36 E-governance

T. Radha

Introduction

E-governance plays an important role in all walks of human lives. It reduces the tension of the people. It helps in saving time. This essay aims at bringing out the importance of e-governance and its role in enhancing the welfare rural communities.

E-governance

E-governance expanded as an electronic governance is basically delivery of Government services and information to the citizens using electronic means, E-governance involves computerization of services to be provided to the citizens. Another aspect of e-governance is computerization of government documents, records and various reports.

e-governance aims to put information and communication technologies to the services of good governance that is transparent, fair, effective, accountable and receptive to the aspirations of the citizens. Its efforts should aim to achieve a Simple, Moral, Accountable, Responsive and Transparent (SMART) government.

Electronic governance has proven its usefulness in the implementation of various welfare schemes for citizens like weather forecasting for farmers, fishermen and tourists, e-learning projects, e-service centers, e-voting etc. The importance of e-governance both to the public and to the government is noteworthy

Benefits to citizens

1. Access to all requisite information: e-governance projects provide 24 hours, 7 days a week online access to government services to all citizens.

2.Transparent process: e-governance projects ensure clarity and transparency in all transactions on the part of government administration. It would be helpful in confidence building among the citizens and the government machinery.

3. Reduction in transaction cost: It facilitates easy monitoring and tracking of files. There is no place for red tapism. The people not only save journey and waiting time, but also most of the services through the E-governance are provided at affordable charges.

4.Blurring of the boundaries of government departments: It is helpful in collecting required data and information from any corner of the world. An effective computer network system like Internet can be helpful in solving the problems immediately. For instance, during the World Trade Centre tragedy (September II, 2001) with the help of network, 290 hospitals were ready to track and accept the injured persons and immediate medical treatment was provided.

5.Removal of middlemen: E-governance cuts of the role of middleman or broker. It purges the intermediaries who flourish on red-tapism, complex web of rules and laws and networking.

6. No scope of discretion: E-governance cuts off discretionary powers as all the transactions are transparent and accessible to one and all, all the time. It helps in bringing the have-nots into the mainstream. These centres could provide better services to the poor, tribal people living in rural remote areas.

E-governance will be fruitful for the farmers as they would be able to get information regarding prices of commodities in different markets, new varieties of seeds, new techniques or methods of cultivation, crop protection guidance. Even an illiterate farmer could e-mail to agriculture universities and colleges regarding his/her difficulties with the help of trained service centre operators.

Benefits to the Government

1.Improved productivity and services: Decisions and follow up action can be traced and tracked, leading to more liability. It will limit the procrastinating habits of the bureaucracy, thereby enabling the government to take head on the competition from private organizations.

2.Improving finance: It can help in cost cutting, by curtailing the growth of excess manpower, deleting certain steps, simplifying the procedures and putting an end to duplication of efforts.

3.Better decisions: E-governance facilitates prompt feedback from the people and field staff which can be analysed quickly and decisions can accordingly be taken. There can be better identification of priorities and better audit and analysis of data.

4.Weapon against corruption: E-governance leads to increased transparency, accountability and predictability. Transparency in data, decisions/actions, rules, procedures and performance of government agencies can be introduced, E-governance can become a weapon against corruption though it may not guarantee the end of corruption.

5.Change in orientation: E-governance can lead to improved quality and customer orientation of government services. Every individual, at some stage or the other, has to come in contact with the government. A change in orientation leads to overall increase in the productivity of the nation.

Important E-governance Projects in India

Bhoomi Project

This is an economically sustainable project and is one of the most successful ICT projects based on land records in Karnataka State in India.

In the ancient days, people had to search for an accountant to get the Record of Rights. Such a document needs to go under process such as obtaining for loans. For this process, one has to pay bribes so as to avoid the delays. But now the condition has been changed. A farmer can obtain a copy of an RTC online by paying a small amount, where such facilities are available.

Bhoomi is one of the few e-governance applications in Karnataka and have several advantages.

1.Ease in use of the Bhoomi Kiosks: Most users of the Bhoomi system found the system to be very simple and able to utilise the kiosks with no help, in comparison to earlier manual system.

2.Error-free document: Users indicated that the Bhoomi kiosks provide error-free documents as against the manual system which included reporting errors, wrongly spelt names etc.

3.Low-cost service: All users of the Bhoomi facility who wish to receive a copy of the RTC are to pay a small amount and receive a receipt for the same.

4.Reduced corruption: Bhoomi project helped in reducing corruption and bribery. Bhoomi empowers the small rural farmers in many ways. Their relationship with lower rungs of civil servants can be on a more equal footing. Armed with genuine certificates, farmers can raise loans from banks and cannot be easily harassed by bank staff. In case of land disputes, land owners simply bribed the officials to get the records changed to favour their position. Now the records are in the public domain and can be easily verified by anyone.

