Nagaland State Portal Enabling e-service delivery to empower citizens

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1 Nagaland State Portal Enabling e-service delivery to empower citizens

2 Client profile The National e-governance Plan (NeGP) of the Government of India aims to make all government services accessible and affordable to citizens through local common service delivery outlets, while delivering them with efficiency, transparency and reliability. All state governments in India have adopted the NeGP and committed themselves to the establishment of core IT infrastructure, comprising the State Wide Area Network (SWAN), a State Data Center (SDC) and Common Service Centres (CSC), to support mission mode projects projects with significant citizen interface. The SDC is a reliable and secure shared services center with a robust infrastructure that will host and manage the state s e-governance applications and departments, enabling delivery of services quickly and efficiently to its citizens. Nagaland is one of eight states in India s north east and is inhabited by indigenous people. It has a population of approximately 2 million and a high literacy rate of more than 80 percent. The Department of Information Technology (DIT), Government of Nagaland is implementing the State Portal/State Service Delivery Gateway (SSDG) project under the NeGP through the Nagaland State e-governance Society, the nodal agency for development of the IT and IT-enabled services (ITeS) industries in the state.

3 Business challenge Nagaland s high literacy rate and lack of easy transportation make a strong case for e-governance. The DIT was keen to streamline IT systems and deliver services to citizens effectively and efficiently. Specifically, the objectives were to: Provide easy, anywhere and anytime access to government services both informational and transactional. Reduce the need for citizens to visit government offices. Lower the administrative burden on the state government. Make government services cheaper and faster to deliver to citizens. Expand opportunities for citizens to engage with government services via electronic means and encourage e-interaction. Enable more efficient communication through the portal. Improve citizen s perception of the government. The DIT needed a partner with expertise in e-governance, knowledge of the immense benefits it would bring to the citizens, and extensive global experience in e-governance delivery. Although Accenture did not have a history of working with the DIT, it was chosen for its global footprint, price, knowledge and experience. Under the terms of the US$1-million contract, Accenture leveraged its experience in leading similar largescale implementation programs to execute and manage the state portal/ SSDG and electronic forms (e-forms) to facilitate the delivery of services.

4 High performance delivered For Accenture in India, this is the first state portal project using automation tooling. The portal will provide electronic forms for 25 services offered by eight government departments, ranging from birth certificates and vehicle registration to education scholarships and firearms licensing. The content volume associated with each service is 600 KB, or a total data volume requirement of 1,176 GB, to meet an estimated demand of 500,000 applications over three years. By automating the system, the portal will reduce the number of steps required for a service only the delivery will be physical. For instance, citizens can apply for a service at the nearest CSC or at home and even track online the status of their application and any feedback they need to visit a government office only at the final stage, such as to collect a certificate or license. Earlier, just the simple process of standardizing forms across government departments had taken five months, delaying the signoff of the software requirements specification (SRS). However, using the form builder tool helped speed up the design, building and testing of the Nagaland portal by more than 34 percent. Over the next three years, this will help reduce the state government s cumulative administrative work by half. Going forward, the portal will also offer a mobile service gateway for easier access. The effectiveness of the Nagaland Portal can be measured once citizens start using the services offered and the state departments start migrating to the online mode from the current paper-based practices. Some of the other critical factors are connectivity across the state through the State Wide Area Network (SWAN) and the simultaneous spread of the Common Service Centers (CSCs).

5 How Accenture helped Accenture is helping the Nagaland government by building a public services portal as a one-stop shop, where citizens can perform transactions online from placing requests for birth and domicile certificates to getting information on the upcoming events with speed, efficiency and transparency anytime and anywhere. This technology transformation will also enhance the government s technological agenda, by building synergies with the National Portal of India and providing access to all data and information. Specifically, Accenture is helping the DIT by: Developing the state portal, including applications and electronic forms. Developing the application and infrastructure required for the deployment of SSDG. Training government officials on e-forms and the SSDG. Supplying and installing computing infrastructure for department offices around the state. Accenture started implementing the project on January 18, The project will span 42 months, comprising six months for system implementation and 36 months for application and information outsourcing. Accenture has teamed with HCL Infosystems, India s leading provider of information and communication technology (ICT) products, which will look after hardware delivery, installation and maintenance for three years and provide help desk support. The applications are being developed at the Accenture Delhi Delivery Center and will be installed at the SDC in Kohima, the capital city of Nagaland. The 15-member Accenture team has completed the system integration phase and the State Portal & State Service Delivery Gateway application went live on March 30, To enable the deployment of the application, the required servers and network components have been installed at the State Data Center in Kohima. The district offices of eight state government departments, spread across more than 40 locations, have been provided with the required infrastructure to enable them to carry out their regular business operations and provide services to the citizens. The application and infrastructure provided have successfully gone though a quality audit by a third-party agency, the Standardisation Testing and Quality Certification (STQC) Directorate. What stands apart in the case of Nagaland is the innovative solution offered by Accenture for SSDG. All components are based on open source technology Jboss Enterprise Portal/Application and Java/J2EE were the primary technologies, along with other technologies such as Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP), an Internet protocol that and other programs use to look up information from a server, Alfresco Web Content Management System and the PostgreSQL database. The tools used were e-forms SI builder, workflow engine and state portal engine. The e-forms builder/ accelerator helped reduce the development effort and aligned the components with the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) standards and Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) to generate industry standard output. A key success factor has been the project s ability to maintain stringent government standards and guidelines on state portal implementation. By using Open Source technology, Accenture has not only brought about a significant saving of the licensing and recurring maintenance costs but has also enabled greater flexibility in terms of platform and customization. The technology will also facilitate easy maintenance of the project and reduce scope for errors.

6 About Accenture Accenture is a global management consulting, technology services and outsourcing company, with approximately 261,000 people serving clients in more than 120 countries. Combining unparalleled experience, comprehensive capabilities across all industries and business functions, and extensive research on the world s most successful companies, Accenture collaborates with clients to help them become high-performance businesses and governments. The company generated net revenues of US$27.9 billion for the fiscal year ended Aug. 31, Its home page is Contact Details G.Sethuraman Partner, Accenture Consulting in India g.sethuraman@accenture.com Ashok Veldurti Vice President, Accenture in India ashok.veldurti@accenture.com Copyright 2013 Accenture All rights reserved. Accenture, its logo, and High Performance Delivered are trademarks of Accenture. 3