The recent launch of Digital India programme by the Prime Minister of India has brought back the focus on the progress of e-governance projects in India.
The recent launch of Digital India programme by the Prime Minister of India has brought back the focus on the progress of e-governance projects in India. While all the three tiers of government (Centre, State & Local) have been using information technology for over three decades, e-governance, as a structured programme, was launched about 10 years back in the form of National e-Governance Plan (NeGP). In simple terms, the main objective of NeGP was to improve delivery of government services to common man by leveraging technology. It was envisaged that as a first step, the enabling IT infrastructure in the form of State Wide Area Networks (SWANs), State Data Centres (SDCs), Common Service Centres (CSCs) etc. shall be strengthened in every State/Union Territory. On the back of supporting infrastructure, several e-governance projects were proposed to be launched in “Mission Mode” to enable efficient electronic delivery of G2C, G2B and G2B services (such as issue of birth & death certificates, filing of tax returns, filing of FIRs, passport services, filing of statutory documents by business entities etc).
Looking back now almost a decade later, there is no doubt that we have come a long way and there are some significant success stories which have transformed the way services are delivered to citizens. However it is felt that a lot more could have been achieved. There are several important initiatives which have either got delayed or achieved only partial success in ensuring efficient electronic delivery of government services to common man. While most of the projects were good in concept, it is the implementation on the ground that has left much to be desired.
In addition to factors such as digital divide, low IT literacy, accessibility etc. posing serious challenge, there are several other issues that have impacted the successful delivery of e-services to common citizens. Government approval procedures particularly relating to procurement process are one of the main causes of delays in execution of some of these projects. There are elaborate approvals required at every stage of an e-governance project—finalising the department/functions to be covered, services to be delivered, budgeted expenditure to be incurred, mode of financing, and most importantly procurement of services from private partners for implementation of the project such as for supply of hardware, software, training & capacity building of concerned government staff, project management support etc.
Also, most of the e-governance initiatives merely seek to introduce use of technology in delivery of government services without necessarily reforming the existing archaic processes. The more difficult task of re-engineering the processes required to be undertaken at the back-end for delivery of any government service is largely untouched. So while there would surely be incremental benefits through use of technology including reduction of delivery time of services, the large scale benefits that could emerge from transforming the government systems in line with modern practices are being missed completely.
Lack of adequate domain knowledge about government systems with the private partners engaged for implementation of e-governance projects is another key factor for the relative under success on some of the complex projects. The system integrators (SI) that are awarded the contracts for roll out and implementation of projects are generally quick in supply and installation of infrastructure but face a lot of issues in development and roll out of application software. The development of a robust solution for efficient delivery of services requires deep knowledge of government systems combined with IT expertise.
Another recent development that is adversely affecting e-governance initiative is that the private partners are becoming increasingly reluctant to bid for the role of SIs. This is because large amount of investments get stuck due to heavy back ended payment terms linked to successful implementation of the solution. While from the government perspective it may be more prudent that SIs get paid a major chunk of their contracted amount only after the final outcome of the project is achieved, the delays in successful implementation results in SIs incurring substantial losses and impacting their cash flows.
The way forward would be to effectively address the issues listed above. An immediate step would be to review the overarching rules, guidelines, manuals which govern important government activities such as procurement, financial matters, etc. to bring them in line with modern practices commonly in use in well run large private corporates. These internal administrative reforms combined with renewed government’s focus on faster decision making would not only help in expediting the effective roll out of e-governance projects but also in other government projects and interventions.
Efforts should be made to create a repository of such successful solutions that can be made available to interested Centre/State/Local government authorities. In future portable solutions developed on open platforms and hosted on cloud based infrastructure that could be used by multiple government authorities should be encouraged.
Most importantly, alignment of all existing e-governance initiatives with the vision and goals of the Digital India programme will be a critical step in this direction.
By Anil Jain
The writer is senior director with Deloitte India
