Andhra Pradesh has agreed to share its e-governance initiative Mee Seva with other states.
Under
Mee Seva (meaning at your service) launched a year ago, the state
government is offering 45 various services and plans to increase the
same to 100 services in two to three months.
Services like
issuance of birth, caste and income certificates are being performed for
citizens in 15 to 20 minutes, which earlier used to take 10 to 15 days.
Chief
Minister N. Kiran Kumar Reddy Thursday agreed to a suggestion made by
J. Satyanarayana, secretary, department of electronics and information
technology, government of India at the eIndia event here.
Satyanarayana
suggested to the chief minister to dedicate Mee Seva to the nation so
that other state can take benefit of this ready-made platform with minor
customizations and use of cloud technology.
He pointed out that
under various e-governance projects across the country citizen services
were being offered to 8.2 crore people. "We plan to increase this number
to 15 crore by March 2013 and 30 crore by March 2014," he said.
The
chief minister claimed that the Mee Seva initiative has immensely
benefited the common man. According to one estimate, this has saved
annually Rs.4,000 crore to Rs.6,000 crore which the citizens used to pay
as bribe to government officers at various levels for the services.
Reddy
said he now planned to use the information and communication technology
in health services aimed at pregnant women. He explained how the use of
this technology in student scholarships helped the government save
Rs.300 crore every year, which was being misappropriated.
He said
as the state was giving Rs.26,000 crore subsidies to various sections of
people every year, the use of ICT would ensure that the subsidies reach
the targeted group.
The state is now planning to link all the
welfare schemes to Aadhar to check the leakages. It has already covered
six crore out of 8.3 crore people under Aadhar.