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N ITS journey toimprove serv icesfo r c i t i zens , t he

g o v e r n m e n t h a sundertaken severalsuccessful e-governance initiativessuch as MCA21 (to improve thespeed and certainty in the delivery ofthe services of Ministry of CompanyAffairs), online submission ofincome tax returns, Passport SevaKendra (PSK), etc. Also, to roll outall the planned 1,100 e-governanceservices by 2014, the government

is making huge investment up toRs 40,000 crore. This investmentwill cover the cost of all kinds ofhardware and software that will berequired for capacity building.

At your service or Mee Seva isGovernment of Andhra Pradeshswindow to its citizens. Nearly6,000 Mee Seva Counters areservicing over 50,000 requests

per day, whi ch are geared tohandle 100,000 transactions aday. It has converged all Nationale-Governance Programme (NeGP)initiatives in rendering G2Cservices in a fast and secure way

thus ended the tyranny of inksignatures. Back-end applicationsinteract with database and pull

E-Governance: Need for a bottom-up approach

GOOD GOVERNANCE

Sameer Kochhar

POINT OF VIEW

Achieving successin e-governance requires active partnerships

between government, citizens

and the private sector

out information and front-endapplication receives the citizensrequest and communicates with

departmental application thereforegives a single view of the citizen.It involves departments l ikerevenue, registration, municipaladministration, education and otherservice delivery channels.

Reduction in cost, increase instorage, flexibility, informationaccess from anywhere and noworries about keeping software up

to date are but few considerationsthat encouraged Governmentof Maharashtra to pioneer aMahaGov Cloud. Implementedin State Data Centre, it is beingused by departments for websiteand application hosting. Out of 42government departments, 25 arealready on the cloud that hosts 70different applications. Using featureof thin provision of storage andmemory, resources are ef cientlyutilized and allocated as per therequirement and performance.It is helping the SDC team tomanage planned maintenancewithout requiring any downtime ofthe application, thus has increased

procedural ef ciencies.

The author is Chairman, Skoch Group.

O

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where permanent assets are created.The roads are being developedin a cluster approach across 50districts in Madhya Pradesh. Onlinemonitoring, contractor details,expenditure and progress detailsare available on a real time basis.The state government has alsostarted the scheme for recoveryof bank NPA against government-sponsored employment oriented,

poverty alleviation and social lydesirable schemes. Recovery of

bank overdues is made againstRevenue Recovery Certificatesled by banks as arrears of landrevenue. Web based BRISC software

provides real time information onrecoveries to stakeholders, i.e.,Tehsil, Bank Branch, Nodal DistrictBranch, Lead District Manager,and District Collector. OnlinePatwari Exam has removed manualintervention resulting in hugesavings in time and improvement inef ciency. Over 100,000 candidateshave applied so far, out of which

80,932 candidates were tested.The entire MIS is available online.Further, 110 of its cities are readywith City Development Plans whileCDPs of 270 municipalities are

being prepared. All the CDPs areavailable online.

The importance of adopting a bot toms-up approach cannot beemphasised enough. Reaching

the last mile is an issue across alldevelopment programmes whetherit is nancial inclusion, delivery ofhealth services or e-governance. Inthis context, one needs to speed upthe e-District project, for instance.Envisaged as Mission Mode Projectunder the National e-GovernancePlan, it is proceeding at a slow

pace, in different directions andhardly qualifies for a national

endeavour. Districts are the de factofront-end of government wheremost government-to-consumer orG2C interaction takes place. Thee-District project was conceptualisedto improve this experience andenhance the efficiencies of thevarious departments at the district-level to enable seamless servicedelivery to the citizen. Front-endsunder the scheme, in the form ofcitizen facilitation centres, areenvisioned to be built at District-,Tehsil-, Sub-division- and Block-levels. Village-level front-endswould be established throughCommon Services Centres (CSCs)

for delivery of services.Implementation of an ef cient

electronic work ow system for theDistrict Administration is at theheart of e-District. This coupledwith challenging terrain such as inAssam makes it doubly dif cult.Admittedly, AMTRON took upthe challenge and connected tendepartments in two districts

Goalpara and Sonitpur with the aimto increase accountability, ef ciencyand transparency in operations suchthat public is bene ted to maximumextent possible. Citizens can nowreceive digitally signed documents.The format of Application Formshas been standardized which can beused by all CSC/e-District Centresacross the state. All front-endof cers have been trained to deliversingle window services. The systemis designed to be process drivenrather than champion driven.

