E-GOVERNANCE: In Search of a Common Identity

The challenge before the IT industry in India is to pass the
benefits of IT to the average Indian citizen. We are looking at the substantial
percentage of the one billion Indians who have to struggle every day for
amenities, especially as they interact with the government.

One cannot blame the government. The increasing services that
it has been taking upon itself since independence coupled with the sheer
increase in urbanization and population have eroded the benefits of the small
and piece meal governance initiatives. Neither have corruption, the license raj
and nepotism helped to alleviate the hardships that citizens go through, thus
adding to their woes.

India is uniquely positioned as it does not have a lot of
legacy systems to migrate from or to make redundant. Precious resources, both
monetary and human, are not wasted when deploying IT systems in India using
concurrent tools, technologies and methodologies.

This situation allows India to leapfrog a few steps of
technology and come into the new, Internet world. In fact, the Internet comes
across as the only way to address problems of the one billion people in India.
If one thinks of other routes, the cost of the projects would be prohibitive,
leading to sure failures.

Further, IT deployment in the government is rudimentary.
Government departments are islands of information, where, through the individual
initiatives of a handful of young and dynamic bureaucrats, some piece meal
systems have been put in place. Most of these have been of the Cobol, dBase era
(1970s). Often, one comes across computers installed in the departments, only
for printing reports, which the officers require from time to time. IT has not
been used for analytical or business intelligence purposes.

Solutions

What is required is to build a common IT vision and develop
an IT road map. Instead of each citizen-facing government entity spending on
resources to build their own islands of information, a consolidated approach
needs to be adopted to develop a common database. And all these government
entities could leverage from a common IT repository. There are examples around
the world, especially in countries with a colonial background, where a single,
consolidated system is addressing multiple departmental interactions with their
citizens. Our systems are no different as most of the systems and practices laid
down by the British still work here. Some departments are making attempts toward
this and a lot of money is being saved. The citizen is starting to see a
seamless single face of the government, regardless of the department that he is
interacting with. This eliminates all usage of multiple identifiers that each
government department gives its citizens (We all have unique numbers for
electricity connection, telephone, water connection, gas, income tax, property
tax, passport, ration card, driving license.)

Even though we do not have any social security like many
other countries, a unique identifier could be used for a whole host of cross
functions as well as separate government-citizen interfaces. This could be
provided to the citizen in the form of a secure citizen card, similar to the
credit card.

The citizen card could be used to deliver government-citizen
interface activities. This would be unlike the way it is being done today–through
limited government-owned counters that run during fixed timings, that are
concentrated in a few geographical locations. These mean people go through
tedious processes. But the citizen card would allow an interface with the
government from street-side Internet kiosks, which would deliver citizen
services.

This would dramatically improve governance and, more
importantly, provide the ability to the government to reach out to the people,
at no extra cost to them. It would also give the people the convenience and ease
of interacting with the government.

Government action

Seeing drivers withdrawing money for their sahibs from ATMs
is a common phenomenon. And no one has given them any training, neither are they
literate. So the question is, how did it happen? The government must give a
choice to the people. It should provide optional channels to reach out to the
people and allow them to decide on which route to take. If it means that
providing convenience would come at a nominal cost to the citizens, let them be
given the option. Let them pay a small fee and save the time and money that they
are spending today to get such services through the traditional channels of
governance. Or, let them interact with the government in the traditional way.
Unless the citizens have a choice, they are left with no option but to go
through the traditional route. Here, "market forces" will determine
the levels of acceptability of the alternative channels of service. This would
depend upon real-value propositions from these channels to the people. For 50
years we have had a few people deciding on what is right and what is wrong for
the people of India. We have seen where we are in terms of the operating
environment of an average citizen getting government services.

What is required today is a fast decision-making government
engine. It is in its own interest to involve large, stable, IT providers as
partners who bring with them IT project roll-out capabilities. They can also
bring in successful and stable IT deployment, which will make life a lot simpler
for the citizen, reduce costs for the government and help reduce fraud or
corruption. These three objectives being met, India will truly stand tall as a
country not as one which provides skilled IT resources for the rest of the world
to benefit from but one which brings the true benefits of IT to the common man
in India. Only time will tell where we go from here.

TANMOY
CHAKRABARTY is vice president, EDS India