National e-Governance Plan (NeGP)

To bring the benefits of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) at the last mile to ensure transparent, timely and hassle free delivery of citizen services, Government of India has initiated e-governance programme in country in the late 1990s. After that, Union Government has approved the National e-Governance Plan (NeGP), comprising of 27 Mission Mode Projects (MMPs) and 8 components on May 18, 2006 to give a boost to e-Governance initiatives in India. Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DEIT) and Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances (DAR&PG) has formulated the National e-Governance Plan (NeGP).


Vision of National e-Governance Plan

National e-Governance Plan has been launched with the aim of improving delivery of Government services to citizens and businesses is guided by the following vision:

“Make all Public Services accessible to the common man in his locality, through common service delivery outlets and ensure efficiency, transparency and reliability of such services at affordable costs to realize the basic needs of the common man.”

The vision statement clearly underlines these priorities of the Government in fostering good governance:

Accessibility: The vision has been designed keeping the rural population in mind. The need is to reach those sections of the society which have remained tangential to the government sphere due to various reasons like geographical challenges and lack of awareness. National e-Governance Plan (NeGP) has a provision for State Wide Area Network (SWAN) to connect all the government offices upto the block level and Common Service Centres (CSCs) for accessing the citizens from the rural areas.

Common Service Delivery Outlets: At present, citizens especially those living in remote rural areas have to travel long distances to avail a service through a government department or its local offices. This is time-consuming and costly affairs for a common man to access citizen services. To overcome this problem, as a part of the National e-Governance Plan (NeGP) vision, one computer and internet enabled Common Service Centre (CSC) is envisaged to set up for every six villages so that Villagers can easily avail these services. These Common Service Centres (CSCs) are envisaged to offer online Integrated Service Delivery on ‘Anytime, Anywhere’ basis.

Adopting e-Governance for improving the Governance: The use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) will enable government to reach citizens thereby improving governance. This will also enable improvement in monitoring and implementing of various government schemes thereby increasing the accountability and transparency in government.

Improve the quality of life of citizens: e-Governance would help in attaining this objective through the provision of citizen centric service delivery at nominal cost, and thereby providing better turnaround times and convenience in demanding and availing services.

Hence, the vision is to use e-Governance as the route for governments to strengthen good governance. All services provided through the various e-Governance initiatives are expected to assist the governments at the Central and State levels in reaching the yet ‘unreached’ and enable involvement and empowerment of marginalized groups through their participation in the government processes thereby contributing towards poverty reduction and bridging the sharp social and economic divide.


Implementation Strategy for National e-Governance Plan

A prudent approach, therefore, is proposed for the National e-Governance Plan (NeGP), which is based on lessons learnt from the past and experiences from successful e-Governance applications that have been implemented nationally and internationally. The approach and methodology adopted for National e-Governance Plan (NeGP) contains the following elements:

Common Infrastructure: National e-Governance Plan (NeGP) implementation involves setting up of common and support IT infrastructure such as: State Wide Area Networks (SWANs), State Data Centres (SDCs), Common Services Centres (CSCs) and Electronic Service Delivery Gateways.

Governance: Suitable arrangements for monitoring and coordinating the implementation of National e-Governance Plan under the direction of the competent authorities have been set up. The programme also involves evolving/ laying down standards and policy guidelines, providing technical support, undertaking capacity building, Research and Development etc. Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DEIT) strengthens itself and various institutions like National Informatics Centre (NIC), Standardization, Testing and Quality Certification (STQC), Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), National Institute for Smart Governance (NISG) etc., to play these roles effectively.

Centralized Initiative, Decentralized Implementation: e-Governance is being promoted through a centralized initiative to the extent necessary to ensure citizen-centric orientation, realize the objective of inter-operability of various e-Governance applications and ensure optimal utilization of Information and Communication Technology infrastructure and resources while allowing for a decentralized implementation model. It also aims at identifying successful projects and replicating them with required customization wherever needed.

Public-Private Partnerships (PPP) model: It has to be adopted wherever feasible to enlarge the resource pool without compromising on the security aspects.

Integrative elements: Adoption of unique identification codes for citizens, businesses and property is to be promoted to facilitate integration and avoid ambiguity.


Implementation Framework for National e-Governance Plan (NeGP)

Considering the multiplicity of agencies involved in the implementation of National e-Governance Plan (NeGP) and the need for overall aggregation and integration at the national level, it has been decided to implement National e-Governance Plan as a programme, with well-defined roles and responsibilities of each agency involved and to create an appropriate programme management structure and it has already been approved by government. The key components and features of the programme management structure are given in the graphic.