Despite NeGP, India still lacksa full- edged ICT framework forimplementation of e-governance.C o m p l e t e i m p l e m e n t a t i o nof e-governance will include

building technical hardware andsoftware infrastructure. It will

also include better and fasterconnectivity options. Newerconnectivity options will includefaster broadband connections andfaster wireless networks suchas 3G and 4G. There is littleargument to the fact that cellular

phones based on various wirelesstechnologies have revolutionisedtelecommunication in India. Butthese cellular technologies havenot been sufficiently applied todeliver broadband data connectivityto households in rural area due tohigh both cost and complexity. Itis now learnt that all the 250,000Panchayats in the country will

have broadband connectivity by Nove mbe r 201 3. Ti ll you areconnected, how can one even

presume to deliver e-governance.

Given that we are now in anera where technology providesmuch greater inter-operabilitythan before and standards basedintegration is far more realisticwe can look at a more structured

approach going forward. Successfuldelivery of e-governance must byde nition be led by the governmentitself. But private partners can helpgovernments by providing experttechnical support. IT initiativesin the government in India havelargely been on a piecemeal basischaracterized by a lack of visionthat has limited the resultant

benefits. The use of innovative public-private partnership modelshas been very limited and needs to

be reviewed.

Worldwide, PPPs are oftenessential to the ef cient, speedyand sustainable design and deliveryof e-government services and

programmes . E-governmentinitiatives in developing countriesare constrained by lack of nancial

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resources, low level of skills andcapacity within governments, andthe absence of incentive structuresfor rewarding performance andthe case in India seems to be nodifferent. PPPs in e-governmentcan help overcome many of theseconstraints, while at the same timeincreasing opportunities for the

private sector.

PPP can assume a wide spectrumof shapes like, BOO, BOOT (Build-Own-Operate-Transfer), BOTfor specified periods -otherwisecalled concession contracts, jointventures, private nance initiative(PFI), partial privatisation through

partnering with strategic investoretc. The idea is to arrive at theright combination of public sectoraccountability with private sectorefficiencies and to also to sharethe risk correspondingly. Tomitigate risk and ensure qualityand performance levels of the

private sectors, it is important toset standards. The Government

of India is currently working onstandards management and hasvarious drafts prepared relatingto inter-operability, technical andsecurity standards.

Experiences across the globeshow that IT is one of the areaswhich is eminently suited for PPP especially, in areas such as drivinglicenses, utility bill collections,management of land records

etc. Investments in informationtechnology by governments havean opportunity cost since thereare limited resources of money,time and attention. Investingthese in IT would explicit lydeny such investments in otherdevelopment areas like provisionof water, sanitation, health, shelter,

production technology and skillsdevelopment. Investments ininformation technology havetherefore to be made verystrategically by governments. TheGovernment of Andhra Pradesh,for instance, has focused itsenergies on creation of content anddigitisation of databases so thattransaction based services becomeattractive for private sector players.For example, in the case of the

TWINS project after a successfuldemonstration of the pilot, privatesector partners have been involvedto provide services to citizens. Inthe case of infrastructure creation,

government has leveraged assetslike land for attracting privatesector investments to set upfacilities like Hitec City. Similarly,the government has used the

provision of a royalty free right of

way for attracting investments intosetting up high-speed optical brenetworks. The possible usage ofsuch networks for e-governmentapplications in the future has inturn enhanced their commercialviability.

A c h i e v i n g s u c c e s s i ne-governance requires active

partnerships between government,

citizens and the private sector.The e-governance process needscontinuous input and feedbackfrom the `customers thecitizens, resident, businesses andof cials who use electronic publicservices. Their voices and ideasfrom the grassroots are essential tomaking e-governance work. Hencee-governance has to be a shared

vision with all the stakeholders government and non-government

participating in de ning this vision.q

(E-mail: info@skoch.in)

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