Gyandoot-Community-owned Rural Internet Kiosks

Gyandoot is recognised as a breakthrough in e-governance, demonstrating a paradigm shift which gives marginalised tribal citizens their first ever chance to access knowledge with minimum investment. The goal of the Gyandoot project was to establish community owned, technologically innovative and sustainable information kiosks in a poverty-stricken, tribal dominated Dhar District of Madhya Pradesh. The Gyandoot project was launched in 1st January, 2000, with the installation of a low cost rural Intranet covering twenty village information kiosks in five blocks of the District. Later eleven more kiosks were set up.

The following services are offered at the kiosks.

1.Agricultural produce auction centres rates: Prevailing rates of important crops at the local and other recognised auction centres around the country are available online for a nominal charge. The volume of incoming agricultural produce, previous rates etc. are also provided on demand.

2.Copies of land records: Documents relating to land records including khasra (record of rights), are provided on the spot at a small charge. All banks in the district have agreed to accept these kiosks’ documents.

3. e-governance also play an important role in the issue of certificates. In the olden days, the people had to walk to the local offices to collect their certificates. But now, only one visit to the office is enough. Because the notification about the readiness of the certificates will be sent through e-mail to the concerned kiosks. The complete process will be done at a small price.

4.Online public grievance redressal: A complaint relating to drinking water problem, quality of seeds, scholarship sanction/disbursement, functioning of school can be filed and a reply received within seven days for a small cost.

5.  Village auction site: The site makes also services available to farmers and villagers especially for:

    ·    Land,

·    Agricultural machinery,

·    Equipment

·    Other durable commodities etc

Everyone is allowed to put their commodities on sale for a period of three months at a small rate. The catalogue of marketable cargos can also be surfed.

6.Transparency in government: Updated information regarding beneficiaries of social security pension, beneficiaries of rural development schemes, information regarding government grants given to village committees, data on families below the poverty line etc. are all available on the Intranet which makes government functioning more transparent.

Computer-aided Administration of Registration Department (CARD)

Computer-aided Administration of Registration Department (CARD) is a major information technology project in Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh since 1998. This project is designed to eliminate the maladies affecting the system of registration of Deeds, Stamp duties, valuation certificates and other documents through electronic delivery of all the registration services. Under this project more than one million documents have been registered and citizens now complete registration formalities within an hour. Previously before introduction of IT, the registration system was governed by antiquated procedures which included the laborious copying and indexing of documents as well as their unscientific space-consuming preservation in ill-maintained backrooms. The laborious procedure and lack of transparency in property valuation resulted in a flourishing business for brokers and middlemen who exploited citizens selling property.

  The main objectives of CARD projects are as follows:

1.   Demystify the registration process.

2.   Introduce a transparent system of valuation of properties easily accessible to citizens.

3.   Replace the manual system of copying and filing of documents.

4.   Replace the manual system of indexing, accounting and reporting.

5.   Introduce electronic document writing.

The CARD project ensures speedy, transparent, easily accessible and reliable services to citizens.

FRIENDS-Online payment to the Government in Kerala

FRIENDS is the acronym for Fast, Reliable, Instant, Efficient, Network for Disbursement of Services. FRIENDS was launched in the capital city of Kerala, Thiruvananthapuram, in June 2000 by the Kerala State IT Mission along with other government departments namely Kerala State Electricity Board, Kerala Water Authority, BSNL, Revenue Department, Motor Vehicles Department, Universities and local bodies of the State.

FRIENDS was conceived with the following objectives:

1.   To induct a philosophy of service delivery in the government.

2.  To act as one-step centre where a citizen could conveniently pay all government dues; and

3. To treat the citizen as valuable customer who pays for services.

Like other Indian States, Kerala has a number of departments collecting taxes and utility bill payments. Every citizen had to personally visit, on an average seven offices and stand in long queues to pay in their bills turn. Corruption was rampant and the behaviour of Government staff towards the citizens was not very cordial. Customers invariably spent several days in a month just to make bill payments.

FRIENDS has provided the citizens with a one-stop shop for payment of government bills and taxes. Instead of running from one agency department to another for bill payments, the customer can now make payments under one window thereby drastically reducing the time spent.

   The following services are offered at FRIENDS counters:

• Electricity bill payment
•  Revenue recovery
•  Property tax
• Water bill payments etc.

Innovative application of ICTs in rural areas of other countries

Latin America and the Caribbean: FAO has developed a number of methodologies for applying ICTs for development. The ‘Pedagogia Audiovisual’ project was set up for development and effective peasant participation through an improved system and has brought together ‘peasants, government representatives, technicians, banking services, construction companiesand marketing institutions’.

Since human resources are a key factor to ensuring food sec packages and other traditional communication media were used to intermediaries and to exchange ideas and information. A computer system was later established which distributed ‘the bulletin’ with unneeded-market, technical and weather, by fax. The information provided linkages to international sources and external databases.

