eGov-Jan-2011-[16-18]-Inclusive Community Technology-Ashank Desai

opinion

inclusive growth

Ashank Desai Founder, Mastek Ltd.

Inclusive community technology?

To deliver the benefits of social welfare schemes to the right people in a timely manner, ICT must be fully exploited

I

ndia is ranked 119th among 169 countries on Human Development Index (HDI) in the 2010 Human Development Report (HDR) by UNDP. On one hand, while the country has had good economic growth, it has done poorly in terms of human development. The report also states that poverty rates in eight Indian states are similar to 26 of the poorest countries in Africa.

Such starkly contrasting disparity is alarming for the nation, especially when it is being considered to be an emerging super power in the world. Consequently, plenty of focussed and targeted programmes and schemes such as Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGs), Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, and Micro Credit Scheme for Self Help Groups (SHGs) have been initiated, broadly described as affirmative or inclusive policies by the central and state governments.

The Government of India, in its budget, increased spending on the social sector which was 37 percent of the total plan outlay in 2010-11. While

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the government’s seriousness about its intention to deliver the services to citizens cannot be denied, the pertinent questions are: Are the right services and benefits being delivered to the right people and in the time frame promised, especially in the social sector, a focus area of inclusive development?

Are these initiatives producing the desired results?

Considering the gigantic size and complexity involved, the role of ICT is critical in this scenario and I believe it can assist the governments in address these question through integrated automation. There are a wide range of benefits ICT can deliver in making social welfare programmes effective.

and ` 60 in daily wages?

Portal development activity has been seen in the recent past. A majority of the underprivileged do not use this channel, so the educated section, however small, operating staff and concerned people should be targeted to disseminate such information to the whole community. The awareness messages should be designed accordingly for each target group e.g. women and children, tribal or OBCs. Multimedia should be effectively and creatively used to promote awareness among the digitally unconnected sections. Today ICT has reached this maturity, and society should address this doggedly. To support this, portals need to be integrated with channels such as SMS, IVR and social media.

Generating awareness Probably one of the biggest challenges faced today is that the citizens are not aware of the various programmes and schemes they can benefit from. Does a student from the OBC socio-economic class know that he may be eligible for scholarship or does a daily-wage worker know that under NREGS he is assured a minimum of 100 days of employment

Giving meaning to numbers The organised sector is using MIS and BI tools as decision support systems. The social justice sector should also start using these tools

Multiple reports get generated for the departments on a regular basis. But what do these numbers mean? For example, just knowing that there are 100 colleges in a state does not mean anything until one knows the demographics of the student population in these colleges. Thus,

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contextual information is important to interpret the numbers. Without the context, the effectiveness of the programmes and schemes and its impact on society is not known. Based on our experience in this domain and interaction with central and state departments, I believe that a ‘dashboard’ is required to provide the departments with a view of how ‘healthy’ their schemes are.

Data aggregation, in the context of the budgetary allocation, coupled with the expected effect is a key activity for this.

It is important to start with identifying what information needs to be provided and in what context is the data meaningful. The organised sector, public as well as private, is using MIS and BI tools very effectively as decision support systems (DSS). The social justice sector should also start exploiting such tools effectively.

It will therefore be necessary to widen the scope of such IT systems beyond mere accounting of the funds disbursements, and link it to the fundamental problem areas and the social reengineering model designed to resolve them.

I am aware this is easier said than done.

However, IT Industry has to rise to undertake such challenges so as to assist society in diluting the ‘starkly contrasting disparity’ referred in the beginning.

Taking a beneficiary view While the social justice & empowerment department is able to create the mandate and the planned, scheduled and budgeted activities, it needs to route most of the schemes through different line departments like agriculture, education or housing, so as to make the schemes relevant and effective. Thus, the beneficiary can have multiple touch points to receive the benefits. From our discussion with the state departments, I realise that the government does not have an integrated view of the beneficiary. Overcoming this challenge will enable it to know if its investment is correctly used and if the right individual or class of individuals received the social benefit or not.

The challenge of creating visibility is that first there are various other depart-

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Portals, SMSs and IVRs can act as channels to get feedback from the citizens to understand the pain points and bottlenecks in program execution

ments and corporations involved and each state has districts, further drilled down to tehsils, talukas and gram panchayats—all of which are jurisdictiondriven. Second, there is no unique way to identify an individual or small-scale business in service at the moment.

The UID programme is what is required as a first step to the solution.

This will provide a unique identification to the individual. As a second step, contextual data i.e. socio-economiccultural factors need to be applied to these demographics from UID as metadata, in order to arrive at the single view of the individual. This is a paradigm shift from being programme- or budget-focused to becoming citizenand result-focused. The social benefits being consumed by a citizen, a family, a community, a state or a country and their ‘development’ can then be tracked and monitored and leakages can be identified or course correction be applied in time.

Bringing transparency in movement of funds The department has the visibility of the funds budgeted, allocated and disbursed to districts for execution of the programmes and schemes. However, it does not have visibility of how the funds have been utilised and services rendered to citizens. As mentioned earlier, due to the ‘jurisdiction-driven’ and ‘process bound’ execution, which is most of the time criticised as ‘red tapes’ because of inherent inefficiencies, at least this much visibility is possible. Creating any

other meaningful information in time is humanly impossible considering the size and issues involved in handling and managing paper documents. Collation of information is a challenge. Increasing integration and automation of the activities is the only cost effective way out and I am able to see the gradual shift in the government sector in that direction.

Ensuring compliance to the most complex set of processes and rules (helping the administration) and delivering the service to every needy citizen speedily and as per his personal convenience is what efficient and effective systems are about. This I believe is the challenge which IT Industry must meet, and I’m confident it will.

Getting feedback It is important to not only provide information but also receive feedback, complaints, suggestions from the citizens to understand the pain points and bottlenecks in the programme execution. Portals, CSCs, SMSs and IVRs can act as channels for these and provide the user a concrete experience. A happy customer is a satisfied citizen who can depend upon and believe in his or her government.

Indian ICT professionals have tackled business, industrial and scientific sectors problems, domestic as well as global in these types of situations very effectively. The need of the hour is to employ these techniques creatively in this unique Indian situation to make inclusive policies efficient and effective.