States keen on replicating BangaloreOne model

Foreign students and officials are curious to know how it works.

Bangaloreans getting facilities at their fingertips have now become coveted models for the rest of the world!

The Karnataka government's e-governance initiative titled 'Bangalore One' (B1) "" citizen service centres "" has turned out to be the latest force of gravity for the country's IT capital. Not just civic agencies of other states, even students and officials from foreign countries are making a beeline to Bangalore to check out the operational efficiency of the B1 project, which is propelled by the information-and-communication-technology-for-development (ICT4D) concept.

Launched in 2005, the B1 centres were aimed to serve as one-stop shop for all government to citizen (G2C), government to business (G2B) and citizen to business (C2B) transactions.

The B1 centres, presently located in 39 different parts of the city, help citizens to avail 29 different services, including paying telephone and electricity bills, booking train and flight tickets, submitting passport applications, transferring money and paying insurance premiums.

According to Karnataka's e-governance department, close to 800,000 people use the 'Bangalore One' centres every month.

"The B1 project has not only become a huge hit among Bangaloreans, but also among outsiders who are curious to know how the system works," The latest visitors were a group of 14 post graduate students from Manchester University," Karnataka's IT/E-governance secretary M N Vidyashankar pointed out.

Prof Richard Heeks, Development Informatics Group, IDPM, Manchester University, said: "We had heard a lot about public-private partnerships of which Bangalore One is a sucessful example. We wanted our students to see it and understand why and how such partnerships can be made to work."

The students spent half a day at the Bangalore One centre in Malleswaram trying to hands-on experience the ICT4D concept being put to practical use.

Said Prof Heeks: "We wanted our students to understand that government doesn't always have to adhere to its stereotype of dusty, bureaucratic, second best.

At B1 centre, we wanted them to see how e-government for development can be a working reality. Moreover, Bangalore One has succeeded in cracking two key problems that are associated with ICT4D projects: sustainability and scalability."

Not just Manchester University, the B1 project has been drawing students from centres of academic excellence in India.

Said Vidyashankar, "While we had students of post graduation in public policy management of Indian Institute of Management (Bangalore) visiting the Bangalore One centre recently, an engineering student from geoinformatics discipline from Visvesvaraya Technological University is doing a dissertation on Bangalore One," Vidyashankar stated.

The project has also drawn the attention of officers from the states of Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh and Himachal Pradesh. "These states want to replicate the Bangalore One model in their major cities," Vidyashankar added.

This apart, official teams from Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Kerala and West Bengal have also visited the Bangalore One centres. A delegation from Bhutan had also visited the Bangalore One centre to learn about the project .

Enthused by the response, the e-governance department has planned to add another 20 new B1 centres to the city by the end of the year. The B1 centres will also be replicated in other cities of the state such as Mangalore and Hubli-Dharwad.