Chandigarh is named after the local presiding deity ‘Chandi’, the goddess of power. The city was planned on gently rolling plains at the foot of Shivalik Hills by Le Corbusier, a French architect. Today Chandigarh is a fully grown town of most modern architectural splendour and has acquired the enviable reputation of being the ‘City Beautiful’. It is stretched over an area of 114 sq. kms and is administered by Union Government through an Administrator and assisted by an Adviser, three Administrative Secretaries and a team of officers.
€|NIC Setup National Informatics Centre, Chandigarh UT Unit was setup in 1990 in the office of Deputy Commissioner, Chandigarh. The centre started its operations from a relatively small room and slowly grew in terms of infrastructure. In 1995 NIC State unit was established in UT Secretariat. Subsequently, additional space was allotted to establish Training Centre and thereafter Network centre. With the merger of NITPU with NIC UT Chandigarh in 2004, a regional Network hub was established with VC studio.
€|e-Governance in Chandigarh Chandigarh Administration is committed to providing a responsive and effective administration for the welfare of the public keeping in view the national objectives. Recognizing the need for technology-enabled service delivery, the residents of this UT are enlightened enough to realize the significance of the ICT revolution and expectedly they are wholeheartedly participating in this movement.
€|e-Sampark – “Single Window Multiple Convenience” As a key initiative to achieve the above objective, the Administration has decided to set-up Electronic Citizen Service Centres across the city. This initiative is named as Project e-Sampark. The objective is to bring together all the departments under one single umbrella and give citizens of Chandigarh a “multi-service” – “single-window” experience. It has been made possible by involving an array of partners (Government and Private), having domain expertise in their respective areas. The Centres not only provides the Online Transaction Processing through the portal (chandigarh.gov.in) but is also a major source of information dissemination. There are 9 e-Sampark centres in place with around 36 service counters spread across city.
The critical factors behind the success of the Project have been the state of the art technology, an eye catching e-Sampark centre infrastructure, citizen facilities available at these centres and above all the process reengineering. Now, on an average, a service from e-Sampark centre is delivered in few minutes without any inconvenience.
€|Current Status of e-Sampark . 17 G2C and 3 B2C Services are being provided at 9 Centres spread across the City. . Since launch in Sept. 2004, Rs 536 Crores of Government revenue has been collected in 24 Lakh transactions. . Number of transactions have touched 1.28 lakh transactions per month. . Rs. 272 Cr of revenue collected in months of 2006 (April to December) compared to Rs 167 Cr for the corresponding period in 2005. . Select private services are also being launched to make the project self sustainable. Phone bills of Connect, Airtel and Spice are being collected and more similar services are under process of initiation. . eSampark Services are also being extended to Gram Sampark Programme where 17 Gram Sampark Centres are being constructed covering all the UT Villages. . Jan Sampark Services from these Centres are also being provided for information and facilitation services to the citizens including registration of grievances and applications under Right to Information.
€|e-Jan Sampark - IT for Society After the successful launch of the eSampark Centres and in the second phase of the e-Governance initiative, the Administration has identified certain services of various departments to be provided through the 70 e-Jan Sampark kiosks which are to be set up in each sector and each village of Chandigarh. The e-Jan Sampark services are enabling residents to access information and avail services from the kiosks with ease, and without any harassment. These Centres also enable the citizen to submit their grievances at a common centre and their quick redressal thereafter, apart from being a one stop for filing applications seeking information under RTI pertaining to any of the Departments of the Chandigarh Administration. The type of services provided by the Jan Sampark project include: . Registration of grievances and applications seeking information under RTI relating to all departments at one place; . All Procedures and Forms for all departments, which are frequently used by a common man e.g how to apply for a birth/death certificate, how to lodge a FIR etc. . Education and Health related information services e.g daily updated information regarding availability of blood in Blood Bank of Govt Medical Hospital, Exam Results, Information about availability of educational and health related facilities in each sector etc. . Transport and Tourism related inquiries e.g Bus Routes, information relating to tourism activities etc. . Inquiries relating to Passport status; Railway booking status, Train timings etc. . Providing access to all Government websites. These services are provided free of cost except when the citizen needs any print out, the same is available at a nominal cost per page of print out.
