The Transport Infrastructure has a crucial role in every economy. In a vast country like ours, transport sector plays a vital role not just to make food and other commodities available from the “Grain Bowls” of the country to “Grain Starved States” but also all other essential goods from the industrial belts to each nook and corner of the Country. ICT implementation to bring about modernization and efficiency in this Sector, therefore, is not just important but crucial to the Country's progress. During the last 50 years, the vehicle population in India has grown a whopping 250 folds. The number of goods and transport vehicles have also grown 1000 times. Today in most of the Indian states, Road Transport Sector is the 3rd largest revenue earner. The enormity of this sector can be gauged by the fact that over 1.5 crore Driving Licences and over 1 crore Vehicle Registration Certificate are issued by the Transport Authority Offices across the Country per year. The Motor Vehicle registration and issuance of driving license are governed by the Central Motor Vehicle Act and Central Motor Vehicle Rules. The states have their own taxation structure. Although documents like driving licenses and RC (Vehicle registration certificate) are issued by the states, these documents are valid for the entire country. In spite of the phenomenal growth of this sector over the 50 years, the processes for issuances of the DL and RC had not been reviewed extensively for a long time. The procedure that was established 50 years ago was optimized based on the circumstances prevalent at that time. However, with the passage of time, the demands of these services underwent a sea change and more responsive citizen interface and improved services delivery time became the need of the hour.

The Earlier Scenario Till a few years back a vehicle owner or a driving licence holder used to carry paper documents for Registration certificate (RC) and Driving Licence (DL). These documents were not legible, often in torn condition and were difficult to manage or comprehend at times. At the same time, the Regional Transport Offices were operating on a manual mode with documents and files pertaining to each vehicle and licensee's records being stored in a paper format. The condition of the Records Room of RTOs in the Country was something as shocking as this picture.

The Solution In the year 2000, Ministry of Road Transport and Highways, decided that in view of growing volumes, non-uniformity of documents, 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 (Road Transport and Highways) with representation from various states with a mandate to evolve common standards for data and the shape of documents to be released to citizen at large, or in other words, A Driving Licence (DL) and Registration Certificate (RC) to have standard data elements. The RC and DL should be issued in an industry standard format and media. These documents must be digitally signed by the RTAs / DTAs so that they retain their authenticity. These documents must be inter-operable across implementation agencies in different States/UTs in the Country.

With the above requirements in mind, the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways conceived the National Transport Project in June 2000 and the task of implementing the above with Smart Card as a uniform mode of document delivery for DL/RC was assigned to National Informatics Centre (NIC).

Implementation Model NIC has prepared the standard back end modules for the work flow based software and named them as “SARATHI” for management of driving licences and “VAHAN” for managing the RCs and permits on day to day basis at the RTO level.

VAHAN and SARATHI were implemented at some pilot sites in each state and once the pilot site was successful, the states replicated the same using any of their business models. During this time, the team of NIC professionals who have developed the software have conducted workshops and provided training to the Officials of the State Transport Authorities and other agencies.

The Technology behind Vahan and Sarathi VAHAN/ SARATHI is a 32 bit, GUI rich application written entirely in JAVA. It has three-tier application architecture. The components of the tiers are: v Database - This is the bottom most layer or the back end. VAHAN /Sarathi 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. v Application Server - This is the middle layer which manages the business rule that manipulates the data as per the governing condition of the applications. It provides a database independent interface for applications and makes the front end robust. This application uses the JAVA RMI framework to establish connection to clients. This feature enables a program running on the client computer to make method calls on an object located on a remote server machine. 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. v 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.

NIC in association with IIT, Kanpur and Industry designed and developed an operating system for the smart card which is exclusive for the country. The OS is known as Smart Card Operating System for Transport Application (SCOSTA). The Road Transport Ministry issued a Gazette Notification formalizing the SCOSTA1.0. The Ministry also amended the Form-7 for the Driving Licence for a person and Form23-A for Registration of a Vehicle in accordance with the new developments.

Software solution While designing the software solution for this sector, in addition to the technical considerations, an inclusive solution was necessary. Most of the staff from the RTOs had no specific computer background and in the first phase, it was decided to translate the manual processes to computerized ones. However, scalability of the solution and introducing alternate modes of providing services was kept in mind. The standard software Vahan 1.0 and Sarathi 1.0 were first released in the year 2002. The Features of these software packages were liked by most of the staff from RTOs across the country. Today the names VAHAN and SARATHI have become synonymous with RC and DL software.

