Mee Seva
Department of IT

A. Problem Analysis

 1. What was the problem before the implementation of the initiative?
In the past, service delivery mechanisms of the Government departments left much to be desired in India. Government bureaucratic structure, built on rationale principles, dominatedGovernment service delivery in twentieth century but it failed to respond to the changing requirements of the present times. Public Administration was rigid and did lay too much emphasis on red-tapism and thus was wearing out dynamism and denyingsmooth and seamless service delivery to citizens. In addition, the focus was more on following procedures and keeping records. The Government did run numerous welfare benefit schemes for citizens and being a developing country, the citizen’s dependency on such schemes were very high. However, as most of the requests were processed in paper form, there were alarming discrepancies in way the requests were processed and the way the data was maintained and recorded. Government records like land records, registration records, birth/death registrations, municipal permissions etc., which were essential aids in getting benefits under various welfare programs remained archived in unidentifiable sheaths and bundles of papers. Consequently, a visit to Government department by a citizen to make use of any service used to be a harrowing experience. Since majority of the citizens who claimed social benefits belonged to the disadvantaged sections of the society, they often became mute spectators to the constant ignominy that heaped upon them. During those days the power of IT was primarily under-utilized and most of the departments had ineffective interfaces for service delivery to the citizens. Government employees too were not satisfied as the system induced drudgery and lack of occupational motivation were affecting their overall productivity. With the rising awareness amongst the citizens and their better experiences with the private sector– the demand for better services on the part of Government departments became more pronounced. Citizens belonging to all strata of the society including that of immigrants, women, youth, poor, illiterate, disabled etc.; were finding it difficult to access basic Government Services. Though eSeva, GoAP initiated project in 2001, was providing bill payment services pertaining to various Government Departments and Private Organizations in urban parts of the State, it still was not serving the citizens in the way they wanted. e-Seva succeeded in reducing the drudgery of bill-payments, but it still functioned like a 'post-office', accepting applications, sending by post to the concerned office, receiving back and then handing over to the citizens without any integrated service delivery model. The early months of the financial year 2011 witnessed many isolated as well as unified citizen movements. The need for a transparent and efficient governance mechanism acted as a catalyst for most of these campaigns. One such was the Anna Hazare’s campaign, demanding a clear transparent citizen centric Government. The ripples of such campaigns hit even the remotest corners of the nation. The need for the Government to do something unique and citizen centric became the dire need of the hour.

B. Strategic Approach

 2. What was the solution?
In the state of Andhra Pradesh, the situations took a dramatic shift when the Chief Minister Kiran Kumar Reddy himself took the reins. His strategy focused on commitment, accountability, responsiveness and inclusiveness of the governance systems. The approach also aimed at establishing an accountable and transparent public administration system. The Chief Ministerdemanded that the concept should aim at delivering services to citizens in mere 15 minutes, that too across the counter. This gave birth to the concept of Category Aand Category B. However it was soon realized that making Category A service a reality was a herculean task. To deliver a service across the counter, the data pertaining to the query should already be readily available on the system. Besides, those data should already be verified as well. So the next step was crystal clear. Update, verify and digitally sign the data! The officials chose Revenue department as their pilot. However, convincing department officials was not an easy task. To tackle this, Inter departmental coordination meetings with key Departments were conducted to ensure that they are on board right from the inception. At the same time they also realized that the entire time cannot be spend on one activity alone, but on many activities as well. Hence multiple processes were initiated in a parallel manner. Finally MeeSeva was launched with 10 services in November, 2011 and has touched 192 services now. The Project brings in a digital PKI enabled integrated architecture through multiple service delivery points by fusing in the various pre-existing state initiatives with the Mission-mode Projects like State Data Center (SDC), State Wide Area Network (SWAN) and Common Service centers (CSCs) of the National eGovernance Plan (NeGP) of Government of India. MeeSeva adopts the concept of central pooling of all Land records, Registration records and records of Socio-economic survey, digitally signing them with the digital signature certificates of the authorized officer, storing them in the database and rendering them using a web-service. All the documents rendered are digitally signed and electronically verifiable making them tamper proof. The project brings in strict adherence to citizen charter time limits and ushers in a whole new paradigm of across the counter services to ostensibly work flow services through massive porting and bulk signing of databases. MeeSeva initiative has taken a holistic view of Government procedures, paying more attention to Government process re-engineering to increase operational efficiency and citizen satisfaction. MeeSeva has enabled the procedural changes in various front and back office processes to enable faster delivery of services, optimization of operational cost and improvement in quality of service delivery. MeeSeva services are delivered through kiosks, where kiosk operator receives citizen application, captures details of application in frontend-software system. Front end - delivery channels like eSeva centers, CSCs etc. are established to cater to citizens’ service requests. Wherever there is any shortfall, new CSCs are established.Multiple service delivery points run by citizens competing with each other redefine governance and bring in strict adherence to citizen charter time limits. MeeSeva currently has 192 high impact services, which would go up to more than 300 by the end of this year. The project has already completed 33.86Million transactions and most of the Government departments are now on board. The target is to ensure that MeeSeva becomes the entry and exit point for the citizen to approach the Government for any service. Besides this, project also delivers more than 200 Million transactions every year for other services like Bill Payments besides a big range of B2C services making it the country’s biggest one stop e-governance shop.

