Report on E-Governance: Recommendations for India

The Commission has summed up its recommendations in wide-ranging 17 categories Category 1: Building a Congenial Environment, the Commission has recommended “Providing political support at the highest level” for successful implementation of e- governance initiatives.

In Category Identification of E-governance Projects and Prioritization, the Commission has categorized e-governance initiatives into five categories ranging from simple (provision of information) to complex (creation integration of complex databases).

In Category 3: Business Process Re-engineering, the Commission has recommended governmental forms; processes and structures should be re-designed to them adaptable to e-Governance, backed by procedural, institutional and legal changes.” In Category 4. Capacity Building and Creating Awareness, the Commission has rightly laid emphasis on and in particular has recommended: “A network of training institutions needs to be created in the Stat with the Administrative Training Institutes at the apex.

The Administrative Training Institutes in v States should take up capacity building programmes in e-Governance, by establishing s e-Governance wings. ATls need to be strengthened under the NeGP.” In Category 5: Develop Technological Solutions the Commission has laid emphasis on ‘enterprise architecture’ frame wise observing “There is a need to develop a national e-Governance ‘enterprise architecture’ framework has been done in some countries.”

In Category 6: Implementation, an important category as governance projects are known to fail quite frequently, in addition to familiar observations on project management the focus is on websites and change management, two items important in their own rise. In Category 7: Monitoring and Evaluation, the Commission makes routine observations.

In Category Institutional Framework for Coordination and Sharing of Resources/Information, the Commission that the “Departments of Information Technology at the Union and State Government levels short provide institutional support to other departments and organizations in implementation of e-Governing projects identified and conceptualized by them.” In Category 9: Public- Private Partnership (PPP), Commission recommends that “Several components of e-Governance projects lend themselves to Public-Private Partnership (PPP) mode. In all such cases (PPP) should be the preferred mode.”

In Category 10: Protecting Critical Information Infrastructure Assets, the Commission recommend “There is need to develop a critical information infrastructure assets protection strategy. This should supplement with improved analysis and warning capabilities as well as improved information on threats and vulnerabilities.” In Category 11: The Common Support Infrastructure, the Commission re-iterates the recommendation of the Standing Committee on Information Technology in its 58th Report that “State Data Centres (SDCs) should be maintained by Government agencies such as NIC as involves handling of sovereign data. Further, all data centres at the State level should be subsumed if the SDCs.”

In Category 12: Mission Mode Projects, the Commission makes a number o recommendations including use of annual performance appraisal report for recording performance in governance.

In Category 13: Mission Mode Project on Computerisation of Land Records, the Commission has recommended that “Surveys and measurements need to be carried out in a mission mode utilizing modern technology to arrive at a correct picture of land holdings and land parcels and rectification of outdated maps.”

In Category 14: Passport & Visa MMP, the Commission has recommended: “The entire passport issue process needs to be put on an e-Governance mode in phases.” In Category 15: Framework for e-Governance, the Commission makes a far-reaching recommendation: “A clear road map with a set of milestones should be outlined by Government of India with the ultimate objective ol transforming the citizen-government interaction at all levels to the e-Governance mode by 2020.”

In last Category 16: Knowledge Management, the Commission has recommended: “Union and State Governments should take proactive measures for establishing Knowledge Management systems as a pivotal step for administrative reforms in general and e-Governance in particular.”

The Second Administrative Reforms Commission, set up in 2005, nearly four decades after the first was set up in 1966, was required to consider “Promoting e-governance” and “suggest measures to achieve a proactive, responsive, accountable and efficient administration for the country at all levels of the government.” No doubt it was a tall order. Yet it was also a major opportunity to promote the cause of e-governance countrywide at all levels of the government.

The report turns out to be a disappointment making recommendations on various aspects of e-governance already currently under implementation. Many of its recommendations are also incomplete.

For example, the Commission makes a salutary but incomplete recommendation on training. While Commission’s focus on training is right, it is not clear as to what it hads in mind while recommending creation of a network of training institutions with the Administrative Training Institutes (ATls) at the apex as it has not spelled out which training institutes will constitute the network within the state and why.

In fact, it is unnecessary to set up any training institution at sub-state level as a capable ATI can, and should, provide training online in the language of the state. More importantly, the Commission is silent on e-governance training capability at the national level including the performance of National Institute of Smart Government (NISG), Hyderabad and other Centres for E-governance which have been or proposed to be set up as in matters like these states often look to the Centre for guidance.

Similarly the Commission has suggested development of a national e-Governance ‘enterprise ar­chitecture’ framework but this is already being done by National Informatics Centre (NIC), New Delhi. The Commission has missed the valuable opportunity of getting some of important websites indepen­dently evaluated to see if they are meeting their stated objectives and trying to bring some order to what is fast becoming an unregulated jungle of websites with accompanying waste of scarce public resources. In evaluation, no suggestion has been made for any assessment of the functioning of project manage­ment unit (PMU) for the National E-governance Plan (NEGP), nor of the evaluation did studies carry out so far, nor for that matter, evaluation assessment framework (EAF) Version 2.0.

On computerisation of land records, the Commission has not specified the technology it has in mind (satellite imagery? remote sensing? geographical information system (GIS)?) nor has it mentioned of good work done by the Centre and states.

Also it has mixed up rural and urban land records, each of which has separate requirement. No attempt has been made to compare and contrast deeds registration and Torrens system as a result of which citizens continue to be burdened with the onus of proving ownership of land resulting in heavy litigation.

There is no mention about chip-based e-passport scheme launched in June 2008 with e-passport likely to be made available from May 2009. What was wanted was a close knit, clearly articulated, “Action plan” for promoting e-governance countrywide. A major opportunity to treat e-governance as a prime mover of administrative reforms has thus been lost.