New Delhi: Introduction of smart cards in the Rashtriya Swasthaya Bima Yojna (RSBY) scheme has led to empowerment of citizens by effectively preventing denial of services to rightful recipients and a regular evaluation of this scheme was needed for its sustained growth, speakers at a summit here opined.

The first ever summit on ‘Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana’ (RSBY) – a joint initiative of Smart Card Forum of India (SCAFI) and the Government of India was held on Wednesday here.

The day long summit was the first multi-stakeholder effort to create a single platform to share and shape the future of RSBY scheme — one of the most successful social engineering e-Governance programs undertaken by the government in a Public-Private Partnership initiative.

The aim of this summit was to bring together members from the industry and government to showcase the technology and business perspective of the RSBY scheme. Speakers shared their perspectives on technology implementation, operational challenges, scope expansion of the scheme, business processes for scalability, technology optimisation and standardisation, quality assurance and standardisation of equipments and products.

Speaking on the occasion, Labour Welfare Director General Anil Swarup while underlining the role of smartcards in the RSBY revolution said it has the potential to trigger transparent delivery of other benefits as well to the poorest of the poor. "It is an idea that can change the world," he added.

While setting the pace for the summit,Smart Chip Managing Director Sanjeev Shriya said, "To my mind RSBY today is taking the shape of a framework rather than just a scheme which in our opinion can help lay the fundamental architecture for executing similar inclusion and benefit rollout initiatives, not just in India but across the globe, especially in countries where conditions similar to India prevail.

In his speech during the inaugural session SCAFI President M Parmeswaran emphasised the importance and the need for technology implementation for projects of such large scale and magnitude.

In his message to the forum, Union Minister for Health And Family Welfare Gulam Nabi Azad while haling the efforts of the organisers of the summit assured support for all such initiatives.

World Bank official Robert Palacios also shared his thoughts on the RSBY scheme and said, ‘The RSBY is truly a revolutionary initiative and is a potential role model for other social sector schemes. It is truly remarkable as it has been designed from the perspective of the beneficiary; the transactions involved are simple and give choice to the beneficiary – all essential elements for a scheme such as this.

The success of RSBY can be gauged from the fact that other countries have approached the World Bank regarding technical advice for rolling out similar schemes in their respective countries, he added.

In addition to the 'Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana' (RSBY) initiative the summit offered numerous opportunities for discussion and networking.