An accountability law to provide online public services in time

India is set to move into bureaucratic accountability for public services with the Central government issuing a draft national law on public services to be provided online and a redressal mechanism for the failure to provide them within a stipulated timeframe. Chetan Chauhan reports

Updated on: Apr 19, 2011, 22:09:22 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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India is set to move into bureaucratic accountability for public services with the Central government issuing a draft national law on public services to be provided online and a redressal mechanism for the failure to provide them within a stipulated timeframe.

The draft bill, a next logical step after the Right To Information law, comes at the time when the government is trying to fight alleged corruption at high levels through Lok Pal Bill and two NDA ruled states - Bihar and Madhya Pradesh - have taken lead in enacting similar legislations.

The state laws provides for penalty to be imposed on an official who fails to provide a public service such as caste certificate or death certificate or property documents within the stipulated time.

The draft Electronic Service Delivery Bill of Information Technology ministry aims to fix accountability only for online service. But eventually, in five to eight years, all public services will have to be provided online in India, the bill says.

Each government - state or the centre - will have to notify the public services to be provided online within six months of enactment of the law and give reasons for not notifying a particular service.

The notification will have the timeframe within which citizens should expect delivery of the online service which may include issuing of birth certificates, driving license, ration card or a passport.

To make the online service easily accessible, the bill says, the Central government would have power to electronic government standards for ensuring interoperability and security.

The bill also has a grievance redressal mechanism, striking similar to the one in the RTI law. Like the RTI law, the first complaint will have to be filed with senior official of the department concerned. If not satisfied, an appeal can be lodged with the Central Commission, in case the service provider is Central government and state commissions, if the service is being provided by state governments. The bill provides for one Central Commission and state commissions around the country.

In case, it is found that the official has failed to provide the service within a limited timeframe, the commissions will have power to impose a fine of up to Rs 5,000 on each official. In case of RTI, the maximum fine is Rs 25,000.

Ventakesh Nayak with Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative says it is well known that accessing public service delivered manually is cumbersome and there is not enough transparency and it leads to corruption. But, hoped that the proposed law will compel governments to deliver all public services electronically in a more transparent and clean manner.

Even the draft bill says it is aimed at "delivery of public services by the government to all persons by electronic mode to enhance transparency, efficiency, accountability, accessibility and reliability."

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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