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Follow UsAs part of the recommendations for the Tenth Five-Year Plan (2002-07), the
working group on convergence and e-governance has ear-marked an investment of Rs
2,680 crore, out of which Rs 1,830 crore is for convergence and Rs 850 crore for
e-governance. This clearly shows that the Indian government acknowledges the
significance of IT in catalyzing economic development. Most successful economies
the world over have made significant investments in IT and integrated
development processes. The 1998 Task Force, set up to study the use of IT in
governance, has suggested a number of key measures.
While implementing any policy, the major concern most times is financial. But
these days there is no dearth of investment funds in IT systems. In 2000-01
alone, government expenditure on IT was $556 million. Interestingly, only 3% of
the total IT budget allotted to central and state government departments have
been used. Though the government is encouraging e-governance initiatives, most
funds are being spent on junk buying. There is, therefore, a big divide between
the grand vision of e-governance and its actual implementation.
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Uneven progress
An overview of e-governance shows that progress has been uneven, as there is
lack of commitment to translate policy into reality. E-governance is widely
varied in computerization rate and the actual use of IT-enabled applications
within and outside the government. In spite of sustained efforts, the entire
government machinery, especially to States is not available for computerization.
Some of the state governments like Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Madhya Pradesh
have made significant progress, whereas some others have lagged behind, for
various reasons.
It is evident that most adopters are experiencing faster growth because of an
early mover advantage. Because of this disparity in adoption, a growing digital
divide is observed not only from region to region, but also between departments
of the same government. Though an agenda has been devised to keep such records,
there is no data available of the country’s level of IT deployment by various
governments.
The mid-term appraisal of the Ninth Plan and proposed paper for the Tenth
Five-Year plan commented on the deterioration of e-governance processes. It
mentions that though good governance is being considered an important tool, the
methods employed for achieving it remains doubtful. Most systems in the
government are oblivious to the demands of the citizens. Discretion at all
level, lack of transparency and cumbersome record management has made the system
totally user-unfriendly.
Indian Railways leads the success march
If we take stock of all e-governance initiatives kicked off so far, there
are few success stories. One very successful IT implementation is the passenger
reservation system by Indian Railways. There’s perhaps no other case where we
can talk about e-governance on such a large and productive scale.
Among various agencies involved in facilitating e-governance, National
Informatics Center (NIC) has been very instrumental. It developed and
implemented applications for the central and state governments. For instance, it
designed Gyandoot for the Dhar district of Madhya Pradesh, which was eventful in
taking IT to the rural areas. This model was thereafter replicated by other
states like Haryana, Himachal Pradesh and Rajasthan. It is not only
cost-effective model but also creates employment for the rural youth.
For a direct interaction between citizens and the government, a simple yet
effective tool called Fast Reliable Instantaneous Delivery of Services (FRIENDS)
was implemented in Kerala. Citizens can make utilities and other payments like
property and road taxes at a FRIENDS center instead of queuing in front of
offices. Andhra Pradesh on the other hand, has implemented a complete
reengineering of government systems. Gujarat implemented the use of smart chip
driving licenses for its transport department. At the national level,
nationalized banks have by and large achieved their objective of computerizing
70% of their business.
Mindset: The biggest roadblock
Despite few successful projects, the objective of e-governance has not been
achieved as yet. More than infrastructure constraints, the existing mindset and
work culture in government departments are posing to be the biggest threat. The
culture of non-transparency, hierarchy and corruption are interrupting
e-governance. Public servants have been experiencing a sense of power by keeping
away information from citizens. Another impediment is in the method of paper
based migration to IT applications. Since an organization’s domain knowledge
is not complemented with an IT knowledge, they is often lack of effort in
combining the two. Even well known IT companies has not been able to implement
software projects successfully for the government. The two main reasons being,
lack of proper sense of direction (particularly in the case of frequent policy
changes) and non-involvement of end-users during the process. A number of other
factors are lack of IT awareness among decision-makers, poor management of
knowledge and human resources, non-compatibility between IT projects and
business processes, poor risk management, incorrect choice of technology and
over-ambitious projects.
Rampant corruption also prevent the use of IT even after it is deployed, as
processes and functions become more transparent. Interestingly in the Customs
department, a loophole in the IT system has been found. Supposing a bill on
import goods or any such document has to be processed or fed into the system for
customs clearance. The custom officials enter field queries into the IT system
to the extent that the entire Customs system hangs. They then use this as excuse
to earn a good sum from those who would pay them to expedite the entire
processing.
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Apparently the two most important characteristics needed to leverage
e-governance are a fair amount of imagination and great levels of commitment.