The Strategy for Service Delivery

A common digital service delivery infrastructure consisting of the State Wide Area Network (SWAN), State Data Centre (SDC), National/State Service Delivery Gateway (NSDG/SSDG), State Portal and Common Services Centre (CSC) are being created in every State and Union Territory to ensure seamless and single-window delivery of public services to the common man.

IPv4 & IPv6

What is Internet Protocol -- IP?

The Internet Protocol (IP) is the method or protocol by which data is sent from one computer to another on the Internet.

What is Internet Protocol address ?

An Internet Protocol address (IP address) is a numerical label assigned to each device (e.g., computer, printer) participating in a computer network that uses the Internet Protocol for communication. An IP address serves two principal functions: host or network interface identification and location addressing.

Most networks combine IP with a higher-level protocol called Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), which establishes a virtual connection between a destination and a source. IP by itself can be compared to something like the postal system. It allows you to address a package and drop it in the system, but there's no direct link between you and the recipient. TCP/IP, on the other hand, establishes a connection between two hosts so that they can send messages back and forth for a period of time.

What is IPv4?

 IPv4 stands for Internet Protocol version 4. It is the underlying technology that makes it possible for us to  connect our devices to the web. Whenever a device access the Internet (whether it’s a PC, Mac,  smartphone or other device), it is assigned a unique, numerical IP address such as 99.48.227.227. To send data from one computer to another through the web, a data packet must be transferred across the network containing the IP addresses of both devices.

Without IP addresses, computers would not be able to communicate and send data to each other. It’s essential to the infrastructure of the web.

What is IPv6?

 IPv6 is the sixth revision to the Internet Protocol and the successor to IPv4. IPv6 is often referred to as the "next generation" Internet standard and has been under development now since the mid-1990s. IPv6 was born out of concern that the demand for IP addresses would exceed the available supply. It functions similarly to IPv4 in  that it provides the unique, numerical IP addresses necessary for Internet-enabled devices to communicate.  However, it does sport one major difference: it utilizes 128-bit addresses.

Why are we running out of IPv4 addresses?

In IPv4 an address consists of 32 bits (4 bytes) which limits the address space to 4294967296 (2^32) possible unique addresses. That means it can support 2^32 IP addresses in total — around  4.29 billion. That may seem like a lot, but all 4.29 billion IP addresses have now been assigned to various institutions, leading to the crisis we face today.

Though we haven’t run out of addresses quite yet. Many of them are unused and in the hands of institutions like MIT and companies like Ford and IBM. More IPv4 addresses are available to be assigned and more will be traded or sold (since IPv4 addresses are now a scarce resource), but they will become a scarcer commodity over the next two years until it creates problem for the web.

 How does IPv6 solve this problem?

 As previously stated, IPv6 utilizes 128-bit (16 bytes) Internet addresses. Therefore, it can support 2^128 Internet addresses — 340,282,366,920,938,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 of them to be exact. That’s a lot of addresses, so many that it requires a hexadecimal system to display the addresses. In other words, there are more than enough IPv6 addresses to keep the Internet operational for a very, very long time.

 While increasing the pool of addresses is one of the most important benefit of IPv6, there are other important technological changes in IPv6 that will improve the IP protocol,they are :

• No more NAT ( Network Address Translation (NAT) is a method of connecting multiple computers to the Internet using one IP address because of shortage of IP addresses. This allows home users and small businesses to connect their network to the Internet cheaply and efficiently.) 

• Auto-configuration

• No more private address collisions

• Better multicast routing

• Simpler header format

• Simplified, more efficient routing

• True quality of service (QoS), also called "flow labeling"( Flow label field in the IPv6 header can be used by a source to label a set of packets belonging to the same flow.)

• Built-in authentication and privacy support

• Flexible options and extensions

• Easier administration (say good-bye to DHCP)

So why don’t we just switch?

The depletion of IPv4 addresses was predicted years ago, so the switch has been in progress for the last decade. However, progress has been slow — only a small fraction of the web has switched over to the new protocol. In addition, IPv4 and IPv6 essentially run as parallel networks — exchanging data between these protocols requires special gateways. 

To make the switch, software and routers will have to be changed to support the more advanced network. This will take time and money. 

How will this affect us?

 Initially, it won’t have a major impact.Most operating systems actually support IPv6, including Mac OS X 10.2 and Windows XP SP 1. However, many routers and servers don’t support it, making a connection between a device with an IPv6 address to a router or server that only supports IPv4 impossible. IPv6 is also still in its infancy; it has a lot of bugs and security issues that still need to be fixed, which could result in one giant mess.

Nobody is sure how much the transition will cost or how long it will take, but it has to be done in order for the web to function as it does today.