From: Mustafa Akgul (akgul@Bilkent.EDU.TR)
Date: Tue 27 May 2003 - 20:56:20 EEST
*** Democracies Online Newswire - http://e-democracy.org/do ***
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This is a great overview of themes related to e-government and
transparency/anti-corruption.
Steven Clift
Democracies Online
------- Forwarded message follows -------
To: India-egov@yahoogroups.com
From: sanjay jaju <sjaju26@yahoo.com>
Date sent: Wed, 21 May 2003 09:44:39 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [India-egov] e governance : Questions and Answers
Dear Friends,
I'm enclosing the abstract of an interview sent by me recently on
e-governance. The interview carries many issues related to this
subject wherein i have tried to provide answers to some of these
questions with my limited abilities. Members may have a look and
comment. (May be it helps Mr Kartikeyan set his conference agenda).
1. What are the successes of the Saukaryam and e-seva experiments?
Both the projects have made the life of citizens easier by
providing them fast and user friendly access to the
government services. The dependence of the citizens on the
government system is immense. However due to vested
interests they are often denied this access and have to
shell out time and money over and above what is due. The
government services being monopolistic in nature leave them
with no other chance. Both these projects tried to address
this situation and opened out the delivery of these services
into the public domain. The projects were successful in
inducing the elements of transparency, accountability and
made hapless citizens feel empowered.
The project utilized the gains of information and
communications technology in reducing official involvement
and cutting down red tape. The projects could create an
environment that enabled close monitoring of the official
performances and brought into light sub optimal and immoral
performers thereby allowing interventions to correct such
deviations.
2. What are the key lessons for e-governance that your experiences
with saukaryam and e-seva throw up?
Both these projects very clearly indicate that although
technology is not the only answer for solving the governance
related problems, it nonetheless proves that technology is
an indispensable step to achieving the same. The two
projects also show that any improvement in the citizen
services meets with immense approval from the citizens.
This therefore throws a key question that while embarking
upon any e-governance project it is important that citizens
are kept as a central focus. The agenda for e-governance
should prioritize the methods that help improve the
interface between the government and the citizens.
The two projects have been by and large developed and
implemented through in house expertise and therefore prove
that it is possible to take up such experiments by
harnessing the internal domain knowledge and improving upon
it through the use of technology. The two projects also had
a very minimal ‘drawing board to implementation time’ and
thus underscores the fact that a momentum of popular
acceptability should never be allowed to slag and it is
pertinent that the project in some hue is grounded and
allowed to evolve so that it starts bringing results from
the day one.
3. What is your perspective of the role of self-help groups of women
in the rural e-seva venture?
The self-help groups’ strategy has now become a cornerstone
of the development agenda. The strategy not just helps in
empowering the impoverished but also enables rechannelizing
individual strengths into collective good. This district
also has a huge presence of the women self-help groups and
therefore this project thought it fit to use them as
information intermediaries and make them turn into
information leaders in their respective areas.
In the rural areas where the access to computer technologies
is not very significant it was important that this was not
left in selfish hands and therefore the e-seva project here
has given the responsibility for running the kiosks to the
self-help groups. It’s quite an eye opener that these women
groups who were hitherto considered unfit for technological
advances have accepted the opportunity with folded hands and
are running the show with acumen, confidence and honesty.
Although it required and still requires computer training
programmes it serves government well to leave the governance
in local hands who can also act as change agents.
4. What is your perspective on the current e-governance scenario in
India?
Although some concrete steps have been taken by various
state and local governments in utilizing information
technology, there is a still a long way to go for citizens
to feel empowered in various spheres of life. When one
talks of e-governance there are two issues that are germane
to this. One is to improve the delivery of civic services
while other is to create an environment to usher in a
knowledge society so as to reduce the information gaps
between the haves and have-nots. While there has been
significant effort towards the former, the dream to achieve
the latter is still in the pipe.
It has also clearly come out that in order to realize this
dream, the political and administrative will at the top is
of utmost importance and this explains why some states are
doing better than the others. It’s also important that the
political establishment starts getting the feel that the way
to win the voters’ hearts is by improving governance and
technology offers the most cost effective and easy solutions
to achieve the same.
5. Has e-governance in India even partially achieved what it had set
out to in terms of mitigating corruption in public life?
Mitigating corruption in public life is a very complex issue
and is interconnected with lots of other issues ranging from
the electoral mal practices and compulsions to the over all
decline in the societal value systems to the capacity of the
system to offer discretions or to offer largesse to only a
few. What the information and communications technology can
do is to bring into the public domain the issues that were
so far shrouded into secrecy. It can also help in improving
the systemic deficiencies that allowed the wanton elements
both within the government and outside to selfishly use them
for narrow objectives.
The project in Visakhapatnam could achieve this in a very
short time by providing easy access to citizens to pay their
dues or get various permissions and certificates or in their
ability to file their grievances and get them solved without
having to pay in terms of their time and money. But it is
true that unless the other threads are picked the whole
circle of eliminating corruption in public life would not be
completed.
6. What according to you would be the guidelines an e-governance
initiative should follow to be successful, based on your past
experiences?
In order to be successful, an e-governance initiative has
got to be citizen centric. It is also important that
e-governance initiatives are not equated to computerization
exercises that we see so often in various government
departments. The accent on the information part of the IT
has to be understood. The e-governance initiatives have to
reshape the internal organization and recast the government
citizen interface and it should be understood that
technology is only a catalyst and should not be considered
as a reagent.
An e-governance initiative should be sustainable and should
attempt to do simple things simply. Most of the complex
problems have simple solutions and the attempt should be
made to keep to that. Before embarking upon an e-governance
initiative it is important that it is driven by a leader who
believes in it and has the patience to make others believe
in that. It would also require some perseverance and
courage as many a times it’s going to disturb the existing
applecart. The bottom line is to win the public heart
through such projects as they only would ultimately become
the champions of such projects and would help one ride
through the various challenges.
7. What do you see as the future of e-governance in India?
It is heart warming that e-governance and better governance
has achieved some critical mass and is shaping the
governance agenda of our country. One keeps hearing of
successful experiments from various corners of the country
and it is also noteworthy that many local governments and
municipalities are becoming the leaders in this pursuit.
The local governments being at the grass roots have a huge
bearing on our individual lives and the embracing of the
technology agenda couldn’t be more suited anywhere.
However, it is also true that the successes are quite
disparate both from state to state and from activities to
activities.
Wherever the local political and administrative leadership
have understood its value the things have improved. Even
the oft repeated ‘funds constraints dilemma’ has also been
met by entering into public-private partnerships. For this
agenda to be successful it would be important that it starts
affecting the polity and that would put immense pressure on
the governing class to improve and change their ways. The
refusal of public to accept anything sub optimal is a key to
its future.
Sanjay Jaju IAS
Collector & District Magistrate
West Godavari
Eluru- 534006 AP
91-8812-230051(O)91-8812-231844(R)91-8812-231050(Fax)
098491 32344(Mobile)
sjaju1@rediffmail.com
---------------------------------
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------- End of forwarded message -------
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