Providing Citizen Services online: E-seva in Andhra Pradesh State of India

Author : Nir Kshetri
Date added : 2002-04-15

Brief Project Background

E-seva is built on the success of Hyderabad''s (the capital of AP) Twin Cities Network Services Project (TWINS). TWINS, which was launched in November 1999 to focus on Hyderabad and its sister city Secunderabad, was renamed e-seva with the AP government~{!/~}s plans to extend the services to major towns and municipalities of the state.

The e-seva center is a one-stop-shop for more than 30 government-to-consumer (G2C) and business-to-consumer (B2C) services including payment of utility bills; reservations of train tickets; getting birth and death certificates, vehicle permits, driving licenses; transport department services; sale and receipt of passport applications; telephone connections; collection of small savings; ATM (cash withdrawal and deposits and issue of statement of accounts); mutual funds (collection of applications and transfer of shares); receipt of complaints or requests in connection with citizen services; cell phone bill payments, etc. Before the launch of the e-seva project, these services were available at separate offices and were normally time-consuming because of slow processing and often large crowds waiting for the services.
The goal of e-seva is to simplify the delivery of city services by ~{!0~}providing a wide spectrum of citizen friendly services that will save citizens the bother of running around various departments~{!1~} . E-seva is built on the success of Hyderabad's (the capital of AP) Twin Cities Network Services Project (TWINS). TWINS, which was launched in November 1999 to focus on Hyderabad and its sister city Secunderabad, was renamed e-seva with the AP government~{!/~}s plans to extend the services to major towns and municipalities of the state. The AP government has plans to integrate both the state government and some central government-centric services through the e-seva centers.
The system used in e-seva is not sophisticated. There is a client/server model relying on Web browsers on the front end, an Oracle relational database on the back end, and an Oracle Web application server and reliable ISDN lines in the middle . There are 19 e-seva centers with 200 service counters spread across the twin cities (Hyderabad and Secunderabad). Each center operates from 9:00 am to 7:00 pm every day.

Results

Because of the innovative idea undertaken by the e-seva project, it has been able to attract the attention of customers and suppliers of services. Various public and private organizations are providing their services through e-seva center. For instance, the Industrial Credit and Investment Corporation of India (ICICI), Housing Development Finance Corporation Project (HDFC), GTB, Unit Trust of India (UTI) are some of the banks with whom e-seva has tied up to facilitate banking services.
E-seva has shown phenomenal growth rate in terms of number of transactions conducted as well. By September 2001, AP government served more than 500,000 citizens through e-seva centers. Before September 2001, Rs 5 (about 10 cents) was being charged for each service such as payment of property tax, registration, electricity bill, etc. AP Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu announced that e-seva would be free of cost after October 2001. Availability of free services online is expected to significantly boost the number of user of the services provided by e-seva projects.

Lessons

The experience of e-seva and various IT projects implemented in AP indicates that developing economies may encounter various types of obstacles in the implementation of the projects. Some obstacles are related to a particular IT project, some are related to all IT projects in general and some others are related to the broad socio-cultural forces. In AP, there have been various types of resistive forces acting against the implementation of e-seva and other IT projects. Some of them were overcome with the help of appropriate political and organizational strategies while others may take relatively longer time. First, in an economy with per capita income $400, only a tiny fraction of the population can afford a PC and Internet services. Second, illiteracy rate of 54% means that a majority of the population lacks basic skills required to use the Internet. Other resistive forces include IT Unawareness of government employees and real and perceived threat of computerization, lack of belief among the citizens on the potential of IT, political motivation, etc.
For instance, government employees were totally unaware of IT until the mid-1990s. The success of an IT project is a function of the awareness status of the government employees. Field (2000) describes the IT awareness status of AP government employees.
Soon after taking office, Naidu asked an assistant whether his office was equipped for PowerPoint. ~{!0~}We~{!/~}ll check,~{!1~} he was told. That staffer soon returned and announced, ~{!0~}You have three PowerPoints in your office.~{!1~} Puzzled by the answer, Naidu pushed for clarification. ~{!0~}See?~{!1~} the staffer said, pointing the office~{!/~}s three electrical outlets. ~{!0~}Three power points.~{!1~} Around the same time, Naidu inquired how many PCs were in the state. The answer: 80,000. Realizing that number had to be off by more than a few thousand, Naidu probed. It~{!/~}s true, he was told. Andhra Pradesh really did have 80,000 PCs - police constables, that is (p. 164).
Moreover, IT proved to be a potential threat to the jobs of the government bureaucrats and/or was perceived to be incompatible with their daily routines. These bureaucrats protested against computerization by threatening an indefinite strike in 1999 because it jeopardized their jobs as well as the ability to extract bribes (The Economist 1999, Sept 11).
In addition, if the potential users of an IT project do not see any significant potential benefit of the project, it will be hard to implement. Still another obstacle in AP case was the lack of belief among the stakeholders that IT can lead to the economic development. In one of his interviews, Naidu says:
I used to talk about Singapore, South Korea, even Japan. At that time people used to laugh at me. Even when I spoke about Information Technology, people used to react very pessimistically (Lanka.net 2001).

