Golden Icon Award at the 9th National e-Governance Seminar at Kochi Special Mention at Stockholm Challenge 2006, Stockholm, Sweden Manthan Award 2006 Microsoft Award for Best Practices 2006 Lokvani is an effort to empower citizen through the use of Information & Communication Technology (ICT) in rural areas. It was initiated at district Sitapur of Uttar Pradesh in the year 2004. The project has been commended unequivocally by various neutral observers/ agencies and has been showcased as one of the most successful, popular and influential e- Governance solution implemented in India. It is a single window, self-sustainable solution providing transparent, accountable and responsive administration for grievance handling as well as an eclectic mixture of essential services. complaint got disposed off successfully. A noteworthy fact is that in spite of a low female literacy rate of 12.74%, more than 10% Lokvani complainants are women from rural interiors. The project has helped in making life simpler and easier for the rural masses in the remote and far-flung areas and has also created employment opportunities for the educated unemployed youth of the district. Need for ‘Lokvani The manual system working prior to Lokvani made it mandatory for the citizens to visit the District/Tehsil headquarters for simple transactions with the government and for redressal of their grievances. Due to bureaucratic and hierarchical model of functioning, even ordinary documents such as birth, death, domicile, caste, and income certificates, were difficult to obtain. It was also a time consuming process. The citizens were allotted a fixed time of two hours to interact with the District Magistrate for filing their complaints, which was often not sufficient, as there were a large number of complainants. It was at this juncture that District Administration and NIC came up with the idea of inducting Information and Communication Technology (ICT), to manage the delivery of services to all the citizens. Also, the use of ICT was expected to ensure greater transparency in the system, a higher accountability on the part of the concerned officers and faster redressal of grievances thereby building trust and faith in government system. About the Project Lokvani is basically an attempt to provide efficient and responsive online services to the common people. It is based on Service Oriented Architecture and seeks to increase transparency and accountability in government procedures, increase the efficiency of manpower at the government departments, accelerate the response time and facilitate anywhere-anytime services to the common citizen. It also aims to provide services in a professional and citizen friendly environment by: Saving time and cost of people who visit Lokvani Kiosk at Sadar Tehsil, Sitapur The project started with combined efforts of District Administration, Sitapur and National Informatics Centre, Uttar Pradesh, and is based on the PPP model of e-Governance. Existing A chain of sixty Lokvani Kiosk Centres, spread throughout the district have been established from where people can file complaints to district administration and access information regarding land records, arms license, free medical facility, details of government schemes, Land Records Public Grievances Single Window System (Birth, Death, Caste Certificates) Tender Publishing & Monitoring Arms License Status Teachers GPF Details Government Schemes Information Developmental Works Information Local Employment Advertising Prescribed Government Forms List of old age pensioners, scholarship beneficiaries Details of Food grains allotment to fair-price shops Online Court cases, cause lists & judgments RTI Services and many more Proposed Online Electoral Rolls Vehicle Registration, Driving License University/ College Information (seat availability, admission) Payment of Utility Bills Tourist Related Information Commodity Rates Industries Information Recovery Certificates Family Register Land Registry Services Health Information (Hospitals, Nursing Homes, Laboratories etc) Banking Services Khasra & Jamabandi Records Drinking water facilities database developmental works in the districts, allotment of food grains to fair price shop, allotments of funds to village etc. Lokvani received tremendous response from the citizens as soon as it was launched; around 31,000 complaints were registered in the first 7-8 months out of which 90% district Headquarters time and again for getting information, certificates and licenses from District offices. Creating awareness in remote areas through e-administration, e-education, e- health etc. Creating job opportunities for the youth of the district Services Offered Lokvani system has empowered the citizens by generating awareness towards their rights through a seamless flow of information. It is an outstanding manifestation of the “right to information”. It is a continuously evolving system, bringing in more and more services under its umbrella. How Lokvani works Lokvani in Hindi means “Voice of people” and the most widely used service of Lokvani is the Grievance System. The first physical interface to this system is the Lokvani Kiosk Centre spread uniformly in the district and continuously increasing in numbers. Lokvani – Public Grievance System The complainants can access the status of their complaints through the Lokvani Hub, directly on the web server. They can now keep track of the information as to whom the complaint has been marked to, what is the deadline set, has it been resolved or not and what is the action taken. In case, the complainants are dissatisfied with the decision made, he/she can lodge a new complaint enclosing the previous complaint number and other details. The new complaint lodged will carry a history sheet containing all the details about the previous complaints and its resolution. The District Magistrate continuously monitors the status of complaints filed, resolved and pending through the website and once in a week he/she holds a meeting of district officials to