Day 46 – Q 2.How is the government leveraging ICT to deliver its services faster and without leakages? Illustrate with the help of suitable examples.

2. How is the government leveraging ICT to deliver its services faster and without leakages? Illustrate with the help of suitable examples.  

सरकार तेजी से और बिना लीकेज के अपनी सेवाएं देने के लिए आईसीटी का लाभ कैसे उठा रही है? उपयुक्त उदाहरणों की सहायता से चित्रण करें।

Introduction:

While Governance relates to safeguarding the legal rights of all citizens, an equally important aspect is concerned with ensuring equitable access to public services and the benefits of economic growth to all. Governance basically associated with carrying out the functions and achieving the results through the utilization of ICT (Information and Communications Technology) is E-governance.

Body:

Benefits of leveraging ICT in governance:

• Transparency: Use of ICT makes governing profess transparent. All the information of the Government would be made available on the internet. The citizens can see the information whenever they want to see.
• Accountability: Once the governing process is made transparent the Government is automatically made accountable. 
• Improved Customer Service: E-Government allows redeploying resources from back-end processing to the front line of customer service.
• Data management: ICT provides efficient storing and retrieval of data, instantaneous transmission of information, processing information and data faster than the earlier manual systems.
• Decision making: Speeding up governmental processes, taking decisions expeditiously and judiciously, increasing transparency and enforcing accountability. It also helps in increasing the reach of government – both geographically and demographically.

Various initiatives by government to leverage ICT are:

Government to Citizen (G2C) Initiatives:

• Computerization of Land Records: In collaboration with NIC. Ensuring that landowners get computerized copies of ownership, crop and tenancy and updated copies of Records of Rights (RoRs) on demand.
• Bhoomi Project: Online delivery of Land Records. Self-sustainable e-Governance project for the computerized delivery of 20 million rural land records to 6.7 million farmers through 177 Government-owned kiosks in the State of Karnataka.
• E-Seva (Andhra Pradesh): The highlight of the E-Seva project is that all the services are delivered online to consumers /citizens by connecting them to the respective government departments and providing online information at the point of service delivery.

Government to Business (G2B) Initiatives:

• MCA 21: By the Ministry of Corporate Affairs. The project aims at providing easy and secure online access to all registry related services provided by the Union Ministry of Corporate Affairs to corporate and other stakeholders at any time and in a manner that best suits them.

Central government initiatives:

• Immigration, Visa and Foreigner’s Registration & Tracking (IVFRT): India has emerged as a key tourist destination, besides being a major business and service hub. Immigration Check Post is the first point of contact that generates public and popular perception about the country, thus necessitating a state of the art system for prompt and user-friendly services.
• Public Distribution System: Computerization of the PDS is envisaged as an end-to-end project covering key functional areas such as supply chain management including allocation and utilization reporting, storage and movement of food grains, grievance redressal and transparency portal, digitization of beneficiary database, Fair Price Shop automation, etc.
• E-Courts: A clear objective – to re-engineer processes and enhance judicial productivity both qualitatively and quantitatively to make the justice delivery system affordable, accessible, cost effective, transparent and accountable.
• Direct Cash transfer: To facilitate disbursements of Government entitlements like NREGA, Social Security pension, Handicapped Old Age Pension etc. of any Central or State Government bodies, using Aadhaar and authentication thereof as supported by UIDAI.
• E-Kranti scheme: This is project for linking the internet with remote villages in the country. This scheme will broaden the reach of internet services to the rural areas in the country. 
• Digital India Programme: The Digital India would ensure that Government services are available to citizens electronically.  It would also bring in public accountability through mandated delivery of government’s services electronically; a Unique ID and e-Pramaan based on authentic and standard based interoperable and integrated government applications and data basis.

[NAM, Shagun portal, AirSewa portal, E-pashuhaat, DigiLocker system etc are other examples of service delivery through ICT.]

Conclusion:

Slow pace of project completion, red-tape and resistance from the side of government employees and citizens too are some challenges to be addressed for the successful implementation of an ICT enabled governance. The concept of e-governance and m-governance has evolved in Indian scenario, and can be leveraged to build a robust governance system if ensured with the right approaches.