Delivering Next Generation e-Public Services via Digital Technology in Uttar Pradesh: e-agriculture, e-education & e-health

Led by Columbia university economists, Nirupam Bajpai and Jeffrey Sachs, CSD has launched a joint project of the University, and the Reliance Foundation to develop and evaluate several online e-public services using digital technology.  The opportunity to leapfrog in healthcare, education, agriculture, and other sectors is very large, and the introduction of new low-cost devices with sharply reduced prices for data, makes the project especially timely.  The project team is partnering with the Uttar Pradesh state government who will implement the suggested interventions of online services, and the project team would undertake the follow-up evaluation.

ICTs are a way to make rapid breakthroughs in social and economic development.  They are low cost, easily accessible, and powerful.  That’s why, of course, ICT technology is the fastest growing technology in world history.  Yet it also creates a technology divide unless there is a systematic approach to mass inclusion.  

Today, India is a world leader in the field of digital-based development. India is using ICTs for economic development in key sectors: health, education, infrastructure, finance, agriculture, manufacturing, and perhaps most important, governance.  The national Aadhaar program is globally admired.  Demonetization spurred the transformation to an e-payments system.  ICTs are being used to deliver critical goods and services to hundreds of millions of Indians. 

In July 2015, Prime Minister Modi launched the Digital India Program, which includes plans to connect rural areas with high-speed Internet networks. This is the largest program of its kind under what we call “ICT for All”. We refer to “ICT for All” as platforms, which leverage technology and a shared digital infrastructure that enables open and affordable access to scarce resources as public goods.

Digital India Program’s three key components are all vital pillars for our proposed project.  These are: the creation of digital infrastructure; delivery of services digitally and digital literacy. The initiatives launched under the Digital India program include projects in the areas of digital infrastructure, digital empowerment, on-demand government services and promotion of industry. Under the program, the government plans to provide government services online, expand Internet connectivity to rural areas and boost manufacturing of electronic goods in the country. Work is also underway for several years now on the concept of digital villages - rural areas that will have telemedicine facilities, virtual classes and solar power-based Wi-Fi hot spots.

Yet even with access in a physical or financial sense, there still needs to be content.  The market generally solves the problem of content for richer users, but not for social goods (like health, early childhood development, and education) or for poor users (like farmers).  The coding, techniques, software, training, and uses are multipurpose.  That’s why we have Microsoft Office, not separate applications.  We need interoperability across the uses.  Similarly, the coding, techniques, software, training, and uses for social purposes are multipurpose.  The same teams locally that implement ICTs for Anganwadi workers will do it for community health workers, poor farmers, local teachers, and others.  Hence, the need to develop applications and do training for workers, such as Aanganwadi workers, public school teachers, ASHAs, ANMs, and agriculture extension workers simultaneously.  The uptake of the technologies is synergistic.

We believe that ICTs, deployed across a range of areas, are key.  There are enormous synergies across ICT applications, so working on all the three sectors together: agriculture, health and education brings out the brilliant development opportunities of ICTs taken as a package. The two key aspects this project will bring out front and center are, namely intersectoral convergence and data-driven decision-making at the block, district and state levels.

The project will develop and demonstrate a set of IT-based interventions at the district scale during the first three years.  In the fourth and fifth years, the Uttar Pradesh government will scale up the interventions across the state.  We intend to use digital technology to facilitate meeting the program outcomes, which are in all cases aligned with State strategies. Further, the endline data collected in Year 3 will show any changes the project was able to effect between the short period of Year 1 through 3.  Years 4 and 5 will serve for statewide scale-up of effective interventions.

The UP government has identified Sitapur as the intervention district. 

Areas of work. The project will focus on the following interventions:

1. Education: Focusing on improving ECCE practices in Anganwadi centers and ensuring smooth transition and continuum into Grades 1 and 2 of government schools.
2. Health: Improving health services by equipping ASHAs and ANMs with smartphones, IT based support systems and interventions.
3. Agriculture: Creating digitized database, data collection system and digital tools to improve agricultural practices in the State.