OPPORTUNITIES AND CHALLENGES FOR E- GOVERNANCE IN INDIA

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1 OPPORTUNITIES AND CHALLENGES FOR E- GOVERNANCE IN INDIA Rashmi Chaudhary Research Scholar,Mewar University,India ABSTRACT E Governance, a paradigm shift over the traditional approach and an added impetus for the government services and information using electronic means. The paper highlights the role and potential of ICT in supporting good governance in India. Good Governance as efficient and effective will give a significant contribution for the achievement of good governance goals. This research paper highlights the main challenges related to the implementation of e-governance in India. It shows that e-governance is a current reality for India. Effective implementations can take ICT to the Indian citizens and can help government to align their services with the hanging needs of stakeholders and Indian citizens to develop the economy. This paper discusses the factors which are responsible for good governance, and also includes some current challenges for managing E-Government projects in India. This paper also includes the current status of E Governance in India and future prospects of E-Governance. Keywords: E-Governance, ICT. I. INTRODUCTION Electronic governance or e-governance is the application of Information and communication Technology (ICT) for delivering government services, exchange of information, communication transactions, integration of various stand-alone systems and services between government-to-customer (G2C), governmentto-business (G2B), government-to-government (G2G) as well as back office processes and interactions within the entire government framework. Through e-governance, government services will be made available to citizens in a convenient, efficient and transparent manner. The three main target groups that can be distinguished in governance concepts are government, citizens and businesses/interest groups. In e-governance there are no distinct boundaries.e-governance also provides a mechanism of direct delivery of public services to the marginal segments of the society in the remotest corners, without having to deal with intermediaries. II. BENEFITS OF E-GOVERNANCE E-government reduce costs, carry out all companies to interact with the government. Electronic trading saves time compared to human doing business. No need for driving to government and no waiting time. If the transaction is not completed, you can use the mouse to click on the return trip rather than drive to the office. As more and more companies are doing online conduct government business, and their transaction costs will be reduced. More technology and less workers needed reduce the business cost. 678 P a g e

2 2.1 Accountability Once the governing process is made transparent the Government is automatically made accountable. Accountability is answerability of the Government to the people. It is the answerability for the deeds of the Government. An accountable Government is a responsible Government. 2.2 Speed Technology makes communication speedier. Internet, Phones, Cell Phones have reduced the time taken in normal communication. 2.3 Cost Reduction Most of the Government expenditure is appropriated towards the cost of stationary. Paper-based communication needs lots of stationary, printers, computers, etc. which calls for continuous heavy expenditure. Internet and Phones makes communication cheaper saving valuable money for the Government. 2.4 Transparency Use of ICT makes governing profess transparent. All the information of the Government would be made available on the internet. The citizens can see the information whenever they want to see. But this is only possible when every piece of information of the Government is uploaded on the internet and is available for the public to peruse. Current governing process leaves many ways to conceal the information from all the people. ICT helps make the information available online eliminating all the possibilities of concealing of information. III. SECTORS BENEFITTED BY E-GOVERNANCE 3.1 E-Governance Projects In Rural Areas NEGP & NIC: For the success of e-governance, Government launched National e-governance plan and with the help of National Informatics Centre set up a central repository for all e-governance initiatives. A. NeGP National e-governance Plan was launched with the following vision: Make all Public Services accessible to the common man in his locality, through common service delivery outlets and ensure efficiency, transparency and reliability of such services at affordable costs to realize the basic needs of the common man. NeGP came up on May 18, 2006 by Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DEIT) and Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances (DAR&PG). NeGP was set up with 27 Mission Mode Projects (MMPs) and 8 components. It was specially designed for rural areas and for the easy access of the services provided by NeGP State Wide Area Network (SWAN) and Common Service Centre (CSC) was set up NIC: is a part of the Indian Ministry of Communications and Information Technology's Department of Electronics & Information Technology and came up in It is a website designed for all the e-governance initiatives taken by government at one place. This includes blocks, districts, state government and central government. The ICT network of NIC is called NICNET GYANDOOT: Gyandoot is a government to citizen intranet based project launched in Thar district of Madhya Pradesh on 1st January It made use of IT for benefit of rural areas where people do not have the facilities as those in cities. Initially this was considered very successful but with passing of time in long run it did not prove to be too good BHOOMI: "Land record forms the base for all land reforms and therefore regular online updating of land records is essential. BHOOMI has done it." Bhoomi is an initiative of Karnataka government to computerize land records. Records of 6.7 million farmers dealing with 20 million records in Karnataka state have been 679 P a g e

