With an objective to create an institutional mechanism for tracking the stalled investment projects, both in the public and private sectors, and to eradicate the implementation bottlenecks so faced on a fast track basis, a Cabinet Committee on Investment (CCI) Cell has been constituted in the Cabinet Secretariat. The committee carries out monitoring of all major projects besides pro-actively pursuing the stalled projects to ensure that these can be commissioned on time.

e-CCI OVERVIEW e-CCI is an Online Cabinet Committee on Investment Projects Management System which has been developed for tracking projects with investments of over Rs 1000 crores. e-CCI system assists in redefining processes for effective tracking and resolving issues using a central interface besides providing integrated services in a transparent manner. The system provides fast and accurate information to the Government for strategic decision-making besides eliminating duplicate and inconsistent records, thus facilitating easy discussion on issues along with brainstorming of ideas.

ANIL SWARUP, IAS Additional Secretary Cabinet Secretariat Evolving a “paper-less” office in Government setup was never easy. e-CCI Project Monitoring System has come handy in this regard enabling the Project Monitoring Group (PMG) to evolve a paperless tracking of projects that facilitates all the stakeholders to track the developments in each project. It is a unique system developed by the NIC team in the Cabinet Secretariat. The initial results have been encouraging and the system has come to be appreciated all over. It could well become the forerunner for “paper-less” functioning in the Government.

WORK FLOW • Private entrepreneurs can register on http://cabsec.gov.in or http://cabsec.nic.in. to get their login credentials. Thereafter, project details can be submitted along with the bottlenecks/issues to the sponsoring Ministry/Department. • Sponsoring Ministry can review the project details submitted by the private entrepreneurs and recommend it to the CCI Cell at the Cabinet Secretariat. • Ministries/Departments can reject a project submitted by private entrepreneurs if it does not contain any valid information. These rejected projects will automatically come to the CCI Cell at Cabinet Secretariat for final decision. Sponsoring Ministries/ States/Union Territories can also directly submit projects with bottlenecks/issues at CCI Cell. Once the Sponsoring Ministries/ States/UTs recommend the projects, the issues/bottlenecks along with the project details will automatically go to the Recipient Ministry/ Departments / States/UTs for their comment/action. • CCI Cell at Cabinet Secretariat reviews the projects recommended by the Sponsoring Ministry /Department/States/ UTs. Once it is accepted by the CCI Cell, a unique Project ID is generated for further reference. Separate Tripartite Sub-Groups such as Environment and Forest, Coal, Mines, Railways, Petroleum and Natural Gas, Heavy Industries, Road Transport and Highways, Fertilizers, Chemicals and Petrochemicals, Financial Services, Home Affairs, etc., are constituted to consider issues/bottlenecks periodically in order to resolve them quickly. Decisions taken in the PMG Sub-Groups are made available through e-CCI System. • Automatic mailer notifications are triggered for each and every transaction made in the e-CCI System. • Once the projects are resolved by the various PMG Sub-Groups at CCI setup, they are further moved to the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) or Cabinet Committee on Investment (CCI) module to monitor the decision. It also reviews whether projects falling under the purview of CCEA/CCI decision have been complied or not. Initiator Ministries or Sponsoring Ministries which have to submit the CCEA/CCI notes have to enter their details about the Cabinet decisions along with or without projects. Once the project is complied in CCEA/CCI and resolved in the PMG, it automatically flows to the Department of Financial Services to track the expenditure on implementation of such stalled project.

TECHNOLOGY USED e-CCI was developed using the Open source technology which employs PHP and MySQL.

CAPACITY BUILDING INITIATIVES • Training sessions were organized for concerned Ministries. • A help desk has been established to handle private entrepreneurs, users from Sponsoring and Recipient Ministries. • Nodal Officers of various sponsoring and Recipient Ministries have been sensitized about the e-CCI system at the commencement of PMG meetings to ensure smooth implementation of the system.

STATISTICAL DATA As on 11/12/2013, 395 projects have been accepted for monitoring worth of ` 17,68,059 crores.

OUTCOMES e-CCI has added a new paradigm to the entire process of tracking the projects and removing the impeding bottlenecks. The CCI cell at Cabinet Secretariat has expressed its satisfaction with the implementation of the e-CCI system. At the same time, the NIC team has garnered wide term appreciation for its efforts.

The major outcomes of the project are:

  1. Maintenance of separate project lists by the various Ministry(ies)/ Departments(s) has now been discontinued.
  2. All projects are now submitted through a single window interface while service delivery time has reduced considerably.
  3. Various types of reports in pdf and excel format have been generated to assist in the decision-making process.
  4. e-CCI system has been customized for the Ministries, Departments, and States/UTs in accordance to their requirements.
  5. Manual procedure for complaint registration/tracking has gone online, making the process swift and easy. The private entrepreneurs, Ministries/Departments, States/UTs can easily track the status/decisions taken by the PMG Subgroups.
  6. Another major re-engineering step is to track the actual expenditures on implementation of such projects. This has been accomplished by adding two different modules - The CCEA/CCI module monitors the decision involving investments; the Department of Financial Services (DoFS) module monitors the actual expenditure till the project is initiated or implemented.
  7. Use of automatic mailer notifications has fostered quick implementation process.
  8. The decisions made during the PMG Subgroup meetings are entered online to facilitate the private entrepreneurs. Even, Ministry(ies) and Departments can see the minutes of meetings, before the meeting gets over.
  9. Due to centralized system, each user can view their status and submit their comments at the same time. The status/comments get reflected to all the other users limiting third party intervention.
  10. Till 11th of December, 2013, with the use of e-CCI, CCI has been able to resolve 120 stalled projects worth of Rs. 4 lakh crore. The same has been widely reported by all the leading newspapers.

e-CCI system has bolstered the ICT culture within the Government, paving way for paperless and fileless functioning.