 3. How did the initiative solve the problem and improve people’s lives?
The Project successfully tried out INNOVATIVE, NOVEL and hitherto UNKNOWN practices and unraveled the mysteries hampering the country’s e-Govt. space for the last ten years. Mee Seva reduced the service delivery time and improved the customer service experience dramatically. Some of the many unique and innovative features of the project are: • Categorization of services in to Category A & B; Cat A implies high volume services to be delivered across the counter • Large scale digitization of records, wherever digital databases were not available. Digital signing of databases including bulk signing • Centralizing databases by purifying, digital signing and porting at central departmental database servers at the SDC. • State electronic certificate repository (SECR) to store issued certificates and it is placed in public domain for verification of certificates using unique Application number. • Delegation of powers to field functionaries by establishing District e-Governance Society • Creation of new databases • Single sign-on • Secured stationery with 8 security features is used to eliminate certificate duplication These features ensure that Mee Seva functions as a single entry/exit point for all citizen centric services in Andhra Pradesh.Mee Seva thus helps citizens save time and effort while bringing a sense of satisfaction and happiness on their faces.

C. Execution and Implementation

 4. In which ways is the initiative creative and innovative?
One of the most challenging tasks IT & C had during the initial days of Mee Seva was to establish Mee Seva as a citizen’s one stop e-governance shop. IT & C identified the Government departments which had high public interfaces and initiated discussions with them. Studies revealed that the large demand and lack of transparency had resulted in wide spread corruption and breeding of large number of unauthorized agents and touts. To curb these and to ensure that the requests were processed only through authorized channels, IT & C decided to standardize the entire delivery channels across the state. Subsequently, all the authorized/recognized delivery channels, including CSCs, APOnline centers etc., were converted into Mee Seva centers. In addition to these, the state also came up with ESD rules. Government of Andhra Pradesh issued Andhra Pradesh Information Technology Rules (Electronic Service Delivery), 2011 in order to provide legal sanctity to the digitally signed certificates. It was also made mandatory for Departments to migrate to electronic service delivery within a period of five years. District eGovernance Societies were formed, registered and empowered to function as nodal agencies for the implementation of Mee Seva. With the help of these DeGSs, the central team did many capacity building activities in every districts and mandals and ensured that the IT awareness levels of department officers were enhanced. In the similar manner, training for using digital signatures was also given to the concerned officers. Convincing other departments and bringing them under the Mee Seva parasol was another and perhaps one of the most challenging tasks the team had to undertake. Inter departmental coordination meetings were arranged regularly with key departments to ensure that they join the bandwagon. The team studied the hardware gaps and necessity and helped the department in establishing Backend hardware, wherever required. This ensured that the hardware available in the department were capable and adequate enough to support high transaction applications. The entire solution was hosted at a state of art State Data Center. The Web Based System, which was deployed at a central location, ensured that the services were easily accessible to all the stakeholders, anytime and anywhere. The project worked on an Integrated Service Delivery Model to provide a single entry point for a wide range of services to the citizens. It also brought in a digital PKI enabled integrated architecture through multiple service delivery points by blending various pre-existing state initiatives with the Mission-mode Projects like State Data Center (SDC), State Wide Area Network (SWAN) and Common Service centers (CSCs). Government process re-engineering was done to improvise overall efficiency of Government service delivery. IT&C department had envisioned procedural changes in various Government processes to enable faster delivery of services, optimization of operational cost and improvement in quality of service delivery. The progressive reforms led development of innovative business models in Government service delivery; thus removing inconsistencies in the system and enhancing efficiency of SLAs (time, cost, resources etc.). The systems were developed by optimizing, redefining and automating existing Government processes benefitting citizens and various Government departments. IT&C department utilized the power of communication in effective implementation of Mee Seva project and has innovatively devised an exclusive communication strategy utilizing various media platforms such as: Electronic Media, Television, Print Media, and Display Boards etc. along with established PR techniques to connect with various stakeholders of the projects. Mee Seva communication strategy incorporates various key segments where information is required to be communicated to stakeholders such as: capacity building, awareness, stakeholder motivation & enhanced participation, feedback/grievance management, conflict resolution, developing common interactive forums etc

