Promoting e-Governance: Summary | Indian Polity for UPSC CSE PDF Download

Introduction

Commission is of the view that even in any e-Governance initiative, the focus has to be on governance reforms with the technological tools provided by ICT being utilized to bring about fundamental changes in the governmental processes.

Summary of Recommendations of ARC on e-governance

• Building a Congenial Environment: Building a congenial environment is a sine qua non for successful implementation of e-Governance initiatives. This should be achieved by:
  • Creating and displaying a will to change within the government
  • Providing political support at the highest level
  • Incentivising e-Governance and overcoming the resistance to change within government
  • Creating awareness in the public with a view to generating a demand for change.
• Identification of e-Governance Projects and Prioritisation: Government organizations/departments at Union and State Government revers need to identify e-Governance initiatives which could be undertaken within the functional domain, keeping the needs of the citizens in mind. These should be implemented after prioritizing them on the basis of ease of implementation which would generally follow the categories mentioned above in that order
• Business Process Re-engineering:
  • For every function a government organisation performs and every service or information it is required to provide, there should be a step-by-step analysis of each process to ensure its rationality and simplicity.
  • Such analysis should incorporate the viewpoints of all stakeholders, while maintaining the citizen-centricity of the exercise.
  • After identifying steps which are redundant or which require simplification, and which are adaptable to e-Governance, the provisions of the law, rules, regulations, instructions, codes, manuals etc. which form their basis should also be identified
  • Following this exercise, governmental forms, processes and structures should be re-designed to make them adaptable to e- Governance, backed by procedural, institutional and legal changes.
• Capacity Building and Creating Awareness:
  • Organizational capacity building as also the professional and skills upgradation of individuals associated with the implementation of e- Governance projects.
  • Each government organization must conduct a capacity assessment which should form the basis for training their personnel.
  • Organisations should prepare a roadmap for enhancing the capabilities of both their employees and the organization.
  • A network of training institutions needs to be created in the States with the Administrative Training Institutes at the apex.
  • Lessons learnt from previous successful e-Governance initiatives should be incorporated in training programmes.
• Developing Technological Solutions: There is a need to:
  • Develop a national e-Governance ‘enterprise architecture’ framework
  • Promote the use of ‘enterprise the use of ‘enterprise architecture in the successful implementation of e-governance initiatives
• Implementation:
  • All organizations should carry out a periodic independent evaluation of the information available on their websites from the citizens perspective and then redesign their websites on the basis of the feedback obtained.
  • Each government organization should prepare a time-bound plan for providing of transactional information through their websites.
  • Updating the websites at regular intervals, while at the same time, reengineering the back-end processes and putting them on computer networks. Ultimately, all the back-end processes should be computerized.
  • Complex e-Governance projects should be planned and implemented like any major project having several parts / components for which Project Management capability should be developed in-house.
• Public-Private Partnership (PPP):
  • Several components of e-Governance projects lend themselves to the Public-Private Partnership (PPP) mode. In all such cases (PPP) should be the preferred mode.
  • The private partner should be selected through a transparent process. The roles and responsibilities of government as well as the private partner should be clearly laid down in the initial stage itself, leaving no room for any ambiguity.
• Protecting Critical Information Infrastructure Assets: There is need to develop a critical information infrastructure assets protection strategy. This should be supplemented with improved analysis and warning capabilities as well as improved information sharing on threats and vulnerabilities.
• Common Support Infrastructure: As recommended by the Standing Committee on Information Technology in its 58th Report, the State Data Centres (SDCs) should be maintained by Government agencies such as NIC as it involves handling of sovereign data.
• Mission Mode Projects: State Governments should first provide a clear mandate for governance reforms that must precede the e-Governance initiatives. This would involve, if necessary, changing procedures and even structures and statutes. Therefore as a first step, these issues need to be analysed, decision points identified and political approval taken.
• Mission Mode Project on Computerisation of Land Records: Surveys and measurements need to be carried out in a mission mode utilising modern technology to arrive at a correct picture of land holdings and land parcels and rectification of outdated maps
• Passport & Visa: The entire passport issue process needs to be put on an e-Governance mode in phases. As the processes which precede and follow the police verification have already been re-engineered and put in e- Governance mode, this may be integrated with online police and citizen identification data bases. In the meantime, the process of police verification should be streamlined and made time bound.
• Unique National Identity Number/Card: The proposed Unique ID Authority should evolve a database of UIDs on the basis of permanent identifiers such as date of birth, place of birth etc. as described.
• Legal Framework for e-Governance:
  • A clear road map with a set of milestones should be outlined by Government of India with the ultimate objective of transforming the citizen-government interaction at all levels to the e-Governance mode by 2020.
• Knowledge Management: Union and State Governments should take proactive measures for establishing Knowledge Management systems as a pivotal step for administrative reforms in general and e-Governance in particular.