Road Transport plays a vital role in our economy. During the past 50 years, the number of registered vehicles has grown from a paltry 3 lac in 1951 to 6 crores in January 2004. Earlier, railways used to be the only reliable mode of transport for long routes. However, during these years, the mode of transport for goods on long routes and inter-state routes is switching towards road transport. Pan Indian character of this sector necessitates better control and coordination at the intra and inter-state level. ?| State Transport Authority The state transport authorities control this movement by providing permits to the goods and passenger vehicles from their state. For inter-state routes, National Permit can be obtained from the state of registration. Another important activity in this sector is issuance of driving licenses. The Central Motor Vehicles Act, 1988 (CMVA ) forms the basis for processing any request for a new registration, permit or a new licence. However, each state has its own Motor Vehicle Rules which form the basis for charging vehicle tax and permit fee. For citizen services, each state has its Regional Transport Office (RTO) or a District Transport Office (DTO) spread all over the state. ?| Computerization of RTOs & DTOs Computerization of Regional Transport Offices (RTO) and District Transport Offices (DTO) had been initiated by a number of State Governments, notably Delhi, Maharashtra, Bihar, Goa, Punjab, West Bengal and others. However, the approach was different for each state keeping in view only the local requirements. The shape of documents was also non-uniform. Some states introduced plastic cards, some smart cards and others continued with the paper-based document. ?| Impediments The differences in the user perception, local objectives and limited resources lead to widely different levels of computerization, software functionality and level of success. Some of these states where computerization has been done, provide on-line transaction facility, while others provide offline or batch oriented facility. The development of MIS software for controlling such functions is improvised. All the transport authorities aim to serve the objectives relevant to their own state as per their perception. One aspect common to all the state transport authorities was that the creation of a central database to store statewide information and records was not a priority. ?| Basic Minimum Data Availability of some basic minimum data related to vehicle population in the state and vehicles running on the national routes both across the state border and international border could help the Centre in various ways. It could help in: • Providing the useful data for planning purposes. • Locating vehicles reported missing or stolen. • Better monitoring of the inter-state and National Permits. • Avoiding duplicate registration of vehicles and thereby avoiding multiple hypothecation of the same vehicle. • Monitoring the inter-state issues in a better way. Before... The transformation ICT has brought in a typical Road Transport office where the files/documents in paper form have been replaced by the digitized version After... ?| National Register There is a need for establishing a national register of vehicles either centrally or distributed at various state capitals and linked through a computer network to facilitate data access. This would provide valuable data for the Centre as well as to the various security agencies to track vehicles involved in unlawful activities inside state, across states and across international borders. This data could be made available to all the states for better monitoring of their inter-state revenue. The database as proposed above could also be linked to the insurance companies database to ensure that vehicle related details are available to all state authorities as well as courts. ?| Need for ICT In the year 2000, Ministry of Road Transport and Highways, decided that in view of growing volumes, non-uniformity of document, heterogeneity of data formats and huge cost of application software it was important to evolve and implement standards. An Apex committee was constituted under the chairmanship of Secretary (RT & H) with representation from the states, industry and NIC with a mandate to evolve common standards for data and the shape of document to be released to citizen at large. ?| Smart Cards Another technical sub-committee was formed to look into the use of smart cards as the DL/RC document. The Apex commit-tee approved the recommendations. These recommendations, inter-alia, mandated unified data structure for the back end system and unified format for Vehicle Registration Certificate (RC) and Driving License (DL). These recommendations have been circulated to all states and are also available at http://parivahan.nic.in. As a follow up, Central Motor Vehicles Rules have been amended with precise definition of Smart Card and specifications of the Smart Card and peripherals to be used to achieve national compatibility/ interoperability (Gazette notification G.S,R. No. 400 (E) dated 31.5.2002 and gazette notification G.S.R. No. 513(E) dated 10.8.2004). The provisions also enable States to mandate use of Smart Card based document for which an enhanced fee structure has been prescribed under the rules. In 2002, NIC and MoRTH entered into an MoU to develop core software for Vehicle Registration and Driving