 5. Who implemented the initiative and what is the size of the population affected by this initiative?
MeeSeva is a multi-departmental, multi-location, technology-rich; completely home grown initiative. A technology intensive multi-disciplinary project of this nature requires the entire range of parallel and sequential activities to converge together around the same time. Mee Seva exemplifies the role played by all stakeholders working together as a team. • Government Departments o Dept. of Information Technology and Communications IT&C department played a key-catalyzing role in the entire process. It evolved the concept, became the main implementer and technology partner. Important components of the Project were identified, such as creation/updating databases, developing front-end and back-end applications, strengthening connectivity, procuring digital signatures and training field-functionaries in their usage, establishing additional CSCs etc. and work was started simultaneously on all these components. o Other Government Departments The participating departments have supported well in delivering their departmental service through MeeSeva, organizing the trainings and following up with the progress and adhering to the timelines. • Citizens: MeeSeva being a citizen centric and a 'demand side' project where the incipient demand always existed, there was extensive cooperation from them by adapting to the new system. • Technology Solution Provider (NIC): NIC has developed several applications for various departments of GoAP, where they have extended the data through web service for delivering the services through MeeSeva. • Authorized Service Providersensured smooth functioning of MeeSeva by providing and maintaining IT infrastructure, appointing authorized agents, training them, providing secured stationery and attending to customers in a user-friendly manner. • Kiosk Operators: Self-employed youth who operated Mee Seva centres, bearing all the troubles and probing questions from the citizen as well as field level officers to render the services within SLA. • Media: Rapid penetration of information is only possible through Media. In publicizing MeeSeva till the rural level, media has played a very important role.
 6. How was the strategy implemented and what resources were mobilized?
Mee Seva is the direct result of the experience acquired through existing Government initiatives blended with emerging technologies and citizen needs. The concept was translated into reality, culminating in the creation of about 7000+ Mee Seva Centers throughout the state. The role of the IT & C department as technical arm of the state was to conceptualize the project, coordinate with various departments involved and develop the entire technical infrastructure of the project including hardware and software besides providing connectivity for the multiple offices in the state and the State Data Centre, as well as the management of the setting up of MeeSeva centers through the franchisee model all over Andhra Pradesh. The project was launched with an initial seed investment of $ 1.45 Million. The project used technical infrastructure created under the existing programmes and leveraged it to the fullest. This Infrastructure had already been created with the support from Government of India at a cost of more than $ 32.3 Million for AP. AP Online a joint venture company promoted jointly by M/s TCS and Government of Andhra Pradesh has been appointed to Mee Seva system Development; a team of 50-60 developers is exclusively working on Mee Seva. In Mee Seva, a key pillar for the success of the project was determined by the successful digitization of data which involved two major aspects, namely, (i) to verify, authenticate and digitally sign the records, (ii) to make them available for the centralized Mee Seva platform to successfully fetch and deliver them as services to the citizen. The verification and signing of such bulk data required the development of special software to respond to the challenge of the digital verification and certification of all records. To digitalize the 40 Million land records, all village and block level resources had to be mobilized to first identify, analyze and then digitally sign the documents. Additionally all the departments involved, such as revenue, registration or taxes had to be supplied with different software corresponding to their needs with regards to service delivery. They had to be streamlined to a bouquet of services under one single system as a single gateway, which is now accessed, by the thousands of center operators every day. An initial grant of 200 Million INR by the Government was used for software development and additional hardware. The centralizedkiosk based model of Mee Seva is an extremely innovative model. Well trained operators, deliver services to the citizens concerning the submission of the appropriate documents along with professional supervision of application processes to the ultimate delivery of the certificates. Mee Seva centers have been streamlined in design, specification and logo and in addition, urban centers upgraded with the adequate hardware for effective delivery of certificates to the citizen. Opening of a center involves an approximate cost of around 75000 INR, which includes a desktop, a high quality printer, a scanner, an uninterrupted Internet connection. The innovative business model guarantees the long-term sustainability and profitability by sharing the user charges among all stakeholders.

