E-GOVERNANCE CHALLENGES AND SUCCESS FACTORS OF PROJECTS AN INDIAN EXPERIENCE

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1 189 E-GOVERNANCE CHALLENGES AND SUCCESS FACTORS OF PROJECTS AN INDIAN EXPERIENCE ABSTRACT CHANDAN SINGH* *Assistant Professor, Department of Business Administration, Technical Education & Research Institute, Post Graduate College, Ghazipur , U.P. For centuries Governments has endeavored to serve its constituents. Lengthy delay in communication has been some of the unfortunate consequences of the services provided by the Government to the public and other organizations. Generally speaking, e-government refers to the use of technology, particularly Web-based Internet applications, to enhance an individual agency s website, for access to and delivery of government information and service to citizens including business partners and employees other agencies, and entities. In this paper author tries to focus on different level of challenges for e-governance in India like key challenges, Environmental challenge, Technological challenges and internal (national) challenges and how e-governance handle all challenges and gain a competitive advantages. Paper concludes E- governance is a new mantra for governments across the world and India is one of the countries where this type of office show seems to be very but surely bubbling up. Information Technology work as enabler for delivering effective, transparent and efficient delivery of Government services to the public at a very low cost. This makes e-government more relevant to India (a poor country) compared to many developed countries. Success factors of E-Government projects - 10% Technology, 60% Process, 20% Change Management, Rest is luck. KEYWORDS: CRM, Electronic media, Information Technology, Governance. INTRODUCTION E-governance is a new mantra for governments across the world and India. E-governance is an IT driven initiatives that will allow government to make information easily available and also in turn make it s functioning transparent and interactive. This concept is moving toward non-bulky, non-dusty files. E-governance is making government more transparent, effective and efficient for providing e-services. The services can be online rather than in-line. There is an urgent need to understand various factors that would make processes of e-governance successful. E-governance, however, is not really the use of IT in governance but as a tool to ensure good governance. E- governance does not mean proliferation of computers and accessories; it is basically a political decision which calls for discipline, attitudinal change in officers and employees, and massive government process re-engineering. The success factors for e-governance projects, as with any other project, include having clearly identified goals and expected benefits. In enabling citizen services, the major share of the initiative s outcome depends on re-engineering government processes and on changing organizational behaviors. The technologies constitute a small

2 190 percentage only. E-Government is considered as one of the most powerful tool to spread digital dividend across different social segments of any developing country. The Introduction of E- Governance is the key to making information technology (IT) relevant to ordinary citizens. Governance is a culture, which changes how citizens relate to governments as much as it changes how citizens relate to each other. [FIGURE1: MAIN ELEMENT OF GOVERNANCE] Source: annual report government of India ministry of communications & information technology department OF information technology E-GOVERNMENT AND E-GOVERNANCE The world is experiencing an information revolution, which is fundamentally transforming the way in which government and citizens interact. Government worldwide are adopting e- governance as a means of improving their service to citizens and improving the effectiveness and efficiency of internal government operations. E-Government involves a complete change in the way government services are delivered to citizens because these are delivered faster, more conveniently, for more cheaply and at a time convents to the user. E-Governance itself is governance as a whole. Brining modernization means a transformation of existing mode of governing. E governance is the way of achieving the goal of good governance. The principle of good governance has to be made concrete in e-governance setting. The transparency and openness of the whole policy process is closely connected with the precondition of accessibility of information.

3 191 [FIGURE2: INFORMATION SOURCE AND ITS CONNECTIVITY] Source: annual report government of India ministry of communications & information technology department of information technology E AND GOVERNANCE The modern architecture should be able to provide the following capabilities to the government: 1. To provide to the citizens, secure and easy access to the key services through the e-governance infrastructure, any time, from any place, using any device. 2. To give to the citizens, a unified and simplified view of government services and information. 3. To allow government employees access to relevant information across all its offices, seamlessly and efficiently 4. To enable future e-governance application, a consistent and open mechanism of an interoperability with government services. CRM AND E-GOVERNANCE Citizen (customer) Relationship Management (CRM) is one of the key elements in an e- government strategy that aims to put constituents both citizens and enterprises - at the very centre of the service delivery. CRM in government promises the same outcomes as in the private sector: 1. A single view of the citizen.

