VARIndia IT Forum 2004
E-Governance is developing a different kind of political culture worldwide and improving the lives of billions of people through allowing the people to participate dirctly in democartic process. Government with its innovative approach, low cost and open standards is rapidly becoming the driving force behind this electronic revolution and trying to deliver tangible benefits to citizens which was previously unavailable to the citizen of India.The primary objective of e-governance is to perk up the lives of the people and encourage them to actively participate in democratic process (which has become ulitimate voice of world community). Despite taking lots of initiatives in this area, the e-governance lacks in effieciency, transparecy and integrity due to the inconsistentcy in policy implementation.
As we all know that information is the basis of a well-functioning and transparent decision-making process for both global society and local communities and in the same time, Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) can be an important and very effective tool not only for good governance but also for frequent and direct communication with government officers is required to seek clarification.
The advent of e-governance has played considerable role in reduction of the hardship of citizen of India. But the replication of paper governance with electronic governance might prove to be an ugly task for the government. In this information-age, led by Internet, software, technology, and connectivity, the e-governance will help us to map out opportunity through which we can participate more effectively, govern our self and do public work in a better way in this changing global society.
VARIndia IT Forum 2004
In order to discuss the various issues on e-governance, 'VARIndia IT Forum 2004' was successfully held on 28th May 2004 at Park Royal Inter-Continental, New Delhi. Organized by VAR India, the Frontline IT Magazine of India, the forum was attended by more than 500 people including many dignitaries of the Industry, Government, BFSI and PSUs. When Mr. Sanjeev Mahapatra, Publisher, VARIndia Magazine briefed the audience about the success of VARIndia Magazine over last four years, MR. Deepak Sahu, Director, Kalinga Digital Media, welcomed the guests.
Apart from this, various corporates including LG Electronics, HP, Maxtor, Simmtronics, Chemoplast, APC, Canon, TVS-E and Stellar had put up their stalls for displaying their latest products and technology.
Some of the big names who attended the event include Dr. G. D Gautama (I.A.S), Principal Secretary, Department of Information Technology, Government of West Bengal; Mr. K. Praveen kumar (I.A.S), Joint Secretary, Department of Information Technology, Government of Andhra Pradesh; Shri Shreeranjan, the Commissioner & Secretary of Information Techology Department, Govt. of Meghalaya; Shri S. S. Grover, Sr. Director (e-Governance), Department of Information Technology, Ministry of Communications & IT, Government of India; B. S. Bedi, Senior Director, Department of Information Technology, Ministry of Communications & IT, Govt. of India and Mr. Srinivas Polishetty, President, webVocal.
The objective of the forum was to bring the government and corporate bodies to a common platform, for a better understanding of the e-Governance practices and challenges as well to provide support to those who are working towards building a better IT infrastructure.
This forum was organised in two phases. In the first phase the government and corporate bodies presented their focus on e-governance. And the second phase there was panel discussion on exploring the opportunities on e-governance.
Language and other barriers
Multilingual environments have created new challenges and opportunities in front of government. There are multiple national languages in India but more importantly numerous regional languages are also mandated by state governments. Despite the existence of national languages, state governments dictate that regional languages must be used for all government communication within state and local departments. Speaking on e-governance, Mr. Tarun Mallik, Product Marketing Manager, Microsoft Corporation (I) Pvt. Ltd., said, "The technology is easy but the people are hard. Trying to adopt the technology is a bigger challenge. Technology is the enabler not the panacea."
Beside there are social, political, economical and cultural barriers that impede the growth of e-governance in India. Government in India is often characterized by rigid hierarchies, red-tapism, complicated procedures, sluggish decision-making and lack of accountability. Commenting on role model for government Mr. Sidharth Shakdher, Country Marketing Manager-Value Solutions, Canon India Pvt. Ltd. Said, " The government should be smart- i.e. simple, moral, accountable, responsive, and transparent." But the public access to Government services is usually clumsy and complicated and the person who experiences the hardships as a whole is the citizen of India. As Mr. Sanjay Mahapatra, Editor, VARIndia pointed out," On the retrospect, many of the state governments and the union government have done a lot towards the effectiveness of e-Governance. But, still there is a lot to do. The ultimate benefits of the e-governance have to be dripped down to the masses. Local language is the biggest barrier. There is no formal project documentation as on date. There are many villages in the country where there is no electricity, forget about telephone connection or Internet." So a coherent and growth oriented policy has to be adopted by government to aggrandize India in field of e-governance.
Private sector involvement
E-governance initiatives by government of India are cited as an area of active involvement for the private sector. The private sector is not only a market player but also plays a crucial role in a wider political and social context, i.e. helping country like India to develop ICTs and overcome the digital divide and participating in enhancing the living standard of the citizen of India through their technology. The private sector can be involved in practical partnerships for innovative application, for instance, in e-governance initiatives and can help in providing better platform to explore the opportunities of e-governance. Commenting on the role of private players in the field of E-governance, Dr. G. D Gautama, Principal Secretary, Department of Information Technology, Government of West Bengal said, "There are two types of models, one is the initiative completely driven by the government and the second one is the initiatives driven by private companies. According to me both the initiatives are equally important."
