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A Parliamentary panel has slammed the IT Department on the “under utilisation of outlay” for National e-Governance Plan.
NeGP is an ongoing flagship programme of the Government, aimed at providing electronic delivery of public services to the citizens.
The Standing Committee on IT noted that actual expenditure in the first four years of the Eleventh Plan amounted to only about 36 per cent of the total budgetary allocation approved for the full Plan period.
In its report, the committee observed that while the Revised Estimate allocation during the period was pegged at about Rs 2,171 crore, the actual spending met so far during the first four years of the Eleventh plan was only about Rs 1,795 crore. The analysis of the data furnished by the Department in various documents revealed that during the Eleventh Plan, Rs 4,992 crore was provided, it said, adding that the BE (Budget Estimate) allocation for five years was about Rs 4,617 crore.
“The committee is also concerned that instead of analysing the reasons for under spending under one of the important schemes, the Department has tried to shift the responsibility to the State Governments,” the report said citing Department's contention that low level of utilisation could be ascribed to the non-release of State share.
The committee also frowned upon the “repetitive” shifting of deadlines for roll out of SWAN (the backbone network for NeGP), CSC (the front end delivery mechanism for NeGP) and SDCs (infrastructure to host local or State e-governance applications).
It also expressed concern that implementation of eDistrict project, a mission mode project that aims to automate citizen services at the district level, had fallen behind schedule.
The Department of IT has also received a rap on its knuckles after the committee found that a portion of Common Service Centres were not fully operational or, in certain cases, did not have Internet connectivity.
It further said that after recurring shifting of deadlines, against the target of establishing one lakh CSCs only 93,163 such centres could be rolled out. “What is disturbing to the committee is that out of 93,163 CSCs set up, 85,287 CSCs could be made functional as on February 2011,” it said.
The committee also asked the IT Department to formulate guidelines with regard to the number of services to be provided by CSCs so that uniformity can be maintained.
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