Seamless outreach

Samagra was one of the awardees at the Nexus of Good Annual Awards this year. What they have already done is truly remarkable and has the potential of transforming service delivery by government and its agencies. The model they have evolved is replicable and scalable. Their approach entails scaling through public-private partnership. Hence, they richly deserved the award they got.

I had a dream that remained unfulfilled during my career as a civil servant. This dream was based on my experience as the head of the Project Monitoring Group (PMG) set up in 2013. Consequent to alleged scams, government decision-making had come to a grinding halt, adversely impacting the clearance of projects. A paperless and transparent mechanism was implemented to fast-track clearances using technology. The idea was to persuade respective Ministries and Departments to take a decision, not necessarily in favour of the applicant. It worked. More than Rs 5 lakh crore worth of projects were granted clearance in less than 15 months. One Cabinet Minister even lost her job for sitting on files. This gave me an idea that technology could virtually eliminate all the harassment that the commoners face while visiting any public office. As I moved out to the Coal Ministry on promotion, it remained a dream.

It was a chance meeting and discussion with Gaurav Goel, Founder and CEO, Samagra, that I discovered that he and his committed team were in the process of making my dream come true.

For the average Indian citizen, the government system presents a labyrinth. From information on existing schemes, services and eligibility criteria to the actual process of availing a scheme or a service, citizens usually resign themselves to undertaking an arduous journey if they have to engage with the government in any form. Isn't this a sad state of affairs in the world's largest democracy? Especially when this need not be the case at all.

More often than not, we give in to the belief that the status quo will continue to remain abysmal as far as governance is concerned. Much of this belief is fuelled by our propensity to consume and disseminate only negative news and happenings.

However, far-reaching changes are only possible if we believe that things can change and take decisive steps towards creating that change. One such example of change is the Government of Haryana's Digital Haryana programme, which started to drive key IT initiatives and develop a digital roadmap. Samagra, a mission-driven governance consulting firm, has supported the state government in designing and implementing this digital roadmap.

While several initiatives are part of the Digital Haryana programme, its centrepiece has been Antyodaya Saral — a project conceived to transform the G2C (Government-to-Citizen) scheme and service delivery. The Government of Haryana offers more than 600 schemes and services for citizens across more than 40 departments. These include a wide range of essentials — providing a new electricity connection, subsidy for establishing dairy units, marriage registration, and an application for a ration card. The vision for Antyodaya Saral was fundamentally altering how citizens avail these schemes and services, and in the process, engage with the government system.

Starting in July 2017, over one year, the state government worked with the NIC Government of India and NIC Haryana to bring more than 500 schemes and services from more than 35 departments to an online portal called Antyodaya Saral. In essence, this meant that a resident of Haryana could apply to all these services and schemes on the portal itself without having to run from pillar to post in different government offices to avail them. Besides the online platform, there are 117 government-run state-of-the-art service centres at headquarter/tehsil level, which provide the same schemes/services, and 6000+ Common Service Centres at the village/ward level in Haryana. All relevant information, such as documents needed and eligibility criteria, is available on the portal itself and at these centres. A single state-wide helpline has also been established to resolve all service-related queries and grievances. Applications are expected to be processed per designated timelines notified under the Haryana Right to Service Act 2014. A public dashboard allows department officials to view compliance with Right to Service timelines at the state and district level to ensure accountability. To bring in transparency, when a citizen applies on the portal, she receives a tracking number that can be used to check the status of the application at various levels of processing.

Of the 500+ schemes and services available on Antyodaya Saral, 229 schemes and services across 12 departments have been brought online for the first time. The helpline handles more than 1 lakh queries and grievances every month. Since the platform's launch in 2018, the government has received more than one crore applications and processed 88.2 per cent of them within timelines notified under the Haryana Right to Service Act 2014. Designed to achieve accessibility, convenience and efficiency, Antyodaya Saral is an example of a government resolving to make citizen-service delivery seamless and using technology to realise this objective. And an investment in such systemic reforms can pay dividends in the most trying circumstances. For example, after the Covid-19-induced national lockdown was announced, Saral was used to issue movement passes to citizens for emergencies/ essential services. The Saral helpline, launched initially to help citizens register queries/grievances related to government services/schemes, was converted into a Covid-relief helpline for informal sector workers. After the Central government allowed partial resumption of economic activities, Haryana directed all industries/commercial establishments to apply for passes to seek approval for resuming operations through the Saral platform. This reform, initiated in 2017, helped make citizen-service delivery smooth and efficient in a manner that would not have been envisioned three years earlier.

This was only made possible through the collaboration of diverse partners brought together by the Chief Minister's office — Central government, state government, NIC, local bodies, non-government entities, academic institutions, Special Purpose Vehicles (CSC SPV) and IT societies. All 22 districts and 38 departments under the leadership of the Deputy Commissioner and Administrative Secretaries have worked tirelessly on Antyodaya Saral over the last three years to make it what it is today.

Such a transformation does not have to be expensive either. Instead of roping in a new and costly vendor, the Digital Haryana team worked with the Government of India's in-house Service Plus platform that was easy to use, could be configured and integrated with existing tech systems, and was scalable. It also had the features required to design an end-to-end workflow for departments without proper online systems. This strategy of leveraging in-house expertise ensured that the project could be delivered on time, at a low cost and with full ownership of the concerned departments. Any state looking to streamline its public service delivery system should study the Haryana model. Going forward, Haryana is looking to make service delivery paperless, faceless and proactive. Haryana has been an example of what is possible.

Going forward, Samagra aspires to scale up the Saral public service delivery model to 10 states in 10 years, covering nearly 50 per cent of the country's population. The firm hopes to work with ecosystem partners to build a digital public good that can power Saral across states and execute the transformation in collaboration with reform champions in the bureaucracy in different states. The creation of a bluebook with detailed explanation of the design and implementation of Saral will make it much easier to replicate. This way, I hope to see my dream of making citizen service delivery easy, accessible and efficient fulfilled.

As governance becomes increasingly complex with the need for more data-backed decision making, it is time governments embrace technology to make e-governance the new normal.

Gaurav Goel can be reached at: gaurav@samagragovernance.in

Views expressed are personal