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Some of the areas where states have achieved moderate
success have been those of e-payments, online provision of information and
online ordering of documents, passport services and income-tax functions like
applying for a PAN card and filing returns and claims. E-initiatives have
brought in several benefits to citizens in the form of general ease of dealing
with state governments and municipal departments. Businesses also find it easier
to access information, pay taxes, acquire goods and services, and these
improvements have helped reduce business costs.
More Needed
Police and security, judiciary and land-related functions like registration,
sale and purchase and ownership enquiries are pain areas in most states for
citizens as well as corporates. The police and security departments seem to have
fallen behind in e-Governance in general and have performed poorly in terms of
both quality and availability of their e-initiatives for citizens.
| METHODOLOGY |
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Research
Objective
The objective of this study was to assess the availability of ICT
infrastructure, the rollout of e-Governance projects of select Indian
states and evaluate the impact of these projects on the delivery of
government services to common citizens and corporates.
Research
Methodology
This study was conducted in three phases:
Phase
I
Desk Research
In this phase, extensive desk research was conducted and IDC knowledge
base was used to identify and shortlist 18 major states out of the 35
states and union territories of India. The final selection was based on
the states' rank in the Human Development Index (HDI).
Phase
II
Survey of State IT Secretaries/Heads of State Nodal IT Agencies
Secondary Research
Each of the selected 18 states was profiled in terms of the clarity of
their IT vision and goals and the scope of the various e-Governance
projects in terms of services offered, number of towns/municipal
areas/villages/block panchayats covered or to be covered, expected
benefits to the state's citizens and so on. A percentile method was
employed to allocate scores to the states on individual parameters, with
the state reporting the best initiatives being allocated a percentile
score of 100. These factors were together allocated a combined weight of
9% in the overall assessment.
Each state was also
assessed on the budgetary allocation or planned/actual IT spending on
hardware, software and IT services on recently implemented projects
(2004-05) and planned IT spending on new/ongoing projects (2005-06 and
2006-07). A percentile method was employed to allocate scores to the
states on each year's IT spending, with the state reporting the highest
per capita IT spending being allocated a percentile score of 100. This
actual/planned IT spending was allocated a weightage of 6% in the overall
assessment.
Finally, the 18
selected states were rated on the basis of availability and usage of ICT
and social/educational infrastructure like number of PCs per 1000
population, estimated per capita overall IT spending, number of telephones
per 1000 population, Internet subscribers per 1000 population and the
capacity of the state to produce technically qualified manpower. States
were again ranked using a percentile method and these factors were
allocated a combined weight of 10% in the overall assessment.
Phase
III
Survey of Citizens and Corporates
This part of the study evaluated the effectiveness of IT deployment by
governments of the 18 major states of India, based on a primary survey of
common citizens as well as corporates regarding the actual/perceived
improvement in delivery of government services. Feedback was sought on all
major government services to citizens as well as key government services
to corporates.
To make a meaningful
and broad-based assessment 1,350 citizen users and business users was
conducted across the 18 selected states. 75 interviews were conducted in
each state amongst common citizens, professionals (lawyers, doctors
chartered accountants) and administrative/business heads of small,
mid-size and large corporates. To arrive at a 100-point index, a
five-point 'Improvement Rating' scale was used to evaluate the
feedback on each type of government service and the average score for each
service type multiplied by a factor of 20. The scores obtained from this
survey were allocated a weightage of 75% in the overall assessment and
ranking of the states, reflecting the importance of the perceived
improvements in the eyes of common citizens and business users alike.
Hence, the individual
service-wise and total scores for each state reported in this survey
reflect the extent to which citizens and corporates perceive improvement
in delivery of government services after/as a result of deployment of
e-Governance initiatives. |
However, several other areas still require attention.
Increasing e-literacy, reaching out to large expanses of areas, computerizing
decades of manual records, high infrastructure costs are still some of the
barriers. Essential services like water and power are still poor performers in
terms of e-initiatives. So are state public transport, employment exchanges and
functions related to sale and purchase of land/real estate like servicing of
ownership enquiries, issue of No Encumbrance certificates and so on. A uniformly
poor performance in the e-initiatives of the police and judiciary is a cause of
concern.
But the biggest disappointment to citizens and corporates
alike is that e-initiatives seem to have failed to reduce corruption and
harassment or increase transparency in the functioning of the government
departments. For e-initiatives to succeed in the long run, it is important for
users to perceive these improvements very clearly, as corruption and harassment
are the most painful aspects of the citizens' interaction with the government.
| There seems to be a significant
gap between the best performing states and those not performing too well
on the e-Governance scorecard |
Most states are rolling out several initiatives in typical
areas like networking and communications, computerization of land records,
education (admissions to professional/engineering courses), and grievance
monitoring and management information systems for various government
departments.
With increased investments in e-Governance and a healthy
competition amongst states to offer effective citizen services and achieve
greater efficiencies, e-Governance will be a major area of growth and,
therefore, ICT will be a major expenditure for the public sector. Besides
increased investments, states need to focus on putting in quality infrastructure
and the mechanisms to educate people to use e-Governance features. The states
need to have strong feedback mechanisms to assess the needs of the citizens and
businesses so that they are able to optimize their ICT investments accordingly
and maximize returns.
Bhaswati Chakravorty
bhaswatic@cybermedia.co.in Page(s) 1
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