SSDG and State Portal

State Service Delivery Gateway (SSDG) and State Portal

The Government of India has approved the National e-Governance Plan (NeGP) in pursuance of its policy of introducing e-Governance on a massive scale, as enunciated in the National Common Minimum Programme. The NeGP vision aims to “Make all Government services accessible to the common man in his locality, through common service delivery outlets and ensure efficiency, transparency & reliability of such services at affordable costs to realize the basic needs of the common man”.

One of the goals of the State governments is to cooperate, collaborate and integrate information across different departments in the state & local government. The Government of India has advised the states that the common infrastructure (SWAN, SDC & CSC) be leveraged immediately by developing applications and infrastructure required for deployment of State Portals and State Service Delivery Gateway (SSDG) across the States/UTs. The SSDG aims to achieve a high order of interoperability and facilitate G2C services delivery. Such a framework would enable citizens to download forms and submit their applications electronically through a common gateway.

SSDG as proposed by Government of India can act as an intelligent hub and route Service requests from a service seeker to a Service provider and in return send the response back to the service seeker. SSDG achieves integration amongst diverse set of applications built on varying platforms through compliance with a set of e-Governance specifications. Thus the State portal and SSDG as envisaged are proposed to be an integral part of the G2C service delivery architecture at the State level.

The Government of Meghalaya has undertaken the following steps preceding the SSDG rollout.

1. Identified departments where significant computerization (more than 60%) & automation has been undertaken to ensure e-enabling of delivery of G2C services.
2. Identified and prioritized the services that need to be e-enabled through this scheme.
3. Government of Meghalaya has Collected data from field level offices and vertical line departments that elucidated the gap in infrastructure available and/or required including the requirements for connectivity.
4. Care has been taken to ensure that this connectivity is primarily the horizontal connect to the SWAN back bone.
5. The initial phase in SSDG is for the roll out of e forms and related services which would get scaled up to the energized two way inter-communication for the G2C services.
   

Government of Meghalaya desires to create an integrated information infrastructure that will expand, synthesize and enhance the utility and reach of the services provided by the Government by utilizing the network of the Common Service Centres. The ‘State - Portal’ is envisioned as the ‘Informative, interactive, integrated and trusted service delivery channel for all the Government to Citizens (G2C) and Government to Business (G2B) Services of the State and its constituent departments’.

The State Portal and SSDG will support the following features

1. Information:
   The portal will provide information about government departments, line ministries and web links to these departments. It will provide information about the government structure in the state, service offerings, budget, key notifications, government schemes etc. to businesses and citizens.
2. 24X7:
   The portal will be available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year and accessible from anywhere in the world via internet.
3. Accessibility:
   The portal can be accessed from a variety of established channels - CSCs, Government service delivery counters, Homes, Offices equipped with internet.
4. One Stop Shop:
   The state portal will be a single window for G2B, G2C services with service delivery being integrated using NeGPs’ core infrastructure components.
5. Enable single gateway:
   For the government to provide an integrated service delivery mechanism that will make accessible all available online services to the citizen via the State Portal.
6. Ensure:
   Proper standards are adopted to ensure seamless up-gradation and integration with the backend computerization as and when it happens.
7. Enable:
   CSCs to charge/collect fees for submission of application forms. Processing at the backend in the department will initially be manual but as & when the MMPs are implemented and backend computerization gets completed, government response time will improve and eventually all services that can be provided online will be accessible via State Portal.