THIRUVANANTHAPURAM When the Kerala State IT Mission was set up in the late 1990s, its purpose was to drive all innovation in e-governance. Though it did move along this direction, it has been primarily used for providing back-end support for e-governance activities and also in hardware procurement. However, in recent times, a reorientation has happened, with major initiatives in service delivery to citizens as well as in consolidating much of the online activities of the various government departments in a single, accessible space.
The citizen portal (https://services.kerala.gov.in/), which brings together 816 different services of the government, is the centrepiece of the kind of shift that is happening in the mission's activities. These recent initiatives have led to Kerala topping the rankings among major States in the National e-services Delivery Assessment conducted by the Department of Administrative Reforms & Public Grievances (DARPG). The State ranked first in the category of State portal -- single window access to information and service links. It also got the sixth rank in the category of digital delivery of service.
"In the past one year, the citizen portal and the dashboard have been major initiatives. The portal started with 300 services. Now, more than 800 services have come onboard from various departments. A lot of departments are cleaning up their services, removing the ones that are no longer needed. Through the citizen portal, a user can register with an email ID and mobile number, which can be used for a host of different services. The dashboard, which gives a quick overview of the functioning and services of various departments, is reviewed every two weeks at the highest levels," IT Mission Director Snehil Kumar Singh tells The Hindu.
Parallely, there has been a drastic expansion in the implementation of the e-office system developed by the National Informatics Centre (NIC), for which the IT Mission is providing support for departments to onboard. The Secretariat, all the collectorates, more than hundred directorates and commissionerates and revenue divisional offices have implemented the system, which increases efficiency of file movement, making it able to pinpoint at which desk each file is being held up.
The DigiLocker facility is also being stepped up with the Public Service Commission, the Departments of Higher Education, General Education and Civil Supplies making available certificates and documents in DigiLocker. If the education certificates are provided from the department to the DigiLocker, those applying for government jobs need not submit documents multiple times, as the PSC can pick and verify it directly from the locker. The two unprecedented floods in 2018 and 2019 led to a faster shift to DigiLocker. Certificate adalat campaigns were organised for people who lost certificates in floods in eight districts. The newly issued certificates were also automatically uploaded to the DigiLocker.
The Right of Way portal for the Public Works department has become a one-stop solution for utility shifting, for telecom service providers wanting to lay cables and for KWA to lay pipelines. The system, which has already processed close to 25,000 applications, is aimed at increased coordination between agencies in processes involving road cutting.
The Kerala State Spatial Data Infrastructure is a dedicated and niche initiative aimed at spatial planning. The popular mapathon initiative under it has generated hundreds of maps laying out information as varied as school playgrounds in the State and fire and rescue stations in the State. The maps are valuable resources for citizens as well as policymakers. The IT Mission manages the government call centre, the end-point for all the call centre operations across government departments, everything from the food safety helpline to the KWA and ration card helpline.
Though instances of cyberattacks on government websites are low in Kerala, the IT Mission also runs a computer emergency response team, which does frequent vulnerability assessments and security auditing of all Government portals.
