Common Service Centre

The Government has approved a Common Services Centers (CSCs) Scheme for providing support for establishing 100,000 Common Services Centers in 600,000 villages of India. CSCs will function as the front-end delivery points for government, private and social sector services to rural citizens of India, in an integrated manner. The platform will enable government, private and social sector organizations to align their social and commercial goals for the benefit of the rural population in the remotest corners of the country through a combination of IT-based as well as non-IT-based services.

The CSC would be designed as ICT-enabled Kiosks having a PC along with basic support equipment like Printer, Scanner, UPS, with Wireless Connectivity as the backbone and additional equipment for edutainment, telemedicine, projection systems, etc., as the case may be. The Scheme is to be implemented through a Public Private Partnership.

CSCs are the primary physical front-end for delivery of the National e-Governance Plan for enabling anytime anywhere delivery of government services, along with the State Wide Area Network and the State Data Centre Scheme. DIT has appointed a National Level Service Agency (NLSA) with defined Terms of Reference to coordinate the entire activity. The CSC Scheme has a 3-tier implementation framework as

• At the first (CSC) level would be the local Village Level Entrepreneur (VLE- similar to a franchisee), to service the rural consumer in a cluster of 5-6 villages.
• At the second/middle level an Service Centre Agency (SCA similar to a franchiser) will operate, manage and build the VLE network and business for one or more districts (one district would cover 100-200 CSCs).
• At the third level the State- the State Designated Agency (SDA) will to facilitate implementation of the Scheme within the State and to provide requisite policy, content and other support to the SCAs.