The government of Karnataka leveraging the power of technology to deliver citizen services fast and efficiently
Bengaluru, February 25, 2023: 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.
“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,” said Varaprasad Reddy B.N., Project Director, GramaOne.
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”
100% automation
“We are 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,” said V Ponnuraj, Secretary, E-governance, GoK. 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,” he said.
The government is leveraging connected databases to achieve this high level of efficiency in governance, Mr 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
Dr Dileesh Sasi (IAS), Director, e-Governance and Ex-officio Director of the Directorate of Electronic Delivery of Citizen Services (EDCS), 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 Dr Dileesh.
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
Sanjay Kumar, State Head, BLS International, 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,” he said.
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.”
A senior official of GramaOne said that the government is adding more services to the delivery channel.
