• e-Governance can be defined as the application of information and communication technology (ICT) for providing government services, exchange of information, transactions, integration of previously existing services and information portals.

Objectives:

• Better service delivery to citizens.
• Ushering in transparency and accountability.
• Empowering people through information.
• Improve efficiency within Government i.e between centre-state or inter-states.
• Improve interface with business and industry.

Types:

• G2G i.e. Government to Government
• G2C i.e. Government to Citizen
• G2B i.e. Government to Business
• G2E i.e. Government to Employees

Advantages of e-Governance:

• Improves delivery and efficiency of government services
• Improved government interactions with business and industry
• Citizen empowerment through access to information
• More efficient government management
• Less corruption in the administration
• Increased transparency in administration
• Greater convenience to citizens and businesses
• Cost reductions and revenue growth
• Increased legitimacy of government

Challenges with e-Governance:

• Lack of information on the Human resource requirements to support the central and state e Governance mission
• Privacy and Security: A critical obstacle in implementing e-Governance is the privacy and security of an individual’s personal data that he/she provides to obtain government services.
• Digital Divide: In India only 30% population have internet connection. The Digital divide also shows grim picture of gender gap in internet access. Only 29% women have access to internet.
• Inaccessibility: An e-government site that provides web-based access and support often does not offer the potential to reach many users including those who live in the remote areas, have low literacy levels and exist on poverty line incomes
• Population: Population of India is probably the biggest challenge in implementing e-Governance projects.

Origin in India:

• e-Governance originated in India during the 1970
• The establishment of the Department of Electronics in 1970
• National Informatics Centre (NIC) established in 1977, launched the District Information System program to computerize all district offices in the country launching of NICNET in 1987 – the national satellite-based computer network
• A National Task Force on Information Technology and Software Development was set-up in 1998.
• The Ministry of Information Technology was created at the Centre in 1999.
• The Information Technology Act (2000) was enacted.
• This Act was amended in 2008.
• Government set-up NISG (National Institute for Smart Government).
• The National e-Governance Plan (NeGP) was launched.
• It consists of 31 Mission Mode Projects (MMPs) and 8 support components.
• The National Policy on Information Technology (NPIT) was adopted in 2012.

National e-Governance Plan (NeGP):

• The National e-Governance Plan (NeGP), provides a holistic view of e-Governance initiatives across the country.
• A mission mode project (MMP) is an individual project within the National e-Governance Plan (NeGP) that focuses on one aspect of electronic governance, such as banking, land records or commercial taxes, etc
• The Government has proposed to implement “e-Kranti: National e-Governance Plan (NeGP) 2.0” under the Digital India programme.

Central MMPs:

• Banking
• Insurance
• Income Tax
• Central Excise and Customs
• Ministry of Company Affairs (MCA 21)
• Pensions
• Passport
• e-Office
• UID
• Immigration/Visa
• Posts

State MMPs:

• Land Records
• Road Transport
• e-District
• Commercial Taxes
• Treasuries Computerisation
• Agriculture
• Municipalities
• Police – CCTNS (Crime & Criminal Tracking Network & Systems)
• Public Distribution Systems (PDS)
• Health
• Education
• e-Panchayats
• Employment Exchange

Integrated MMPs:

• India Portal
• National e-Governance Service Delivery Gateway
• Common Service Centres
• e-Courts
• Electronic Data Interchange for e-Trade
• e-Procurement
• e-Biz
• NeGP 2.0: NeGP 2.0 or e-Kranti was introduced by the government in March 2015 under the Digital India program to utilise emerging technologies such as cloud, mobile platforms (like smartphones and tablets) and geospatial information systems.
• Initiatives: Some of the e-governance initiatives include the Digital India initiative, Aadhaar, Digital Locker, computerisation of land records, E-Courts, e-procurement and G-I cloud.
• e-Kranti is an essential pillar of the Digital India initiative. Considering the critical need for e-Governance, mobile Governance and Good Governance in the country

Objectives of e-Kranti:

• To redefine NeGP with transformational and outcome-oriented e-Governance initiatives.
• To enhance the portfolio of citizen centric services.
• To ensure optimum usage of core Information & Communication Technology (ICT).
• To promote rapid replication and integration of e-Governance applications.
• To leverage emerging technologies.
• To make use of more agile implementation models.

