Assessment of Village Level Demand on e- Governance Services Using Participatory Rural Appraisal Deepak B. Hiremath
Harekrishna Misra
Sanjay Chaudhary
B.N Hiremath
DA-IICT Gandhinagar-382007 +919601194720
IRMA Anand-388001 02692221612
IET-Ahmedabad University Ahmedabad-380009 07926309220,
DA-IICT Gandhinagar-382007 07930510642
deepak_hiremath@daiict. ac.in
[email protected]
ABSTRACT Information and communication technology (ICT) initiatives for rural development in India are not new. Many of these initiatives have shown mixed responses. Most of these projects have been incubated with government support. For a development project to be successful, the approach should shift from the current “supplydriven” mode to “demand-driven mode” that is citizen centric. These challenges are predominantly in rural areas since the issues are dynamic, engulfed with digital divide issues and services need to be livelihood security centric. In order to make the egovernment plans successful and sustainable in the rural areas, ereadiness as well as citizens acceptance of ICT technology needs to be managed. In this paper a citizen centric model or design uses Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) to create an ambience where citizens access their requirements and influence the service providers to perpetually create and deliver the required services through feasible ICT options. This paper focuses on developing a mechanism to reflect rural citizen’s contributions in the e-governance systems. These contributions are elicited through PRA exercises since most of the rural citizens face educational security challenges.
Keywords E-governance, Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA), Livelihood Security, Unified Modeling Language (UML), Common Service Centers
1. INTRODUCTION Participatory rural appraisal (PRA) is a label given to a growing family of participatory approaches and methods that emphasize local knowledge and enable local people to make their own appraisal, analysis, and plans. The purpose of PRA is to enable development practitioners, government officials, and local people to work together to in planning appropriate programs required by rural citizens. Electronic Governance popularly referred to as e-Governance or e-gov is broadly defined as an “application of information technology to the functioning of the Government” The use of information and communication technologies in public administrations combined with organizational change through Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from
[email protected]. ICTCS '14, November 14 - 16 2014, Udaipur, Rajasthan, India Copyright 2014 ACM 978-1-4503-3216-3/14/11 $15.00 http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2677855.2677880
sanjay.chaudhary@ahdun
[email protected] i.edu.in training is used to improve public services, democratic processes and strengthen support to public policies. Today, it is being used for applications of IT to government operations with a goal of realizing more efficient and transparent performance of government functions. In broader terms egovernance is termed as a form of governance comprising processes and structures in deliverance of electronic services to the public (citizens). The government supplies various ICT enabled service portfolios through the e-governance systems. The services provide by the government should be citizen demand driven and has to be interface with the services provided by the government [Misra and Hiremath, 2006]. The demands of these services which are required by the citizens can be obtained through PRA exercises. The paper discuss how PRA can be used to create an atmosphere where citizens access their needs and influence the service providers to constantly create and deliver the required services through feasible ICT options.
2. PROBLEM STATEMENT As per national policy viz. National e-Governance Plan (NeGP), is extending various e-governance services under mission mode projects (MMPs). Most of the state governments are also participating in this national level task (http://deity.gov.in/content/national-e-governance-plan). However, MMPs need support of citizens in general and rural citizens in particular. Rural citizens are facing digital divide challenges, thus making their participating more challenging. It is argued that rural citizens’ demand needs to be reflected in MMPs to render these projects successful and sustainable. Therefore, there is a need to capture rural citizens; demand through a framework so that these demands can be met through the services being supplied. Demands of rural citizens are dynamic and livelihood security oriented. Demand elicitation is a complex process and in the paper PRA has been used as a tool for the purpose. It is contemplated that this framework can help minimize the gap between what is expected or demanded by the rural people and what is provided through different e-governance driven MMPs.
