‘Bihar dreams of becoming the top five e-governed states’

Whom would you like to give the maximum credit for winning the e-Readiness Award?

Timely action and proactive decision by the state government. The IT Department team has been the backbone to get e-Governance implemented in the state.

As an administrator/bureaucrat, what are the management practices you follow to ensure that you take all stakeholders along in the egovernance journey?

Since citizen is the most important stakeholder in the e-Governance journey therefore, the most important thing is enrichment and strengthening of vision which brings in citizen-centric transformation in delivery mechanism. With change in time and need, the government ecosystem needs to strengthen their capacity to keep it at pace.

What are the pitfalls that, in your opinion, should be avoided to make e-Governance successful?

E-governance is not exactly the translation of erstwhile procedures into the electronic mode, rather it also needs to transform our procedures, laws, and rules in order to make the citizen services available with ease , transparency and the comfort at the doorstep of the citizen.

The biggest mistake is creating e governance as technology-centric rather than citizen-centric.

Keeping at pace with technology so that latest technology is infused into system in batches and simultaneously taking out obsolete systems & maintain higher delivery supply chain running.

With almost similar running processes/system/methodology across various parts of the country a unified dove tailed approach may increase effectiveness of delivery rather than reinventing the wheel every time. One profound challenge in e-Governance scenario is not only the implementation but also the sustenance and the improvement in the longer run.

What are your expectations from the hardware, software and networking vendors? Any message or advice that you would like to extend?

Instead of vendors I would like to phrase them as business partners who compliment each other with trans-pollination of technology & knowledge. It is important that the government creates a right set of atmosphere for private partners and simultaneously the private partners need to provide solutions where in TCO is favorable to government than usual seller-vendor relationship.

What is your vision or dream with regard to e-Governance for your state?

The Bihar government has a vision, of becoming one of the top five e-governed, ITenabled, e-literate states in the country. We have taken a number of measures to introduce ICT and related tools in the delivery of government services to the citizens, with a focus on reaching the most disadvantaged population.

In order to realise this vision, department of IT has been working through many departments in the government to make their citizen-centric services e-enabled and also simultaneously increasing the network penetration both horizontally and vertically.