E-Governance and India

E-Governance for Good Governance : Emerging Technology and New Opportunities

E-Governance is the public sector’s use of information and communication technologies with the aim of improving information and service delivery, encouraging citizen participation in the decision-making process and making government more accountable, transparent and effective.

Over the years, a large number of initiatives have been undertaken by various State Governments and Central Ministries to usher in an era of e-Governance. Sustained efforts have been made at multiple levels to improve the delivery of public services and simplify the process of accessing them.

E-Governance in India has steadily evolved from computerization of Government Departments to initiatives that encapsulate the finer points of Governance, such as citizen centricity, service orientation and transparency. Lessons from previous e-Governance initiatives have played an important role in shaping the progressive e-Governance strategy of the country. Due consideration has been taken of the notion that to speed up e-Governance implementation across the various arms of Government at National, State, and Local levels, a programme approach needs to be adopted, guided by common vision and strategy. This approach has the potential of enabling huge savings in costs through sharing of core and support infrastructure, enabling interoperability through standards, and of presenting a seamless view of Government to citizens.

Every branch of human life has been impacted decisively by Information Technology with both the Central and State Governments making every effort to introduce e-governance, thus ensuring efficiency, promptness, transparency and better citizen friendly interface.

Every department at the centre and every state is making efforts to make the life of the citizens less cumbersome by best utilizing the tools of information technology.

Appreciable progress has been made in land ,vehicles registration departments, railways and utility bills payment centers. The union department of Information Technology is creating a national portal encompassing information on different services extended by the Central and State Governments. This is part of the IT initiative being undertaken by the Government with a view to providing convenience, efficiency, transparency and reliability in the services.

Apart from providing government services, the common service centers could cater to purposes like launching AIDS awareness poster campaign in villages.

Among the departments or undertakings of the Central Government, the Railways have made a considerable headway in e-governance and have several new proposals on the anvil. They are in touch with the banks for utilizing their counters to issue tickets.

The Railways are planning to install 5,000 ATMs and an equal number of vending machines at the banks for Railway counters, numbering over one lakh across the country. Under the proposed scheme, the ATM would be connected with ticket counters, called ‘electronic dispensing counters’, from where tickets could be issued. The Railways are also introducing e-ticketing. One could travel by presenting one’s identity card or ration card.

Among the States, the e-pension project of Himachal Pradesh has some kudos for its innovative operations. Assam government is proud of its ‘Dharitree’, one of the first web-technology-based land records computerization projects of the country. Haryana is also known for its Dynamic Integration of Property Registration and Land Records Administration (HALRIS). Andhra Pradesh has launched a project on site suitability for water harvesting structure in reserve forests. Arunachal Pradesh in the month of March 2013 became the first state to introduce e-GPF or electronic GPF.Lokvani Project of Sitapur Collectorate in Uttar Pradesh is known for its outstanding performance in service delivery. The Jharkhand Government has introduced the computerization and networking of the transport department called “Vahan”. Rajasthan has munched “Aarakshi” — the online FIR system. In Kerala two gram panchayats have been fully computerized The Public Works Department is ready to use satellite imagery for road mapping. The Kerala Government is all set to implement a Treasury Information Management (TRIM) system that is aimed at making the government treasuries more citizen friendly. Rural multipurpose ICT centers of AISECT, Bhopal have earned reputation in exemplary leadership and ICT achievement.In Andhra Pradesh Government had  launched online service Parishkaram for entrepreneurs on April 1,2013.

The MCA 21 project, envisaging electronic filing of documents and paperless administration, pertains to the Registrar of Companies offices. It is already in operation in a few cities in Tamil Nadu and will soon cover the entire country. There is a good public private partnership between the Ministry of Company Affairs and the Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) in all Registrar of Companies (RoC) offices across the country to facilitate easy stabilization of e-filing of documents under company law.

Inspection of any document relating to a company allowed under company law can now be done online from anywhere on Payment of the prescribed fee. In a highly inter-dependent world, it should be possible to achieve inter-operability of e-governance projects if the citizens are to get the benefit of information technology in day-to-day life. In other words, every IT project should have a clear government to government interface before a meaningful government to citizen solution can be implemented. The National Informatics Centre (NIC) has already started work in this direction.

In conclusion, through e-media using IT technologies has enabled very efficient, transparent and fast decision making process. The IT infrastructure has made direct participation of a common man in the Government matters with access to all the information he needs .E-governance is the ideal government system of the modern age and slowly, but steadily, e-governance is percolating down to the bottom, enabling citizens to have a better and friendly rapport with the government, thereby ensuring a hassle-free life.