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With the galloping Indian economy and the strides being made by
the corporate sector, the existing governmental work transaction
structure is not in sync with the times. Being more than a century
old the existing system is characterized by large amounts of paper
work, time consuming processes and complicated set of controls.
This legacy framework has come under immense pressure in the
globalised context, necessitating creation of a favorable climate
for encouraging sustainable economic growth and maintaining a
healthy business eco-system. Institutional arrangements and
processes necessary to support accelerated growth are needed to be
put in place.
It is particularly relevant to the country’s corporate sector,
which has registered a four-fold growth in the number of companies
from about 200,000 in 1990 to over 8 lakh as of today. The
Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA) has the only authentic
information repository on the corporate sector and serves as the
registry for all filings / public records.
Flagship of Transformational Change
The possibilities offered by technology to simplify the interfaces
between the Government and the stakeholders have been effectively
adopted to address this challenge. Towards this end the Ministry
of Corporate Affairs has embarked upon an ambitious e-Governance
project called the MCA21 e-Governance Program. It aims at
continuously repositioning MCA as an organization capable of
fulfilling the aspirations of its stakeholders in a globally
competitive business environment. The comprehensive, end-to-end
service oriented solution has helped establish a fine balance
between facilitation and compliance – as a blend of well-defined
goals and performance metrics.
Demonstrable Stakeholder Values
MCA21 is an outcome-oriented initiative and the objectives of the
program are to address the concerns of all the major stakeholders:
 Business: enabled to register a company and file statutory
documents quickly and easily and in a convenient manner;
Public: to get easy access to corporate records and get their
grievances redressed effectively;
Professionals: to be able to offer efficient services to their
client companies;
Financial Institutions: to find registration and verification of
charges easy;
Government: to ensure proactive and effective compliance of
relevant laws, corporate governance and transparency;
MCA Employees: enabled to deliver best of breed services to all
the stakeholders in a speedy and transparent manner.
100 MCA Services covered
About 100 citizen-facing services are covered within the scope of
this project. Service categories include:
Name approval & Incorporation of new companies;
Filing of Annual Statutory Returns;
Filing of forms for change of names/address/Director’s details;
Creation/ Modification/ Satisfaction and verification of
charges;
Various other statutory filings required under the Companies
Act;
Inspection of public records;
Providing a forum to redress investors’ grievances.
Big Bang Strategy
Given the unique nature of requirements and the outcomes targeted,
a ‘big-bang’ strategy was adopted to migrate to a near complete
paperless system. A hybrid system would have only added to
complexities of reconciling paper and electronic transactions. The
back office operations have been made completely paperless (with
the exception of stamp papers) with the use of electronic
workflows and secure digital document repositories. No other
similar solution implemented elsewhere in the world has made such
a massive transition within a seven month period like what has
been achieved in MCA21.
A unique Project
MCA21 is a departure from the conventional ‘computerization’
approach involving procurement of infrastructure and project
related services. Instead, it has adopted a ‘service delivery’
model where the project operator would provide the desired service
facilitation through a clearly agreed service level agreement.
Financial and legal structuring of the project has been carried
out with the help of experts. MCA21 is the first project
implemented through a Public-Private Partnership (PPP) wherein a
consortium led by Tata Consultancy Services Ltd. represents the
private sector. The commercial approach involves a
Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT) model that is based on the operation
of a service driven technology solution. The project cost includes
the costs towards software/solution development, digitization and
data migration, implementation and change management, operation of
the solution for a period of six years upon implementation. The
payments to the operator are made on an equated quarterly basis of
clearly defined service level agreements (SLAs) to ensure
effective service delivery. A system of incentives and penalties
has been built in so as to enforce adherence to service levels by
the Operator.
The MCA21 process involves extensive processes re-engineering to
provide ethos with anywhere, anytime secure electronic filing of
all statutory documents. Electronic workflows and sophisticated
document management systems for processing service requests has
enabled quicker service turnaround from the back office.
Consequently all statutory forms have been revised and adopted for
electronic filing. E-filing process has been implemented through
freely available software, where there is no additional cost on
end user.