3. METHODOLOGY 3.1 Conceptual Framework A governance system has two broad metrics - the capability metric and the other usability metric. The capability metrics aims at providing supply driven support structure for ICT enabled service portfolios belonging to the government. There are many services provided by the government through the service providers to the citizens [Misra and Hiremath, 2006]. The services may or may not be useful to the citizens. Today, in many villages there are
Common Service Centers (CSCs), kiosks and others where many e-governance and village level services are made available. Most of these service provided to the village are not used as they are often irrelevant to the peoples’ needs. The usability metrics aims at providing demand-driven information systems which need to interface with the support structure. An e-governance system can run successfully and sustainably only when the rural citizens find the services useful, which takes into account livelihood security. The demands of the services which are required by the rural citizens can be obtained through PRA exercises. Studies show that most of the successful e-governance systems in India cater to the needs of people’s livelihoods. A case study on migration information centers in Dahod district show that people managed e-governance systems were beneficial in contributing towards the livelihood security of the tribal households (Misra and Hiremath, 2006). A development project to be successful should shift from the current “supply-driven” mode to “demand-driven mode” that is citizen centric. Abundant opportunities exist to introduce ICT in the area of governance to provide better services to citizens. For this, it is essential to make relevant information available to the service providers. This can be made possible with the help of ICT(Figure 1.). The village specific information obtained from the PRA exercises about the services demanded by the village citizen is fed to a computer which is stored in a database. The village level demands are ranked based on priority through the PRA exercises.
Figure 2. Demand Planning The stakeholders in demand planning other are the government, NGOs, Community Based Organizations (CBOs) and villagers themselves. The information generated through PRA exercises involving primary stakeholders (villagers), help in understanding the demands of their village. This in turn helps the government and other stakeholders in formulating different schemes, egovernance and infrastructural services for that particular village. The information obtained from the PRA exercises about the services demanded by the village citizens is stored in a database that is village specific. The village citizens are asked to give weights on different services and infrastructure which are present in their villages and the ones they want to avail.
3.1.2 Conducting PRA PRA is a means to understand the requirements of the village citizens through the conduct of some specific exercises involving people’s participation The information when pooled together from each of exercise will give an indication of the livelihood security status index of the village in terms of food, fodder, health, education and financial security. These indices are prioritized based on the requirement of the village. The information generated through these exercise is stored in a database called village level demand (Figure 3).
3.1.2.1 Natural Resource Diagram
Figure 1. Conceptual Framework
3.1.1 Demand Planning PRA is an essential tool to elicit demands and priorities of rural citizens with respect to their livelihood securities. The demands of the rural citizens captured through PRA exercises should help in developing e-governance services and infrastructure plans for their village. These demands will be interfaced with e-governance plan of the government authorities and other related agencies through the village information system dialogues. In this particular study PRA exercises were basically used to capture the information related specifically to health, education, food, fodder and income generation opportunities. To elicit this information three PRA exercises were chosen. They are natural resources mapping, social and infrastructural mapping and seasonal diagrams (Figure 2).
Natural resource mapping focuses on the nature resources in the locality and depict land, fields, hills, water bodies, vegetation, etc. The information generated from this exercise can be categorized into three groups viz. The information generated from this exercise can be categorized into three groups viz. 1. Sources of water 2. Land availability 3. Labour The information obtained from the natural resource diagrams for the above mentioned categories are as follows:
3.1.2.1.1 Sources of water
Type of water: Irrigation water and drinking water Distance of the source of water Quality Availability in months
The output generated from social and infrastructure mapping will give information about the existing and demanded infrastructure in the village. It will help in identifying the needs along with the priority of services demanded. The main advantage of social and infrastructural mapping is that it will give the exact location of existing infrastructure as a result will help the government and service providing agency to understand the requirement of the village clearly. The output generated relates to social infrastructure like schools, hospitals, drinking water taps, electricity, veterinary clinics, electricity, market, transportation, irrigation, drinking water etc. along with the distance to these infrastructures, time taken to avail service and the costs.