3 computerized. Seeing the success of Bhoomi other states like Andhra Pradesh, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh has also implemented a similar system E-choupal: E-choupal is an initiative of ITC Ltd. This project is a success and has benefited the farmers a lot. In this a trained villager called Sanchalak was appointed to run the ITC internet kiosk. E-choupal contains information about the latest farming techniques, weather forecasts, crop insurance, etc. through which the farmers remain well informed.. The productivity of the crops increased as now the farmers could purchase good seeds and fertilizers, which in turn yielded profit to the farmers. ITC s echoupals serve 40,000 villages and 4 million farmers, making it the world s largest rural digital infrastructure created by a private enterprise E-post : Send mail from anywhere in the globe. Internet and are a main part of e-governance. E- post service was launched by the secretary of the Department of Posts on 30th January E-panchayats: Panchayats are a local village based self government. As majority of the population of India lives in villages the panchayats play a major role. Government thus felt the need to improve it and transform it, and so e-panchayat was introduced. The project caters to all aspects of panchayat s functioning including planning, monitoring, implementation, budgeting, accounting, social audit and delivery of citizen services. IV. OPPORTUNITIES FOR E-GOVERNANCE IN INDIA The following opportunities are suitable for academics, PhD scholars, professionals and job seekers in the area of e-government: 4.1 National Institute for Smart Government (NISG): It is located in Hyderabad, was founded on the recommendations of the National Task Force on IT and software development. NISG services include providing consultations to both Central and State Government in India regarding the development and implementation of various egov-related projects. NISG provides consulting experience for both technical and non-technical issues related to egov and also is involved in capacity-building and change management through partnerships with both government and private institutions. They also advertise a number of vacancies for different management positions and ongoing government. 4.2 ABM Knowledgeware Ltd. (ABM) is an IT company listed on the Bombay Stock Exchange. ABM has developed a thorough insight into the development, implementation and institu-tionalization of e-governance in the Indian context. This is evident from various egov projects (such as the Kalyan Dombivli Municipal Corporation (KDMC) project, the Property Tax project for the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM), an ERP-based integrated and holistic e-governance solution for MCGM, and the AQUA project for water billing and accounting for MCGM, the e-municipality covering 231 municipal bodies across the Government of Maharashtra, to name a few) that have been successfully undertaken by this organisation. Job seekers with relevant experience and capabilities in the area of management, software development, and functional consultancy can look for appropriate jobs in this company. 4.3 Inkroma E-Business Solutions Pvt. Ltd. is a six sigma e-governance company involved in implementing end-to-end e-governance product based solutions. 4.4 Research opportunities: A number of universities and academic institutions have well-established research groups focusing on egov-related issues. Researchers and potential doctoral candidates may like to explore the following research groups and centres for research-related opportunities This group provides an opportunity for 680 P a g e

4 eligible candidates to undertake doctoral research or collaborative research leading to paper publications. Within India, The Department of Management Studies, IIT Delhi and The School of Management, MNNIT, hosts worlds-leading academics under-taking research, consultancy and PhD supervision related to the egov area and has already produced a number of PhD scholars specialising in egov-related issues. India today has perhaps the most ambitious e-governance plan. At the highest level in the Government, there is a separate Secretary-level official, there is an approved budget of more than billion dollars at the Central Government; there are Secretary-level officials in every State Government with additional (though small compared to Central budget) budget. There are annual e-governance conferences at the Regional, National and even International levels. Major Indian IT service majors (TCS and Wipro, for example) and MNC firms (IBM and Sun, for example) have dedicated teams to address the growing e-governance market in India. Thanks to some early success e-seva, CARDS, Bhoomi, Bangalore-One and Passport office computerisation, for example there is enough media coverage both print and electronic media with at least two magazines devoted exclusively to e-governance. There is an Institute NISG (National Institute of Smart Governance) set up in public-private-partnership model with Government of Andhra Pradesh and NASSCOM. V. CHALLENGES FOR E-GOVERNANCE IN INDIA There are a large number of obstacles in implementation of e-governance in India. These can be categorized under the following titles: Environmental and Social Challenges, Economical Challenges and Technical Challenges. These challenges are explained below: 5.1 ENVIRONMENTAL AND SOCIAL CHALLENGES Different Language: India is a country where people with different cultures and different religions live. People belonging to different states speak different languages. The diversity of people in context of language is a huge challenge for implementing e-governance projects as e-governance applications are written in English language. And also, English may not be understandable by most of the people. Therefore, it becomes a challenge for the government to write e-governance applications which are to be implemented for the whole nation in more than one language so that these may be acceptable to the users of a particular language Low Literacy: Literacy can be defined as the ability to read and write with understanding in any language. A person who can merely read but cannot write cannot be considered as literate. Any formal education or minimum educational standard is not necessary to be considered literate. Literacy level of India is very low which is a huge obstacle in implementation of e-governance projects. Illiterate people are not able to access the e-governance applications; hence the projects do not get much success Recognition of applications: Recognition of the egovernance facilities by the citizens is another huge challenge. It is a challenge to have all the citizens well aware of the facilities offered by the e-government and have them to trust in it, so that citizens should be ready to accept these facilities Services are not accessible easily: The concept of e-governance is claiming for increased efficiency and effectiveness of the government, but these goals will be achieved only if the service will be available to the 100% of the citizens. So, every service should be accessible by anybody from anywhere and anytime. Even if the users of Internet are growing but still there is a major part of Indian population which is not able to access e- Governance activities for variety of reasons, e.g. some people may have limited access to Information and 681 P a g e

