Common Service Centers Research Articles

Impact of e-government benefits on continuous use intention of e-government services: The moderating role of citizen trust in Common Service Centres (CSCs)

The present study attempts to understand the role of trustworthiness of common service centres (CSCs) in determining the e-government continuance intention from the perspective of citizens who are dependent on these centres for using e-government services, in developing countries like India. The moderating role of citizen trust in CSCs is analysed in the effects of the three dimensions of e-government benefits (namely, economic benefits, quality of service (QoS) benefits and quality of governance (QoG) benefits), on the e-government continuance intention. The primary data were collected from the field surveys conducted at select CSCs in the Uttar Pradesh (UP) state of India using convenience sampling. The study sample included 542 respondents who use e-government services through CSCs. The findings of the study suggest that CSCs' trustworthiness significantly moderates the impact of e-government benefits on the e-government continuance intention; the effects being significantly stronger for the citizens who have greater trust in CSCs.

Socio-economical Costs and Benefits of E-Governance in India through CSCs

The key influence of E-Governance is to improve government procedures, linking people and building peripheral contacts by e-services. But because of some ins and outs citizens are not cognizant about such facilities and services or fail to receive such services up to its extent. Therefore, these services are suffering from meagre enactment. It is discussed in the past studies that the ICT play vital and significant role in societal development. ROI cannot be the focused and foremost objective when e-government projects are envisaged. These are frequently determined for attaining and preparing effectiveness in delivery of services. To raise usefulness, The Indian Government conveyed the idea of Common Service Centres (CSCs). CSCs are the common point for offering the necessary public useful services like social development schemes, banking & finance, health, education skill development and agriculture to citizens in rural and remote areas of the country. The key objective of present study is to evaluate the role of Government, Semi-Government, CSCs and other various agencies in promoting E-Governance facilities with high societal benefits in India.

Does Digital India Deliver in Improving Government Front-End Services?

Common Service Centres (CSCs) have proliferated across the country under the Digital India Initiative. They are meant to provide easy access to several administrative services through private operators. We investigate if digitisation and privatization of these services improves citizen’s experiences and if this model is feasible in the long term in Jharkhand. Our survey findings show a mixed picture from the citizens perspective. Even though citizens like the accessibility aspect of CSCs, they do not get timely and low-cost delivery of basic government services. Overcharing is rampant and users faced several hardships in applying for services. From the perspective of CSC operators, the model of only commission-based payments is unsustainable. Based on our field work and talking to various stakeholders we make recommendations to improve the PK model that will expand the scope of these centres, and improve transparency and accountability.

Service quality perception: A study of common service centers operating in rural areas

Maharashtra Government has implemented e-Governance project in the various government offices to improve the delivery of government services in transparent manner. Amongst the various projects Maha e-Seva Kendra project has been started to provide the services such as various online certificates to the people residing in Maharashtra. Maha e-Seva project is implemented in urban as well as in rural areas under the Revenue Department as a Mission Mode Project of National e-Governance Plan to provide the government services more efficiently to the citizens. So there is a need to assess the efficiency of the implemented project in terms of citizen’s satisfaction and service quality. The present research study is conducted in the rural parts of Kolhapur district. Perception of citizens regarding service quality of Common Service Centers operating in rural areas is assessed by using SERVQUAL Model. The study deals with the facilities and services provided by the Common Service Centers. Keywords: Service quality, SERVQUAL, Maha e- Seva Kendra, Common service centers, e-Governance.

Interim Budget: 2019-2020

Interim budget, 2019 highlights fall in rate of inflation, reduction in fiscal deficit, increase in foreign direct investment, substantial addition to roads and new houses with electricity made available to every house, besides to farmers by Kisan Credit Card Scheme (KCC), to labourers with assured pension and direct benefit transfers and sponsoring digital revolution by creation of Common Service Centers (CSC), and Jan Dhan- Aadhaar-Mobile (JAM), extensive infrastructure development, plan for Government e-Marketplace (GeM) with rural industralisation and concession to housing sector extending benefit to single house. Income-tax returns will be processed electronically without personal presence.

