|
While the Mumbai panel discussion started with the issue of benchmarking the
e-governance projects in India, one of the key messages that came across was
that these projects should essentially penetrate the lives of the masses. The
panel also highlighted the need for involving the masses in the project
conceptualization and designing phases, standardization of e-governance projects
and sharing that information on a national basis, and the possibility of taking
the government to the doorstep of the poorest of the poor. The panel also
shattered the myth that e-governance would essentially eradicate corruption from
the government offices and the society at large.
The speakers at the panel included (from left to right) S Ramakrishnan DG, C-DAC,
Aman Singh, Joint Secretary to CM of Chhatisgarh and CEO-CHIPS, Dr Anupam
Saraph, Advisor-IT Goa, Satish Kaushal, country manager, Government (SWG) IBM,
Avinash Chaurasia, founder president Force 3, Prof Venugopal Iyengar, practice
director (eSecurity Consulting) TCS, Shrikant Joshi, vice president Celetronix
and Gurumurthy Kasinathan, Director IT For Change. Ibrahim Ahmad editor –
Dataquest and Voice & Data moderated the session. Excerpts:
Benchmarks for e-governance projects
Gurumurthy Kasinathan: There are certain key deliverables in the area
of e-governance. These may be the elevation of poverty, better livelihood,
education and health. Another process parameter is the level of involvement of
the community in the whole process of developing and running the project. The
need of the hour is to have good governance as the goal, community ownership as
a process, and seeing sustainability as a major issue.
Prof Venugopal Iyengar: One has to look at something like a balance
scorecard and determine the percentage of the citizen awareness level. Also, the
percentage of investment for IT requirements for citizens needs to be expressed
through investments in a phased manner. The model should also measure the extent
of project penetration into the masses. Those would be very simple measurable
steps to gauge the effectiveness of e-governance.
Avinash Chaurasia: The only parameter for e-governance should be a
smile on a citizen's face. Another point to be kept in mind is that it should
not bring entry barriers on undertaking projects. If e-governance projects can
create jobs for the handicapped, physically challenged and blind people, it will
cut down on process inefficiencies and bring about transparency. In most such
projects, people are involved wherever it is convenient, while being ignored at
inconvenient points. More NGOs should come up to facilitate the process.
Shrikant Joshi: China has progressed greatly in terms of
infrastructure and, therefore, it should be seen as the immediate benchmark for
our projects. I firmly believe that technology has to be brought to the people
in the simplest form. While we have the R&D capabilities-a reason why the
likes of Microsoft employ so many Indians-we need to look at developing
solutions to meet our own people's needs.
Anupam Saraph: I would like to focus on three benchmarks. The first is
integration at a very simple level. The success of governance is determined a
lot by effective integration between different departments of the government.
The second benchmark is simplification of the government itself. The government
has become exceedingly complex. (We actually did this exercise with the
Government of Goa and found that there were 7-10 core functions.) Unless the
government is simplified we will be far away from e-governance. The third level
is that technology should be able to deliver the state's missions for its
citizens-e-governance would successful only if it can help the government
provide things like food security, home security...
Aman Singh: For any e-governance project, the benchmarks should be
intrinsically built into the project itself. Any exercise for benchmarking is
something that is measurable, though in many of the e-governance projects there
are no measurable objectives. The second point is that there should be a third
party evaluation and certification. Third, it should be outcome oriented. The
end is definitely more important than the means. Some projects already done by
somebody should be efficiently used as primary resource for further projects on
the same lines, and more time should not be spent on the system study.
Critically, information should be transparent for everyone, which is not the
case today.
S Ramakrishnan: The results should be visible and can only be vouched
for by a beneficiary. But the definition of the beneficiary, in different
e-governance projects, is very vague. Many intermediaries are getting desired
benefits. So, in any e-governance project, how it impacts the final beneficiary,
and not the intermediate beneficiaries, in terms of specific term and outcome,
is the desired benchmark. Sustainability has to be maintained in terms of
quality.
| Tools
for effective e-governance |
| Prof
Venugopal Iyengar: For effective e-governance, the government needs to
start thinking afresh from ground zero. The ministries should spend more
money in terms of planning, strategizing and designing their projects, and
then converting the blueprint into an IT project. Training is another key
area. We might still have all the e-governance initiatives but if people are
not comfortable using computers, things won't move. |
| Aman
Singh: The initial missing link in the whole process of e-governance,
that of not having shareable information, is now being bridged. NISG is
trying to correlate and collect all the best practices and would act as a
consulting organization for any government agency. NISG is also creating a
portal for sharing of information on all e-governance projects that have
been rolled out or are being implemented in the country. |
| Avinash
Chaurasia: The UN framework for poverty alleviation very categorically
says that one of the ways to measure the success of an e-governance project
is to evaluate the government as a user. While there is no doubt that
e-governance can really transform rural India, for this second revolution to
happen it is important for us to take e-democracy to the doorstep of these
people who have been struggling for their livelihood and existence even 57
years after Independence. Today, thanks to technology, people don't have
to travel to offices where they stand long queue for hours to collect one
certificate, or Rs 250 pension. We need to move our documents online, not
just digitize them for better storage and retrieval. |
|
Can e-governance eradicate corruption?
Anupam Saraph: Basically, corruption exists because the cost of honesty
is more than the cost of dishonesty, in whatever system one might be. Whether
manually or electronically, if we can actually change this equation and reduce
the cost of honesty, corruption will automatically get eliminated or reduced.
Hence, one should not equate e-governance as 'no corruption'.
Aman Singh: I think corruption is a very complex phenomenon and being
part of the government I don't think there can be a one-to-one correlation
between e-governance and corruption. However, for any e-governance project that
I set up, I would definitely want 'reduction in corruption' as one of the
spin-offs. The starting point of corruption is direct interface, the physical
contact, but IT can definitely help us in reducing this contact. When we enable
electronic filing of documents, corruption would slowly peter off. If we want to
eliminate corruption from our systems, we would need radical process
reengineering.
Jasmin Kaur
Page(s) 1
| 
Print
Comment
Email
Digg
Del.icio.us
Reddit
Twitter
