State of e-Governance

This is a conference where Sameer makes lots of efforts to see the reality, what really happens because each one of us did lot of work which we implement in various parts of the country and we say it is working fantastically but quite a few of us may not have seen the reality what happens when you go to some of the nook and corners, how it performs, how it delivers the services concerned. He is the one person I think who visited more e-Governance centres than any one of us. I have not visited so many centres which he visited. He assess from the point of view whether really this technology making India work. When we use the word India, are the people really getting benefit out of the particular system. The reality which he brings out facilitates each one of us for coming with solutions to modify or midway correct to ensure that particular thing delivers.

If you look at the entire e-governance gamut, there are number of stakeholders and each of these stakeholders has different set of expectations from e-governance. To count a few, Government may have a different expectation from e-governance, the common politician, honest bureaucrat, corrupt people rich and poor, urban, rural, all of them they have different set of expectations. Similarly businessmen, industry people, academia, students, they have different expectations from e-governance but the end result everyone want good governance. Having said that let us try to understand what are the factors responsible for good governance. It is very difficult to quantify those factors but still I would try. There are eight factors to my mind: rule of law, transparency, accountability, responsiveness, effectiveness and efficiency, equity and inclusiveness, consensus orientation and participation. These are the eight factors based on which a kind of measuring matrix has to be designed. But then most importantly the measurement has to be from the perspective of the end-citizen. For end citizen I think it is the weighted average, the percentage change or the improvement in the overall service which he is receiving.