The Hindu Business Line : NEGP: State projects may get major share of World Bank aid

THE State-level e-governance projects spanning land records, property registration, agriculture and municipalities are expected to get a massive thrust, with a whopping 50-75 per cent of the World Bank's proposed $500-million assistance for the National e-Governance Plan (NEGP) likely to flow into these initiatives.

According to senior officials in the Department of Information Technology, a bulk of the amount is likely to be channelised into the State-level e-governance projects as well as 10 functional components entailing core projects, integrated projects, core infrastructure, assessment and awareness, technical assistance and research and development, amongst others.

The NEGP is aimed at improving the quality, accessibility and effectiveness of Government services with the help of information and communication technologies, and consists of 10 functional components and 25 mission mode projects (MMPs) to be executed over a four-year period.

The MMPs comprise projects under the Central Government, the State departments, and those, which are integrated, that is, spanning multiple ministries, departments or agencies.

The Central Government projects cover programmes such as national ID, Central Excise, income-tax, DCA-21, passports/visa and immigration, pensions, banking, and insurance, while the State-level includes projects such as land records, property registration, transport, agriculture, municipalities, gram panchayats, commercial taxes, treasuries, police and employment exchange.

The integrated projects, on the other hand, include e-business, common service centres, India portal, e-procurement and e-courts.

"The dialogue with the World Bank was for programme-level support. The assistance may not flow into the Central projects as many those relating to income-tax, excise and company affairs are being funded by the Ministry of Finance from budgetary sources.

"Most of the bank assistance will, therefore, go into the State-level projects," the official said adding that the States had been given the flexibility to prioritise the projects and moot additional projects, if required.

The official said that a World Bank team had recently conducted a due diligence and undertaken a costing exercise for three States - West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh and Punjab - to arrive at a normative cost.

With the bank having indicated a timeframe of 9-12 months for approving the amount and modalities, the official estimated that the fund would begin to flow in by early or middle of next year.

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