Abstract
Contemporary states act as facilitators and this facilitation can be result oriented and successful only when effective governance is ensured. In the era of globalisation, greater emphasis is being laid today on good governance because of the critical link between the state and the global community. The nation states need to reinvent themselves and reframe their development strategy, which requires a thorough revision of their existing approach to international relations and internal governance. As a part of the ongoing administrative reform process, e-governance envisages a structural change in the bureaucracy and is perceived as a key to a more flexible and proactive governance in tune with the concerns of citizen-friendly administration.
The present article explores the challenges and prospects of e-governance and tries to delve into the complex socio-cultural dynamics alongside political-bureaucratic initiatives that are crucial factors for the successful transition from traditional governance to the electronic governance. It attempts to situate the ongoing Digital India Mission in the larger context of good governance by examining the case study of the Indian Province of Odisha, where a silent but stunning revolution is taking shape.
Keywords
Introduction
Every phase of history is an improvement upon the previous one in terms of human progress based on knowledge, information and innovation. The globalised world today is increasingly getting integrated through shared ideas, values, principles and vision of common destiny jointly achieved by nation states.
Technology and information are the two enabling instruments, which are complimenting and supplementing this objective and are providing solutions to the problems of the human race. The internet is a core pillar of the modern information society. It was on 12 March 1989 that the idea of the modern internet came into existence when CERN (European Organisation for Nuclear Research) researcher Berners-Lee laid out his vision of an internet network. As a result, the number of internet users increased from 15 million in 2005 to 4.4 billion internet users in April 2019. 1 This goes to prove beyond doubt that internet as a significant enabler is proving to be relevant to the citizens’ everyday lives and addresses their personal needs. The use of Information Technology (IT) applications (internet, wide area network [WAN], mobile phones and social media) for sharing information and delivery of services by the government agencies seek to transform relations with citizens and business (Sharma, 2004).
In the present era, the global community re-organises the political and economic relationships among nation states based on the principles of democracy and neo-liberalism. It is a system of getting nation states and their economies integrated through commonly agreed principles of global trade, commerce and services. Globalisation today is seen to be the only way forward to negotiate with the challenges of poverty and underdevelopment, which are responsible for other critical issues such as hunger, illiteracy, unemployment, malnutrition and high mortality rate. The nation states have reinvented their role to facilitate a new global environment of good governance, free trade, commerce and collaborative ventures (Santiso, 2001; World Bank Report, 1992). The pursuit of good governance through the application of technology and speedy dissemination of information to the people is today considered to be the most effective and result-oriented approach to development. It further aims to transform public administration by providing various services to citizens without the interface of government offices (Holmes, 2001).The issues and challenges of governance thus occupy the centre stage of political and academic discourse in the contemporary world. India, one of the fastest-growing economies in the world today, offers a classic example of how rapid economic transformations can be affected through the application of modern technology (Chakrabarty & Bhattacharya, 2008).
This present article contextualises the Digital India Mission as an enabling futuristic goal to achieve success in mitigating the challenges of development. It also locates electronic governance as an enabling and technologically driven instrument to improve governance in Odisha, a relatively underdeveloped state in the eastern coast of India that has made remarkable progress in recent times in terms of implementing e-governance objectives and projects. This article delves into the complex socio-cultural dynamics alongside political-bureaucratic initiatives that are crucial factors for the successful transition from traditional governance to electronic governance.
E-governance is one of the recent trends in administrative reforms adopted in the state of Odisha after the introduction of new economic policy at the national level in the early 1990s. As a result of this change in policy and approach to governance, the state government started using Information and Communications Technology (ICT) in the administrative processes and in providing services to the citizens. The concept of e-governance is explored in this study as a major outcome of new public service reforms in Odisha, which has a tremendous impact on the functions of the government and its policies. The present research article is based on the following provisional suppositions:
The use of ICT to modernise the state of Odisha has resulted in a greater degree of government efficiency, accountability and speedy delivery of services to people; The political and administrative will to employ modern administrative tools such as e-governance plays a crucial role in the overall course of development and progress of a backward state like Odisha.