License workflow process computerisation with a view to: ?Implement uniform data structure for these two applications to facilitate creation of state and the national registers for DL and RC ?Establish a smart card lab to test the SCOSTA (Smart Card Operating System for Transport Applications) compliance of smart cards from various vendors ?Establish atleast one pilot site in each state and UT to facilitate replication either through the state funds or using suitable PPP model ?Establishment of backend system at State level/RTO level through total computerization of records for DL and RC on a standardized software. ?Facilitates ease of access to citizens. ?Making information available to concerned agencies to perform their task better. ?Documents issued by one State should be readily readable and verifiable in other States. The computerised counter at RTO Chennai ?| The basic philosophy behind this initiative was: ?To usher in transparency, responsiveness & citizen friendly e- governance ?Computerization of records and processes at RTO offices ?Issuance of Smart Card based driving licenses, registration certificates for (and permits in respect of commercial transport) vehicles. In turn NIC started consolidating the work already done in this sector by various state units. The software developed to meet these objectives were named as VAHAN (for vehicle Registration) and SARATHI (for Driving Licence). ?| Project so far ?MoU with the Ministry to implement the project on their behalf. ?Backend software made available free of cost to all States. The software is amenable to customization for local requirement. ?Standardized software formats & common specifications have been developed & circulated to the States. ?operating system protocol based on ISO 7816 standard developed & standardized. ?Applications software for terminals and hand held readers finalized. ?The operating system is from the open domain and not proprietary ones offered by the vendors. ?Software for RC (Vahan) has been implemented in 11 States, implementation is in progress in 20 states and discussion is on in 5 States. Software for driving license (Sarathi) has been implemented in 7 states, implementation is in progress in 11 states and discussion is on in 17 states. ?Symmetric Key Management System has been prepared and finalized by NIC through external audit. Keys have been issued to Delhi (for RC) and West Bengal (for DL & RC) already. Inauguration of VAHAN at DTO, Aizwal (Mizoram) ?| Role of Central Government ?Provision of software free of cost through NIC. ?Issuance of keys to ensure security. ?Successful demonstration of one pilot project by NIC in each State (hardware and manpower to be provided by States). SKMA Keys being handed over by Dr B.K Gairola, DDG (NIC) to Sh.H Mohan, Transport Commissioner, West Bengal ?| Role of the States ?Provision of infrastructure and hardware. ?Replication of the project throughout the State through appropriate business models. ?| Timeline: The entire country is to be covered by the end of 10th plan. Technology used for Vahan / Sarathi 2.0 VAHAN/ Sarathi 2.0 is a 32 bit, GUI rich application written entirely in JAVA. It has three-tier application architecture. The components of the tiers are: ?Database – This is the bottom most layer or the back end. VAHAN /Sarathi 2.0 supports three databases namely DB2 version 7.2 or higher, Oracle 8i and version 8.1.6 or higher and MSSQL Server 2000 or higher. ?Application Server – This is the middle layer which manages the business rule that manipulates the data as per the governing condition of the applications. This application uses the JAVA RMI framework to establish connection to clients. It gives the ability to distribute computing across a networked environment. The JAVA JDBC framework provides a standard interface to establish connection to the database. ?Client – The presentation and control logic is embedded in the client tier. This is the GUI layer of the application using Swing component of JAVA, which will interact with the Application server by means of forms. Technology used for Vahan/ Sarathi 1.0 VAHAN 1.0 is a Two Tier GUI rich application written entirely in Visual Basic. VAHAN / Sarathi 1.0 supports three databases namely DB2 version 8.1 or higher, Oracle 8i version 8.1.6 or higher and MSSQL server 7.0, 2000 or higher. ICT at full swing at DTO Aizwal The Road Ahead Our experience during the last two years shows that most states are keen to automate their citizen services in this sector. The priorities and perception, however, differ from state to state. About a dozen states have plans for statewide deployment of Vahan and Sarathi by December 2005. Department of IT has sponsored a project for replication of these softwares in the North-Eastern states. New version of the software caters to filing of application online, computer-assisted test for learning license and finding out status of application on the mobile phone. Most states have plans to interlink RTOs/ DTOs to facilitate creation of the state register. During 2005, work related to the national register will begin. This will greatly help inter-state transfer of vehicles and inter-state settlement of national permit fee. It is important to record tremendous efforts put in by NIC district units, state units and the core teams to ensure time-bound implementation and millions of smiling faces bear the testimony of their work.