A standardised e-governance framework is required to infuse life in egov projects
Dr Vijay Bhatkar, Chancellor of India International Multiversity and is popularly known for architecting the indigenously built super computer- PARAM 8000. He was a member of the Scientific Advisory Committee to the Cabinet of the Govt of India and Chairman, e-governance Committee for the governments of Maharashtra and Goa.
In the current scenario, India requires a unified architecture for e-governance. The evolution towards a mature e-governance model has taken more time than required. Similar to how ERP has taken a firm foothold in the Industry, the same should have happened with e-governance. Here is a first person account, as told to Abhishek Raval:
The E-Governance scenario
In a large democratic country like India, e-governance can provide the answer to challenges of corruption, obstructionism and delays. It got a national level importance during the tenure of Dr. Manmohan Singh.
In the current scenario, India requires a unified architecture for E-Governance. The evolution towards a mature E-Governance model has taken more time than required. Similar to how ERP has taken a firm foothold in the Industry, the same should have happened with E-Governance. With all the fuzzy processes, requirement of files and the series of processes involved, to evolve a ERP like system for governance is a challenge faced by countries the world over.
Another pothole in the e-governance journey is the application incompatibility. There is an urgent need to adopt standards for seamless communication in-between applications. Moreover, the bureaucracy is not up to the speed with developments in the space of IT.
The lack of accurate data in government departments is also a challenge. Usually, the issue is about incomplete data.
Governments unclear about their requirements
The IT companies from the private sector often complain about late payments from the governments and the difficult terms and conditions to be adhered in the e-governance contracts signed. Many companies have burnt their hands in handling government projects.
The Government doesn’t know of what they want in the project. On top of that, the Government in a way is not ready to take the responsibility of what they don’t know, by putting unreasonable terms in the contracts with the private companies. For example, if a particular software does not serve the purpose, then the Govt turns up and says, “this is not what I want, I want something else.” Rewriting software to match the changed requirements is a big task. From the government point of view, the deliverables are still pending according to the contract, and thus the payments get delayed.
Even in the case of the consultants appointed to draft the tenders, the consultants themselves not aware of what they want or what the government wants, because their domain knowledge is very limited that’s why many state level data centers and computers procured by the states have become outdated in just three-four years after they were bought. The Government had no provision for updating the infrastructure.
The last mile connectivity issue can be solved by making the computers available in the rural areas, getting Internet penetration into these areas and training the masses on how to use these systems. At times, non-availability of power makes all these initiatives useless. The penetration of mobile devices certainly helps. The Govt of India has set up kiosks for accessing the Internet at a nominal cost. A large number of such centers are created but people, culturally don’t like to walk down and access them without any formal understanding. What they want is a device like a mobile or a laptop that will get the work done in no time.
The way forward for e-governance
One of the secrets to get e-governance right in the state is to have all the state departments collaborate, standardise processes and share data. Most of the states have their respective IT departments. At times, it is merged with other departments. The IT budget for each department is separate. The local government bodies have to get their budgets sanctioned from the respective departments under which they operate and they are giving contracts to disparate vendors. Ideally, the IT department should set standards and take decisions accordingly but these departments are not adequately staffed to take the decisions at the pace at which they should be taken.
At the same time, the applications cannot wait because the IT landscape and various other standards are evolving fast. This challenge has been there and it still remains and our work is more in the files.
The central government is starting to use standardized softwares for e-grampanchayats, e-district etc. To make all e-governance applications mobile enabled will be critical. The citizens should have the power to get G2C services on their mobile — even upto the level of giving a Siri like experience, where the phone is able to understand the language and guess the speaker’s command to rightly judge the queries.