Basic Framework of E-governance
A well-defined and comprehensive system of information forms the core of the e-governance. Electronic governance acts as an important tool for good governance in making democracy meaningful through interactive communication and exchange of information among various stakeholders. Many scholars have focused on the democratic dividend of electronic governance for its ability to enhance the direct participation of people in the political processes (Bhatnagar, 2009; Holmes, 2001). For instance, modern technology is of great value in registering the political attitudes and inclinations of the public, interactive media which can accommodate dialogue among various stakeholders, government, citizens and the players in the private and the public sectors. This process creates the foundation of an inclusive governance system through online administration. E-governance is based on the three characteristics in the UNESCO definition as outlined by Benkler. 2
In the e-governance framework, the citizen is put at the centre stage and is encouraged to participate in the process of governance. Advanced countries such as the USA and European states are fast moving towards interconnectedness wherein gadgets, vehicles and buildings are embedded with software, sensors and network connectivity for exchanging data between objects, owners and the world. Japan will make a transition from the internet of things to the internet of everything, with everything ceaselessly transmitting real time data. Thus, Japan seeks to build a safe and productive society with a positive integration and interaction between man and machines to enhance human existence. In India too, we are using technology to empower citizens through ICT, speed up public delivery of services and create more jobs.
The concept of new public service dwells upon this aspect of governance, where corporate, managerial methods are blended with the application of technology to make good governance a reality. As a result, most of the underdeveloped countries today are adopting the electronic mode of governance in order to make the process of governance more efficient and smart. The objective of this new approach is to bridge the governance deficit and re-establish the credibility of the government that had been constantly eroding due to under-performance or lack of success in achieving the desired goals of development (Gyan & Singh, 2008). The role of the government can be best ensured by using the technology and bringing more objectivity to the decision-making process rather than leaving the process of policymaking and programme implementation to the subjective discretion of political executives and bureaucrats (Denhardt & Denhardt, 2009). There is an urgent need to replace the subjective element in the process of administration with objective assessment and transparent dealings in the public domain. To pursue this goal, the central and state governments have initiated many strategies to promote ICT in all walks of life representing a structural and functional change in the government organisations and the bureaucracy. Several efforts are made to increase ICT accessibility through computers and internet to reach out to large sections of the population with the help of civil society organisations and Common Service Centres (CSCs).
Evolution of E-governance in India
E-governance had its origins in India during the 1970s with a focus on development and deployment of IT to manage data-intensive functions related to elections, census, tax administration, etc. During the 1980s, the efforts of National Informatics Centre (NIC) to connect all the district headquarters was a significant step. The states followed a three-pillar e-governance structure of State Wide Area Network (SWAN), State Data Centre (SDC) and CSC that linked all districts through ICT networks.
From the late 1990s, the Central and the state governments have been pursuing a policy for the adoption of ICTs, web-based technology and internet. By 1995, the Videsh Sanchar Nigam Limited (VSNL) formally launched internet services for the Indian public to use the World Wide Web (www) network in the public domain and sharing of information extensively. India has been at the forefront of the IT revolution encompassing the areas of rural development, services delivery, local administration, education, training, economy and many others. Digital governance has been legalised in India by the Information Technology Act 2000, which provides legal reorganisation for transactions carried out by means of electronic data exchange. This Act was a path-breaking initiative towards administrative reform in India. 3 Further, the political will to employ e-governance and online administration has led to the transformation of a representative democracy into a participatory democracy through the introduction of key milestones for digital empowerment like National e-Governance Plan (NeGP), 2006, comprising twenty-seven Mission Mode Projects (MMPs) at the Centre, state and grassroots level to enable citizen-centric governance. NeGP seeks to improve the delivery of government services to citizens and business establishments with the vision to make them accessible to the common man through common service delivery outlets situated in convenient locations at affordable costs. 4
The Digital India Programme was introduced as a flagship programme with a vision to transform India into a digitally empowered society and knowledge economy. The Digital Mission in India called e-Kranti (e-revolution) launched in August 2014 falls under the purview of Digital India initiative and is considered to be the world’s most ambitious and costly broadband project.
