Next level of Mee-seva

Hyderabad, January 19: With digital payment being the buzzword these days, wonder what has happened to the Mee Seva of the eponymous Electronic Service Delivery of the Information Technology, Electronics & Communication Department?After all, starting as e-seva 15 years ago, it served as the first-ever government front office for the rest of the country in payment of bills. Apparently, the Meeseva has been doing well clocking an impressive number of transactions over the years although demonetization has had its effect.Through Meeseva the Telangana GOVT has now lined up a series of initiatives to take it to the next level.Likely to be rolled out in a few months, citizens need not repeatedly go with documents for scanning and sourcing for any certificate at any of the centers soon.Under the Certificate Form of Governance initiative, once scanned, the Meeseva would be storing the information on its own server and hence, can be accessed repeatedly as a single source of truth .The distinction between e-seva and Meeseva would also be removed and dovetailed into a single platform with a more user-friendly interface and common screen, explains G.T. Venkateshwar Rao, Commissioner (ESD) and Special Commissioner (e-Governance).A total revamp of the services include reducing transaction time for any document or certificate to five to eight minutes from up to half an hour now. A messaging service would be introduced indicating the time frame for a document to be ready and steps are also in the offing to make financial reconciliation faster with the treasury."We have been growing steadily. There were 3.8 crore transactions in 2015-16 with about a lakh per day worth 350 crores a month and 4,000 crores annually, because of the shift towards digital payments," he says. The biggest challenge for Meeseva was to get hold of the land holdings data, encumbrances, and other certificates, but these are now being issued within a day.The Commissioner says that "We are in a position to take up to three lakh applications now," he exults, stating the way forward is through franchises only.