TN is India's best e-governed state

New Delhi : The South Indian states of Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh
have emerged among the top five e-governed states in India in 2008-09. This was
revealed in the findings of the fifth IDC-DQ survey. Tamil Nadu and Andhra
Pradesh have climbed three spots each over last year's ranking, to emerge as the
#1 and 5, respectively.

Himachal Pradesh, Delhi and Haryana have secured 2nd, 3rd and 4th positions,
respectively. Delhi has slipped two ranks from #1 last year, while Himachal
Pradesh and Haryana have climbed up five and 14 places, respectively.

The results of the survey are based on a two-level findings that assesses
every state's IT vision, implementation plan and ease of use of services. It
also takes into consideration IT allocation for new projects in 2007-08,
implementation of new projects, and user satisfaction among 3,150 citizens and
businesses.

The Union Budget for 2008-09 increased the allocation to the Department of IT
to Rs 1,680 crore, an increase of nearly 12 percent over the previous year. The
scheme for establishing 1,00,000 Citizen Service Centers (CSCs) and setting up
SWANs across states is in progress. The government allocated Rs 450 crore for
setting up SWANs; Rs 275 crore for setting up State Data Centers; and Rs 75
crore for establishing CSCs.

SWANs have been implemented in five states--Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Tamil
Nadu, Chandigarh and Delhi. Implementation is under way in nine states, and the
bidding process is on in another four states. The Andamans and Goa have opted
out of the scheme.

By Oct 2008, 20558 CSCs have been rolled out. In 14 states, MSA and Service
Center Agency selection process covering 1,02,827 CSCs has been completed.

The e-governance standards are being developed for network and information
security; local language; meta data; and data standards for application domains
and quality. A draft interoperability framework for e-governance and a draft for
e-governance information security standard have also been prepared. To ensure
quality, conformity assessment framework guidelines have been prepared by DIT.

While the usual probables like Tamil Nadu, Himachal Pradesh and Delhi
continued to feature in the top 10; it was the performance of Haryana that
requires special mention. The state government seems to have taken the
e-governance agenda seriously as the state is ranked high on the e-readiness
index, indicating that citizens are ready to enter the e-governance era.

Commenting on the findings of the fifth Dataquest-IDC best e-governed states
survey 2008-09, Prasanto K Roy, Chief Editor, Dataquest said, "E-gov has a long
way to go in India. There are good projects, but there's too much duplication of
good work in the government. Central departments are duplicating work by
building multiple citizen databases?census, voter IDs, PAN records, food and
civil supplies?and wasting a lot of money. And yet they cannot tap onto a common
view of the citizen. India's federal structure also gives a great deal of
autonomy to the states, so they guard their turf, and are distrustful of too
much information visibility to Central departments. This makes it even more
challenging to replicate good projects."