3.1.2.3 Seasonal Diagram Seasonal diagrams are used to explore what happens during the year and when. Seasonal diagram is also known as seasonal calendars. Seasonal diagrams are used for temporal analysis across annual cycles with months or seasons as basic units of analysis. It reflects local peoples’ perceptions about seasonal variation on a wide range of items (Somesh Kumar 2002). Seasonal diagrams help to identify heavy workload periods, diseases, food and fodder security, wage availability etc. With seasonal diagram it is possible to identify and analyses livelihood patterns across the year. Seasonal diagrams can be done according to gender if required. The information output obtained from this exercise is on five aspects related to livelihood security. These are • • • • •
Health security Food security Fodder security Educational security Financial security
This exercise gives a picture of the precise type of e-governance and infrastructural services that the village demands. It will also help in determining the priority with which these services are demanded in terms of time and importance. These in turn will help the government and other related agencies to provide the precise service to the village at the precise time. Figure 3. Conceptual Framework for Conduct of Participatory Rural Appraisal
3.1.2.1.2 Land availability
Type of land Area in acres
3.1.2.1.3 Labour
Type of labour Availability in months Wage
3.1.2.2 Social and Infrastructure Mapping Social mapping, for many, is synonymous the PRA itself. Social and Infrastructural mapping seeks the spatial dimensions of people’s reality. It focus on the portrayal of habitat patterns, housing patterns and social infrastructure such as roads, drainage systems, schools, drinking water facilities, transportation, communication etc.
3.1.3 Supply Planning There are a number of schemes and services that are provided by the government and various service providing agencies. The major actors who provide various kinds of services are the state and central government, international agencies, private agencies, NGOs and PSUs. The services supplied by these agencies can be broadly categorized into 1. 2. 3.
Information Transaction Infrastructure
Rural citizens need information related to their livelihoods such as food, fodder, education, health and infrastructure. Similarly, the citizens are involved in numerous transactions in a village at different levels for diverse purposes such as finance, credit, agricultural input and output market information, etc. ICT can help in reducing the cost and time of such transactions. Infrastructure is another necessary service made available by
service providers. Most of the infrastructural policies designed by the government do not take into consideration the existing infrastructure in the village and therefore outcomes are not efficient (Figure 4).
institutional and non- institutional), input and output, information etc. Two major attributes of a transaction are its “lifecycle” and “mode”. These two attributes, provide an indication as to how effective the transaction are and help the service providers in considering the different ICT options for providing different egovernance services. The main advantage of using ICT for the purpose of transaction is that it saves a considerable amount of time and cost for the rural citizens. If the e-governance services provided to the village citizens are not directly beneficial to their livelihoods, there is a high risk of failure.
Figure 4. Supply Planning
3.1.3.1 Information Supply Rural citizens face numerous problems associated with poverty, deprivation and related socio- economic disparities. The major characteristic is a lack of information. Information on resources and support services related to livelihood goals as mentioned earlier (i.e., food, fodder, education, health and infrastructure) is essential for the rural citizens. Rural citizens face problems in accessing the required information with minimum constraints. There are a number of schemes and services provided by the government at the nation and state level. The information about them is disseminated through various national as well state level service providers. Usually the information does not reach the village citizens due to lack of proper communication channels. Even if the information is accessible, there is time and cost constrains to avail the needed information. More often the information which is provided may or may not be relevant to rural citizens. As discussed earlier, eliciting the citizens’ demand for information relevant to their livelihoods through PRA has to be matched and met by the suppliers of information. This helps in providing a support for preparing information structure. For example, income-generating options for supporting livelihood needs a complex and dynamic approach such as tracing various markets, locating demand, and reaching these sources. Collating these options within a given context and making it available to the rural citizens in understandable terms should be done by the service providers
3.1.3.2 Transactions There are a number of transactions taking place in a village that are at different levels for different purposes. Most of the transactions are in one way or the other related to their livelihoods. In the context of feasible and dynamic rural livelihood options, the rural citizens are subjected to transactions with various markets such as labour, land, water, financial(
Figure 5. Information Supply The transactions which are carried in the village are at different levels. They can be at individual level, household level, community level or at village level. Different services are demanded at different levels through these transactions. The number and frequency of transactions varies depending on season and purpose. For example there may be higher number of transactions before a new cropping season for different purposes such as finance, labour, input materials etc. It is therefore, essential that the transactions that are demanded by the citizens are served by the service providing agencies. These demands can be effectively elicited through PRA exercises. The service providing agencies should take into consideration the cost, mode and time taken for the transaction before providing the
e-governance services. These demands can be obtained through PRA exercises (Figure 6).
depending on the infrastructure available such as communication, data transfer, data access, power, application such as information portal and maintaining these sources on a sustainable basis. Alternatives using ICT can be initiated such as e-health services. The information about the different infrastructural policies which are provided by different service providers at state and national level can be congregated together in a common database as illustrated in Figure 7.