Rural Citizens'Awareness and Constraints Regarding Common Service Centres: A Study of Rohtak Block (Haryana)

Government service at the citizens’ door through Common Service Centres (CSCs) is a welcome step. It is a citizen-centric e-governance programme which facilitates many services to the citizens under a single roof with the aim of lower cost, speedy service and nearest to the citizens’ residence. The centres provide services like government to the citizen, business to citizen (B2C), educational, financial and others. In Haryana, the CSCs are currently known as Atal Sewa Kendras (ASKs). It is a good step of the government and the success of any government policy and project depends upon the awareness of the citizens which in turn enhance their participation in administrative process. So, by keeping this point in view, the study has been conducted with the aim to check the awareness among the rural citizens about the CSCs and the problems being faced by the beneficiaries while getting services at CSCs.

CORPORATE FUNCTIONS DISTRIBUTION IN A MULTI-ENTITY ORGANIZATION STRUCTURE Functional to process approach

This article presents corporate functions location within a multi-entity organization structure including functional and process approaches. The realization of the specified goal and the theoretical nature of the study determine the following parts: introduction, corporate functions in modern organizations, possible variants of function location in traditional model (functional) and their modification into common service centre, function distribution in terms of process and conclusions. The main reason for undertaking research in this area is the persisting tendency in domestic and foreign a multi-entity organization structure to secretion of processes and build process structures at the expense of traditional functional systems. Therefore, an attempt was made to present the location of functions in the shot traditional (functional) and process terms.

Impact Assessment of Common Service Centres (Telecenters) on Citizen Services - Findings from Jammu and Kashmir

Impact Assessment of Common Service Centres (Telecenters) on Citizen Services - Findings from Jammu and Kashmir

Financial Inclusion After PMJDY: A Case Study of Gubbi Taluk, Tumkur

Pradhan Mantri Jan-Dhan Yojana (PMJDY) was introduced in August 2014 and has achieved record success in terms of ensuring almost 100 percent household coverage. The study attempts to examine the success of PMJDY in six Gram Panchayats of Gubbi. The study finds that new accounts have been opened by women, small and marginal farmers, and rural people with no formal education. The properly run, Common Service Centres have served an important purpose of facilitating financial services to rural population. Interestingly, demonetisation did not have any long term impact on the behaviour of users nor bankers but money lenders improved their services. The other financial schemes of the government pertaining to pension, insurance and social security have yet to make an inroad into rural sector. However, digitalization of the economy needs to be carefully addressed because many respondents were not comfortable in using online, internet, ATM and mobile banking.

Fuzzy C-Means Clustering and Particle Swarm Optimization based scheme for Common Service Center location allocation

Common Service Centers (CSCs), which are also known as Tele-centers and Rural Kiosks, are important infrastructural options for any country aiming to provide E-Governance services in rural regions. Their main objective is to provide adequate information and services to a country’s rural areas, thereby increasing government-citizen connectivity. Within developing nations, such as India, many CSC allocations are being planned. This study proposes a solution for allocating a CSC for villages in a country according to their E-Governance plan. The Fuzzy C-Means (FCM) algorithm was used for clustering the village dataset and finding a cluster center for CSC allocation, and the Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) algorithm was used for further optimizing the results obtained from the FCM algorithm based on population. In the context of other studies addressing similar issues, this study highlights the practical implementation of location modeling and analysis. An extensive analysis of the results obtained using a village dataset from India including four prominent states shows that the proposed solution reduces the average traveling costs of villagers by an average of 33 % compared with those of allocating these CSCs randomly in a sorted order and by an average of 11 % relative to centroid allocation using the FCM-based approach only. As compared to traditional approaches like P-Center and P-Median, the proposed scheme is better by 31 % and 14 %, respectively. Therefore, the proposed algorithm yields better results than classical FCM and other types of computing techniques, such as random search & linear programming. This scheme could be useful for government departments managing the allocation of CSCs in various regions. This work should also be useful for researchers optimizing the location allocation schemes used for various applications worldwide.

Implementation of Common Service Centre Project in India: A Case Study of Zoom Developers Private Limited

The Information Technology (IT) Sector has led India to become a potent global hub of providing IT andIT enabled Services (IT-ITeS). Due to continuous technological advancements and innovations in ITsector, the Government of India (GOI) has been very proactive in applying it to rural sector to bridge theurban and rural divide. The emergence of e-Government as a force in developing India has led to thediscovery of many innovative ways of public service delivery to citizens and businesses with the primefocus on rural sector. The choice of Common Service Center (CSC) based service delivery model is oneof the major and commendable initiatives by GOI. The CSC is created to offer a diversified range ofgovernment and non-government services at one location. The ambitious CSC project is all aboutestablishing 1, 00,000 CSCs across the country at the lowest local government body at village level(Gram Panchayat Level) by Government of India under its National e-Governance Plan (NeGP)(Common Service Centre (N.D.). In other words these CSCs are government’s front end delivery ekiosks.The project is being carried out by a joint collaborative approach between government and privatesectors under Public- Private Partnership Model (PPP) (Kurian and Ray, 2009). This paper highlights theissues and challenges encountered by private entity, Zoom Developers (Zoom), in implementing theproject to establish over 12,000 CSCs in eight states. It further discusses sustainability and success ofthese projects.