4 Greater citizen access. 3. More-effective interactions and greater citizen insight. [FIGURE3: CRM STRATEGY] Source: Financial Services Sector hosted by NDTV at The Ballroom, Taj Lands End, Mumbai on The citizens escapes the bureaucratic loop and gains more control as well as better view and understanding of governmental services. This leads to significant decrease in time spent on applying for the desired services, and in the frustrations associated with it. The usual CRM value equation which is based on balancing out increased profitability and shareholder value with increased value for customers - need to make this peculiarity into account and add a political return dimension. Most of the CRM functions that governments are planning relate to constituents as customer of their services, rather than shareholders. An extremely effective CRM implementation for services may, ironically, lead to unexpected outcomes. Citizens used to good relationship management by their local or central government will develop higher expectations of their ability to interact with their representatives and to influence management by their local or central government will develop higher expectations of their ability to interact with their representatives and to influence regulatory development, town and environmental planning and policy making it general. The key to success in most CRM implementations in the competitive drive - the need to differentiate one's enterprise from competitors by offering a more satisfactory and competitors by offering a more satisfactory and rewarding experience to customers. In the

5 193 public sector, with the limited expectations, customers have no choice about authority to which they pay taxes, or the departmental responsible for renewing their driving licenses or releasing a passport. Citizens and businesses may factor in the quality of public services when choosing their location inside or linguistically homogenous regions, but this is only true to a limited extent and primarily reflects on services such as healthcare and education Government can not choose their customers either Unlike a bank or a retailer, Government are not in a position to decide to price, market and service their product to target different customer segments, deliberately providing different service levels and different customer experience. Therefore all customers need to be treated equally, at least for basic services. This clearly requires effective CRM to manage interaction through different channels so that service levels remain same across all the channels. E-GOVERNANCE CHALLENGES FOR GOVERNMENT "GOOD GOVERNANCE" connotes the process of decision-making and the process by which decisions are implemented Governance can be used in several contexts such as corporate governance, international governance, national governance and local governance. It encompasses the entire process of public administration, the process underlying the formulation of public policies, the HRD efforts required for re-skilling the government machinery, prioritization, efficient management of public resources and above al re-designing the various instruments used to realize the concept of a welfare state. [FIGURE4: CHALLENGING FACTORS]

6 KEY CHALLENGES The key challenges with electronic governance are not technology or internet issues but organizational issues like Redefining rules and procedures Information transparency Legal issues Infrastructure, Skill and awareness Access to right information Interdepartmental collaboration Tendency to resist the change in work culture Assessment of local needs and customizing e-governance solutions to meet those needs Connectivity Content (local content based on local language) Building Human Capacities e-commerce Sustainability 2. ENVIRONMENTAL CHALLENGES Social Aspects Strengths Weaknesses 1. People eager to learn IT skills 1. Basic education poor 2. Skilled people possible export product 2. Low literacy 3. IT literacy 4. Different languages 5. Public acceptance of self service models

7 195 Opportunities 6. Skill shortage: competition with private sector Threats 1. Employment increases 1. Brain drain IT skilled people after training 2. Education system improve 2. Influence of other culture 3. People get structural job 3. Resistance of people 4. Cheap manpower widely available 4. Digital divide 5. Promotion of internet 5. Digital divide Political Aspects Strengths Weaknesses 1. Combination with democratization reforms 1.Budget 2. Internet as pull factor 2.Lack of cyber laws 3. Modern image 3.No problem owner with in government 4.Slow decision making process 5.Hierarchical structures 6. Short term approach due to elections 7. Integration and reform Opportunities Threats 1. Raise external funding 1. Bureaucracy 2. Show competitive edge 2. Piracy, misuse 3. Transparency causes 3. Corruption 4. Natural change of processes 4. Maintaining disorder, no transparency 5. Reinvent government 5. Political instability, Resistance

