Governemnt to Citizen
« About 3,400 people will avail G2C services from Dewathang’s community centre
62 services would be available online by yearend
G2C Everything about it is new.
About 10 minutes walk from Dewathang town in Samdrupjongkhar is a single storied concrete structure.
Two months ago, the two-room structure was equipped with three desktops, a printer, a xerox machine, five tables and four chairs. None of them have been unpacked. The center is clean, unused and under lock and key.
The only activity happening around the community center are the children playing at the learning stations, which were opened last week.
Dewathang’s community center is one among the 23 that will be operationalised on the morning of December 25 across the country to offer 62 Governemnt to Citizen (G2C) servies online.
Nine of them have learning stations installed.
This means, people from 23 gewogs in 14 dzongkhags will be able to access servcies such as availing new citizenship ID cards, registering birth and death, transferring census, procuring business licenses and timber permits from the center.
“What’s impotrtant is that providing these servcies online is a very important element of e-governemance, one of the public policy changes taking place today worldwide,” information and communications secretary Dasho Kinley Dorji said at a press briefing yesterday. “This symbolises the governement taking servcies to the people and not otherwise. That’s the most sigificant aspect of the change.”
Twelve of the 23 centers are newly constructed while the rest are co-operated with other sectors – education and agriculture. The ministry will complete 100 community centers by the end of this year and 205 by June next year.
From some 300 services the government provides its people today, more than 150 will be delivered from the community centres (CC), G2C project director Jigme Thinley said.
“In the first lot, we have achived reduction time of 82 percent,” he said.
It means if services today take eight days to be delivered, from December 25, it will be reduced to a day or even less.
Prime Minister Jigmi Y Thinley will launch the G2C services and operaltionalise the optic fibre connected centres from Isu gewog in Haa.
Economic affiars ministry provides the highest number of G2C services, 38; 16 from the home ministry; 12 from the agricultue and one, passport issuance from the foreign ministry.
Officials said the services will be charged a nomial fee.
The centers will be run by vendors, which is now being piloted by Bhutan Post. It has trained 16 operators, who are assistant post masters to operate and assist people to access these services online.
Bhutan Post today has 74 rural offices across the country, complementing the need for community centers, information technology and telecom director Phuntsho Tobgay said.
“The arrangement is symbiotic and reduces the operation and maintenance cost,” he said.
Beginning Monday, DITT will train another seven operators for about four days before sending them to the 23 centers.
“The commmunity centers will provide a number of services beyond e-governance,” Dasho Kinley Dorji said.
The agriculture ministry is for example planning to sell seeds; education is looking at having non-formal classes; and money orders and financial servies could also be offered to make the centers viable.
The minstry is involved in establishing the infrastructure; DITT in providing internet connection at the cost of about Nu1B; monitering willl be done by the local governnment and the business will be run by the vendors.
“It’s not a profit making enterprise,” Phuntsho Tobgay said. “It’s a social mandate.”
Source: kuenselonline