Bhubaneswar, April 22: Orissa today announced the setting up of common service centres (CSCs) in all the panchayats of the state in an attempt to join the e-governance bandwagon. The CSCs are part of the Mission Mode project under the national e-governance plan.

Information technology minister Surya Narayan Patro, who unveiled the CSC scheme here, said the centres will be single-point shops for delivery of all government services and will encourage other value added services such as agriculture based information/transactions, banking, insurance, micro-credits, telemedicine, e-learning and entertainment.

The scheme would be implemented through a three-tier structure. At the grassroots there will be a village-level entrepreneur akin to a franchisee. At the middle-level there will be a service centre agency (SCA) and at the apex level Orissa Computer Application Centre (OCAC) ?the state level agency ? will facilitate implementation of the scheme.

Patro said the scheme would bridge the digital divide between rural and urban areas, and “people can access all information without having to come to government offices”. He said for effective functioning, the government may allow the self-help groups and NGOs to participate in the project. “Right from knowing which is the best engineering college to send his son to getting land records, the villager can find just about everything through CSCs,” he said.

The scheme, to be started in June, is expected to be complete within the next two years. The one-time cost of setting up the CSC infrastructure (about Rs 1.5 lakh) would be shared by village-level entrepreneur and service centre agency. The government is considering some revenue support for CSCs to be set up in villages.