National rural employment guarantee act 2005: approach for implementation of information systems

Abstract

The National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, 2005, (NREGA), is a workfare programme enacted by the Government of India, with an objective to guarantee employment to rural households for 100 days in an year, that are unemployed and willing to do unskilled manual labor. This study analyzes the Act in light of the Global Employment Agenda and similar initiatives in the West, with an aim to provide insights into how information systems can be used to enforce the Act ..The effectiveness of implementation of National Rural Employment Guarantee Act 2005 (NREGA) is implicitly based on its compliance to the Right to Information Act, 2005 (RTI) that is meant to promote transparency, awareness and accountability in the system. The Ministry of Rural Development, Government of India, has published elaborate operational guidelines [3] for the implementation of NREGA, which forms the basis of this study. This study enunciates the requirements for the design of the information systems to enable the implantation of the Act. By the analysis and comparison with the previous experiences, recommends few changes in the operational guidelines. Such recommendations include installing information systems' infrastructure at the work place and the Gram Panchayat level, checklists for validating beneficiaries and the implanting agencies.