E-governance transactions in India across government offices and departments have crossed the 1 billion mark, reported The Economic Times.

Gujarat topped the list with almost 389 million transactions. The second spot was occupied by Maharashtra with over 189 million transactions, not even half of the figure for Gujarat. The capital city recorded over 71 million transactions.

Most popular services amongst the users were utility and government services which recorded 258 million transactions.

E-governance is often touted to be the answer for India’s corruption.

2011 saw the successfully implementation an e-passport project where digitisation of applications and internal files vastly improved the time taken to issue new passports.

Some of the most ambitious e-governance projects by the government include National e-Governance Plan (NeGP), Mission Mode Projects, Aadhar and National Optic Fibre Network (NOFN) to name a few. NeGP seeks to create a massive countrywide infrastructure which reaches down to the remotest of villages and large-scale digitization of records is taking place to enable easy, reliable access over the internet. Gujarat was the first state to make its State Data Centre (SDC) operational under NeGP.

NeGP comprises 31 mission mode projects (MMPs), which are further classified as state, central or integrated projects. Mission Mode Projects (MMPs) are individual projects within the National e-Governance Plan (NeGP) that focus on one aspect of electronic governance such as banking, land records or commercial taxes etc.

Aadhar is a biometric linked scheme developed by Nandan Nilekani which seeks to enroll 600 million people by 2014.

NOFN aims to provide e-services and e-applications nationally to the remotest of areas by connecting 2.5 gram panchayats.

To ensure that e-governance doesn’t lose momentum, the government has been taking steps to even keep the private players interested. In the budget for the financial year 2013-14, government had announced that it will fund mobile start-ups developing apps for e-governance.