Common Services Centres (CSC):
The Common Services Centres (CSC) has received approvals to manage and operate Passport Seva Kendra kiosks in rural areas.
- CSC is an initiative of the Ministry of Electronics & IT (MeitY).
- The CSC is a strategic cornerstone of the National e-Governance Plan (NeGP), approved by the Government in May 2006, as part of its commitment in the National Common Minimum Programme to introduce e-governance on a massive scale.
- The objective of CSCs is to provide high quality and cost-effective video, voice and data content and services, in the areas of e-governance, education, health, telemedicine, entertainment as well as other private services.
- The Scheme creates a conducive environment for the private sector and NGOs to play an active role in implementation of the CSC Scheme, thereby becoming a partner of the government in development of rural India.
- The PPP (Public Private Partnership) model of the CSC scheme envisages a 3-tier structure consisting of the:
- CSC operator (called Village Level Entrepreneur or VLE);
- Service Centre Agency (SCA), that will be responsible for a division of 500-1000 CSCs; and
- State Designated Agency (SDA) identified by the State Government responsible for managing the implementation in the entire State.
CSC and Digital India:
- Digital India is a flagship programme of India with a vision to transform India into a digitally empowered society and knowledge economy.
CSCs enable the three vision areas of the Digital India programme:- Digital infrastructure as Utility to Every Citizen.
- Governance and services on demand.
- Digital empowerment of citizens.
CSC 2.0:
- It was launched in 2015, expanding the programme’s outreach to all gram panchayats in the country.
- At least one CSC is envisaged in each of the 2.5 lakh Gram Panchayats.
- CSC 2.0 is a service delivery oriented entrepreneurship model with a large bouquet of services made available for the citizens through optimum utilization of infrastructure already created in the form of State Wide Area Network (SWAN), State Service Delivery Gateway (SSDG), e-District, State Data Centre (SDC), and (National Optical Fiber Network (NOFN)/BharatNet.
