KOLKATA SUMMIT: Ensure E-Government Before E-Governance

The four-city Dataquest e-governance Summit 2005 kicked off in Kolkata on 21
Feb 2005. At the Kolkata summit the panelists deliberated on the many issues of
'how to take e-governance in India beyond the pilot stage': Challenges on
the road to e-governance; cost; open source; and inter-state cooperation for
synergy. The summit saw a riot of emotions as panelists started to discuss
problems inherent in the Indian e-governance processes. The forum stressed on
the need for strong political support, judicious choice of projects,
re-engineering of old government processes, and more cross-departmental
integration. Other issues like manpower training and crisis of vernacular
content also came up for discussion.

The panel represented an array of stakeholders in an e-governance project-the
organizations leading the projects, the suppliers and facilitators, the public
and the NGOs. While Ibrahim Ahmad editor—Dataquest, Voice & Data moderated
the discussion, the panelists (from left to right) included Ravi Kant, Special
Secretary-IT, West Bengal; Dr SK Mitra, MD, WEBEL; Avinash Chaurasia, founder
president, Force 3 (NGO); Sivarama Krishnan, associate director, PwC; Milon
Chakrobarty, MD, Syntech Informatics; and Dr Subir Roy, state informatics
officer, NIC (West Bengal).

Challenges to e-governance in India 

Ravi Kant: The most important factor for making e-governance really
succeed in the country is buying political commitment. The political will is of
extreme significance. If politicians are not actively involved, targets would
never be achieved. Another critical area of concern is re-engineering of old
processes. Sometimes, departments create a Web site and don't even update it.
There is a higher level of e-governance involved when transactions are put on
the network. After the processes are put right, the people have to be moved. The
hierarchy in the organization has to accept the changes. It is only once the
people are ready that e-governance can actualy happen. We have to move on bit by
bit. An e-government has to be set up before stepping towards e-governance.

Avinash Chaurasia: I would like to define two words that are used
interchangeably: one, 'e-governance' and the other, 'e-government.'
E-government is more about the efficiency enhancement in government and
e-governance, which focuses on services to people, is a subset of it. If these
projects translate into administrative efficiency, it will translate into
immense amount of savings, and that should be the acid test for any kind of
e-governance to happen. There is no point in charging a poor citizen who can't
even afford to pay.

Dr SK Mitra: E-governance has two parts-first, getting the processes
right in the government departments, also called the back office. Technology is
never an issue with projects because it is basically content which drives value.
The second part is the public face of e-governance and if projects, which create
value and render useful services are judiciously chosen, they become successful.
Recently, we have rolled out a project that links all the 472 police stations in
West Bengal. This would help in tracking crime, deployment of police force and
for filing public complaints. This has been such a runaway success because the
police force feels that it is being of help.

Dr Subir Roy: NIC has thought about a common environment for
e-governance applications in the states. There are a lot of challenges-human
infrastructure, dearth of people etc. Resource centers can be developed for
training the local population in computers. If gram panchayat pradhans are given
responsibilities, I am pretty sure e-centers in West Bengal would see the light
of day. Another important challenge is the need for a legal infrastructure.
After registration, we still have to produce a handwritten certificate because
that is an important rule. So unless the law is changed, things still stay
tardy.

Milon Chakrobarty: I am facing a lot of problems for the operational
training of users. They don't know how to use the systems and, consequently,
our engineers also face problems. Despite maintaining a 24-hour call center in
the project for the police stations, their connectivity and service maintenance
is difficult. We are facing a big problem for operational training, since 60-70%
people basically don't know how to handle the PC.

Ravi Kant: The National e-governance Action Plan (NEGAP) is already
publicized, and very soon, we will have a huge database on what is happening in
the respective states throughout the country. For the convergence of departments
and applications, a datacenter is needed at NIC. Again, there are high technical
inter-operability issues; some standards have to be set in. The good news is
that the policy on data center is also coming. I find that BSNL as a service
provider has a great role to play because they have thousands of kilometers of
fiber already spread to all the blocks which should be exploited to enable
e-governance.

Dr SK Mitra: Everybody is concentrating on services and technology,
while nobody is talking about content-the single largest issue. If you want to
drive value, unless you create a body that is responsible for content, the
project will die its death because either the content has not been created
properly to drive value or there is nobody to keep that content updated. In this
context, I must emphasize the crucial need for vernacular-based content.

Sivarama Krishnan: In seven years, a complete revolution at the stock
exchange has happened since the introduction of DMAT. It has resulted in
controlling the amount of black money that was going into the stock market.
Every transaction is now scrutinized. What we are exploiting today is only 20%;
the rest 80% is an unutilized reservoir, which is available to the government to
bring in more benefits to the citizen, than just off the desk service. If the
departments can improve their decision-making and use appropriate distribution
channels, a lot can be achieved. 

Jasmin Kaur