The Indian eGovernance Progress Card Story

e-Governance: Progress all around

IT spending by the Indian government increased 30 percent to reach Rs 6,934 crore in 2005-06. Some interesting projects are getting underway as part of the national e-governance plan. e-Governance as a phenomenon is undoubtedly on every IT vendor’s radar. By Faiz Askari



With the country set to grow at about nine percent in the coming years, bottlenecks in terms of regulations and delays associated with dealing with public agencies are increasingly in the spotlight. e-Governance has become synonymous with revamping public service delivery of services ranging from those targeted at the average citizen to those of interest to business and industry. To a large extent, the expectations from the industry and the citizen revolve around service delivery within pre refined time frames, doing away with excessive documentation, simplifying procedures, creating a single window or single point of contact for interfacing with multiple government agencies, and reducing interfaces with regulatory agencies with concomitant reduction in the scope for corruption.

R Chandrashekhar, Additional Secretary, Department of IT, Government of India says, “A sizeable number of successful pilots and some cases of full scale rollout of e-Governance projects in certain sectors have fuelled the imagination of the industry and the public with regard to the potential of e-Governance.”

Under pressure from the people to improve the delivery system, there is a sense of urgency even within the government to put appropriate systems for e-Governance in place. Chandrashekhar says, “In addition to the demand placed for improved delivery of services, the demands placed on the State with respect to enforcement and national security have also increased steeply over the last few years. A robust system for data analysis and decision-making are vital for combating money laundering, commercial frauds and threats to national security. On the other hand, a comprehensive and accurate citizens’ database is critical for ensuring that the benefits of various poverty alleviation and development schemes reach the deprived sections of the population with reduced leakage and increased accountability.”

The National e-Governance Plan, approved by Cabinet in May 2006, is a programme that weaves together 27 Mission Mode Projects and eight infrastructure and other support components that collectively address some of these demands of the business, citizens and the government.

The triple PPP model

Giving an insight into the importance of the public private partnership in taking e-Governance applications to the masses, Aruna Sunderajan, CEO, Community Service Centres says, “There is an immediate need for a public access network, I see this as one of the major challenges. ICT will be imperative in enabling rural and underserved communities through access to knowledge services.”

While highlighting the change in the government’s approach towards work, Sunderajan says, “India is facing an increased economic and social disparity. Even the government changed its focus on development this year, citing the example of the Planning Commission’s goal of ‘faster and more inclusive growth’. By leveraging ICT as a tool, the industry can play an instrumental role in the sustainable development of the nation through e-Governance.”

Industry perspective

From the IT industry perspective, the government segment has emerged as the fourth largest customer vertical after BFSI, telecom and manufacturing.

Chandrashekhar says, “The increased spends on e-Governance in the recent past have largely been limited to purchase of hardware and networking products and off-the-shelf system software. The coming three to four years are likely to see a shift towards delivery of e-Governance services. The IT industry will need to develop domain expertise in e-Governance in general along with specific aspects of project execution of relevance to the delivery of public services and maintenance of mission critical government systems.” With the emphasis of National e-Governance Plan on delivering services, adherence to committed service levels, and process reengineering, change management and capacity building within the government, there is considerable growth potential in the area of consulting for e-Governance.

George Paul executive vice president at HCL says, “India’s march towards adoption of e-Governance has been both steady and encouraging. We are happy to acknowledge the widespread realisation, across levels of departments in governments at the centre and state levels of the benefits of IT adoption in delivering better and efficient governance to the citizens.”

Read Full story: http://www.expresscomputeronline.com/20070409/market01.shtml