50 MCA Facilitation centers (service provided free of cost) and
about 1,000 Certified Filing Centres operated by practicing
professionals (services provided for a nominal, prescribed fee)
have been set up to address problems associated with ‘digital
divide’.
Nearly 50 million pages of public records (legacy corporate paper
documents in the registry) have been digitized for ready
electronic access through Internet to the investors and general
public.
MCA21 is the first project to be implemented through a
Public-Private partnership and includes best-in-class computing
infrastructure with facility to handle business continuity
requirements.
Current Status
The Project was launched on 18th Feb. 2006 at Registrar Of
Companies office at Coimbatore, the first pilot location, and a
second major pilot was launched at ROC Delhi one month later.
Progressive rollout was completed at all other ROC offices in the
country by 4th Sept. 2006, almost co-terminus with the mandating
of electronic filing from 16th Sept. 2006 enabled through the
amendments introduced in the Companies Act, 1956.
Subsequently, the MCA21 system has been serving as the operational
backbone to the process of MCA service delivery at the ROC
offices. An average of 1.7 million portal hits per day is
registered and about 34 lakh documents have been filed
electronically so far. About 85,000 new companies have been
registered using the newly introduced secure electronic services
and 5 lakh users have viewed company documents online from the
registry. During the peak season when annual statutory documents
are submitted (September to December each year), the maximum
filings registered in a given day has touched 41,800.
Approximately, 85% of all filings are done directly at the MCA
portal while the balance is filed through facilitation centres
(both MCA established and those established by practicing
professionals).
Banks play a key role in collection of the MCA payments. Reporting
of the collections to MCA is critical in the service turnaround to
the stakeholder. 97% of the payment realization and reporting has
been achieved within T + 3 days. About 48% of the transactions are
being received using the on-line system of payment of statutory
fees.
Best Practices
Despite its size and complexity, MCA21 e-Governance Project has
been accomplished within a very aggressive timeframe. The
implementation benchmarks can be compared to some of the best
efficiencies achieved in the private sector enterprises. Some of
the key factors that have contributed to such high levels of
project efficiency are (i) establishing a sound conceptual
framework and comprehensive documentation including the RFP and
supporting technical data (ii) ability to adhere to project
timelines and not allowing any scope creep, though there were
delays in obtaining the concept and budgetary approvals.
MCA21 e-Governance project was initiated after a very careful
assessment of the environment to ensure the successful adoption of
the ICT solution. It is based on a holistic services outsourcing
model as opposed to procurement and integration of solution
components. This is a significant departure from the conventional
project approach that is generally adopted in ICT initiatives,
where there is a clear shift from a capital intensive investment
model to one that is a Build-Operate-Transfer model where payments
to the Operator are made on an equated quarterly basis based on
adherence to a set of contractually enforced service level
agreements that broadly cover project outcomes, service times,
business continuity and technical parameters governing performance
and service uptime. In short, the MCA21 project has been treated
on par with any other core infrastructure initiative with a
sustainable mechanism to ensure its performance.
Awards & Recognition
MCA21 e-Governance Program is envisioned to catalyze the way
corporate India interfaces with the Government. Aimed at bringing
about a service transformation through a harmonious blend of
facilitation and compliance, it is considered a benchmark among
e-governance projects in India, involving large-scale deployment
of information technology within the shortest possible timeframe.
This is perhaps the first green project that has successfully cut
down large scale usage of paper.
Considered as a flagship project under the National e-Governance
Plan, MCA21 has evolved to prove that how the finite nature of
paper based systems could be overcome especially in a country with
continental dimensions like India. Recognized as ‘a revolutionary
step by the Government in the right direction’ by 92% of CEO/CFOs
surveyed by Ernst & Young / CNBC TV, the project has been
conferred numerous recognitions and awards including the ‘IT
Pathbreaker Award 2006’ by the Dataquest Magazine, ‘Excellence in
e-Governance Implementation’ at Technology Sabha, 2008 organized
by the Indian Express Newspaper Group and TATA Indicom, ‘Golden
Icon’ National Award for “Excellence in Government Process
Reengineering” for 2007 by the Department of Administrative
Reforms & Public Grievances and “Skoch Challenger Award 2008” for
“Project of National Significance”.
Inputs from the Ministry of Company Affairs
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