Business Problem
The project has a broad scope, impacting the lives of 3.7 million people in the entire state of Meghalaya. In the Government of Meghalaya there are 55 stakeholder departments and 100+ directorates and agencies. A sector-wise high-level architecture for 50+ IT systems has been assessed and 800+ services have been identified. Out of them, a total of 700+ services have been identified to undergo Government process re-engineering and integration, covering 19 departments, initially.
The Government of Meghalaya adopted MeghEA to implement integrated digital services from sanction/administrative approval to final disbursement. MeghEA involved analysis of 1,000+ services of 19 departments, which are aligned to Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) indicators to derive what is critical and what is less critical. The identified 700+ services were categorized into six pillars for integrated service delivery:
-
Human Development
-
Primary Sector
-
Entrepreneurship
-
Infrastructure
-
Governance
-
Environment
The architecture blueprint consists of core building blocks such as digital identity, integration platform, single sign-on, and common building blocks such as scheme management capabilities, integrated financial management, email gateway, etc.
Below is the list of projects undertaken to demonstrate the value of the Enterprise Architecture in Meghalaya:
-
A pilot implementation in the Finance Department is initiated since it is a cross-cutting Government department
It re-architected old systems such as the Budget Estimation Allocation Management System (BEAMS),[1] Treasury, and Budget and integrated them with the state integration platform.
-
e-Billing rollout by the Directorate of Accounts and Treasury in September 2021
-
TreasuryNET 2.0 has been re-architected, made online, and centralized
With the above experience, another pilot of MeghEA in the form of the e-Proposal System (ePS), which is the focus of this document, commenced on September 17, 2021 in two departments: Soil & Water Conservation and Tourism. By February 2022, the success of the pilot led to state-wide rollout of the ePS for general schemes for all remaining departments and directorates.
The ePS has won the prestigious award given by the ITU in Category 1:
“AL C1. The role of governments and all stakeholders in the promotion of ICTs for development.”
Initially, 20 projects from China, Singapore, USA, Iran, Argentina, Saudi Arabia, and others were shortlisted by the jury in the first round of World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) evaluation under the above-mentioned category. After final evaluation, five projects from India, Tanzania, Argentina, China, and Australia were declared as champion projects. Based on voting, the Government of Meghalaya’s Planning Department project MeghEA (ePS implementation) was declared as the winning project.[2]
Scope
The state intends to deliver all services to its stakeholders with a uniform and unified experience, enhance service delivery efficiency, improve the effectiveness of services, enhance employee productivity, and ensure data security and information privacy. This can be achieved by leveraging technology-enabled holistic transformation of state governance that calls for streamlining its internal processes, enabling data-driven decision-making by having a robust mechanism of service delivery aligned to local needs, and efficient implementation and effective monitoring.
The scope of the project was to develop the vision and scope of the state, derive detailed architecture requirements, and develop a state-wide blueprint for implementation. The scope also included development of a Solution Architecture for the Finance Department for pilot implementation along with pilot rollout.
Key Business Problems
In this document, the authors would like to refer to two key business problems faced during the implementation of MeghEA and how they have been addressed, for the reader’s reference.
Business Problem-1
In most cases, a department-centric approach to service delivery leads citizens to reach multiple departments/organizations to get services. This consumes a lot of human effort, opportunity costs, multiple follow-ups, etc. For example, social benefits for differently abled citizens required them to produce health certificates from the Health Department and apply with the same to the Social Welfare Department.
Business Solution-1
The services delivered can be integrated, using the strategic technical capabilities such as DigiLocker.[3] Citizens’ certificates can be fetched from DigiLocker (with their consent) and can be delivered to the Social Welfare Department for final disbursement to bank accounts through integrated schemes.
Success Criteria
The following matrix helps us to understand both the current and anticipated future state.
| State No. | Service Type/Category | Current State | Future State |
|---|---|---|---|
1. |
Digital Identity |
Lack of adoption of citizen identification or digital ID. Aadhaar[4] adoption is less than one third (1/3) of the total population of the state. |
Digital ID provisioning for all citizens of the state. |
2. |
Digital Services |
Around 200 e-Services are available. Most of the Government internal services are non-digital. |
To make services digitally available to various stakeholders. |
3. |
Personalized Services |
Services are yet to be personalized. |
All services to be personalized based on citizen or employee profile. Further, Business-to-Business (B2B) services provided by different departments are also studied and made part of the MeghEA framework. |
4. |
Digital Payments |
Availability of Government Receipt Accounting System (GRAS)[5] |
All payments through digital channels. |
In addition to the above, current and target states have been defined in more than ten (10) capabilities. A total of 236 indicators covering 16 SDGs have also been shortlisted with year-wise target details of the same.
