The m-Governance framework of Government of India aims to utilize the massive proliferation of mobile phones and harness the potential of mobile applications to enable easy and round-the-clock access to public services. The framework aims to create unique infrastructure as well as application development ecosystem for m-Governance in the country. Mobile technology is now considered as an opportunity for enhanced rollout of ICT based services. Mobile based Apps development for m-Governance in the State of Bihar took a big leap harnessing various ICT tools and technologies. NIC Bihar has been pivotal in providing various ICT support enabling enhanced public services in the State. Further, various mobile-based channels are being leveraged to deliver the services to citizens. SMS is also widely used for disseminating status, alerts and notifications.
BENEFITS OF MGOVERNANCE Mobile Governance benefits the citizens and other stakeholders in the following aspects: • Ease of access and doorstep delivery of e-Governance services. • Transparency in processes, quality enhancement in planning & execution and productivity linked release of funds. • Real time monitoring of progress and quality of work even without visiting the actual location. • Reduction in monitoring cost and control on false and suspicious reporting. • Reporting from field formations through geo-tagged photographs. • Empower citizens by providing them visual tool for social audit. • Citizens can now easily know about various schemes and their progresses being carried out. • Facilitates in creation of spatial database through capture and upload of geo-locations to understand distribution and coverage of projects. • Automatic enforcement of onsite reporting cycle and policies. • Geo-tagged Asset Register helps in planning additional resources required for citizens. • Coverage or Non-Coverage Analysis helps to identify re-organization needs of Assets. • The applications uses SMS Push and PULL service for alerts, enquiry, transactional SMS etc. • Support for commonly available Android phones. • GPS mapping, geo tagging and time stamping of reports and images. • Report generation with signature and location map embedding. • Auto report mailing to pre-specified email address. • Secure web interface for data management.
APNA PATNA APP APNA Patna is a mobile governance initiative to deliver G2C services to the Citizens of Bihar. Jointly initiated by Urban Development Department, GoB and NIC, Bihar, this application provides an interface to Citizens to report about problems/grievances pertaining to their municipal area. Presently being used in Patna Municipal Corporation, the app is likely to be replicated in all the Municipal Corporations/ Municipalities of Bihar.
E-PACS FOR PADDY PROCUREMENT e-PACS is a mobile and web-based solution to facilitate paddy procurement through PACS (Primary Agriculture Credit Society) and Vyapaar Mandal across Bihar. The payments made to PACS and farmers are also monitored using the application. This is a G2G initiative by Co-operative Department, Government of Bihar to track paddy procurement, its milling & delivery of rice by millers through Mobile App. This application solves the problem of information gap observed in paddy procurement, conversion to rice, delivery & subsequent management of rice at the depots. The resultant output is to have real time data on procurement process.
MOBILE BASED DIGITAL STATE ASSET REGISTER The “Mobile based Digital State Asset Register” is a joint initiative of IT Department, Govt. of Bihar and National Informatics Centre, Bihar. This project has been conceived to establish mobile framework for on-site reporting and inspection of various government executed projects such as buildings, roads, health facilities, education facilities, disaster management, electricity network, PDS shops, nursery plantations and many other assets to strengthen asset management, project management and other related functions for improved planning & execution mechanisms. Mobile devices based solution has been developed and deployed so that requisite information/ photos/ videos from work site can be captured and populated in the centralized database of Government Assets. The web-enabled MIS solution generates compiled MIS reports with detailed analytics.
E-PLANTATION e-Plantation project is a key-component driving the ambitious plan of the Forest Department, Government of Bihar in order to increase the forest coverage upto 15% in a given timeframe of three years. An integrated system of MIS and geo-spatial data has been developed to monitor the plantation activities across the State. Android based application has been developed for mobile devices to capture details of plantation at site, which allows registering plantation details on website along with other details such as scheme name, plantation area, species and sanction details. Details of plantations are downloaded to smartphone of field staff that can perform reporting from the plantation site. Mobile application works in deferred update mode and does not require Internet connectivity at the site. This software has created a permanent and verifiable database in respect of plantation programmes taken up by the Forestry sector and helps to analyze and monitor plantations.
Project Information Monitoring System for Building Construction Department This is a mobile-based e-Governance application, which helps to manage and monitor large-scale building construction schemes undertaken by Building Construction Department across Bihar. The application provides access to field engineers for conveniently reporting activities such as selection of Schemes, updating the stages of construction, release of payment order etc. With this mobile application, field engineers can instantly update the details of the building under construction along with the time-stamped geo-tagged photograph of the building right from the construction sites.
RECOGNITIONS Apart from the popularity gained from the citizens, the mobile-based Assets Register has bagged the “Award of Excellence” during the 50th CSI Annual Convention held at New Delhi
SUMMARY The establishment of mobile based e-Governance framework in Bihar has resulted improved efficiency in monitoring of building & road projects, plantations, nursery, health facilities, electricity network, to strengthen asset management, project management and other related functions for improved planning and execution mechanisms. The MIS reporting solution envisages the collection of various data from field units either through the use of web application or using the medium of mobile SMS/ GPRS/ 3G. This application is capable of generating compiled MIS reports with detailed analytics. Mobile technology has been extensively used in the State to support location-specific decision making by the Government.