 7. Who were the stakeholders involved in the design of the initiative and in its implementation?
1. Coverage: Number of Departments/Services MeeSeva currently has 192 high impact services from 18 various departments. 30 Services are Category A and remaining 162 services are Category B. Project also delivers more than 200 Million transactions every year for services like Bill Payments and a range of B2C services making it the country’s biggest one stop e-governance shop. 2. Huge Geographical Coverage Mee Seva is operational across all 23 districts of Andhra Pradesh with 7000+ kiosks. With centralized architecture, any service can be accessed from anywhere. It has been mandated to the service providers of the kiosks to follow specific norms (Min. infrastructure required & color schemes) for common look and feel. 3. Improvement in efficiency in delivering and availing of ICT enabled services. Time & Money: • Category A are delivered in 15 minutes & 25 INR across the counter, which earlier used to take 3-15 days. • Category B are delivered as per the citizen charter, which earlier used to take 10-60 days. Service Availability: • Mee Seva now has more than 7000 kiosks where citizens can access Government Services. Earlier citizens could only access the services at issuing authority office. Transparency in information: Citizens can verify the application status on MeeSeva portal or at service delivery center; whereas earlier there was no visibility on application status. 4. Contribution to Overall e-Transaction Statistics “Total e-Transactions at National Level (from 01-01-2013 to 07-12-2013)” • Andhra Pradesh is topmost state in number of e-Transactions executed from 1st January 2013 to 07thDecember 2013 with more than 23% of the National Transactions. • Andhra Pradesh holds 1st position among all the states with total of 359, 421,156e-Transactions from 1st January 2013 to 07thDecember 2013. • Statistics are taken from etaal.gov.in, managed by DeiTY- GoI Statistics “Service Category wise (A/B) Number of Trasactions” • Mee Seva has completed 33, 869, 673 trasactions till 7th December 2013: o Cat A: 11, 468, 284 o Cat B: 22, 401, 388 • 34% of the total transactions are Category A which means they have been delivered across the counter. • A meagre 1 % (219,077/22, 401, 388) of the Category B transactions are pending beyond the citizen charter time limits. • 90 % (20, 310, 007/22, 401, 388) of the Category B transactions have been approved. 5. Capacity Building • 1710 Training sessions conducted for 170 services/18 Departments. • Total 58129 users have been trained including 45312 Kiosk operators &12817 Departmental officials.

