World Bank approves USD 150 mn loan for India's NeGP

Lalit K Jha
Washington, Apr 2 (PTI) The World Bank has approved
USD 150 million in loan for India to accelerate implementation
of its National e-Governance Plan (NeGP), which is aimed at
transforming the service delivery system across the country.
While this World Bank loan will not target specific
services per se, it will initiate policy and institutional
actions that will impact all the services.
The loan will support NeGP - approved in May 2006 as a
national programme - to operate on a single common IT
infrastructure, thus allowing faster and easier sharing of
information between departments, saving infrastructure costs
and lowering cost of service delivery for citizens as well as
government agencies, the Bank said in a statement.
Citizens will no longer have to go to multiple
departments, but will have the option of accessing e-services
either through the internet on the government's common
website, or through a 'single window' Common Service Centres
(CSC), set up to assist villages or remote areas, it said.
"The Government of India's aim of providing
web-enabled anytime, anywhere access to information and
e-services can have significant social and economic benefits.
Reducing the financial and opportunity costs of obtaining
specific services through enabling policy measures can go a
long way in transforming service delivery in the country,"
said Roberto Zagha, World Bank Country Director in India.
Venu Rajamony, Joint Secretary, Department of Economic
Affairs, said the NeGP has plans to significantly widen
citizen access to e-services.
"We hope this loan from the World Bank will support
NeGP in its efforts to ensure efficient, cost effective,
accessible and transparent delivery of public services across
the country," he said.
The World Bank said NeGP has identified 27 priority
projects to be transformed using e-services, each one to be
owned and spearheaded by a relevant ministry or agency of the
national and/or state government.
The programme is also expected to have significant
social benefits for the poor, particularly in relation to
services like social welfare schemes, pensions, certificates,
dues and recovery, PDS-related services for food and essential
items, rural health, compensation and relief packages,
grievance services, and for the use of the Right to
Information, it said.