Digital India Initiatives:

• It has been launched by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (Meity).

PRAGATI (Pro-Active Governance and Timely Implementation):

• It has been aimed at starting a culture of Pro-Active Governance and Timely Implementation.
• It is also a robust system for bringing e-transparency and e-accountability with real-time presence and exchange among the key stakeholders.
• It was launched in 2015.

Common Services Centres 2.0 (CSC 2.0):

• It is being implemented to develop and provide support to the use of information technology in rural areas of the country.

National Centre of Geo-informatics (NCoG):

• Under this project, Geographic Information System (GIS) platform for sharing, collaboration, location based analytics and decision support system for Departments has been developed.

e-Healthcare:

• e-Healthcare would cover online medical consultation, online medical records, online medicine supply, pan-India exchange for patient information, etc.

e-Courts:

• e-Courts was Launched by the Department of Justice, Ministry of Law and Justice.
• The Mission Mode Project (MMP) aims at utilizing technology for improved provisioning of judicial services to citizens.

e-District:

• Launched by the Department of Information Technology.
• The MMP aims at delivery of high volume, citizen-centric services at the district level such as the issue of birth/death certificate, income and caste certificates, old age and widow pension, etc.

MCA21:

• Launched by the Ministry of Corporate Affairs.
• The project aims to provide electronic services to the Companies registered under the Companies Act.

Government to Citizen (G2C) Initiatives:

Bhoomi Project:

• Bhoomi is a flagship project of the Karnataka State Government.
• It was launched to digitize all land records in the state to prevent corruption and manipulation of data.

Star Project:

Government to Business (G2B) Initiatives:

e-Procurement:

• Government to Government (G2G) Initiatives
• Tamil Nadu CM Dash board – To monitor all departments and schemes

SmartGov:

• SmartGov has been developed to streamline operations, enhance efficiency through workflow automation and knowledge management for implementation.

G2E (Government to Employee):

e-learning methods:

e-office:

• E – Governance in Tamil Nadu
• Ministry of Information technology in 1999
• Separate Information technology policy for state

Tamil Nadu e-Governance Agency:

• Tamil Nadu e-Governance Agency (TNeGA), as a State Nodal Agency has been formed to support and drive all e-Governance initiatives of the Government of Tamil Nadu.
• TNeGA is implementing various e-Governance projects with the objective of making all Government services, wherever feasible & accessible to the common man in an efficient and transparent manner.
• TNeGA has implemented G2C projects such as e-District, Common Service Centres (CSCs) / e-Sevai Centres in Rural and Urban areas, Capacity Building (CB) in Information and Communication Technology (ICT) & Tools, Tamil Nadu Geographical Information System (TNGIS),
• State Resident Data Hub (SRDH), State Services Delivery Gateway (SSDG).

Organisations:

• Electronics Corporation of Tamil Nadu Limited (ELCOT)
• Established on 21 March 1977.
• ELCOT functions to promote, establish and run State Public Sector Enterprises for Electronic items; manage, supervise, finance, advise, assist, aid or collaborate with any private and public associations, firms, companies, enterprises, undertakings, institutions, and schemes for the advancement and development of electronics and information technology.
• It is considered the back office for the Information Technology Department of the Government of Tamil Nadu, and functions to implement the Government’s E-Governance initiative
• ELCOT Special Economic Zones (ELCOSEZs)
• ELCOSEZ- Sholinganallur, Chennai
• ELCOSEZ Vilankurichi, Coimbatore
• ELCOSEZ – Ilandhaikulam, Madurai
• ELCOSEZ – Vadapalanji, Madurai
• ELCOSEZ – Navalpattu, Tiruchirappalli
• ELCOSEZ- Gangaikondan, Tirunelveli
• ELCOSEZ- Jagirammapalayam, Salem
• ELCOSEZ-Viswanathapuram, Hosur

Tamil Virtual Academy (TVA):

• It is a distance education institution based in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, and India.
• The Government of Tamil Nadu established the Tamil Virtual University on 17 February 2001 as a society.
• The university provides internet-based educational resources and opportunities for the Tamil diaspora as well as for others interested in learning the Tamil language and acquiring knowledge of the history, art, literature and culture of the Tamils.
• The digital library of TVU provides literature, glossaries and dictionaries.
• It accommodates literature starting from Sangam era to the present day, with the following features:

Classified sections of books,

• Nigandu, Agarathi
• Ancient and medieval literature, with their commentaries.
• Romanized versions of Tolkappiyam, Patthuppaattu and Ettutthogai.
• The library has subject-indexing and search facilities.