FAO has embraced new ICTs funding from the government of IT project (1994-97)of sharing knowledge and skills with small developed national communication systems in Latin America. All stakeholders had access to better communication an transfer of knowledge and skills to the wider community, information and to achieve an integrated approach to eco development leading to inter organizational efficiencies.

ICT and e-governance for rural development

The Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) are being increasingly used by the governments to deliver its services at the locations convenient to the citizens. The rural ICT applications attempt to offer the services of central agencies (like district administration, cooperative union, state and central government departments) to the citizens at their village door steps. These applications utilize the ICT in offering improved and affordable connectivity and processing solutions. Several Government-Citizen (G-C) e-Government pilot projects have attempted to adopt these technologies to improve the reach, enhance the base, minimize the processing costs, increase transparency, and reduce the cycle times. A large number of rural e-Government applications, developed as pilot projects, were aimed at offering easy access to citizen services and improved processing of government-to-citizen transactions. Some of these have drawn international attention and have won prestigious awards for their innovative approaches. They have demonstrated the power of ICT in rural context and are seen as reference models for future e-government project implementations. Most of these projects have seen developments in the Internet technology and dropping costs of PCs as opportunity to reach remote locations. They used the existing telecom infrastructure and the Internet access through ISPs as inexpensive connectivity solution. They tried to package in all possible information services for the rural citizens as a single point access through PC based kiosks connected to ISPs. Some projects have experimented with the wireless technology to reach the remote locations.

However, a large number of rural ICT applications have slipped in performance and are facing acute problems of sustenance after their successful launch by the dynamic project champions. Some of the important observations by CEG- IIMA based on its evaluations of some of these projects and the experiences on developing proof-of-concept projects are:

i. Design of citizen-centric services and dependable service delivery mechanisms.

ii.Selection of appropriate (dependable, maintainable and cost effective) technologies for rural connectivity and information processing solutions.

iii.Design of cost-effective delivery stations (kiosks) to enable private entrepreneurs operate the services profitably and build new services for sustainability.

iv.Re-engineering of back-end processes and introduction of changes that take advantage of the storage, processing and distribution powers of the emerging ICTs.

v. Ensuring employee participation with well designed change management processes.

vi.Demonstration of transparency and efficiency to remove distrust and build confidence among the citizens on the functioning of service delivery mechanisms.

vii.Identifying and preparing project champions, ensuring appropriate tenures, facilitating smooth transition, and internalization of the changed procedures.

ICT Availability for Rural Applications

Computers play an important role in e-governance .it proves to be user friendly. it does the maximum work at a minimum cost. But then, using of the computers sometimes appear difficult because there is no option for the regional languages. Moreover, there is one more problem in using the computers. it is that even though, the rate for the hardware is coming down, the cost of the software including the operating system, modem, database, etc. are high. These equipments become absolute too soon, and have high maintenance costs in rural areas, many computers are doing the job of reducing the cost of the software.

They are easily breakable this adds on the amount, But it reduces the rural people’s tension even thought the government has to spend more money on it.

Limitations of e-governance

E-governance in India has not been widely used, except in a few States of South India.

Some factors responsible for its limited application are as follows:

1. Traditional bureaucratic mindset: One of the barriers in the way of e-governance in India is the traditional bureaucratic mindset of the officials who are not ready to accept the changes in the administration in fear of loosing power and employment. Some of the critics of e-governance are of the opinion that it is expensive and would lead to unemployment.
2. Infrastructure deficiencies: The major bottleneck in implementation of e-governance in our country is infrastructure deficiency e.g. inadequate telephone lines, shortage of power, low bandwidth capacity etc.
3. High price of computer: High price of computer is also one of the reasons of low use of computers in India. The rates of Internet connectivity are comparatively high.
4. Financial difficulties of the government: The slow progress of e-governance in India may be attributed to financial deficiencies. The process of computerization and automation has become slow in almost all States due to shortage of fund.

Illiteracy, lack of training, misunderstanding and lack of confidence in government policies are the major problems in the adoption of e-governance in India. In spite of the above mentioned barriers, the government has no option but to continue the process of electronic governance to provide better services to the citizens at minimum costs, enhancing their efficiency.

Conclusion

The above content gave a short view of e-governance. It highlighted the importance of e-governance and also provided an idea about the scope of e-governance. From this module it is obvious that e-governance plays an important role especially to enhance the growth of rural community.

References and Web links

• Radhakrishna Rao, 2003. E- Governance gaining in popularity, Kurukshetra, September 12- 13
• Rama Rao, T. P. 2004. ICT and e- governance for rural development, Symposium on ‘Governances in development, challenges and strategies’, Organised by Institute of Rural Management, Anand, Gujarat.
• Marrow Katherine. 2002. ICT agenda: global action plans and local solutions, LEISA INDIA, 4 (2): 9- 10.
• www.digitalindia.gov.in/content/e-governance-reforming-government-through-technology vikaspedia.in/e-governance