The government of Karnataka leveraging the power of technology to deliver citizen services fast and efficiently
Bengaluru, NFAPost: As many as three crore citizens in Karnataka are benefiting from the State government’s path-breaking technological initiative, Seva Sindhu.
It allows people to avail of government services at the click of a button or by visiting the delivery channels of Seva Sindhu, such as GramaOne, BengaluruOne, and KarnatakaOne centres, or by booking slots for door delivery of citizen services through Janasevaka.
GramaOne Project Director Varaprasad Reddy B N said this is a revolutionary step in the governance of the State wherein the administration is providing essential services to its citizens in a time-saving, efficient, and reliable manner.
E-governance is critical to good governance. Seva Sindhu delivers more than 850 services from 80 government departments that touch every phase of human life, and cater to every sector facilitating citizen-centric essential services, said Mr Reddy.
He added GramaOne is one of its strong delivery mechanisms, and it has achieved both inclusive governance and financial inclusion, which are important facets of good governance.
“Farmers, youth, women, labour, senior citizens among others are catered with different services through GramaOne, which is acting like single stop services delivery point,” said GramaOne Project Director Varaprasad Reddy B N.
100% automation
Government of Karnataka E-governance Secretary V Ponnuraj said the state is transforming the citizens’ services to achieve efficiency by cutting down the time required to deliver services, need for documents verification by dept staff and by reducing manual approvals. He illustrated this with the example of bus passes for students.
“From this year, student bus passes will be issued in a 100% automated manner. In the State, every year, we receive 20 lakh applications. Of that, two lakhs are for new passes, and the rest are for renewals. From this year, the 18 lakh renewals will be automatic. For the two lakh new passes, there will be minimal manual interventions and minimal requirement of documents,” said Government of Karnataka E-governance Secretary V Ponnuraj.
The government is leveraging connected databases to achieve this high level of efficiency in governance, Government of Karnataka E-governance Secretary V Ponnuraj said. “For example, we have integrated three systems for providing bus passes – one, the education department’s database; two, the Kutumba database; and three, the GIS of Karnataka,” he said.
He also stated that there would be no loss of workforce because of this automation. “On the contrary, automation will help reduce considerably the extra work burden on the existing personnel who are often forced to work extra time. In addition, we are also working with BBMP to issue BBMP e-khata in a streamlined manner,” he said.
Robust system
e-Governance Director and Ex-officio Director of the Directorate of Electronic Delivery of Citizen Services (EDCS) Dileesh Sasi said the government is building a robust system to re-engineer existing processes by bridging various types of department machinery.
“Since its inception in June 2018, transactions through Seva Sindhu have increased yearly. Karnataka lives in villages, and one of the strong delivery channels of Seva Sindhu is GramaOne. There are more than 7,300 GramaOne centres across Karnataka. The first centre was opened on the 16th of November 2020 in Maganhalli, Davangere district. They have served 1.6 crore citizens in a record time,” said e-Governance Director and Ex-officio Director of the Directorate of Electronic Delivery of Citizen Services (EDCS) Dileesh Sasi.
Some of the services provided via GramaOne are certificates related to caste, income, residence, old age, birth, death, widow pension, police verification, and crop insurance; besides, student bus pass, loans, application for borewell, etc.
Saving time and money
BLS International State Head Sanjay Kumar said this unique digital initiative of the government is helping people in small towns and villages in a significant way.
“They don’t have to travel long distances to reach government offices in taluk and district headquarters like they used to do. So, they save a lot of travel expenses and time,” said BLS International State Head Sanjay Kumar.
Digital transactions have several advantages, said Mr Sanjay, “For example, they leave a trail of the transaction, thereby increasing the transparency. It also makes government services more trustworthy.”
About BLS International Services Ltd.
BLS International Services Ltd. is a listed company on NSE and BSE. BLS is rendering citizen centric services in various states of India apart from 66 countries of the world.
It is a good governance initiative that incorporates the vision of National e-Governance Plan which is “Public Services Closer to Home” and facilitates single entry portal for entire range of Government to Citizen (G2C) & Business to Customer (B2C) services and BLS is committed to provide G2C and B2C services to citizens through IT and Internet enabled centers using digital platform that is prompt and effective which leads to saving of efforts and time of citizens. Various public services from different government departments are delivered through our centers close to the doorsteps of the citizens.
BLS GramaOne Centers
The BLS GramaOne centers are operated by self-employed youth on Franchisee model in remote corners of the Karnataka state who besides eking their livelihood provide a decentralized self-governance backbone to the administrative system. Multiple service delivery points run by such franchisees competing with each other redefine governance and bring in strict adherence to citizen charter time limits.
BLS is to set-up and operate GramaOne centers in total 15 districts of 2 administrative divisions namely Mysore and Kalaburgi in franchisee model under Directorate of EDCS, DPAR(e-Governance), Government of Karnataka.