Impact in States Prior to the introduction of VAHAN and SARATHI, various units of NIC had developed different software to adjust to the requirements of different States. However, a decision was taken to unify these software and version 1.0 of VAHAN and SARATHI was released. Different states reacted differently to these efforts of introducing a uniform schema and inter-operable documents. However, during the last four years almost all the states have recognized the efforts of the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways as also those of NIC and the deployment of the software has taken off in a big way. As of now, over two-third of the RTOs in the Country have been computerized.

Status of Deployment While going to the press, out of 763 RTOs across the country , 534 RTOs have already been computerized, using both state and central funds for issuing documents for DL and RC in a standard and interoperable manner. Several states have completed state wide deployment and several others are in the process of doing so. 26 States/UTs in the Country have already implemented VAHAN and 24 States/UTs have implemented SARATHI, either for all RTOs or partially. Some of these states have completed the computerization process on their own while several others have employed BOOT model for roll out across the states. Some of these states have also adopted SCOSTA based smart cards as document delivery mode. It is expected that by the end of 2008, all the RTOs in the Country would be fully computerized. States like Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Orissa, Delhi, Meghalaya, Tripura, and Mizoram need a special mention here as they have completed development across all RTOs in their states. Delhi, Tripura, West Bengal, Maharashtra, Orissa have also adopted SCOSTA compliant smart card as DL and RC documents. Several other states have also decided to roll out these applications across the state and issue standard inter-operable SCOSTA compliance smart card as DL and RC document soon.

Boon for the Citizens Implementation of VAHAN and SARATHI Software products has established uniform implementation of Central Motor Vehicle Act (CMVA) 1988 and Rules (CMVR) 1989 in all the RTO across the states, which is not a minor feat, considering the size and diversity of our Country. The ICT intervention in this area has led to several benefits to the common citizens :- v Removed various anomalies in the implementation of act and rules and has led to standardization of various coding patterns like Vehicle type, Manufacture, Registering authority, Licensing authority, Class and type of vehicles, Licencee Name, permit types etc. v Integrated the State based specific Tax models and PSV Badge models without compromising CMVA and CMVR. v Enabled faster clearance of cases involved in accidents or fines. v Brought about transparency in the whole process of Licence and RC management in the country and reduced scope of discretion by the implementing officers. v One time data entry and life time transaction processing helps faster clearance of queues at Tax payment counters for the commercial vehicles and transport licences issuing counters. v Enabled huge amounts of recovery in terms of tax arrears. v Simplified the system of processing requests for transactions like Change of address, duplicate, renewal or change of name in DL. v Driving Licenses can not be issued in absentia as biometrics have been captured for every applicant. v The Entire Data of the vehicles and the Driving Licences existing in Legacy systems have been integrated with the Standard Data Structure, wherever VAHAN and SARATHI are implemented. v RTAs / STAs can now generate several reports for standard and adhoc queries using DSS and MIS modules. v The public gets most authentic and easy to carry, durable documents in form of smart card for DL or RC.

The Road Map Ahead... Here are some of the initiatives by the Ministry of Road Transport & Highways along with NIC which are 'on the cards' in the near future…. v Inter connecting all The RTAs or DTAs in the State with the STAs using State Wide Area Network (SWANs) or Leased Lines to create a State Register. v Replicating the vehicles and driving licence data available at State Registers to develop a National Register. v Granting the authority to issue Learning Licence to the College Principals and to authorized Driving Schools. v Automobile Associations and Dealer Networks to be given the authority to issue Vehicle Registration Certificates. v Setting up of nationwide Call Centres and web based helplines for information and Grievance Redressal. v Establishment of Vehicle Fitness Checking Centres. v Setting up Drop Boxes for payment of Taxes and License Fee etc. v Provision of Anytime-Anywhere services at all RTOs within one's State without any restriction of jurisdiction. v Payment of Fee/Tax using the payment gateways.

Story Compiled and Edited by: Sonal Kalra, Editor-Informatics with inputs from Indrani Das Swer (Meghalaya) and Dr. A.Ram Mohan Rao (Andhra Pradesh)