Sewa Setu is a pioneering digital governance initiative, launched by the Government of Assam in 2021 to streamline public service delivery. Originally named as the Assam Citizen Centric Service Delivery Project, it was rechristened as Sewa Setu on January 4, 2023 through a Cabinet decision.
Its goal is to onboard all Government to Citizen (G2C), Government to Business (G2B), Business to Citizen (B2C), and other utility services on to a single platform for the benefit of citizens. Spearheaded by the Hon’ble Chief Minister of Assam, this initiative aims to streamline administrative processes, reduce paperwork and promote efficient digital workflows, ultimately enhancing the overall effectiveness of governance.
Sewa Setu Portal currently offers 616 services from three Autonomous Councils and 47 Government Departments. These include 382 RTPS services whose time-bound delivery has been notified as a right under the Assam RTPS Act, 2012. Over 50 services from three Autonomous Councils are onboarded, wherein adequate care has been taken to ensure that their delivery is in alignment with the administrative structure of the Autonomous Councils. Contractor registrations under Public Works, Water Resource, GMC, PHE, Soil Conservation and Irrigation Departments, and doctors’ registration services pertaining to the Assam Council of Medical Registration, Dental Council, Assam State Council of Indian Medicine (Ayurvedic) and Board of Homeopathic System of Medicine have also been onboarded on the platform. Other services such as issue of migration certificates to students, PRCs, land settlement services under Mission Basundhara 2.0 and Mission Bwiswmuthi, services related to the Assam Police, minority and Gorkha community certificates, services such as building permission, payment of property tax, trade licenses, etc., are all made available on the Sewa Setu Portal.
Since its inception, the portal has received over 1.30 crore applications, with a disposal rate of 90%, which translates to an impressive figure of 1.1 crore applications. More than 78,000 grievance applications were received with an 86% successful disposal rate. Service delivery has visibly improved with over 74% of applications disposed of within the stipulated time, up from below 50% previously. Furthermore, out of the 8,535 appeals received, 3,152 have been disposed of.
Efforts to improve accessibility to Sewa Setu services throughout Assam have been significantly bolstered through the establishment of 362 Public Facilitation Centers (PFCs). Each PFC has two PFC operators and one supervisor, and is fully equipped for citizen service delivery. Hardware resources have been provided by the Department to these PFCs. PFCs in Assam are divided into eight zones, and each zone is operated by a vendor chosen through open competitive bidding. They are funded under ‘Viability Gap Funding’ model by the Government of Assam. PFCs have played a crucial role in addressing the social and cultural needs of diverse communities, including those in Councils and Hill Areas. Extensive consultations with tribal leaders led to tailored interventions, supported by orientation on the ARTPS Act and Rules. Workshops and local language materials further enhanced community engagement in Char areas, Tea Gardens, and remote tribal belts. In addition to the PFCs, the citizen services under Sewa Setu can also be accessed through Common Service Centres, which are operated on commercial principles under the overall supervision of a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) put in place by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeITY). There are 17,000 such Common Service Centres spread across Assam. The Sewa Setu portal can also be accessed through individual desktop and laptop computers.
Aligned with the vision of Hon’ble Chief Minister of Assam to cultivate a resilient digital ecosystem, Sewa Setu aims to achieve a milestone of 1,000+ online services. To this end, the Information Technology Department has submitted a Preliminary Project Report (PPR) for a mega project to the Department of Economic Affairs (DEA), Ministry of Finance, Government of India in 2024. It is under consideration as I write this article. The project envisages to make the Sewa Setu services available on mobile platform. Several innovative measures such as kiosk-based interactive service delivery, service delivery-on-wheels, door-step service delivery, one-stop-shop, making private services such as banking available on Sewa Setu, introducing a Sewa Setu Payment Wallet, etc., are being planned under the project. Strengthening the IT infrastructure of Government departments by providing hardware and software is also on the agenda.
Analytical tools related to service delivery can provide valuable insights in digital governance and delivery of citizen services. Such tools will help identify bottlenecks and aid in business reforms. This being the era of Artificial Intelligence, many of these analytical tools are automated and do not need human intervention. One of the objectives of the new project is to deploy such analytical tools as an integral part of the citizen service delivery platform.
While providing citizen services, care is also taken to ensure that they are made available to the lowest economic strata of the society at minimal cost. With people-friendly measures like these, the Department is hopeful that the Government objective of delivering last mile delivery of services and connectivity shall be achieved at the earliest for sabka saath, sabka vikas.