Excerpts from a letter by Manjit Brar, Director, IT (Chandigarh Administration) “…Administration involves dealing with large number of people in a mass. It also requires keeping meticulous records to ensure that there is transparency in the process of decision making and more information is retrieved to check precedents so that no injustice is done in handling two cases of the same type. It is said that “justice must not only be done but must seen to be done”. Record keeping and timely information retrieval are important components in the process of making the process of justice in administration visible. IT, which is a happy marriage of computers and communications, is designed to achieve these very purposes. The general complaints against public administration are delay, inefficiency and corruption. Delays and inefficiency provide a rich environment for promoting corruption. Any efforts at administrative reforms involve removing these commonly perceived defects of administration, and bring greater speed and transparency in the system, so that the satisfaction of citizens can be enhanced and there could be greater productivity, efficiency and transparency in administration. Chandigarh Administration has started the process for providing good governance to the citizens through e-governance. As a first step in the direction, common service centres have been opened across the city which have been an instant hit among the citizens. These centres provide transparency in services in a comfortable environment to the citizens apart from helping them save time, money and energy. These Centres will help the Administration reach the masses apart from bridging the digital divide in providing the requisite information and facilitation services to the common man at his door step. I applaud the efforts of NIC in their exemplary support for all e-governance initiatives in the UT…”
€|Gram Sampark – IT for Rural Masses To bridge the digital divide amongst the rural population, 17 e-Gram Sampark centres have been planned across all the villages of Chandigarh. The villagers will be able to use all the 17 G2C services and 3 B2C services, which are presently available to the eSampark Centres situated in the urban areas. These Centres will provide the rural citizens access to loads of information, using broadband connectivity. Information services in these Centres would be provided free of cost, on the lines of eJan Sampark Services. These Centres would also help the rural citizens in registering their grievances, apart from helping them fill their applications under RTI. These Centres will also have safe drinking water facility, clean toilets, etc.
€|Other departments providing eGovernance . Registering & Licensing Authority – A smart card based solution is operational since 2000 for both Registration and Licencing. It is now shifting to SARATHI and VAHAN solution developed by NIC. . Sampada (Estate Office) – Property details of dwelling units in Chandigarh have been computerised and is also available on the website http://sampada.in . Community Police Resource Centre (Police) – A single window counter for public interface has been provided at Chandigarh Police headquarters catering to various requirements like – grievances, passport verification, etc. . Citizens Facilitation Centre (Engineering) – A centralised control room has been established by engineering department whereby any grievance/complaint relating to engineering department can be lodged and followed up. . Registrar Births & Deaths – A solution in the office of Registrar Births and Deaths is running successfully for the last 6 years for the convenience of public. The facility has also been extended to the eSampark centres, from where citizens can avail it. . Municipal Corporation – Municipal Corporation has also implemented a centralised solution for addressing complaints/grievances of citizens pertaining to services being provided by them. A facility to book open spaces/community centres etc is also provided for the benefit of citizens. . Chandigarh Housing Board – A solution has been provided for the benefit of CHB beneficiaries regarding various details about the dwelling units. It includes installments details, current status of payment, plans etc.
€|Application Development Intranet Portal of Chandigarh Administration The portal harnesses content from across the various departments of Chandigarh Administration and provides a common information platform. Although, the primary driver for the development of this solution was the need to have a single point of access for various applications of Chandigarh Administration, this portal has now become the face of the Chandigarh Administration. Some of the applications accessible through the portal include Online services (applications) such as File Monitoring System, Court cases monitoring system, Meeting Manager, Rent Controller - License Fee Monitoring System, Integrated Schemes & Budget Monitoring System, Visitor Information System, Budget Monitoring System and Tenders and Quotations. Besides, other information includes Press Releases, Telephone Directory, G2E Services, Calendar, Acts/Notifications, NIC Mail etc.
Chandigarh Transport Undertaking Transport Department software is running since 2000 and it comprises 2 modules, namely Duty module for allocating bus, driver and conductor on stipulated routes as per fixed timings and Box branch for complete issuance, return and report generation of the ticketing part.
Besides, some of the key projects undertaken by the NIC Chandigarh unit include payroll computerization, Treasury computerization and personnel management information system. Major National level projects such as CIPA, National Unique ID, eGranthalaya, AGMARKNET, 7th AISES etc are also being implemented in various stages.
€|Network support Network & Data Centre (NDC) Chandigarh NIC UT Unit is serving as the network hub for the region north of Delhi covering 4 states and a UT.
SWAN For implementing State Wide Area Network (SWAN), NIC is going to support the administration and the concerned proposal has been accepted by DIT. It will have 7 PoPs covering 125 offices, 15 of which will be on 2 mbps connectivity.
Right of Way (RoW) options 4 important government buildings (DC office, MC, Court, Births and Deaths) have been connected with NDC through high speed channels paving a way for making information available for citizen centric services.
LAN Departmental LANs have been established in the UT Secretariat and a large number of important buildings facilitating data and information sharing so that centralized applications can be used thus bringing paperless culture in offices and encouraging use of e-mail and internet.
€|Services Training A Training Centre was setup in 2002 with complete infrastructure. Regular training sessions are conducted from 2PM to 5PM in which officials from various departments of Chandigarh Administration are trained. NIC has conducted more than 100 courses in last three years in which around 1200 participants were trained.
Video Conferencing A full fledged VC studio is established and regular VC sessions are conducted for the benefit of various departments of Chandigarh Administration.
Website Official websites of various departments of Chandigarh Administration are being developed, hosted and maintained by the UT unit. At present around 22 websites are being maintained.
€|District Centre Chandigarh UT is a city state comprising one district only. The district centre is equipped with state of art infrastructure and is connected to the Network Data Centre with a 2 mbps Leased Line connectivity and 11 mbps RF connectivity.