5 Communication Technologies and devices. Therefore, government has to provide internet access through public terminals as a part of their universal access efforts Population: Population of India is probably the biggest challenge in implementing e Governance projects. As population is considered to be an asset to the country but it also offers some other challenges e.g. establishing person identities. There is no unique identity of individuals in India although Indian government is making efforts for providing unique identity to its citizens. Apart from this, measuring the population, keeping the database of all Indian nationals and keeping this database updated and then providing the e governance services to the whole population are major challenges Lack of integrated services: Most of the e governance services which are offered by the state or central government are not integrated. Lack of communication between different departments of government may be its major cause. Therefore, the information that resides within one department has no or very little meaning to some other department of the government Lack of awareness in people: Most of the Indian people are not aware of the benefits of egovernance services. Even the government does not pay much attention to make the people aware about e-governance activities. Unawareness is a major challenge in the implementation of e-governance projects. 5.2 Economical Challenges Cost: In developing countries like India, cost is one of the most important obstacles in the path of implementation of e-governance where major part of the population is living below poverty line. Even the politicians do not have interest in implementing e-governance. A huge amount of money is involved in implementation, operational and evolutionary maintenance tasks. These costs must be low enough so that to guarantee a good cost/benefit ratio Maintenance of electronic devices: As the Information Technology changes very fast and it is very difficult for us to update our existing systems very fast. Regulations of different devices and their different characteristics may vary and the system in use must be capable to handle all the emerging needs. Maintenance is a key factor for long living systems in a rapidly changing technical environment Limited financial resources: The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is one of the measures o national income and a country s economy. GDP is defined as the total market value of all final goods and services produced within the country in a given period of time. GDP of a country is the measure of its financial strength. India has limited financial resources so as to implement and maintain the e-government projects properly Low per Capita income: Per capita income means how much each individual receives, in the terms of money, of the yearly income generated in a country. This refers to what each individual receives if the yearly national income is divided equally among everyone. Per capita income of India is low as compare to the other countries. Therefore, people cannot afford on-line services provided by the government which is a challenge for implementation of e-governance. 5.3 Technical Challenges Interoperability: Interoperability is the ability of systems and organizations of different qualities to work together. The e-governance applications must have this characteristic so that the newly developed and existing applications can be implemented together. 682 P a g e

6 5.3.2 Scale of applications: e- Governance projects have to be designed to scale from the day one. egovernance is supposed to affect every citizen of the country, so e-governance applications must have the scale to interface with every citizen Multimodal Interaction: Multimodal interaction provides the user with multiple modes of interfacing with a system. An e-government application can be really effective if its users can access it using different devices Privacy and Security: A critical obstacle in implementing e-governance is the privacy and security of an individual s personal data that he/she provides to obtain government services. With the implementation of e- government projects, some effective measures must be taken to protect the sensitive personal information of the people. Lack of security standards can limit the development of egovernment projects that contain personal information such as income, medical history etc Scope of applications: The very first step in creating a good application is to define its scope very well and everything else comes later. The applications which are provided by e-government, their scope must be known in advance for the accurate implementation of e Governance projects Tried and tested technologies: Technology tends to get out of date very fast. Our government may not be in position to buy new servers every year. So, it is better and safer to use technologies and products which are tried and tested for longer periods of times than using the latest ones Geographical problems: Corporate networks reside on reliable and controlled networks. Government networks have to go into all areas which are even unfriendly to live. It is, however, costly to wire up all the villages in the country. So, e-governance systems must have to use the wireless networks like existing cellular networks to reach the applications into remote areas irrespective of the geographical issues Local language: The acceptance of English language in India is very low. The e governance applications are written in English. That is why e-governance projects do not get success. Hence, the e-governance applications must be written in local language of the people so that they may be able to use and take advantage of these applications. VI. CONCLUSION As the usage of Information Technology is growing very fast, Indian government is making many efforts to provide services to its citizens through e-governance. Although Indian government is spending a lot of money on e-governance projects but still these projects are not successful in all parts of India. Unawareness in people, local language of the people of a particular area, privacy for the personal data of the people etc. are main challenges which are responsible for the unsuccessful implementation of egovernance in India. Government must take some actions to make the people aware about the e-governance activities so that people may take full advantage of these activities and egovernance projects can be implemented successfully. The participation of people can play a vital role in implementation of e-governance in India. REFERENCES [1] Bhatnagar Subhash (2004), e-government from vision to implementation, sage publications, New Delhi. [2] CSR Prabhu E-Governance: Concepts and Case Studies, New Delhi, PHI Learning Private Limited [3] Dr. Sanjay Kumar Dwivedi, Ajay Kumar Bharti, E-Governance In India Problems And Acceptability, Journal of Theoretical and Applied Information Technology, pp37-43, P a g e

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