 8. What were the most successful outputs and why was the initiative effective?
Administrative System Director Electronic Service Delivery (ESD): Government of Andhra Pradesh issued Andhra Pradesh Information Technology Rules (Electronic Service Delivery), 2011 in order to provide legal sanctity to the digitally signed certificates and make it mandatory for the Departments to migrate to electronic service delivery within a period of five years. This ensured that departments move to electronic delivery of services in a period of time. The Director of Electronic Service Delivery has the responsibility to ensure that the system of Electronic Service Delivery, specified under these rules functions efficiently and effectively for the benefit of the citizens. District e-Governance Society (DeGS) - DeGS have been made the nodal agencies for the implementation of MeeSeva. All the operational and technical issues in the district are being taken by the DeGS. The Departmental user charges for the transactions are being sent to them. Project Management & Monitoring • PMU MeeSeva: Project Management Unit at IT&C department has been established to address various project implementation issues (citizen grievance report, change request etc.), received through unique email id (pmu.meeseva@gmail.com), coordinate with service providers and concerned Government department(s) to resolve the issues and provide timely issue resolution status report/feedback to kiosk operators/ citizens.). Other Systems for Monitoring, Implementation and Grievance Redressal • MeeSeva Request Tracking System (MRTS): MRTS has been introduced for automatic tracking of requests. It is a web based Ticket and Change Request raising and tracking tool. The system facilitates tracking of requests “who requested what-when requested-what was done to address the request-who handled the request-how much time it took them”. Request Tracker is easy to use, where one screen records all information about a single request. Extensive search capabilities allow the user to identify similar problems or requests that were handled in the past, making the solutions instantly available. • Online Discussion Forum with FAQ “(http://MeeSeva.gov.in/APSDCDeptPortal/User Interface/DiscussionPage.aspx)” This Forum is open to the MeeSeva Users, kiosk operators etc. • Help Desk email ID (http://MeeSeva.gov.in/APSDCDeptPortal/User Interface/Help-Desk.html): e-mails can be sent directly to this Help-Desk Mail id for suggestions, complaints and grievances. • 1100 - This is the call center number. The customers can call this Call number and register their complaints or seek information.

 9. What were the main obstacles encountered and how were they overcome?
• Administrative Control and Establishment of CSCs: Establishing the CSCs needed institutionalization in implementation to ensure that the service delivery was prompt and no disappointment was caused to the citizens. In order to have better administrative control, the powers of Director, ESD were delegated to the Joint Collector which created decentralized leadership and ownership. • Parallel Issuance of the Services: Though citizen centric services from various departments were identified and are being offered through MeeSeva, many Government officials resorted to the traditional methods of delivering the services. This was changed by introducing a Legal framework – Information Technology Rules (Electronic Service Delivery), 2011 in order to provide legal sanctity to the digitally signed certificates. • Distribution of Digital Signature and Renewal: Digital signature distribution and renewal posed a challenge as initially there was only one center for issuance and renewal of their digital signatures. Distributed centers were established at 6 locations across the state thus helping the users to conveniently register the digital signatures from their nearest location. • Implementation of Citizen Charter& SLA: Guidelines on formulating the Charters as well as a list of do’s and don’ts were communicated to various Government departments to enable them to bring out focused and effective charters on the services offered through MeeSeva. The MeeSeva project brings in strict adherence to citizen charter time limits.