Figure 7. Infrastructure
3.1.4 Orchestration or Integration Once the information is obtained from the PRA exercises, about the services demanded by the village citizens and fed to the computer, it will be stored in a database called the village information database (Figure 8). Figure 6. Transactions
3.1.3.3 Infrastructure There are a number of infrastructural policies that are created and provided by the government at the nation and state level. These policies are implemented by various national as well state level agencies. Many times, the infrastructural policies that the government implements through different agencies may or may not be useful to the rural people as discussed earlier. Before any policies are implemented, it is necessary to take into consideration the infrastructural facilities which are already present in the village. PRA exercise help in understanding the various infrastructural services demanded by the village citizens. The exercises also provide information on the different local infrastructural facilities existing in the village. This will help the service providing agencies to have a better understanding about the locality in order to increase the effectiveness of the infrastructure they provide. For example, a village may require health care facilities. While planning infrastructure policies, the government should take into consideration the different ways to provide health care facilities. They should look at various factors such as distance of the nearest public health centre or private hospital from the village, cost and time taken to avail the service. Here, ICT options can be evaluated
Figure 8. Orchestration Table 1. Table captions should be placed above the table This information generates a rank for the services demanded and it will show the level of necessity based on weights assigned by the people. Alternatively the services provided by different state and national level agencies are stored in another data base called the village level supply. The state and central government will act as orchestrators. They will use the information obtained through the PRA exercise about the services demanded, taking into consideration the priority and select the service providers who are offering those services. It will also help them to offer village specific e-governance and infrastructural facilities.
Figure 9 sequence diagram clearly illustrates the orchestration of the services demanded by the village citizens and the different service providers providing various services.
5. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The authors are grateful for assistance provided by Shri Kalpesh Soni and others of Gramin Vikas Trust, Dahod, for sharing PRA village reports and for providing logistic support to conduct survey in sample villages. We also acknowledge their invaluable insights about the PSKs. We are also grateful to Shri Kalpesh soni and his team for the experts opinion which was provided us for the villages of Garbada taluka and helping us understand the ways to elicit information required through different PRA exercises.
6. REFERENCES [1] Misra, H K., B N. Hiremath and D. P Mishra. 2006. “Citizen Centric ICT Initiatives for Rural Development in Indian Context: A Participatory Framework,” Working Paper Series 193, Institute of Rural Management, Anand, Gujarat, May. [2] Misra, H K., B N. Hiremath. October 2006. Working paper 198: ICT Initiatives for Sustainable Livelihood Security: A Demand Driven Rural E-Governance Framework for Scaleup, IRMA Publication. [3] Somesh Kumar. 2002. “Methods for Community Participation: A Complete guide for Practitioners,” New Delhi: Vistaar Publications. Figure 9. Transactions Demand on information is largely dependent on village/household specific livelihood security. e-governance services are mostly generic in nature and catering to overall population at national level. Thus there is a mismatch between the “supplies” and “demands” at the village level. In this work each village is assessed with information priorities based on the outcome of PRA exercises. PRA exercises lead to assessment of central issues as perceived/experienced by households and therefore, it is likely that village would find the services related to these issues to be more acceptable. This acceptance is likely to increase demand on the services and trustworthiness in the system. Table 1 shows the actual services that are supplied by the government and the various services that are actually demanded by the rural people.