The resistive forces of political nature have become persistent over time. The state~{!/~}s low per capita income, dependence of the economy on agriculture and an illiteracy rate in excess of 50% has amplified the impact of such resistive forces. Political opponents have attacked Naidu~{!/~}s decision to raise rice and electricity prices by cutting subsidies as ~{!0~}anti-people~{!1~}, and branded as elitist his cultivation of technology and foreign capital (Chanda 2000). Indian journalist Lionel Messias points out: "Government officials do not hesitate to point out that with IT gaining precedence over all other sectors in Naidu's scheme of things, little attention is being paid to agriculture, the main and proven base of economy".
The experience of the implementation of e-seva and other IT projects in AP also indicates that some of the barriers can be overcome by taking appropriate measures. The resistive forces originated from government bureaucrats, for instance, were overcome by strong support and recognition from the Chief Minister and likely approbation from the public. These factors resulted in support to IT implementation by government employees. Moreover, many bureaucrats are labeled as ex-officio IT secretaries despite their heading of different functional departments. These days, AP bureaucrats share a common platform of views on IT issues.
If a government demonstrates good result in at least some of the sectors, it is likely to win the trust of its citizens and other stakeholders. When Naidu approached the World Bank for help in underwriting an economic reform program, the bank pointed out that AP's achievement was far from satisfactory and the organization initially refused the loan (Sidhva 1998). He immediately took measures to reverse the policies. The World Bank was so impressed with the result that it immediately approved a $2.2 billion structural-adjustment loan to the state, which was one-third of the bank~{!/~}s entire aid allocation to India. Similarly, despite general embargo on funding to India after its nuclear test in 1998, the agency gave AP a $560 million loan.
The resistive forces originated from low income and poverty were overcome to some extent by making the services provided by e-seva free. Since low-income people in the state cannot afford PCs, availability of free services encourages higher level of uses. Similarly, to overcome the barriers of illiteracy and hence to extend the services to the illiterate population, touch-screen kiosks are being planned . To extend the services to farmers, in another experiment, 82 agricultural marketing committees have been linked together and with the organization~{!/~}s headquarters. The objective is to make available prices and provide for daily transactions.
Contrary to what Ted Turner, a well-known champion of ICT has said, ~{!0!-~}the poor don~{!/~}t have medicines, they~{!/~}re dying, and they don~{!/~}t have electricity. Bringing more computers to developing countries is not going to solve these problems~{!1~}, the success of e-seva and other IT projects in AP indicates that computers can solve at least some of the problems of the poor people if utilized properly. Field (2000) describes how an illiterate elderly woman is benefiting from the services provided by e-seva centers:
An Elderly woman walks into a municipal office in Hyderabad's Banjara Hills region. She's waving her water bill, which she clearly cannot read~{!*~}she's illiterate. But she patiently takes a number at the reception desk, waits her turn and then is called into the service office. There, behind one of 12 PC terminals, sits a Hyderabad city employee who not only explains the woman's bill, she also accepts payment and records it electronically via a high-speed network linked to the city's main database downtown. In less than 10 minutes, the elderly woman is out of the office, water bill paid.
Projects like e-seva are expected to contribute to 9% to 10% each year through 2020 and expected to make AP the most prosperous state in India. Unlike his predecessors who won short-term popularity and votes by supplying free power and subsidized rice, Naidu has followed the principles of free-market economy to achieve the rapid growth as experienced by the East Asian tigers. The result has already been there in terms of some measurable indicators. Because of the measures taken to develop IT sector, for instance, AP economy grew by nearly 11 % in 1999.

Development Impacts

Other developing economies interested in achieving higher economic growth rate and citizens~{!/~} welfare by utilizing IT to provide various citizen services can learn many valuable and important lessons from the AP experience. First, the governments need to collaborate with private and foreign investors to fund IT projects. Subsidy in electricity, rice and other basic things may not always produce result in the long run. Politicians and policy makers are required to strike a proper balance between short-term and long-term goals.
Second, the needs of the potential IT users should be analyzed properly before investing in IT projects. Illiterate people, poor people and rich people may have different types of needs and ~{!0~}one-size-fits-all~{!1~} approach may not work in such cases.
Third, the IT services provided to the consumers in developing countries should be affordable. The popularity of e-seva in AP is mainly because of its low charge (and free these days).
Fourth, it is important to gain the supports of the various groups of stakeholders. The stakeholders may resist IT projects for various reasons. In the AP case, for instance, the reasons of government bureaucrats resisting the IT projects were different from the reasons the citizens resisted (or at least showed indifferent attitudes). It is important to identify the motivations behind the resistance and take proper measures to overcome them.
Fifth, an IT project is more likely to be successful if it complements with other existing and future IT projects. In AP case, for instance, e-seva complements with other projects such as CARD (project for registration), FAST (project for transportation department), and SKIMS (project for Secretariat linkage with various layers of administration).
Sixth, it is important to change the belief of the potential IT users that they will be getting at least something. Potential users have to adopt the idea (symbolic adoption) before actually adopting the product (use adoption).

Project Information

Organisation : University of Rhode Island
Country of activity: India [IN]

Contact Information

Nir Kshetri
NKSH8805@POSTOFFICE.URI.EDU

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