D. Impact and Sustainability

 10. What were the key benefits resulting from this initiative?
Benefits obtained from these services by each category of stakeholders Citizens:MeeSeva has really made service delivery very convenient for the citizen. Prior to the launch of MeeSeva project, applicants used to visit the respective departments to avail services, and many a times required multiple visits. After the implementation of MeeSeva, approx. 33% of the applicants are able to get their certificates within one visit. In other cases, applicants need to visit the MeeSeva Center only two times to avail the services. • MeeSeva, facilitates convenience of time (8 AM to 8 PM), location (more than 7000 CSCs) and mode of service delivery (Online, CSCs),justifying the concept of anytime, anywhere service. With MeeSeva Online, the availability of the services will be 24/7 • Exclusion of complexity and hassles of traditional system (physical forms, amount of irrelevant information exchange, long queues etc.) is the key transformation area facilitating transparency & simplicity of procedure to citizens. • Drastic reduction in service delivery time. 34% category A services delivered across the counter, remaining category B are delivered as per the citizen charter through more than 7000 kiosks reducing logistics cost and eliminating role of agents/brokers/touts etc. • Easy access to service providers, as Government has facilitated multiple feedback platforms (24*7 call centre, Forums, Social Media etc.), where citizens can directly contact service providers for registering their feedback. Socioeconomic benefits to for citizens: • Employment Generation: 7000+ MeeSeva Kiosks across the state act as a medium of employment generation to thousands of youths. • Benefits to Students: Issuance of 51,87,703 income certificates, 19,21,386 residence certificates • Employment to Women: Direct Employment to 700 Women Kiosk Operators (10% of total Kiosks) • Benefits to Farmers: Issuance of 5651191 Land Record Copies across the state. • Benefits to BPL Citizens: Issuance of authenticated Income Certificates with in prescribed time limit to 3836167 Below Poverty Line (BPL) families. • Benefits to SC/ST/BC Communities: Issuance of authenticated Caste Certificates to 3773600 SC/ST/BC families Government: • Coordination on information management among various departments, as central database facilitates all departmental databases at one place; which have also extended the boundaries of data access for the Government Departments cutting through silos. • Redundant manual Government procedures have been removed, which has eventually increased effective working hours and productivity of Government employees. Employees now better manage core department functions. • Government policy reforms (digital signatures) to improve the legal framework of electronics service delivery have improved data security measures and have increased citizens’ faith in MeeSeva. • Resource utilization was maximized by incorporating innovative& simplified procedures and expanding domain expertise among Government departments to increase their overall capacity. • Improved inter-departmental connectivity through centralized databases, internet connectivity (horizontal connectivity), common ICT infrastructure etc. • Government reach to citizens has improved with the geographical spread of 7000+ CSCs. • Overall cost & time of service delivery has reduced drastically. • Transparent and secured delivery of services, which are being accessed on the MeeSeva Portal through web-services. Service Providers: • Hassle free transactions with automated system and less physical interaction with Government Offices. • Automated electronic fund transfer system to departments with appropriate deductions of service charges. • Faster service development and implementation of services with the help of Single window system. • Clear definition of service levels, citizen charter, roles & responsibilities of the system users has helped the service providers in effective implementation of the system on field

 11. Did the initiative improve integrity and/or accountability in public service? (If applicable)
Sustainability is about ensuring solutions are "built to last" and are able to function efficiently over a long period of time. The goal of sustainability is to establish local economies that are economically viable, technically sound and socially responsible. This section explains various aspects of sustainable development of Mee Seva. Economic Sustainability The project was launched with an initial seed investment of $1.45Million. But the user fee model allows ploughing back the revenues for maintenance and development of services. With 30 Million transactions by now, project has already made more than $11.31 Million in user fees and recovered the initial investment allowing decent returns for the stakeholders, which are being shared amongst them as given below: • 28%/20% (A/B Category) is shared with respective departments • 26%/14% (A/B Category) with Director, ESD • 14%/9% (A/B Category) with Authorized Service Providers • 32%/57% (A/B Category)with the Mee Seva center The project has already attained critical mass and with multiple stakeholders, it would be impossible to reverse the processes. Technical Sustainability MeeSeva brings in a digital PKI enabled integrated architecture through multiple service delivery points by fusing in various Mission-mode Projects like State Data Center (SDC), State Wide Area Network (SWAN) and Common Service centers (CSCs) of the National eGovernance Plan (NeGP) of Government of India. As Mee Seva is a web based system, deployed at a central location, it is easily accessibleanytime and anywhere. “Current system can be scaled up horizontally or vertically based on future needs and requirements of Government as well as Departments.” All the data is located in co-located Departmental servers in a highly secured environment in SDC, where all the Security policies are under implementation. NMS is in place and firewalls are functional. Class-3 digital signatures have been issued to all the Departmental officers and kiosk operators for accessing Mee Seva portal. All the certificates issued are being stored at the SECR for on-line verification. The Mee Seva Portal is integrated with PKI components such as Form Signer & Form Signer Pi for authenticating individuals for accessing the portal and processing the requests through digital signatures. Mee Seva Portal uses standard Web technologies and techniques such as Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), HTTP redirects, cookies, JavaScript, and strong symmetric key encryption to deliver the single sign-in service. The sign-in, sign-out, and registration pages are centrally hosted in the Mee Seva Portal. Replication at National & State Level: Replicability at State level - Both vertical and lateral expansion has become very easy and a plug and play job. This is illustrated by the expansion of Mee Seva from 1 district/120 centers/10 services/2 departments to 23 districts/7000 centers/192 services/18 departments in just about a year’s time. Replicability at National Level: MeeSeva has already been adopted as a National model for delivering G2C services. The DeiTY (GoI) has already sanctioned grants to AP to replicate MeeSeva in 5 states and convert MeeSeva into components to be placed in the National eGov app store for wider use

