E-Governance Solutions

Every e-governance project is quoted after scoping, and for departments the route is usually a tender or a GeM listing rather than a direct quote, so the figure has to be built against a published scope. What drives it: the number of services being digitised, how many departments and role types touch a file, whether legacy registers need digitising, integration count, and whether the mandatory third-party security audit and post-launch handholding sit inside the contract. Across the Indian market, single-service portals sit far below multi-department platforms, which commonly run into several lakh and upward as scope widens. We scope first, then quote per phase.

A single service — one application form, one approval chain, one certificate output — can be live in a few weeks. Multi-department platforms run several months, and the code is rarely what sets the date. Three things do: agreeing exact form fields and approval hierarchy with the officers who own them, cleaning legacy register data before import, and clearing the security audit, which cannot start until the build is frozen and can send you back for remediation. We treat the audit as a scheduled phase rather than a surprise at the end, and release service by service so the first one reaches the public early.

Yes, with one important caveat on Aadhaar. Aadhaar authentication and eKYC are available only to entities notified as requesting entities under the Aadhaar Act, working through a licensed AUA or KUA, so a private software vendor cannot simply switch it on — that access has to come from the department itself. DigiLocker issuance and pull, e-Sign, and fee collection through UPI, netbanking or a state treasury gateway are more straightforward. We also wire DLT-registered SMS and WhatsApp status updates, since most applicants check a file from a phone rather than logging back into a portal.

Yes, and these are the checks that gate go-live rather than optional extras. Government portals are expected to conform to GIGW, meet WCAG accessibility levels, work bilingually in Unicode, and pass a security audit by a CERT-In empanelled auditor before they are allowed onto NIC or state data centre infrastructure. We build to those requirements from the first sprint, because retrofitting accessibility and clearing audit findings after a build is frozen is exactly where these timelines slip. Source code, database and documentation are handed to the department, which most government contracts require in any case.

Yes to both, and they are separate problems. Bilingual support means Unicode throughout — Noto Sans Devanagari or Oriya rather than the legacy non-Unicode fonts still circulating in local government documents, which corrupt the moment a file moves between machines — plus translated field labels, validation messages and generated certificates, not just the menu bar. Last-mile access is designed around assisted use: an operator mode for Common Service Centres and counter staff who file on a citizen's behalf, SMS status updates for people who will never open the portal, and pages light enough for a weak connection.