8 TECHNOLOGY CHALLENGES E-governance projects by their very nature are meant for the masses, so the technology challenges to implement them require serious attention? A. TRIED AND TESTED Technology tends to get obsolete fast. And government may not be in a position to buy new servers every other year. It is better and safer to use tried and tested technologies and products for longer periods of time than the latest, bleeding edge ones. It is not for nothing that old banks still run their mainframe based applications, and keep maintaining them at huge costs. B. SCALE e-governance projects have to be designed from day one to scale. Governance is supposed to affect every citizen; and so e-governance applications have to scale up to interface with every citizen. Even the largest of corporate applications pale into insignificance in comparison. C. SCOPE Governance is the mother of all businesses, and it is easy for every e-governance application to want to be the mother of all applications, encompassing everything possible. Remember that the first step in creating a good application is to define its scope very well. Everything else comes later. D. TERRAIN Corporate networks reside on reliable and controlled networks. Governance networks have to go into all sorts of inhospitable areas. It is going to be prohibitively costly to wire up all villages in the country. So, governance systems will have to use wireless networks like existing cellular networks to reach the applications into remote areas irrespective of the terrain. E. PERMANENCY Enterprise data has a limited lifespan, of maybe a maximum of twenty or thereabout years. Banks go longer, but governance systems have to retain data and the transaction trail for time immemorial. A good example is land records, where we already have more than a century's worth of mutation information. Therefore, as technologies change and as systems are overhauled, care should be taken to ensure that the data in the systems are transferred and made available without errors.

9 197 F. LOCAL LANGUAGE Enterprise applications in India are written in English; and so are the e-governance applications. If e-governance has to gain mass acceptance, then that has to change. Governance has to be in local language. And the applications for enabling governance have to be in the local language, often in multiple local languages.? 4. LOCAL CHALLENGES A. LACK OF INTEGRATED SERVICES Most of the E-Governance Services being offered by state or central governments are not integrated. This can mainly be attributed to Lack of Communication between different Departments. So the information that resides with one department has no or very little meaning to some other department of Government. B. LACK OF KEY PERSONS E-Governance projects lack key persons, not only from technological aspect, but from other aspects as well. C. POPULATION This is probably the biggest challenge. Apart from being an asset to the country it offers some unique issues, an important one being Establishing Person Identities. There is no unique identity of a person in India. Apart from this, measuring the population, keeping the database of all Indian nationals (& keeping it updated) is some other related challenges. D. DIFFERENT LANGUAGES Challenge due to the diversity of the country. It enforces need to do governance (up to certain level), in local languages. Ensuring E-Governance in local language is a big task to achieve. SUCCESS FACTORS OF E-GOV PROJECTS According to an officer from NIC, success factors of e-gov projects: a. 10% Technology b. 60% Process c. 20% Change Management d. Rest is luck

10 198 [GRAPH1: CONTRIBUTION OF VARIOUS ELEMENT FOR E-GOV PROJECTS] HOW INDIA COMPARES ON THE WORLD EG INDEX GLOBAL average: 1.62 INDIA score: 1.29 INDIA rating: Minimal INDIA rank: 77

11 199 How successful has e- governance been in India? State Project Ease of Use Time Savings Affordable Simplicity of Reduction in compared to cost of procedure Corruption manual service Total Rajiv Gandhi Computer Assam Literacy Program WB Land Records Hoogli WB Tele-Medicine Midnapore WB Gram Panchayat Kanaipur WB Computer Literacy and Training Program Sikkim CIC Temi Sikkim Land Records Namchi AP Rural e-seva West Godavari Delhi Transport IP Estate HP Property Registration Simla rural HP Land Records Suni Punjab Suvidha Kapurthala Punjab Property Registration Sang Punjab Transport Ropar Center IT in Judiciary NIC Center Customs NIC Average WAY TO FORWARD.. E-governance is a new mantra for governments across the world and India is one of the countries where this type of office show seems to be very but surely bubbling up. Most projects till now have been pilot projects.evaluation and impact assessment, Accountability, Training for civil servants, Private partnership, Pilot, Plan, Replicate, Revise and Scale.Information Technology work as enabler for delivering effective, transparent and efficient delivery of Government services to the public at a very low cost. This makes e-government more relevant to India (a poor country) compared to many developed countries. Success factors of E-Government projects - 10% Technology, 60% Process, 20% Change Management, Rest is luck. REFERENCES