Tamil Nadu Arasu Cable TV (TACTV) Corporation:

• TACTV was incorporated under Companies Act, 1956 on 04.10.2007 with an intention to provide high quality cable signals to the public at an affordable cost.
• To achieve the objective, high quality Digital Head Ends were installed at a cost of approximately Rs.8 Crore each at Thanjvur, Coimbatore, Tirunelveli and Vellore with control rooms and without control rooms at Madurai and Trichy.

Objectives:

• To reach out to the maximum customer base under the regulations of Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) for distribution of digital cable TV services.
• To promote livelihood of the LCOs registered with the Corporation.
• To provide citizen centric services through Arasu e-Sevai Centers in Local Bodies, Taluk Offices and District Collectorates.
• To provide Internet connectivity to every household
• It runs e seva centres in state Tamil Nadu FibreNet Corporation Limited (TANFINET)
• Tamil Nadu FibreNet Corporation Limited is a Government Company incorporated on 08 Jun 2018
• To assist the Government in establishing Tamil Nadu as an e-Enabled State.
• To fulfil the vision of Good Governance using the tools that information technology provides, such that working within Government becomes transparent and efficient, with concomitant transparency and efficiency in delivery of services to our Citizens
• The Vision is to provide high quality Cable TV, e-sevai and Internet services to the public at an affordable cost using the latest and emerging Technologies.
• Reach out to the Tamil Diaspora across the globe through the Internet.
• To empower every individual and households in Tamil Nadu by harnessing the power of Information Technology enabled through high-speed bandwidth and low latency connectivity.
• To make the students ICT industry ready.

BharatNet:

• BharatNet is an ambitious program conceived by Government of India to provide broadband connectivity to all Village Panchayats in the country.
• Under this Scheme about 1,50,000 Village Panchayats across country are to be provided broadband connectivity by March 2017 in phase I of the project.
• The remaining 1,00,000 Village Panchayats are planned to be covered und

Tamil Net:

• “It has been proposed to connect all the Corporations, Municipalities and Town Panchayats through Optic fiber enabling the urban citizens to reap the benefits of Digital Revolution and avail the services of Government Departments at their doorsteps.
• This scheme will be called as TamilNet.
• TamilNet will be implemented in Public Private Partnership (PPP) mode with funding assistance from State Undertakings like ELCOT and TACTV”.

Tamil Nadu State Wide Area Network (TNSWAN)

• TNSWAN commenced its operations in the year 2007, under the National e-Governance Plan (NeGP) jointly by the Union and State Governments.
• To enable effective workflow in delivery of services to the citizens, TNSWAN provides voice, data and video connectivity to all Government Departments.

Tamil Nadu State Data Centre-I (TNSDC-I)

• The Government of Tamil Nadu implemented the first ISO certified State Data Centre (TNSDC-I) in the country in 2011.

Tamil Nadu State Data Centre-II (TNSDC-II)

• TNSDC-2 can accommodate around 50 racks initially and is expandable up to 195 racks capacity on a scalable manner.

Thamizh Megam-TN Cloud Computing Services

• The State Cloud Infrastructure, trademarked as ‘Thamizh Megam’, enables optimal sharing of system resources with minimal management.
• It is operational from the 2016
• At Thamizh Megam, Infrastructure-as-a Service (IaaS) and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) are being offered.

e-Security

• A high level Security Architecture Framework – Security Architecture for TNSDC, to ensure data protection of Government.

District e-Governance Societies (DeGS)

• The e-district project is one of the State Mission Mode Projects (SMMPs) being implemented under National e-Governance Plan (NeGP).
• The objectives of the project is electronic delivery of identified high volume Citizen-Centric services at District levels.
• Hence the Government have ordered for the formation of District e-Governance Societies to implement the project.
• This Society is headed by the District Collector in all Districts, except Chennai.

