E Governance

not really the use of IT in governance but as a tool to ensure good governance. e-governance does not mean proliferation of computers and accessories; it is basically a political decision which calls for discipline, attitudinal change in officers and employees, and massive government process re-engineering,"Ravi Kant (Special Secretary, IT, Govt. of West Bengal) explains.

All implementers and drivers of e-governance initiatives agree that the biggest challenge of deploying e-governance is not technology but change management. Change management is important not only in terms of cultural change but also in terms of changing operations and processes workflow that the automated environment will introduce.

"It's important to educate people at all levels about the benefits of technology. The various benefits and advantages of e-enabling the system should be communicated clearly right at the beginning to ensure popular support which will lead to greater chances of success," explains Dr G D Gautama, Secretary, IT, Government of West Bengal.

It is important to explain to people that the introduction of IT will not take away existing jobs but will make them easier, and if less manpower is required for operations the staff can be re-deployed elsewhere with no threat to their career growth path.

The key challenges with electronic governance are not technology or internet issues but organizational issues like

Redefining rules and procedures

Information transparency

Legal issues

Infrastructure, Skill and awareness

Access to right information

Interdepartmental collaboration

Tendency to resist the change in work culture

Other obstacles are geographical distances, lack of trained human resources, and lack of ICT penetration in remote areas. For instance, a good e-governance application will not benefit anybody in remote areas if there is no supporting infrastructure such as electricity, computers and connectivity. Many pilots have been successfully implemented in almost all areas of e-governance, but, says Ravi Kant, "Rather than having an obsession to undertake pilot projects, we should capitalise on the existing successful examples in the country and customise them for our use."

The challenges of connectivity have also reduced over the years with the falling prices of bandwidth and increased reach of connectivity service providers. Major VSAT service providers already have established large footprints in India, and telecom service providers have stepped up their leased line offerings even in previously unrepresented territories. Many state governments have developed state wide area networks (SWANs), customised applications, and data banks. But the interconnectivity of the servers is an issue which calls for the establishment of state data centres. The NIC, which is promoting e-governance