Hyderabad: The United States Secretary of Treasury Paul O'Neill, on a two-day visit to the Andhra Pradesh capital, had a glimpse of the state's e-governance initiatives on November 21 when he visited the local "eSeva Centre", a one-stop computerised facility offering a host of citizen services.

O'Neill, accompanied by US Ambassador Robert Blackwill, was taken to the eSeva Centre at Khairatabad and briefed him about the project which offered services of 32 government departments under one roof, including payment of utility bills, issuance of trade licenses, driving licenses and birth certificates and other government-to- citizen and business-to-customer services.

"I am very much impressed with the technology being used here. I have not seen anything like this before," O'Neill told reporters after visiting the Centre.

Evincing keen interest in the project that offers convergence of federal, state and local services under a single roof, the visiting dignitary keyed in his personal details at one of the counters to obtain an Indian driving licence.

After obtaining the US driving licence particulars and other personal details of O'Neill and Blackwill, the officials at the eSeva Centre took just over five minutes to generate computerised driving licence cards and handed them over to the high- profile visitors.

"They were impressed by the application of technology to provide a wide range of citizen services across the counter and over the Web. He (O'Neill) invited us to demonstrate the project in United States," director of eSeva project Phani Kumar told reporters.

PTI