Digital Office Tamil Nadu (DoTN) – e-Office

• e-Office is the application suite that allows automation of routine tasks and processes within the Government offices.
• The Electronic File Management System (e-file) helps create ‘paperless’ offices, that allows speedy disposal of files and improves Governance.

TN Decision Support System – DeTN

• Government of Tamil Nadu envisions a Data-Driven Decision Support Infrastructure to improve Governance by assisting in the design, development and execution of Government schemes and programs.

CM Dashboard

• The Chief Minister’s Dashboard is an internal governance tool launched on 23.12.2021 and designed by a team of Business Intelligence (BI) Developers, Business Analysts and Liaison Data Analysts in TNeGA.
• Its purpose is to provide updated information on a daily, monthly and yearly basis, with some Departments having real-time information and others having data collected periodically from the field level.
• The Dashboard covers 32 Departments, involving over 100 Directorates, with more than 135 Dashboards completed and regularly updated.

State Family Database (SFDB)

• State Family Database (SFDB) is envisioned as a data-driven decision-support infrastructure for improving Governance by aiding planning, implementation and execution of Government schemes and programs.
• Each of the Departments of Government of Tamil Nadu have their own applications and associated databases.

Tamil Nadu Geographic Information System (TNGIS)

• Tamil Nadu Geographical Information System (TNGIS) is established with an objective of creating a common GIS Platform for the State wherein all Departmental assets, facilities, projects being executed by various Departments using geospatial technologies (Remote Sensing data from Satellites, Drone, Aerial and terrestrial platforms including underground data).
• TNGIS is managing over 300 spatial data layers collated from various Departments that are being shared with Departments in need.

Artificial Intelligence / Machine Learning (AI/ML)

• Artificial Intelligence / Machine Learning can provide new ways of approaching problems and to meaningfully improve citizen’s lives.
• The focus in TNeGA is on applying AI to sectors such as Healthcare, Agriculture, Energy and Education that requires a concerted, collaborative effort across all sectors.

e-Paarvai

• A cataract detection mobile app using AI is rolled out for the whole State. So far 20,000 patients with cataract have been detected and reported to District Hospitals for further advice and surgery.

Facial Recognition based Attendance System 2.0 (FRAS 2.0)

• Facial Recognition based Attendance System 2.0 (FRAS 2.0) is developed and deployed as an Android application for scaling across the State.

AI based Pest and Disease detection

• AI based Pest and Disease detection has been developed and deployed in Uzhavan mobile application and the farmers of Tamil Nadu are already using the same and receive expert advice from the Department of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare.

Tamil Nadu Blockchain Backbone – Nambikkai Inaiyam

• Nambikkai Inaiyam will enable Departments of Government of Tamil Nadu to use a unified infrastructure to secure Government data and documents and track the provenance of digitized assets.
• The platform is being used to develop various e-Governance applications.
• Use cases are being implemented to include securing land records, securing academic certificates and marksheets and e-Sevai certificates.

Digitization and Management of Electronic Records of Legislature (DMERL)

• This project aims to digitize approximately one million pages of records in form of debate books, reports of various committees and papers laid before the house along with other significant contents like newspaper clippings, images, audio and video and manage them using advanced technology, enabling the legacy of the legislature readily accessible to the citizens through a web portal.

Namma Grama Sabha

• The Namma Grama Sabha app has been developed to help the Rural Development Department to monitor whether the Grama Sabha takes place with the quorum of minimum participants along with online reporting of agendas and resolutions.

e-Mail as a service

• As a part of e-Governance Initiative, the Government of Tamil Nadu has decided to create e-Mail IDs both Official and name based personal IDs with the ‘tn.gov.in’ domain at free of cost to all Officials working in various Government Departments / Undertakings / Agencies and Boards for the Official communication.
• Each employee will be assigned a ‘designation’ based e-Mail account as well as ‘name’ based e-Mail account.
• Currently, in the year 2022-23 around 65,516 e-mail IDs have been created for the Government employees with the help of NIC.

