Lovneesh Chanana, Associate Director – Government Advisory at Ernst & Young, talked about how the bill could evolve as a platform and its impact on e-governance in India. “This bill provides significant answers in terms of the delivery of services,” he said.
All public services will be provided in electronic mode in the next five years. Whichever services cannot be delivered in this manner, will have to go through a process and eventually go electronic.
The bill will motivate government officials to take up the electronic mode of service delivery. “It is bringing an element of the ‘stick’ to ensure that people get involved. Once citizen participation increases, the answer to the ‘why’ of this type of application will also change.”
There is lot of facilitation happening on part of the government to ensure that citizens are accessing services through electronic mode. The bill will sit between the MMPs and the four pillars of execution i.e. infrastructure, institutional framework, human capacity and management practices. The back-end integration of applications will have to be handled carefully.
According to Chanana, there is a tug of war between the government and industry. With this kind of model, the relationship of the government and industry becomes sustainable. It is an opportunity to experiment, wherein all services will be integrated on to a single platform. From creation to management of infrastructure, continuity planning will become a top priority. To make it a success, inter-agency coordination will become mandatory. In terms of quality and quantity, a lot of stability will be required. To support service delivery, a horizontal transfer between states will be required. The reuse of infrastructure and its transfer will have to be accumulated.
He concluded stating that a continuous assessment framework would have to be put into place.
