On IT and Administrative Reforms

Administration involves dealing with large number of people in a
mass. It also requires keeping meticulous records to ensure that there is
transparency in the process of decision-making and more important information is
retrieved to check precedents so that no injustice is done in handling two cases
of the same type. It is said that justice must not only be done but must seen
to be done. In the process of making the process of justice in
administration visible, keeping of records and timely information retrieval
become very important.

IT, which is a happy marriage of computers and communications,
is designed to achieve these very purposes. The general complaints against
public administration are delay, inefficiency and corruption. Delays and
inefficiency provide a rich environment for promoting corruption. Any effort at
administrative reforms involves removing these commonly perceived defects of
administration, and bring greater speed and transparency in the system. So that
the satisfaction of the citizens can be enhanced and there could be greater
productivity, efficiency and transparency in administration.

Then why is it that IT has not been extensively used in
administrative reforms? The main reason for that is the diametrically opposite
cultures of IT and public administration. IT thrives on speed, IT revels in
transparency and IT grows on accessibility. The culture of public
administration, especially in our country, unfortunately, has grown in a culture
of secrecy, lack of easy accessibility and transparency. It is this dissonance
in culture that delayed the introduction of IT in administration. Fortunately,
the pervasive impact of IT in the global economy is having its osmotic effect on
public administration. In the last 50 years we have seen the increasing impact
of IT in public administration and in this process IT contributing to
administrative reforms. Perhaps the best example of IT contributing not only to
reforms but also greater efficiency, productivity, transparency and comfort to
citizens is the computerization of the railway passenger reservation system. The
extensive use of IT, including electronic voting machines under the vigilant eye
of the Election Commission, has brought a high degree of transparency and
reduction in malpractices in the festivals of democracy in the form of elections
which we celebrate every five years, if not more frequently.

The National Stock Exchange fortunately began on the right foot
by opting for the use of satellite communication and IT. It has emerged today,
in a very short time, as one of the cleanest and biggest stock exchanges in the
world-next only to the New York Stock Exchange and NASSDAQ.

While these are the outstanding examples, many state governments
have also initiated action to move towards the era of e-Governance, from the
Nineties, by extensively using information technology in many departments, which
have high human interface with citizens.

Nevertheless, all these efforts have highlighted a simple fact.
There is no point in merely using computers to replicate the process which are
being done manually. While this may result in speed, mere blind computerization
without looking into processes and eliminating physically the scope for
corruption leads only to sub-optimal results. The greater the extent to which
the administrative processes are thought and reengineered by reducing the
element of human discretion and the need for face-to-face interaction with the
citizen, greater is the scope for checking corruption.

The challenges of a multi speed India can be overcome by using
IT as a leveler. That is our hope!