SMS as a Service

• Tamil Nadu e-Governance Agency (TNeGA) is providing SMS Gateway to all Government Departments at a low cost and effective manner.

e-Sign as a Service

• e-Sign service facilitates instant signing of documents online by utilizing the service of Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) for on-line authentication and Aadhaar e-KYC.
• TNeGA has engaged Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) as e-Sign Service Provider (ESP) to cater the e-Sign service needs of all the Government Departments of Tamil Nadu.

Online Exam as a Service (EaaS)

• TNeGA is providing “Online Examination” as a Service that can be availed by various Government Departments to cater their recruitment needs in order to fill their vacancies in a time-bound, transparent and hassle-free, secured manner.

Tamil Nadu Internet and Connectivity Services Limited (TANICS)

• TACTV has formed a subsidiary company namely, Tamil Nadu Internet and Connectivity Services Ltd. (TANICS)
• To provide internet related services to the public at an affordable cost.
• Steps will be taken to obtain the ISP License from Ministry of Communications and Information Technology.

Theera Kaadhal Thirukural

• In order to promote Thirukural concepts among the youth, Tamil Virtual Academy is taking steps to undertake various activities under ‘Theera Kaadhal Thirukural’.

Tamil Parappurai Kazhagam

• To provide financial assistance to the organizations teaching Tamil as a second and third language abroad and train teachers, Tamil Parappurai Kazhagam has been launched

Tamilinaiyam – Digital Library

• TVA has created a Tamil Digital Library (www.tamildigitallibrary.in) which contains rare books, periodicals of Tamil literature, religion, history, medicine from 18th century onwards and also contains palm-leaf manuscripts.
• This is one among the largest digital library in the South Asian languages.

Tamilar Tagavalaatruppadai

• TVA has created Tamilar Tagavalaatruppadai as a comprehensive and collaborative repository of Tamil language, literature and arts. Under this scheme, Tamilar Tagavalaatruppadai website (www.tagavalaatruppadai.in) has been developed with 31,158 photographs of Tamils’ history and culture.
• This repository is being continuously updated by adding more artefacts and monuments.
• So far, this website has been visited 27,71,565 times by the users.

Kani Tamil Peravai

• Kani Tamil Peravai (KTP) is a programme envisaged by TVA to create awareness among students about Tamil Computing.
• In order to promote and motivate the college students, the field experts are encouraging them to write Tamil contents, app development, writing articles in Tamil etc.
• So far, 212 KTP centres have been started in Universities / Colleges across Tamil Nadu.

ICT Academy of Tamil Nadu (ICTACT)

• Information and Communication Technology Academy of Tamil Nadu (ICTACT) is a not-for-profit Organization, started by the Government of Tamil Nadu in the year 2009, as a Public Private Partnership.
• The objective of ICTACT is to train the higher education teachers and students especially in Tier II and Tier III towns in various technology domains.

National Informatics Centre (NIC):

District e-Governance Society (DeGS):

ICT Academy:

• Skill Development and Entrepreneurship development efforts across the country have been highly fragmented so far.
• Though India enjoys the demographic advantage of having the youngest workforce with an average age of 29 years in comparison with the advanced economies, as opposed to the developed countries, where the percentage of skilled workforce is between 60% and 90% of the total workforce, India records a low 5% of workforce (20-24 years) with formal employability skills.

Centre of Excellence in Emerging Technologies (CEET):

• Establish and foster partnership with Government Departments, agencies, corporate entities, industry bodies and academic institutions working in emerging technologies.
• Define and promote best practices and standards followed across the globe in emerging technologies.
• Engage in capacity building, training and orientation for officers at various levels of the Government Departments to facilitate achievement of their goals.
• Perform R&D projects and undertake specific prototyping or development tasks which could include piloting new product features and proactively building reusable components
• Evolve reuse strategies and centralize the shared asset creation and consumption process for the Departments.

iTNT HUB:

• The Tamil Nadu government will launch the i-Tamil Nadu Technology (iTNT) hub
• The iTNT hub will act as the core by connecting the ecosystem of startups working in Emerging and Deeptech areas, with the academic network of around 570 engineering colleges, engaging with researchers and Industry partners to pave the way for innovation
• Common Services Centres 2.0
• One stop solution for various G2C and B2C services.
• Citizen can avail all the Services at their doorstep.
• Citizen can monitor their application status at any point of time.
• The time taken to deliver the services is drastically reduced from 15 days to 2 days.