address the pending cases. Business Model of Lokvani The business model for Lokvani is based on the PPP model of e-Governance and has been formulated keeping in mind the three key stakeholders – Citizen, Government & IT Entrepreneurs/ Kiosk Operators. Essentially, since the IT literacy is very low in Sitapur, the kiosks form an interface between the IT enabled government and the IT illiterate citizens. Government A society by the name of Lokvani has been constituted at the district level to implement the project autonomously. All the financial decisions are under the purview of the society itself. The rationale for such a framework is that the budgets of small districts have limited scope for extra expenditure and the process of getting finance is a long drawn and complicated one. The Lokvani society takes care of the management, operations, expansion and technical up-gradation of the Project and Lokvani Hub and meets its recurring expenses from the money received from the registration of kiosks, short term and lifetime membership fees & revenue sharing (on the services being offered by the Lokvani Centres to the Public). IT Entrepreneurs / Kiosk owners The key achievement of the solution is its self- sustainability and long-term financial viability. The conversion of existing cyber cafes/computer training institutes into Lokvani Centres is a key factor driving the financial success. This step ensured that external capital was not a vital requirement for the solution. The society signed contracts with existing kiosk owners for the purpose of registering them as Lokvani franchisees with only a nominal annual fee of Rs1,000. The approximate expenditure for setting up new kiosk is a modest Rs.50,000/- while the returns are anywhere between Rs.5000/- to Rs.15000/- per month. Kiosks earn profits through the income generated from various services of Lokvani provided to the citizens. In addition, the kiosks can also generate some extra revenue by providing varied facilities like computer education, computer typing, digital photography, internet access resulting in varied business. Citizens The citizens not only form the consumer base for the system, but they are also the driving force behind the solution, this will ensure that the system continues to exist even when the champions of the system move out. The citizens are ready to pay for the services being offered to them and are constantly demanding new services to be added to the system. Benefits/Impact All the three stakeholders have benefited from the Lokvani project. The citizens are the key beneficiaries from the solution as is evident from the number of petitions filed per day and the efficiency with which they are now being resolved. The system has registered more than seventy thousand complaints and disposed off over 90% complaints successfully. The citizen need not frequently travel to tehsil or district head quarters or forego wages to merely file a petition or collect information. They can easily obtain pertinent information from kiosk located in nearby blocks and villages which saves time, money and effort and the status of their complaints is available through Interactive Voice Response System (IVRS), SMS or Call Centre. The Government has been able to streamline its operations and has also brought in visibility to internal process bottlenecks. It has helped in workload rationalization and has been able to increase the efficiency and accountability of officers. Finally the kiosk owners are getting better returns on their investments as Lokvani has supplemented their regular income, the highest earning kiosk in the district earns more than rupees twenty thousand per month. The project has also created a social impact as it generates job opportunities for the local youth and supports Internet penetration in the remote areas. It has initiated a perceptible shift towards gender equality as some of the most efficient kiosks are being run by women and have made them economically self-reliant. The popularity of the project has prompted the state government to issue a GO for its implementation in all the districts of the State. Change Management Change management was identified as the toughest task for this project. It was difficult for both the citizens and the government employees to break free from the traditional model of paperwork and meeting in person. The technology phobia worked on both sides. The Government employees were also not well versed with the technology. To some extent, the level of enthusiasm was also deterred by the fear of being constantly monitored. Infrastructure, power, and Tele-communications were other barriers which had to be overcome. The Road ahead The lifecycle of Lokvani has already progressed through the first two stages of the three stages of e- governance – publish, interact, and transact. In the first stage – publish – the focus was on providing information relevant to the citizens. In the second stage interact the focus was on receiving feedback from the citizens through the public grievance/complaints redressal system.(citizens could log their complaints through Lokvani and the government’s action/ response to these complaints was made available the citizens through Lokvani). The road ahead for Lokvani is to graduate to the third stage – transact – where all transactions take place through Lokvani without any physical visits to the government offices (for instance, online submission of tenders, online job applications, online mutation of land/ property, online application for arms licenses, etc). Spread of Lokvani Kiosks in Sitapur District Red dots represent the Kiosks is not a barrier for implementing a successful e-Governance project. For further information, mail to anshu.rohatgi@nic.in S No. Lokvani Centre No of Complaints Received (till Sep 06) Average Income per Month (Rs.) 1 Misrikh 3359 3200 2 Laharpur 4637 4500 3 Sidhauli 3957 3800 4 Mahmudabad 4078 4000 5 Biswan 7825 7500 6 Sitapur 18158 17500 Per month earnings of six Lokvani Centres (from Grievance service only)