One look at Media Lab Asia tells us why. This initiative between MIT Labs and
the IT ministry of India, where Rs 65 crore was poured in, is being criticized
for lack of new ideas. MIT officials defended by saying that there are far too
many ideas but are consistently in short funds. Therefore this throws a glaring
light to the fact the government must pay due caution to investments and ensure
that they bring required results.
Besides work culture issues, disparity abounds in education levels and
technology orientation across the country. Southern states of Kerala, Tamil Nadu,
Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh with higher literacy levels have been active in
implementing IT. This is a sharp contrast to Northern States, where such
initiatives lag behind.
Action Plan
The Ministry of Information Technology formulated a program, ‘IT for
masses, for implementing it under the 10th Plan, and based on the
recommendations of the Working Group. It proposes to set up MCACs
(Multifunctional Converged Applications Community Centres) at the Panchayat
level in order to derive the benefits from converged applications like tele-education,
tele-medicine and Internet access and to people in all parts of the country.
MCACs, besides above objectives, would also address other requirements such as
adult literacy, create awareness on social issues, education etc, vocational
training and employment generation for rural people. The 10th Plan suggests to
launch a series of pilot projects in these areas with a view to replicate these
in the country. In the tenth five year plan a sum of Rs 700crore is recommended
for about1000 such community centers across the country. During the Ninth Plan,
Ministry of Information Technology had already initiated Community Information
Centres (CICs) in North-East States.
The Plan also advises the government to concentrate on making information
available to the citizens. The objective is to bring total transparency in its
functioning. To start with the government can provide the information about its
various plans for poverty alleviation, employment generation, etc. and the
citizens who have been benefited by it.
All the application forms shall also be made available to the citizens as
part of the e-governance. The efforts made by leaders like Ashok Gehlot in
Rajasthan and Anna Hazare in Maharashtra to make right of information a major
issue shows how if the quality of governance has to improve, right to
information is a must. IT can be used to make this citizen’s right to
information more meaningful by making it easily available to the public.
Although the government has laid the requisite policy on paper and has even
allocated funds, the real impact of these initiatives is yet to be felt. In the
long term, it is important to make these projects sustainable because they
cannot be funded indefinitely from the Union Budget. These projects can be taken
up as centrally sponsored schemes with active participation of state
governments, universities, non-governmental organizations and private players.
Initially, e-governance may require champions in the bureaucracy and the
political leadership. But implementing agencies should look for those killer
applications and demonstrable benefits to the people so that e-governance
develops its own momentum. The benefits must themselves be so tangible and
persuasive that even in a country full of illiterate people the advantages will
outweigh the objections.
TEAM DQ
What are the Big Boys Doing? Some Case Studies:
Andhra Pradesh
Andhra Pradesh is undoubtedly among the forerunners when it comes to
e-governance. The best known initiatives is APSWAN (Andhra Pradesh State Wide
Area Network), a state-wide network for voice, data and video communication,
which is the basic information highway for improving government-citizen and
government-industry interface.
Gujarat
The state government introduced a smart card-based driving license project
in each of the 22 Regional Transport Offices (RTOs) of Gujarat. The government
has also implemented a state-wide WAN (Wide Area Network) project that connects
its various office complexes and corporations and supports services like voice,
data and video traffic. Gujarat’s State Road Transport Department’s
computerized check posts project seems to have reduced corruption and has
enhanced revenue earnings.
Karnataka
Another IT-oriented state, Karnataka has embarked upon an ambitious e-governance
programme to make its citizen interface (especially in revenue, land
registration and civic utilities) more transparent and friendly. The most
commendable work has been done by the Department of Treasuries, which completed
the installation of 250 VSATs to capture every single transaction at all
district and taluk treasuries.
Tamil Nadu
In keeping with its commitment to the growth of IT, the government of Tamil Nadu
has pioneered several initiatives. It was among the first states in India to
announce an IT Policy and establish a separate IT department. It has implemented
a number of projects to enable citizen-government interaction and has formulated
a policy for the use of the public right of way for laying optic fibre cables to
create statewide area networks.
Kerala
As part of implementing the best practices of other states, the CARD project
of Andhra Pradesh has been adapted in the registration department. Five
sub-registrar’s offices in Thiruvanthapuram district are being computerized. A
successful model evolved in the office of the Controller of Entrance
Examinations, which is fully computerized and equipped with software developed
to facilitate the on-line admissions.
Madhya Pradesh
The state is known for pioneering the Gyandoot project for masses. Set up in
remote towns, it is a host to a lot of information useful to the common man–local
news, prices of agricultural produce, land records, caste certificates and
certificates pertaining to issues like births and deaths, etc. Alongside these
networks, more than two dozen information centers or Soochnalayas have been set
up.