ABSTRACT:
This paper discusses about significant impact made by Information and
Communication Technologies (ICTs) in different countries as well as
concerns and challenges before the nation to use ICTs as cutting edge
tool for development. Why ICT has to be used by the Governments to
effectively meet growing public demands and bring transparency into
governance. It is also attempted to identify key components to be taken
care while planning and adopting ICTs in India for development so that
leaders and decision makers together can asses’ e-readiness at
different layers of administration to determine our readiness to
integrate technology into our society and governments.
Information and Communication Technology has made a profound impact in
many developed and developing countries. With the arrival of IT in a
significant way in India, information, services and products are being
delivered are undergoing rapid changes in all sectors including the
services being provided by the various government agencies to citizens.
It is observed that
conscious uses of ICT, which were targeted to under privileged masses
and women, had given encouraging yield to raise their socio-economic
conditions in many countries. Countries like United Kingdom, Canada,
Australia, Singapore and even some African countries have made
remarkable achievements by deploying ICTs
effectively in different sectors – whether to achieve a defined
citizen’ charter or improvement
in terms of cost,
procedure, easiness and service delivery time against different services
Hence
relationship between Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs)
and Development is being recognized increasingly in all level and
across the country.
*
The Author is currently the State
Informatics Officer in National Informatics Centre, Dept. of
Information Technology, Govt. of India, Agartala. He is a B.E
(Electrical) holder and did a short term course on Micro Electronics
from IIT-Kharagpur. He is having 13+ years of IT experience in
Conceptualizing, Analyzing, Designing and implementation of ICT
applications. He can be contacted at chayan@hub.nic.in
Micro electronics, optical fiber, wireless technology, software,
Internet, innovative applications and delivery capability of various
content thru’ a single device (due to convergence that taking place in
three “product lines”- Broadcasting, Telephony and Internet through
wired and wireless media) and the ability of ICT to bring large sections
of the population on to the “connected world” visibly offer
tremendous opportunities.
Emerging digital techniques, high bandwidth communication technology,
and state-of-the art software for network functions and services, are
the new technology trends evident in the development of electronic
communication system – though they are not without “challenges”.
Table
I
Growth
of Internet in India
(Figures in
Millions)
HH -
Households
CAGR -
Compound Annual Growth Rate
DSL
- Digital
Subscriber Line
Row -
Rest of the World
E-Governance
in its real sense is the use of information and communication
technologies to support good governance. It moves beyond old 'IT in
government'. E-Governance
could be defined as “Government’s use of technology, particularly
web based Internet applications, to enhance the access to and delivery
of government information and service to citizens, business partners,
employees, other agencies, and government entities”
In
one way or the other, the government agencies are the largest service
provider to citizens in India. Off late, indeed governments have started
behaving somewhat differently in delivering information and services to
citizens as because they are becoming more and more demanding in terms
of service quality, transparency, cost, convenience and timely services
on 24X7 basis. Why a person
should stand in a long queue for a simple government transaction? They
are asking why they should visit multiple times for a service.
So it is observed that accountability, transparency, decentralization,
procedure, availability and timeliness etc. from numerous government
agencies are the key problem areas in the present governance system.
During last few years, a number of initiatives have been under taken at
national and state level in India by deploying ICT tools to arrest above
issues including to support decision making, planning, development and
providing access to information and services.
Some of the initiatives have already made remarkable impact in the areas
of i) Property Registration ii) Registration of Vehicles and Issue of
Driving Licenses iii) Land Records iv) Passport v) Courts at different
levels vi) functions
relating to Central Excise & Customs vii) Market access to farmers-AGMARKNET
viii) Utility Billing- Electricity Energy Bill payment, Property Tax
payment, Telephone Bill payment, Road Tax payment etc. ix)
India Image Portal x) Warna project xi) Gyandoot project xii) CICs in
North East States including Sikkim and so on.
In
addition, a few highly successful IT enabled service delivery mechanism
and rapid advances made in ICT fields have opened many other avenues;
and influenced to adopt ICT tools in mass scale to effectively address
common man’s problems in India. But level of ICT infusion into
governmental systems varying among different ministries and state to
state in India which has already resulted an alarming digital gap.
While doing careful impact assessments and identifying success factors
of such applications and technologies, do indicate and alert about a
range of “critical challenges” which are to be taken care at
different levels before prescribing adoption of ICT applications.
Otherwise, in view of huge investment and negligible return, may derail
all efforts and advances made so far.
So adoption of ICT for development or ICT for masses in India needs
careful planning, selection of target people, coverage, selection of
technologies, economy of scale, replication or roll-over strategy and
provisioning infrastructure (ICT) service providers to host such
applications on net at national and state level.
Initial
funding, facility management cost, human resources, training,
re-training, affordability, language interface, illiteracy has already
taken centre stage of concerns and challenges while adopting
ICTs in many states in
India.
Some
challenges are already visible and seriously affecting to derive benefit
offers by ICTs in India. At
grass root level, non-availability of reliable and affordable
connectivity (the last-mile), access to ICT tools, Indian script
interface supports and relevant content in local languages are already
on the list of challenges.
Though,
there is a great deal of hype and fervor about E-Governance across the
country. Indeed, it is very difficult to gain an overall understanding
about the road-ahead to achieve even bottom line of e-Governance goals
when proper implementation approaches are sporadic, no defined role and
responsibility for “project leader” , frequent change in
administration and “lack of ownership” of ICT applications etc.
resulting serious un-certainty about outcome.
Approaches
and solutions needs to be tailored accordingly and adopt a strategy
based on an understanding of local needs and conditions.
E-Governance: Stages -
defined by UN
Stage 1- Emerging Web Presence
-static information with FAQ
Stage 2- Enhanced Web Presence-easy downloading, search & email for
queries
Stage 3- Interactive Web Presence-acts as a portal with online forms
Stage 4- Transactional Web Presence-complete services but usually
departmental
Stage 5- Fully-integrated Web Presence-all services online and
integrated
The following are the key
components to reach to “un-reached” and derive benefit offers by
ICTs:
1) ICT Infrastructure
Service Provider and Application Service Provider~ computing capacity,
network connectivity, bandwidth, last-mile connectivity, and point of
presence (PoP) at national, state and district level to take care
Government applications.
2) Affordable access to ICT tools i.e., telephone, computer, access to
internet etc~ Kiosk, CICs, IVRs, low cost PCs to reach rural masses.
3) Electronic
Security at different layers of ICT application~ protecting ICT
investment, knowledge base and critical applications from relentless
attacks.
4) Arranging public funding for mass scale computerization and evolving
viable business model~ computing facility (for backend processes) for
citizen centric applications.
5) Indian Language Interface supports, diversity of languages and
Illiteracy~ implementation of Unicode, GUI interface etc.
6)
Identifying
and digitization of relevant content in local languages including
categorization.
7) Preparing IT skilled workforce and project leaders in Government
8) Process re-engineering and change management in government as well as
integration issues between various departments.
9) Careful selection of applications and services (of interest to
citizens) keeping in mind the issue of return on investment.
10) IT architecture ( which are open standards, open source, scalable,
extensible, manageable )
“Electronic Government:
Initiatives are evolving rapidly but they have significant challenges”
David L. McClure
Reference:
The
Working Group Report on “Convergence and E-Governance” by Planning
Commission, Govt. of India (November 2001)
Working Group Report on “IT for Masses” published by MIT, Govt. of
India (May 2000)
E-Governance: Agenda
(Published by Sun Microsystems)