At 'VARIndia IT Forum 2004' seven corporate i.e. Microsoft India, Cisco Systems, LG India Electronics, Maxtor, APC, TVS-Electronics and Canon India gave their presentations which were mainly focused on product orientation and the kind of technical and logistical support they can provide to boost the smooth functioning of e-governance. Governments provide extensive access to information and interact electronically with citizens; political groups run online campaigns and the media and portal/search sites play a crucial role in providing news and online navigation. In this model, the "Private Sector" represents a driving force that provides connectivity, software, and technology to the government departments.
Challenges faced by private companies
The world is going through a big change. If we notice, we find that the three forces, which are driving this, change are- globalization, deregulation and Internet. The Internet has added a great impetus to the radical change. In this scenario of radical change, the IT companies can play a substantive role in growth of e-governance. But due to the complicated procedures, sluggish decision-making and lack of accountability from the government side has hampered the willingness of the IT companies to contribute in the field of e-governance.
At 'VARIndia IT forum 2004" the participating IT companies pointed out the challenges which they are facing while dealing with the government. Speaking at VAR India IT Forum Mr.Sudhir Narang, Vice President - Cisco Systems, India and SAARC, said - "What "we have achieved in last six and seven years of e-governance? Can we use open standards so that application can be easily built on it? Can we use some common tools? Can we use deliver system where you start small and grow big? Can we have management tool where we can understand each state and cities so that we have bigger platform to understand and control the services, which we are going to deliver to our citizens? Can we have a performance consistency and thought of low cost operation?"
The eminent personalities present at VARIndia IT Forum suggested the following points to increase the intensity of private participation in achieve the desired goal of e-governance:
1. The government should chalk out a framework under which it should clarify it vision in field of e-governance.
2. The government should set up a virtual business model and clarify the area over which it want to focus and which area it want to outsource to the private companies.
3. Make e-governance more accessible to the citizen.
4. Improve citizen participation engagement.
5. There should be consistency of policy regarding e-governance.
Model for E-governance
New global standards of governance are emerging and the demand for involving the citizen in political process is becoming a trend. Citizens of developing countries are demanding better performance on the part of their governments and they are increasingly aware of the costs of poor management and corruption. E-governance, enabled by IT, requires a fundamental change in its operation through constantly delivering its obligations to the citizens with greater accountability and a responsive sensitivity.
Deployment of e-governance in India has the potential to generate a better quality of services, reduced costs, improved effectiveness and operational efficiency as well as it can potentially aggrandize the social values, ethics, norms and morals that requires to be reinvented in a resolute manner. The deployment of e-governance should be in such way that the public information requirements can be met easily. Ration card applications, industrial unit clearances, tax returns filing, public utility bookings, billing and even payments can take place on-line under such a model of e-governance. Similarly, significant improvements should be initiated in area of education, housing, municipal or health related services. In order to provide the convenience of electronic access to the common man, all government departments should be networked using the web technology and subsequently providing inexpensive network access to public at multiple locations. The private players should be encouraged to taken active participation in developing the IT infrastructure. Without a good IT infrastructure the vision of good e-governance will become in vain. Speaking on the importance of IT infrastructure at IT forum, Mr. Shalendra Vashista, National Sales Manager, APC said, “IT infrastructure consists of two parts. One is IT computing equipments under which server, PCs, storage devices, routers, switches etc. And, second on is NCPI (Network Critical Physical Infrastructure). This is the infrastructure where you boost up your IT computing equipments. The NCPI cost is equal or more than your IT computing equipments. And, to run this IT computing you require NCPI. The entire backbone of your infrastructure is NCPI. You may be using the best of technology but if your NCPI is not strong then the whole IT computing is useless.”
Besides, to maximize the economic and social benefits of the citizen of India, governments need to create a trustworthy, transparent and non-discriminatory legal policy environment, capable of promoting technological innovation and competition, thus favoring the necessary investments, mainly from the private sector, in the deployment of infrastructures and development of new services.
Wrapped in a mystical conundrum, government processes, at present, are enormously rigid. In such a scenario, a properly conceived, developed and deployed model of e-governance will provide an opportunity to the government to reinvent itself and evolve a new type of political system which will help to redefine the public-government relationship and the business-government interface. Such a thriving model of e-governance shall also reinforce India's emergent status of a global IT superpower. Speaking at VAR India IT forum, Mr. Sidharth Shakdher, Country Marketing Manager-Value Solutions, Canon India Pvt. Ltd. has rightly said, “One day we drop e because today we have paper governance but a day will come when there will be no paper governance but only e-governance. So the 'e' will drop by default.”
Conclusion...
To change future of democratic process, governance and public work at the commencement of the information-age can be an onerous task in front of the government. The quality of e-governance shall eventually depend on the intent of the government and the set of mind of the policy makers. For an effective and efficient e-governance model, IT deployment has to be backed by efficient IT infrastructures, a healthy work ethos, transparent systems and simple procedures. With the intelligent and effective application of ICTs, combined with democratic intent, we can make governments more responsive, we can connect citizens to effectively meet public challenges, and ultimately, we can build a more sustainable future for the benefit of the whole of society and world in which we dwell.
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