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Telangana has emerged as a model state for e-governance
For a state just 53 months old, Telangana has had the opportunity to learn from others and build on it. It had a head start in providing internet-based services to citizens, having been part of erstwhile Andhra Pradesh which pioneered e-governance since the Chandrababu Naidu days. It has also capitalised on the growth impulse of Hyderabad, the largest metropolitan area in the country and capital of united Andhra Pradesh.
Telangana also has a very determined chief minister in K. Chandrashekar Rao. To streamline governance, the CM reorganised the state’s 10 districts into 31 in 2016, a promise he had made in his separate statehood campaign. Post-reorganisation, the number of mandals went up to 584, but their number per district dropped from 46 to 19. The state is now in the process of building integrated administrative buildings in all districts, housing offices of all departments, and offering all services, including e-services, under one roof.
On August 29, 2014, the state conducted a Samagra Kutumba Survey in which 400,000 government employees were mobilised to get information on 84 parameters from every household. This gave the state a reliable database, unprecedented in its reach and depth for policy formulation and implementing target-specific programmes.
Telangana has also set up citizen services centres called MeeSeva. A single entry and exit portal, it provides the entire range of government to citizen and government to business services. Some 600 services of 38 departments are offered through 5,073 centres.
“Telangana has led the country in number of e-transactions per 1,000 people in the past four years according to a survey by the eTAAL portal,” says the state’s electronic service delivery and e-governance special commissioner G.T. Venkateshwar Rao. The state tops with 89,883 transactions for 1,000 persons; followed by Andhra Pradesh (82,868) and Kerala (59,582).
The backbone of this success is the Digital Telangana programme. To ensure digital facilities for all, the Telangana Fiber Grid (T- Fiber) is building a scalable, high-quality, resilient and secure state-of-the-art digital network infrastructure connecting 8.4 million households. T-Fiber will lay fibreoptic cables along the water pipe routes of Mission Bhagiratha, a project for safe drinking water to every household.
To service the needs of rural and non-smartphone users but also catering to the general urban population, Telangana has introduced T-Wallet, the first digital wallet owned and operated by a state government. It is also the first digital wallet to use UID biometric authentication even if a citizen does not have a mobile number.
At 89,883 e-transactions per 1,000 persons, Telangana leads among all states