Emerging Challenges of e-Citizenship

e-Citizen, e-Rights and e-Duties

Citizens, usually under the constitution of a country, have rights and
duties. The Constitution of India (1950), for example, provides for fundamental
rights (1950) and fundamental duties (1977) for Indian citizens. The emergence
of e-governance worldwide has given rise to e-rights, for example, right to
access public services on the Internet and e-duties, for example, not to send
spam/unsolicited e-mails. These e-rights and e-duties are rights and duties of
an e-citizen in cyberspace and an altogether new phenomenon. Appropriate
constitutional amendments are required for providing e-rights and e-duties for
e-citizens, preferably by adding a new chapter in the Indian Constitution, to
respond to this new development.

e-Citizen and Right to e-governance

A characteristic feature of fundamental rights is that they are justifiable
(that is, they can be enforced in a court of law). Thus, they are legally
binding upon the state. No such provision, however, exists for the fundamental
duties with the result that the state cannot legally enforce them. The right to
information (2005), which is not a fundamental right under the Indian
Constitution, is made available through a separate enactmentthe Right to
Information (RTI) Act, 2005. There is a need to provide a right to e-governance
to citizens on the lines of Right to Information so that the valuable resource
of e-governance is not frittered away.

e-Citizen and e-Right for e-Service

Section 9 of the Indian Information Technology Act 2000, specifically denies
the e-right of insistence on acceptance of a document in electronic form. This
is a regressive step for promotion of e-governance. This provision only absolves
the state of its responsibility to provide e-services to e-citizens, and that
too without any time limit, which is unacceptable in the present digital era.
Thus, this provision is against the interests of e-citizens as well as against
the interests of e-government development and deserves to be deleted altogether
in the proposed amendments to the Act under consideration of Department of
Information Technology.

e-Citizen and RTI

India has enacted Right to Information (RTI) Act which came into force in
October 2005. Earlier, states like Tamil Nadu (1997), Goa (1997), Rajasthan
(2000), Delhi (2001), Maharashtra (2002), Assam (2002), Madhya Pradesh (2003)
and Jammu and Kashmir (2004) had legislated their own enactments showing that
states, on their part too, were keen to empower citizens to obtain information
from public authorities. Variously hailed as a historic legislation and a
milestone in Indian democracy, the RTI Act empowers citizens to obtain
information directly from the government. e-Governance is required to be
integrated with the RTI Act so that the two can mutually re-enforce each other.

e-Citizen and e-Citizen Charter

The Dutch e-Citizen Charter consists of ten quality requirements for a new
relationship between citizen and government (Poelmans 2007). According to the
website, The charter has been adopted as a quality standard on all levels of
Dutch government and will also be used as the basis for the measurement of
citizen satisfaction. (Citizenlink n.d.). The quality requirements of the Dutch
e-Citizen Charter are: 1. Choice of Channel 2. Transparent Public Sector 3.
Overview of Rights and Duties 4. Personalized Information 5. Convenient Services
6. Comprehensive Procedures 7. Trust and Reliability 8. Considerate
Administration 9. Accountability and Benchmarking 10. Involvement and
Empowerment (ibid.). We too need an e-citizen charter.

e-Citizen and e-Petitions

Britain has taken a unique lead by launching an e-petition website,
e-petitions, in November 2006. The service allows a UK citizen to create a
petition and to collect signatures via the website. No wonder the site has
proved to be highly popular. Up to November 13, 2007, over 29,000 petitions have
been submitted, of which over 8,500 are currently live and available for
signing, over 6,000 have finished and 14,601 have been rejected outright. The
website, designed in collaboration with a non-partisan organization, mySociety,
is based on open source. Thus, other organizations can also build similar sites
under appropriate General Public License (GPL). Similar portals should be set up
in India for Prime Ministers Office (PMO) and Chief Ministers Offices (CMOs)
if the benefits of e-government are to reach the common man.

e-Engagement Tools for e-Citizens

The term citizen masks a great deal of variety based on criteria like
income, gender, etc. A typology of citizens needs to be developed so that
e-government could be fine-tuned to meet the specific requirements of each
category of citizens. At the same time it can enable us, by way of illustration,
to design appropriate e-engagement strategies, an essential requirement of
democracy in the twenty first century.

e-Citizen and Call Centers

A visit to a government office in India is still the most prevalent way to
access the public services for want of an alternative, despite the fact that
such visits are costly, time-consuming and inconvenient to the citizens.
However, as tele density goes up (it has shot up to 30.64% by end of September
2008), the need to provide telephonic public services to citizens has assumed
urgency. Setting up of call centers is one option. If one goes by the experience
of developed countries like United Kingdom, call centers have been quite
successful. For example, the National Audit Office in United Kingdom has
reported Departmental call centers have achieved levels of customer
satisfaction of around 89% cent and an average of 84% 20 seconds in 2001-02. (NAO
2002). There is thus a need for setting up call centers for public services.

e-Citizen and Website Standardization

While the Department of Information Technology, Ministry of Communications
and Information Technology, has already taken the initiative for standards and
architecture for e-governance applications (check http://egovstandards.gov.in/index_html),
there is urgent need to standardize the official websites providing public
services to citizens. Such a standardisation will include a standard format,
frequently asked questions (FAQs), a guide for using the website, an appropriate
search capacity by way of a special search engine, a blog maintained by the
officer in-charge of the website, a discussion group and a wiki for citizens,
and appropriate links to other relevant websites. Subsequently, the public
services must think of adopting ISO (International Organization for
Standardization) 10002:2004 standard for customer satisfaction.

e-Citizen and Grievance Redress Architecture

A very complex citizen grievance redress ecosystem has come into being in
India. Its examination shows that it consists of ten distinguishable strands: 1.
Administrative, 2. Recommendatory, 3. Legislative, 4. Standards, 5.
Anti-corruption, 6. Civil Society Organizations (CSOs), 7. Media, 8. Citizen
rights, 9. Legal, and 10. e-Government, which provide different channels for
grievance redress. Since these strands and their constituent parts are
free-floating and function independently of each other, they do not provide any
effective channel for redress of grievance to a citizen. Integration of
e-government with the citizen grievance architecture can help.

DC Mishra

The author is former chairman, Task Force for IT Policy for Delhi

maildqindia@cybermedia.co.in