Arasu e-Sevai centres:

• At present Tamil Nadu Arasu Cable TV Corporation (TACTV) is operating 659 centres across the State.
• The Arasu e-Sevai Centres are equipped with sufficient Broadband Internet connectivity.
• These centres are providing many services relating to various Government Departments of the State and Union Government like Certificates/services of Revenue Department, Social Welfare Department, payment of Utilility Bills, Printing of replacement EPIC Card, Pensioners Card, Online Booking for Text Books, TNPSC Services etc.,

CSA-TN:

• The Cyber Security Architecture of Tamil Nadu (CSA-TN) is being executed by ELCOT in association with the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC).
• CERT-TN in compliance with National and State Law shall act as a statutory body issuing directives, guidelines and advisories to enforce cybersecurity practices to the Departments.
• It is learnt that CERT-TN will regularly assess the government’s Critical Information Infrastructure (CII) for Security and resilience maturity.
• The state is also coming up with Cyber Crisis Management Plan (CCMP) for countering Cyber Attacks.
• Under the CCMP, there will be Crisis Management Group (CMG) for each Department which will coordinate with CERT-TN during a crisis situation.

Tamil Nadu Disaster Recovery Centre (TNDRC):

• Facilitated to have a mirror image of the applications / data hosted in TNSDC. Designed, built and maintained as per Tier II standards.
• Reliable, robust and secured infrastructure for e-Delivery of services on a 24 X 7 basis in the event of disaster at TNSDC.
• Established in a different seismic zone.
• Ensures Business Continuity of various e-Governance applications hosted at TNSDC on demand.
• TNDRC also addresses the co-location requirements of the Departments, which opt for co-location at Thiruchirapalli.

TN Telecom infrastructure policy, 2022:

• Telecom Infrastructure plays a vital role in the world of communication in providing G2G, G2B and G2C services.
• The Importance of telecom services has grown Manifold as several organizations have Adopted e-learning, e-services, Over-The-Top (OTT) platforms, e-Commerce and e-Governance etc.
• All this has led to tremendous upsurge in broadband traffic and the internet usage.
• To cope up with the increased traffic, the telecom network Capacity will have to be enhanced quickly through addition of New Telecom Infrastructure (Telecom Towers / Optical Fibre Cable) and upgradation of existing Telecom Infrastructure on a faster pace.

Objectives:

• To develop a robust and secure State-of-the-art Telecommunication Network
• To provide seamless coverage especially in rural and remote areas.
• To provide citizens with seamless connectivity over the entire State.
• To provide single window clearance for approvals.

Tamil Nadu Data Policy,2022:

• Develop data capabilities to address all phases of governance, namely – policy making, administration, and scheme review, policy redesign, aimed at developing a Data-driven decision-making culture.

Objectives:

• Promote the data analytics capability of all departments.
• Minimize exclusion/inclusion errors in government schemes.
• Data driven assessment of efficacy of schemes.
• Making data publicly available for policy research and for improving transparency.

Tamil Nadu Block Chain Policy:

• To make Tamil Nadu a global leader in Blockchain Technology.
• Provide faster, efficient, secure and transparent delivery of services to the people of Tamil Nadu by building new e-Governance Blockchain applications and to augment Existing Governance workflows and processes with Blockchain.
• To generate awareness and understanding about Blockchain technology in executives and senior officers of Tamil Nadu Government to promote adoption of the technology.
• Provide new opportunities to people of Tamil Nadu and organizations of Tamil Nadu and help create a thriving ecosystem including Blockchain entrepreneurs and Community development.
• To promote and encourage mass adoption and implementation of Blockchain Technology in the State of Tamil Nadu across Government and industries.

TN Cyber security policy:

• Protect Information Assets of Government (Infrastructure, Software, Citizen Services) and maximize their availability to Government and the Citizens.
• Develop a Comprehensive Security Risk Reduction Strategy.
• Establish Enterprise Approach to Security Policy and Governance.
• Establish Security Capabilities and Infrastructure for layered Security of Mission-Critical Systems and Data.
• Foster a Security Awareness and Adoption among the Government Workforce.