Enhancing the Reach of Public Services Through Mobile Governance: The Mobile Seva Initiative in India

Mobile governance has emerged as a new paradigm for enhancing the reach of and access to public services by the citizens. While the Common Service Centres (CSCs) have helped in enhancing access to public services in rural areas, low penetration of computers and Internet in the country has hindered wider access. In July 2011, the Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY), Government of India launched a new countrywide initiative on mobile governance, named as Mobile Seva. This project aims at creating a common platform to enable all government departments and agencies in the country at central, state, and local levels to provide their electronic services through mobile phones and tablets. The project has achieved very good success within a short time. It already has 980 departments across the country on board and is offering over 295 services through mobile devices. The platform has already delivered over 775 million SMS based transactions to the citizens and businesses. It has also created a Mobile AppStore with over 290 live mobile apps for a wide range of public services. In this paper, I analyse the performance of this project in detail and examine the critical factors behind its success. I also examine the potential failure factors that, if not addressed properly, may undermine the project’s sustainability in the medium and long term. The analysis in the paper shows that the project has achieved its success due to a number of factors that include formulation of a national policy framework on mobile governance and support from the highest decision making body on National e-Governance Plan in the country, responsiveness of the implementing team, ease of onboarding and implementation for the departments, portal effectiveness, performance reliability, transparency and participatory design. However, there are a number of potential critical failure factors that may affect the performance of the project in future. These include lack of technical knowhow and qualified resources within departments, lack of adequate power and connectivity at department offices, lack of detailed understanding about departments’ systems, lack of face to face interaction and lack of adequate awareness about the project. These issues need to be addressed properly to ensure that the project does not suffer a sustainability failure in the long term. Developing an appropriate business model and ensuring institutional support for the project are also very important factor for its long-term sustainability.

E-Governance and Rural Development: An Assessment of CSCS in Tripura

In Tripura, E-governance is available for health, education, and livelihood sectors and it provides services like Utility services, Rural Banking, Training Courses (Computer), Micro-credit, Insurance service, Health Services, Online PAN card facility, Adhar Card, Commercial services through Common Service Center (CSCs) to the people residing in the remote areas. CSCs are playing a vital role for rural development through providing various services in the rural areas which were not available before implementing e-governance. Because of e-governance the rural population easily accesses the several services in nearest to their village & also e-governance playing crucial role in the field of rural development. Present study provides an insight into the role of e-governance in providing essential facilities to people of Tripura. The study attempts to reveal the socio-economic status of the rural people in study area; level of awareness among rural peoples regarding e-governance; the services available in the Common Service Centre (CSC) under e-governance. It also makes an attempt to identify the problems during access the services and make necessary suggestion for better e-governance in rural areas.

E-Governance Mediated Agriculture for Sustainable Life in India

Abstract This era is called as ICT era which comprises the ICT Mediated Agriculture Extension in Rural as well as Urban areas to disseminate the ethics of information by Decision Support System (DSS), Management Information System(MIS) and Expert System(ES) by impregnating the User Interface and Knowledge Management System. So, E-Agriculture, therefore describes an emerging field focused on the enhancement of agricultural and rural development through improved information and communication process. The main Objective is to provide an Interface to farmers and consumers and to facilitate linking up of agriculture produce marketing cooperative.ITCs,E-chaupal,IT-Kiosks,Eid-party agriline,Gyandoot Project,Warana weired Village,Information Village Project of MSSRF(MS Swaminathan Research Foundation),I-kisan project of Nagarjun group of companies,Kisan Call Center(KCC),Bhoomi Project,Village Knowledge Center etc. are the recent development in e-governance mediated agriculture in India.It add value to the lives of Farmers and End-users in a Sustainable way through Knowledge Management Portals, e-kiosks, Common Service centers in grass root level

Telecentres Go Where Mobile Phones Fear to Tread

As broadband becomes an integral part of universal service schemes in emerging economies, the lines between universal access to telephony and universal access to computing are blurring. This article focuses on the social inclusiveness of publicly funded telecentres in India. In contrast to the previous literature, it does not test their inclusiveness in absolute terms, but relative to the inclusiveness of mobile phones. Data from telecentres set up in two states in India under the National Common Service Centre Scheme shows that mobile and telecentre adoption is driven by different factors. This suggests that telecentre adoption could take precedence over mobile adoption in certain socio-economic categories like females and agriculturists. We show that this is indeed true among females where telecentres are substitutes for mobiles. Among males the two media behave as complements. This suggests that telecentres and mobiles must play complementary roles in bringing connectivity to rural areas. The optimism on telecentre performance with respect to women has to be tempered with a sober reflection on commercial viability.