[4] James Rumbaugh, Ivar Jacobson, Grady Booch. 2000.The Unified Modelling Language Reference Manual. 2nd ed. USA, Addison Wesley Longman, Inc. [5] Hiremath, B. N., K. V. Raju and Patel, Anil. 2004 “Farmers' Technology Adoption, Farm Management and Livelihood System Gujarat,” in Ruedi Baumgartner and Ruedi Hogger (eds.) In Search of Sustaible Livelihoods: Managing Resources and Change. New Delhi: Sage Publications, pp. 94-125. [6] Ministry of Information Technology. 2005. “National eGovernance Plan (NeGP),” New Delhi: Ministry of Information Technology, Government of India. [7] http://deity.gov.in/content/national-e-governance-plan
4. CONCLUTION
[8] http://www.mit.gov.in/plan/gdecisions.asp .
E-governance services are mostly generic in nature and catering to overall population at national level. Thus there is a mismatch between the “supplies” and “demands” at the village level. The paper brings together a system designed to integrate the demands of the rural people on the various e-governance services provide by the government at the village level. This will help in improving the acceptance of the system among the people and likely increase the demand on the services and trustworthiness in the system.
[9] http://www.expresscomputeronline.com/20060529/largebusi nesssurvey06.shtml http://www.tfgordon.de/publications/gordon2004a.pdf [10] http://www.digitalgovernance.org [11] http://www.aoema.org/e-government/index.htm [12] http://www.aoema.org/e-goverment/index.htm
Table 1. Demands of Rural Citizen and Services Supplied by e-government Services e-government services available in Dahod district (Supply)
Demand by Rural Citizens
Goal
Metrics
Measurements Sufficiency food
on
Income Generating Opportunities
Agricultur e Labour
Demand for Information on employment opportunities
Work
Health Security (Human)
Sustainable Livelihood Security
Programme
Health
Health Education Immunisation Services
Accessibility Health Infrastructure
to
Livestock Security
Artificial Insemination
of
Part-Withdrawal
Birth Certificate Death Certificate
I
1. Farming Equipments Purchasing (for less price) Form for Farmers 2. For Bullock purchasing with subsidy for SC farmers Form
BPL Certificate
I
1.Housing Help Application Form (Sardar Patel Awas Yojana) 2.Housing Help Application Form (Indira Awas Yojana) 3. Application For Land/Plot for Residential Purpose (Military/Ex Military Employee)
Property valuation certificate
Providing opportunities in the village
III
Loan Application Form (Swarna Jayanti Gram Rojgar Yojana)
Land records
Creating Opportunities in the Village
III
New Private School or Adding Class Approval Application Form
Loan grant / permission
III
Rs. 500 on Birth of Giral Application Form(Balika Samrudhi Yojana)
Tax Payments
III
1.District Panchayat Education committee 2. Loan for business for ST application Form (Social Welfare) - (Manav Garima Yojana)
II
Monetary Help during Pregnancy Application Form (National Pregnancy Help )
II
1.Medical Help for SC/ST application Form 2. Help for purchase of Farming Land for SC/ST
II
Rationing Card (New/Duplicate) Application Form Ration Card Name Adding or Removing application Form
Maintaining Records Health Services through Governme nt Agency
Provident Fund Application Form
e-Gram Services (Barr Village)
1.Oil Engine Subsidy Case Checking 2. Well Subsidy Case 3. New Well subsidy recommendation application
Demand for Information on employment opportunities from government and other agencies
Health Services Providing Information through on Immunisation details Governmen and history t Agency Providing Information on Doctors, Interaction with Doctors, Receiving advice from Doctors
Clinical Service
Availability Medicine
GSWAN Services Priority
I Migration
Availability of work opportunity Food for locally
Public Service
Demand on ICT Options
on
Sufficiency Agriculture Produce Food Security
Options for Support
Health
Providing facilities in the village, access to information on availability Providing facilities in the village, access to information on availability
Note: Source NIC, Dahod District. GSWAN services are not available in Sample Villages. ** Source: Panchayat Office, Barr Village. EGram services are available in Barr Village only. Connectivity to GSWAN network does not exist. E-gram services are available through Panchayat on “off-line” mode and Misra, H K., B N. Hiremath (October 2006) working paper 198
