The Assam e-District Project is a Mission Mode Project under the National e-Governance Plan (NeGP). This project is being implemented by the Information Technology Department,Government of Assam. This project aims to improve G2C interaction experience between the government and citizen. It aims at seamless service delivery of services to the citizen by enhancing the efficiencies at the districts.
The e-District project is aimed at delivering G2C service in all the existing districts of the state. It will make Government Services accessible to the common man in his locality through Internet, Common Service Centres (Arunodoy CSCs) and Public Facilitation Centres (PFCs) at DC,SDO and Circle Offices. It is envisaged that electronic delivery of citizen centric services will ensure efficiency, transparency and reliability at affordable costs to the citizens. Front-ends under the project, in the form of Public Facilitation Centres (PFCs), are built at District, Sub-division and Circle levels. Village-level front-ends are established through Arunodoy Common Services Centres (CSCs) for delivery of services.
e-District project leverages the infrastructure created in the form of State Data Center(SDC), State Wide Area Network (SWAN), State Services Digital Gateway (SSDG), Common Service Centres (CSC) and the other ICT infrastructure created by the State under various initiatives and harmonize it with the e-District MMP. Line department applications already online and live, which are providing G2C services, are also being integrated by dovetailing and integrating them in the e-District architecture.
The key objectives of the project are:
The e-District technical architecture is based on n-tier architecture model. The application architecture follows industry standard protocols like HTTP, SOAP and XML for integration with back end department systems.
The e-District application catering to G2C services is built on Java and is web enabled. This application hosted at the SDC, is a work flow based software, where services are configured based on roles, responsibilities, types & levels of access for various functionaries. The work flow is configurable in the State level as well as the District level. The e-District application business layer provides for:
A core list of five categories of services has been identified at the national level which were implemented in the e-District project. The list includes Certificates, Government Dues and Recovery, Revenue Court Cases, RTI/ Grievances Cases, Certified Copies and Pensions. As part of the State Wide Roll Out, five other categories of services are also identified and selected by the State Govt. A total of 53 citizen centric services have been identified for delivery through e-District in Assam. However the currently 46 services are online through e-District. List may be seen at http://assam.gov.in/service-details .
The management of the project is vested with a District e-Governance Society (DeGS). There are 27 DeGS functional across the State which has the District Deputy Commissioner as the Chairman. To manage and monitor the functioning of the project at the district level, an e-District Project Manager (eDPM) is allotted at each district. As a part of implementation of e-District project in Assam, the Assam Electronics Development Corporation Ltd. (AMTRON), a Public Sector Undertaking of the IT Department, has been appointed as the State Designated Agency (SDA). As SDA, AMTRON shall be the authority responsible for overall management of the project across the State. As SDA, AMTRON would also be responsible for end-to-end implementation of the project as per the predefined scope and within the prescribed time lines.
A System Integrator (SI) has been selected through an open bid process to implement the project for a duration of 4.5 years after which the DeGS would take over the day-to-day implementation of the project at district level. Hardware at districts, State Data Centre are part of this project. Although Assam SWAN is the preferred backbone for Assam e-District, in remote areas use of 3G dongles from various service providers are also utilised to establish the digital connectivity. Back office local area networks (LAN) are also built in DC, SDO and Circle Offices to ease file application movement. A diesel Generating set also forms the part of infrastructure at the Public Facilitation Centres (PFCs) in e-District.
Under e-District project, Capacity Building has been one of the main focus area. Based on the roles and responsibilities of the government officials and staff at various levels, training programs have been designed and imparted under the project across the state in districts. The following training modules form the key component under e-District:
1. Basic Computer Training
2. Advanced Computer Training
3. e-District Application Trainings
4. Training on Usage of Digital Signatures
5. CSC Operator Training
The expected benefits, post implementation of this project, are:
The project was launched on 21st September 2016 and it is live now. Citizen can apply for any of the available services through state portal. One have to register at www.assam.gov.in to avail e-District services. Guidelines are available at http://assam.gov.in/user-manual . Also they can track their application’s status at http://edistrict.assam.gov.in/eDistrict/. A real-time dashboard is also available here.
