|
Average Rating: no ratings submitted
Evaluation of Gyandoot
Summary
An Evaluation of Gyandoot
by the Center for Electronic Governance Indian Institute of Management
Ahmedabad, India
2003
Click here for a Programme Description
Excerpts from the Evaluation follow:
Delivery of government services to rural poor at their doorstep through ICT was a bold step attempted by the district administration of Dhar through the Gyandoot project. It created excitement when it was implemented at few controlled locations and earned laurels all over the world as one of the innovative experiments to bridge the digital divide.
Our evaluation study of the Gyandoot project suggests that the project management needs to seriously examine the suitability of the current approach to the solution of improved service delivery to the rural poor. Following are some important observations of the study...
- The project has fully succeeded in generating awareness (72% of users) of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) amongst the rural community at large, although this in not the intended objective of the project. Specifically, the youth (16% of users) are excited about the new employment opportunities arising out of ICT. They want to become soochaks [operators], start computer training institutes or assemble and trade in computers.
- The citizens perceive a shift in corruption levels, especially in terms of access to information and lesser harassment by the government officials. While this impact is encouraging, the payment of speed money continues, with some increase in the amount, after the introduction of Gyandoot.
- Government officials feel that Gyandoot has improved their accountability. Now they have to comply with promised time of complaint disposal. This is also expressed by 25% of the users.
- The soochaks appear to have benefited more significantly than other categories of stakeholders. They seem to have assumed an important position in the eyes of the rural poor, as the soochaks are perceived to have an easy access to the district administration and Gyandoot Samiti.
- The revenue generated from the Gyandoot services is grossly inadequate to breakeven. Therefore, the soochaks (especially the entrepreneurial category) are more enthused about offering other solutions through computers (job work, training, etc.). This is leading to a dilution in the objectives of Gyandoot, especially as the self owned soochanalayas [computer kiosks] are not perceived as Gyandoot soochanalayas.
- The low number of transactions recorded in the log registers of past several months, the inability of the study team to locate a sizeable chunk of users, and the closure of a number of soochanalayas during the study period (a week), indicate that this model of G2C service delivery has serious sustenance problems.
- This computer connectivity-based solution of delivering government services to the rural citizens is proving to be a severe constraint. The total cost of ownership does not justify the project's utilization by the citizens. The investment on the project (Annexure 12) is Rs.25 lacs for the networking and Rs. 75,000 per soochanalay. Where as the average revenue per soochanalay turned out to be Rs.150 per month.
- Lack of reliable basic infrastructure such as power supply and connectivity has led to the partial or total closure of many soochanlayas. This is an acute problem in the district.
- The backend processing for all services continues to be manual in the government departments. The delivery of service follows the traditional route and hence, does not capitalize on the ICT infrastructure available at the soochanalayas. Further, the Gyandoot Samiti has limited authority to influence the departments providing the backend support. (Civil supplies, DRDA, RTO, etc.).
- Gyandoot has not succeeded in attracting the rural poor to the soochanalayas. Even services like issuance of caste, domicile and income certificates have not enthused them, as there are better delivery mechanisms for these certificates in place today (caste certificates are issued in schools). Clearly, the rural poor do not perceive Gyandoot as a platform for them to seek services from the government, even when they have a need.
- Although the grievance redressal service had received some initial attention, it is losing its sheen, as the citizens are not satisfied with the response times as well as the responses to the problems registered. This is a very serious and oft-repeated complaint from all users.
- The beneficiaries of mandi price service, which perhaps has the highest number of transactions registered, are only middlemen and medium to large-scale, educated farmers, who possess the ability to absorb the risks associated with quick decisions making, or can wait for favorable market conditions to happen. Even here some of these beneficiaries have complained about the lack of timeliness in updating the prices, which led them to making losses. While the proven and cost effective mechanisms like radio broadcast exist, should the district administration deploy expensive ICT channels at its own cost to serve communities which in no way can be considered as poor or backward? Further, number of transactions for this category of service is high only in comparison with those for the other services and is quite low in an absolute sense.
- The information and application services related to schemes for the socially and economically backward citizens have not received adequate attention in Gyandoot. Information on these schemes should be regularly posted, as possibly this is one area where more rural citizens could benefit.
- The non-users of Gyandoot do not perceive the services as useful to them, in their present form. They are neither aware of how it can add value to their daily life nor they are interested in government related activities.
Click here to download the full evaluation in PDF format.
Source:
"Gyandoot: Community-Owned Rural Internet Kiosks", case study by Subhash Bhatnagar and Nitesh Vyas on the World Bank's E-Government site.
Placed on the Communication Initiative site January 12 2004
Last Updated January 12 2004
How useful did you find the knowledge and contacts on this page to your work?
Post your comments (review comments from others below):
|
