HEADLINES
JOBS
COM:PORT
POLICY POLICE
ARCHIVES

Will electronic governance take off in India?

Will electronic governance take off in India? E-commerce is the buzz. But an axiom for that to really happen is e-governance. And the second 'Power Panel' discussion today asked just that: Will electronic governance take off in India?

The chairman of the session was IT evangelist Chief Vigilance Commissioner N Vittal. The panellists were:

• Tata IBM President Dr Mukesh Aghi.
• Andhra Pradesh Department of IT Secretary R Chandrashekhar and
• Spectrum Business Support Managing Director D B Modak.

However, the discussion veered round, converting the interrogative to the affirmative. Modak had a simple explanation. "The question that will electronic governance take off in India is rhetorical."

Going by worldwide trends, Dr Aghi is sure that there is no choice but to go for electronic governance. His advice is to "start simple and move fast" in digitising government processes.

"The government has a major role in putting up laws and regulations. The Singapore Cargo Port Management has used IT to reduce berthing time from 7-8 days to less than a day," he said. Leadership at the policy level is most necessary for e-governance, Dr Aghi said.

Modak talked about the legal infrastructure and how it needs to be set in place for better e-governance. He spoke from his experience in preparation of the draft bill for the E-Commerce Act, 1998, that has recently been submitted to government and is likely to be enacted in the current session of Parliament itself.

Security, integrity, usage, digital signatures and electronic records are the major issues that the law will address in the e-commerce domain.

If electronic records are accepted as legal evidence, there would be progress in e-governance felt Modak. A certification authority for securing the payment system is one of the proposals made by Modak for the E-Commence Act.

"Government leadership is rare and indeed, we have in India a rare example of government playing the major role in pushing laws for e-commerce," Modak pointed out. "This is bound to give us all-round competitive advantage once we have the electronic contract laws in place as many countries such as China have no such laws. Legislature competence is a prerequisite for furthering e-governance," Modak pointed out.

Chandrashekhar provided an interesting perspective on the subject with his own experience of pushing for e-governance in Andhra Pradesh.

"AP has made several efforts to enable a competitive society and has used IT for the purpose," he claimed. "Citizen-oriented governance is being demanded by the people and therefore there is no choice but to proceed with digitisation of government processes."

"Today there are more government programmes for the people and so there is also the fiscal pressure in terms of wages for employing people. Quality in service is also being demanded. All this makes it necessary to go in for e-governance," he explained.

All the scepticism that IT is elitist, too expensive and that is serves only vested interests has been debunked in the AP experience, he pointed out.

"There are a lot of hidden costs in not adopting e-governance such as delay in processes, uncertainty, lack of transparency and corruption," he warned.

"The poor get equal access to information and it is now not necessary to worry about 'whom they know' for getting things done. The Citizen's Charter assumes a new meaning through e-governance," he felt.

The main focus in e-governance in AP is the government-citizen interface and all projects are designed with the view to enhance the quality of this interface, Chandrashekhar observed.

N Vittal worried about how e-governance can be made possible in all parts of India. The country, he declared, "has her head in the Twentieth Century and tail in the Seventeenth Century".

But he was sure that things are bound to progress, though they may be at different speeds in different places.

Vittal cited scientist-industrialist Vikram Sarabhai's observation that a developing country like India can grow much faster and in fact leapfrog technologies. This, he said, give us scope for optimism about e-governance.

Political and legal pressures are the important driving force for e-governance, felt Vittal. He cited the example of his pushing the Reserve Bank of India to computerise banks all over the country by the end of 2000 through a vigilance ordinance for curbing frauds in banking.

The RBI is now considering a proposal to ask listed companies go for an e-clearance system for their dividend cheques and the infrastructure for it has been established very quickly.

These examples, said Vittal, encourage us to the view that things move fast in India and e-governance will take off.

Tell us what you think