CHENNAI: In a big leap towards ensuring efficient and seamless delivery of government services to the public, the State government will now centralise the data from all its departments through the Tamil Nadu e-Governance Agency (TNeGA).
The Information Technology Department issued a G.O. regarding the decision, already announced in the Assembly during the Budget session. The order directed the government departments to share their respective data with the TNeGA. “To ensure data purity, all departments should provide TNeGA a one-time dump of its electronic data and thereafter, update them from time to time,” the G.O. said.
Asked what kind of a transformation the data-driven infrastructure could make in government services, a senior official told TNIE: “The government will automatically include a child’s name in the ration card without needing any formal application. Similarly, if anyone dies, their account would be deleted and their pension would be given to the legal nominee; a proactive governance to ensure social justice through the digital way.”
On how the data would be gathered, the official explained: “Lot of sensitive data collected by different departments were in silos so far. Now, we will put them into an integrated format. Using these databases, we can draw inferences regarding new schemes, welfare measures, and proposed subsidies. Apart from removing ineligible and fraudulent beneficiaries availing schemes, it will help in adding genuine beneficiaries. The databases will also aid the government in policy making.”
The official also revealed how the data-driven infrastructure had helped the government in saving huge amounts. “Recently, the TNeGA did a project on the gold loan waiver scheme, under which the Cooperation Department had handed over details of loans worth Rs 19,000 crore to 70 lakh beneficiaries. But, on an analysis, we could filter out loans worth Rs 11,000-13,000 crore as these beneficiaries were ineligible for the scheme or were duplicate entries. We saved around Rs 10,000 crore to the State exchequer.”
He also pointed out cases where a single family availed loans from 700 different places and how some used the Antyodaya Anna Yojana cards to get loans in 500 places. It was also found that a single family had availed loans worth Rs 2 crores. “We will ensure high level security to the databases. We are trying to complete the data collection within 30-45 days,” the official added.
When asked whether the Aadhaar card details would be made mandatory for availing government schemes in future, the official denied it and said: “We are just making use of the data already available with the
departments. We can’t make Aadhaar details mandatory. We can’t compel anyone to share their private information.”
‘Will help identify ineligible beneficiaries’
The databases will help the officials identify ineligible and fraudulent beneficiaries availing government schemes and add genuine beneficiaries