E-governance and the Indian experience

E-governance projects in the country have helped in converting archaic paper-based systems into online repositories of structured information. This digitisation not only helps the public save time and money, but has also resulted in streamlining of government departments. Gaurav Patra and Shipra Arora report

E-governance in India will be a gradual evolving process, and does not warrant comparisons with e-governance initiatives in developed countries, feels Dr N Vijayaditya

Across the globe, countries have recognised IT as an effective tool in catalysing the economic activity in efficient governance, and in developing human resources. Many developed countries have made huge investments in IT and have successfully integrated it with the development process, giving their societies multiple benefits. Of late, in India too, many state governments have started investing heavily to build effective e-governance set-ups, with states like Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka leading the bandwagon.

According to Nasscom, the e-governance market grew by 18 percent in the year 2002, touching a market size of Rs 1,400 crore. The major driver for this growth has been an ‘increased awareness of IT among Indian state governments’, which unveiled policies aimed at bringing significant improvements in one-stop services to citizens. Having identified the potential, IT giants like Microsoft, IBM, Intel, Oracle, TCS, etc, have already tied-up with several state governments to address G2C (government to citizen) and G2B (government to business) initiatives. However, the growth curve of the e-governance segment has followed the geometric progression pattern where the initial period sees slow growth, followed by a period where there is a leap in growth. Dr N Vijayaditya, director general at National Informatics Centre, feels that e-governance in India would be a gradual evolving process and comparisons should not be made with e-governance initiatives in developed countries.

Ground realities
Considering that e-governance has become an integral part of a democratic dispensation, the Union Ministry of Information Technology has set up a centre focusing on e-governance solutions and services. This centre showcases applications by various IT majors and is aimed at providing transparency and facilitating speedy dissemination of information to all citizens.

In terms of success stories, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh (AP) have taken the lead, having implemented some path-breaking projects and setting examples for other states to follow. The projects include Karnataka’s ‘Bhoomi project,’ AP’s twin-city project and so on. AP had computerised land records in sub-registrar offices to reduce corruption levels. The Municipal Corporation of Delhi is now using software to collect property taxes more efficiently. And waiting in the wings to make their mark in this space are initiatives from states like Chattisgarh (public grievance redressal), Himachal Pradesh (Lokmitra) and Bihar (STAMINA).

With the Information Technology (IT) Act, 2000 coming into effect from October 18, 2000, transactions on the Internet have got legal validity in India. This allows users to pay their bills for utilities on the Web, at least on paper.

Towards a better tomorrow
Change management is a key focus area state governments will be looking at closely, as it goes beyond investments in hardware and networking. Clarity in their mission will help keep factors like revenue generation and RoI at the top of their implementation list, away from projects with limited or ornamental value. Some revenue generation areas that the government should be focusing on are: issuance of licenses, government records and filing of returns online. However, this does not mean that state governments should not focus on low profit margin projects. The future intangible benefits should be another consideration, resulting in a broader benefit for the citizen.

Building up more and more effective public-private partnerships will also give a spurt to e-governance in the country. Sriram Bharatram, the founder and CEO of Iridium Interactive says that private sector enterprises have had more experience with e-business models than the government. The government can benefit from their experiences—successes as well as failures.

Considering the present scenario, very few state governments are heavily focusing on e-governance. And this has created a Digital Divide in e-governance. On the one side, there are the e-governance haves (Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh) and on the other hand there are have-nots (Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra and states in the North East), with the have-nots lagging behind in terms of e-governance initiatives. Besides this, there is also a need to make e-governance initiatives more broad-based, with better co-ordination between the Centre and the states. Governments also need to adopt a more professional approach, where the Central government views the state governments as its clients. Similarly, the state governments need to view citizens as their clients. Comments Mahesh Uppal, director of a private consultancy firm, Telecommunications and Computer Information Systems, “The government needs to follow the example set by the private sector in terms of customer focus and implementation
standards.” Overall, all these projects should be very user-friendly and easily manageable, as they are targeted at the masses, who are not technology-savvy.

According to Mahesh Uppal, the government needs to follow the example set by the private sector in terms of customer focus and implementation standards

Besides this, there is also a need to generate demand for the e-governance services being provided. Presently, there is not much demand for them, as most e-governance projects are still not utilitarian in nature. The government not only needs to generate more demand but also identify and target those potential areas where there is need for e-governance services.

Transparency is another issue that needs to be tackled. Governments need to ensure that there is effective transparency in procedures like the tendering process and procurement, involving e-governance projects. “There has not been much headway on initiatives as they have been surrounded by red-tape. Nor is information available on what is happening. Many of the private sector firms are becoming disillusioned. There should be less administrative hassles, bureaucratic hurdles and red-tapism,” says Pavan Duggal, advocate with the Supreme Court of India, a cyberlaw consultant and president, CYBERLAWS.NET.

Another important factor that state governments should focus on before implementing any e-governance project is the legal aspect. The service that the government provides to citizens in the online environment must be legal in the eyes of the law. “By and large e-governance projects have not taken pains to ensure compliance with law. The IT Act 2000 has legalised the concept of e-governance but if this output is challenged in a court of law there are chances some issues would be held invalid,” says Duggal.

After 9/11, the government also needs to focus on the critical issues of information security. It needs to ensure that e-governance services should be reasonably secure from hacking and other cyber crimes and the said services must be capable of ensuring information security of its contents and systems.

With increasing Internet bandwidth and decreasing cost of Internet access, the e-governance sector is expected to grow by leaps and bounds. However, the ability of the government to transform itself in the above mentioned areas will decide the fate of e-governance in India.