 12. Were special measures put in place to ensure that the initiative benefits women and girls and improves the situation of the poorest and most vulnerable? (If applicable)
Mee Seva is seen as a realization of the direct and manifested will of the citizen. The political leadership channelized the demand generated by the people into the effective delivery of citizen-centric services. The reengineering of the business processes of departments became both the prerequisite as well as the byproduct of Mee Seva. The efficiency levels of departments have also increased as IT drastically reduced their avoidable workload. The key learning is that the such projects should avoid the deeply rooted technological determinism which assumes that the layering of ICTs in development alone will automatically solve pre-existing constraints related to gender, caste, feudalism, privilege and traditional exercises of power, factors which limit the real potential of ICTs in citizen centric service delivery. The project holds a lesson that thorough preparatory work is important to avoid breakdowns in service delivery, availability and updating of accurate data, adherence to timelines indicated in Citizen Charters, monitoring the performance & dynamic evaluation from time to time. The project has been a success mainly because of the involvement of multiple stakeholders with specific motivations, all seamlessly fusing towards a common goal. The big learning is to involve all the stakeholders’ right throughout the project cycle and allow the project to evolve. The push from Hon'ble Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh, helped in getting the departmental buy-in truly exemplifying the need for political will in such changes. The mixture of success here is a noble thought, committed individuals, supporting technology and some impatience. Economies of Scale, Scope and Learning Mee Seva approach to service delivery needed a complete transformation in capacity which was strategized to be achieved by bringing in Innovation in organizational and Technological Model. A complete realization that the process had to move through all the stages starting from visioning and leading to a sustainable model of service delivery was the cornerstone of the overall strategy. Technology driven efforts were planned, assigned and implemented for various departments to increase efficiency in service delivery; department processes were re-engineered considering feasibility of implementation and participation from various stakeholders was ensured for problem solving and decision making. Resource utilization was maximized by incorporating innovative procedures and expanding domain expertise among Government departments to increase their overall capacity. Mee Seva approach also made it possible to achieve multiple economies of scale, scope and learning leading to enhanced capacities and ease of expansion. Breaking the Department Silos Various departments exist to facilitate and simplify the Government functions. However, when a citizen has to approach different departments for a single request, it complicates his life and effort. Mee Seva successfully addressed this concern. It facilitates interaction between different departments thus sparing citizens from the pain of knocking the doors of different departments for a single application/request. For example, Mee Seva facilitated communication and data transfer/file movement between Revenue and Registration department The biggest key-learning of the initiative is just a reiteration of the adage, that "where there is a will, there is a way".

Contact Information

Institution Name:   Department of IT
Institution Type:   Government Agency  
Contact Person:   Sanjay Jaju
Title:   Mr  
Telephone/ Fax:   91-9849132344
Institution's / Project's Website:  
E-mail:   sjaju1@yahoo.in  
Address:   AP Secretariats
Postal Code:   500080
City:   Hyderbad
State/Province:   Anhdra Pradesh
Country:  

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