Why India needs to revise
its eGovernance Strategy
The National eGovernance Plan (NeGP) was drafted in May 2006 with a vision
to make all Government services accessible to the common man
in his locality, through common service delivery outlets at affordable costs to
realise the basic needs of the common man. Other objectives behind this grand
scheme are efficiency, transparency and reliability of such services. After
seven years, time has come to take a stock of situation and suggest corrective steps.
When it comes to service delivery electronically the result has been
mixed one. The central government agencies have been successful in rolling out
their applications thus offering electronic services to customers be it Income
Tax or Excise Tax or Customs or Company registration or Passport or UID or
Banks/Insurance companies. Few like postal department are in the midst of implementing
their solution which will benefit large number of citizens, especially in the
rural areas. However, the situation is not good especially when we look at services
provided by state government agencies. In large number of State MMPs, the intended
clients and beneficiaries are yet to get services electronically. Preparation
and issue of ‘Driving License’ and ‘Registration Certificate’ is the only service
which has been automated in all 35 states/UTs. Few departments like land records
department and VAT are offering few services electronically in majority of
States/UTs. Few states/UTs have done some good work in the field of PDS,
Panchyat and eDistrict. Thus out of 14 state MMPs only one is under post
implementation stage and nine are under various stages of implementation.
Remaining four programs pertain to important sectors like food, employment,
health and education and they are far away from delivering services electronically.
PDS and Employment Exchange are under ‘design & development’ whereas Health
and Education are still under conceptualization stage.
With changes in the technology landscape since 2006, including increased
e-readiness of end users (e.g. explosive growth in mobile phones) and advent of
new technologies like cloud, the time has come to re-visit the approach and
strategy of eGovernance in India. Another driver is the need to accelerate
electronic service delivery which will facilitate smooth implementation of
proposed Electronic Service Delivery Rule.
Therefore, in this context, need is to come up with next generation of
the eGovernance strategy which will look at the following components:
·
Provisioning
of ICT infrastructure (compute, storage, network and gateway) to departments
and agencies “On Demand” rather than their procuring it on their own. Also it
will bring the required flexibility in supply and take care of peaks associated
with demand of resources on days when examination results are published or last
few days of filing returns etc. Cloud makes it easy to provide these on demand
and reduces the total cost for all departments put together.
· Easy availability of “Applications” which can be shared/procured in a convenient manner. There are many applications developed in states which can be used by other states. However, a mechanism is needed to enable easy sharing of such successful applications. Again Cloud can come to help with national information utility which can do the work of customization of cloud based software for other states and provide handholding support in deployment and training of their staff. Under this arrangement successful applications from states can be white labelled so that psychological barrier of using applications from other states will go away.
· Enhanced cyber security, which has been a cause of concern with increasing automation and digitization of government data.
· Simplified procurement specially when state departments will buy applications as a service or resources on pay and use basis.
· Improved ICT Governance, Organization, Capacity and Skills
· Creation of unified ICT infrastructure for Government entities from existing fragmented ICT infra to accelerate e-service delivery right down to the village level and to facilitate optimal utilization and economy in expenditure
· Common standards, and
· Holistic strategic control over ICT infra of the government
· Easy availability of “Applications” which can be shared/procured in a convenient manner. There are many applications developed in states which can be used by other states. However, a mechanism is needed to enable easy sharing of such successful applications. Again Cloud can come to help with national information utility which can do the work of customization of cloud based software for other states and provide handholding support in deployment and training of their staff. Under this arrangement successful applications from states can be white labelled so that psychological barrier of using applications from other states will go away.
· Enhanced cyber security, which has been a cause of concern with increasing automation and digitization of government data.
· Simplified procurement specially when state departments will buy applications as a service or resources on pay and use basis.
· Improved ICT Governance, Organization, Capacity and Skills
· Creation of unified ICT infrastructure for Government entities from existing fragmented ICT infra to accelerate e-service delivery right down to the village level and to facilitate optimal utilization and economy in expenditure
· Common standards, and
· Holistic strategic control over ICT infra of the government
International Experience
·
Reducing waste and project failure, and stimulating economic growth
·
Creating a common
ICT infrastructure
· Using ICT to enable and deliver change
· Strengthening governance
· Using ICT to enable and deliver change
· Strengthening governance
·
Innovation
·
Cost Efficiency
·
Security
·
Quality
· Rationalization
· Rationalization
·
Standardization
· Sustainability
· Sustainability
Recently the Government of India came out with its Cloud Policy and application
delivery thru the same. Similarly policy on ‘Standards’ and ‘Cyber Security’
has been announced. The Expert Committee under Nandan Nilekani has submitted
its report on HR Policy for eGovernance. All these have come up one by one
without having a bigger picture in view. Keeping in view the change in
landscape, both on technological front as well as on implementation of NeGP, it
would be advisable to look beyond ICT provisioning, especially the following
while developing the next generation of eGov strategy:
·
ICT
governance, organization, capability and skills inside the government
· Common standards
· Reference architecture
· Procurement and
· Service management
Putting
all these together in a framework with defined business architecture can be the
new eGovernance Strategy which we may call as NeGP 2.0. Thus the NeGP 2.0 should
be looked at as a change programme driven by a need to save money, integrate
and join up ICT across the government to help accelerate delivery of services
electronically to citizens and businesses. The joined up ICT would enable
joined up services wherever required/appropriate. It will lead to creation of a
new marketplace for procurement of ICT services delivered over network for
central as well as state/local government departments/agencies. It will also
lead to development of the required ICT capability and skills in the
government; common standards and reference architecture; security and identity
assurance; and service management. The suggested business architecture for
enabling better public services with greater citizen satisfaction, increased
efficiency and increased number of transactions is shown below. · Common standards
· Reference architecture
· Procurement and
· Service management
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