Developing entrepreneurship and e-government in India: Role of common service centers

Developing e-Governance and entrepreneurship in rural India is the biggest challenge for Indian government. Number of initiatives has been taken by government to boost both entrepreneurship and e-Governance, one of which is Common Service Center CSC project. CSC project is an ambitious project of Indian government based on PPP framework to boost entrepreneurship and e governance in Rural India. Very few studies have focused on the role of Common Service Centers CSC in development of Rural India. This study tries to fill this gap by throwing light on the benefits derived from the CSC project and some of the major bottlenecks of the project. The study concludes with major recommendations to overcome these bottlenecks to increase the impact in the field of e-governance and entrepreneurship.

Financial Sustainability of E-Governance Embedded Rural Telecentres (EGERT) in India

In the recent years, two significant changes have taken place in an effort to address the rural poor:Businesses have started recognizing the potential of rural markets and governments have started using telecentres for providing government-to-citizen G2C services to rural citizens. In India, the national and sub-national governments have supported businesses to establish telecentres in rural areas to provide information technology-enabled services. However, the focus so far has been mostly on B2C services and financial viability of the common service centres (CSCs) is being questioned. We argue conceptually and show through preliminary evidence that designing these telecentres with embedded G2C services would not only enhance sustainability of these centres but also improve the effectiveness of the delivery of the government services and strengthen their information system. Considering that the poor can benefit substantially from government programmes and services, improvements in the effectiveness of their delivery would invariably foster inclusive growth and help bridge digital divide.

Designing a sustainable business model for e-governance embedded rural telecentres (EGERT) in India

An effective inclusive growth model for rural areas in India will have to be driven by information and communication technology (ICT), and telecentres (places where shared access to ICT and enabled services are available) are the potential instruments of rural information and empowerment. Realising this, the Government of India has under its National e-Governance Plan, committed to the setting up of 250,000 common service centres in rural India. However, the experience with the roll out of this plan has not been encouraging as many of the centres are closing down due to the weak business model.The first part of this article, the academic perspective, suggests an alternative model for rural telecentres, the e-governance embedded rural telecentres (EGERT), in which e-governance is an important service to be provided, and details the contentious issues clustered round the role of the government; the viability of partnership models with the private and NGO sectors; the institutional design for rural telecentres; the services to be rendered by the centres and the likely markets for them; the location of the centres and support in the form of infrastructure and manpower; and the technology to support the institutional design. Stakeholder representatives from the government, the industry, the NGO sector and the academia discuss these issues in the second part of the article, and make suggestions towards a viable model for service.

Location of Multiple Server Common Service Centers or Public Facilities for Minimizing General Congestion and Travel Cost Functions

We propose a model and solution methods, for locating a fixed number of multiple-server, congestible common service centers or congestible public facilities. Locations are chosen so to minimize consumers' congestion (or queuing) and travel costs, considering that all the demand must be served. Customers choose the facilities to which they travel in order to receive service at minimum travel and congestion cost. As a proxy for this criterion, total travel and waiting costs are minimized. The travel cost is a general function of the origin and destination of the demand, while the congestion cost is a general function of the number of customers in queue at the facilities.

Location of Multiple-Server Common Service Centers or Facilities, for Minimizing General Congestion and Travel Cost Functions

The authors propose a model for locating a fixed number of multiple-server service centers or facilities that may become congested. Customers arriving at these centers must wait in line until served. The locations of the facilities and the allocations of customers to them are chosen by the planner, so to minimize both travel costs and system-wide congestion (or queuing) at centers. All the customers arriving at the facilities must be served, up to a certain maximum line length. The travel cost in which customers incur is a function of the length of the trip to the facility, while the congestion cost at a facility is a general function of the number of customers waiting on line or being served at the facility. The resulting model is a nonlinear p-median formulation. A solution method for this nonlinear model is proposed, and computational experience is presented.