Tripura, one of the north-eastern states of India, is famous for its natural beauty, abundant resources and rich cultural heritage.

Government of Tripura envisions implementing e-Governance up to the Panchayat level in the State with a view to enhance transparency, improve efficiency and provide quality and prompt services to its citizens. As a key initiative to achieve this objective, Directorate of Information Technology, Government of Tripura had decided to set up Service Facilitation Centre (SFCs) in each SDM office, where common people can visit to avail various citizen services. The project titled ‘e-Suvidha’ has been implemented in all Sub-Divisional headquarters in association with NIC, at a cost of Rs. 2 crores. The project aims at providing single window service for the people to avail 22 citizen services. The project has in-built citizen charter in terms of transparency and promptness in delivering the asked service. A workflow based e-Suvidha Application Software processes, maintains, archives as well as provides on-line monitoring and tracing facilities at different stages. Status of application for the issuance of various certificates can be checked on the Internet and Touch Screen Kiosk.

Till date, more than 1,12,000 service requests have been catered to, using the e-Suvidha solution that has been deployed in 15 locations spread over the entire state. These results have been achieved based on the state-of-art technology and robust infrastructure. Moreover, introduction of the Common Application Form (CAF) for various services and better facilities for the citizens available at these centres, have also contributed to achieve this feat. Each e-Suvidha centre is equipped with two mid range servers, five clients, one scanner, one laser printer, two DMPs, one web camera, one DVB VSAT and UPS systems of various capacities. e-Suvidha software runs on a Client-Server architecture on a LAN environment with three-tier Security – OS Level, RDBMS Level and Application Form Level.

Successful deployment of e-Suvidha project is the result of gradual adoption strategy and strong planning by taking into account the ground realities. To ensure clarity, the roles and responsibilities of various agencies involved in the project were well defined from the beginning itself. NIC looks after technical support whereas front-end operations and process re-engineering are managed by the Revenue Department.

€| Impact Facilities provided by the e-Suvidha centres have relieved the citizens of Tripura from the hardships of standing in long queues as well as from visiting the government offices many times to get their job done. e-Suvidha project has also increased transparency and improved flow of information relating to the citizen services provided by the government.

Turn around time for most of the common services has come down to days, which prior to the implementation of this project, used to take weeks. Now on an average, a service through e-Suvidha centre is delivered in one to four days, depending upon nature of the service. The citizens are spared from inconvenience and more importantly a firm service delivery date is given with provision for knowing status of their application using Touch Screen Kiosk or the Internet. Such service delivery commitment and citizen interface has created favourable impact at the grassroots level with growth in demand for such services.

€| The Future The State Government is working towards data consolidation at the state level NIC Data Centre for providing services on a 24X7 basis. Integration of various other services into e-Suvidha umbrella with a payment gateway interface has also been envisaged as many back office activities have been computerized in other line departments. However for data consolidation, integration and 24X7 basis services, a reliable, robust and capable network backbone with adequate redundancy needs to be put in place. State Government has taken up the setting up of Tripura State Wide Area Network (TSWAN) on a priority basis.