Punjab government to implement e-district project in 20 districts

Having successfully tested e-district project in two districts of the state, the Punjab government is planning to replicate the project in other districts of the state within eight to ten months. Taking a step forward in this direction, the state government has already floated tenders for system integrator and evaluating the bids submitted by the interested players.

It is worth mentioning that e-district project envisages integrated and seamless delivery of citizen services by district administration through automation of workflow, backend computerisation, data digitisation across participating departments.

The project aims to target high volume delivered at the district level and to undertake back-end computerisation to enable the delivery of citizen services through common service centres in a systematic way. It further aims to integrate multiple applications, faster processing of public cases/appeals/grievances, dissemination of information as per public requirement and redesign the processes for the core services to be delivered through the Common Service Centers.

Speaking to Business Standard, senior official in Punjab State e-governance Society (PSEGS), said, "Initially, the state government has chosen the districts of Nawanshahar and Kapurthala for the pilot implementation of the e-district project. The pilot is being followed by the State wide roll out, i.e. roll out of the project across all other remaining 20 districts. Under the pilot implementation, a set of 47 high volume & citizen centric services were chosen. The broad activities under the pilot implementation were installation and commissioning of required infrastructure at data center and field offices, user training to various officials, development of e-district application."

" We were very much satisfied by the pilot project which was implemented in two district and planning to extend to other districts of the state. In this regard we recently floated tender for system integrator and received bids. We are evaluating the bids and very soon a decision would be made in this regard. We are hopeful that the project would be implemented in other districts eight to ten months," he informed.

Under the e-district roll out, system integrators will be responsible for providing a comprehensive solution towards supply, installation, development, integration, commissioning, and maintenance of application and computing infrastructure pertaining to e-district in the state. The government is going to provide 47 citizen centric service like issuance of caste certificate, birth certificate, residence certificate etc through these e-districts.

Wipro has been entrusted as a consultant for the project. The total project cost for the project is around Rs 55 crore which would be funded through central government and in case of any variation, the state government will fund rest of the project cost.

It is pertinent to mention here that The Punjab State e-sovernance society (PEGS) administers the implementation of e-governance projects in the state.