As illustrated in Figure 1, Digital India envisages all government services to be delivered electronically for the benefit of the citizens through high-speed internet as a core utility extending to the village administrative unit and providing a ‘cradle to grave’ digital identity to the citizens. The government has also launched few other innovative IT programmes relating to Make in India, Startup India and Digital Lockers to bring positive changes in state-citizen relationships. Successful implementation of these programmes will be dependent on strengthening the basic foundation of the digital economy and making the internet accessible, open and safe for all the citizens of India (Basu, 2016).
The introduction of new technology offers a monumental opportunity to the pensioners through a major service of Digital India known as ‘Jeevan Pramaan’ (life certificate) wherein life certificate can be given online which has benefitted 1.17 crore pensioners. 5 For the benefit of the students, a National Scholarship Portal, that creates a transparent database of scholars, has been introduced. This provides 32 scholarship schemes online through direct benefit transfer to nearly 1.4 crore students who have been registered and availed the scholarships which were timely disbursed. As shown in Figure 2, the vision of Digital India is based on three key areas such as digital infrastructure as a utility to every citizen, governance and services on demand, and achieving digital empowerment of citizens (Business Standard, 2014).
Another path-breaking initiative is the State Resident Data Hub, which includes big data technology wherein Aadhaar ID (social security number) based information on demography is stored for the citizens with photographs. Through this digitisation project, already more than 1.1 billion citizens of India have been issued Aadhaar IDs which has proved to be a revolutionary digital ID platform. To utilise and harness the benefits of cloud, an internet facility, the Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeiTY) of Government of India has embarked upon another ambitious programme known as ‘GI Cloud’ (MeghRaj). In order to implement this initiative, a task force was constituted by the DeiTY to provide strategic direction and implementation roadmap of GI Cloud and integrating it with the existing or new infrastructure. The architectural vision of GI Cloud centres on a set of discrete cloud computing environments spread across multiple locations based on the guidelines issued by the state. 6
The governments across the country today are using ICT to facilitate governance and provide services to citizens in different spheres of government-citizen engagement (Bose, 2007; Heeks, 2006). IT has also been playing a noteworthy role in the successful implementation of development initiatives in the rural areas. The importance of transparency through flow of information is widely acknowledged to promote greater public confidence in the policymaking processes. The government departments and organisations make use of the digital platform to publish official information. Thus, government websites are the most important public faces of the internet promoting new civic engagement and online activism.
The Indian experience of the last seventy years proves that chronic problems of maladministration cannot be solved using traditional methods which are slow and face different problems such as corruption, nepotism, pilferage and bribery. So, technology becomes an indispensable tool to counter the myriad socio-cultural and psychological barriers in governance. Digitisation is changing the way governments are addressing the problems of people in particular and the issues of development in general. New technology backed by strong political will, provides a path-breaking platform that has given a fillip to the overall governance (Singhal & Everett,1990). Today there is an emphasis on doing every governmental transaction digitally and the political leadership is driving the change and ensuring its implementation.
E-governance is making citizens conscious of their rights to get required services due to them and both state and Central governments recognise the need to deliver faster and efficient services to the citizens. Odisha is one of the few states in India which has initiated many e-governance projects to promote specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time-based (SMART) governance in different spheres of administration. The government of Odisha has tried to provide several government services of which many are unique and trendsetting in the entire country, thereby making life easier for people. The CSCs aimed at providing multiple electronic services under one roof, particularly in the rural areas of the state, are also assigned the task of implementing the ambitious National Digital Literacy Mission (NDLM). Suitable training for the rural and urban population is imparted to ensure that every family in the state has at least one e-literate member, preferably a female. However, the useful and potentially forward-looking vision of the Central government’s flagship Digital India Mission can succeed in the state, only if the rural people are also provided access to the modern banking system, which promotes the idea of financial inclusion.
Heralding a New Era in Inclusive Governance in Odisha
The history of e-governance in Odisha can be traced to 1986 with the formation of NIC at Bhubaneswar. Within few years of its inception, NIC in 1988 introduced District Network Project (disnic) in thirteen districts of Odisha situated in the eastern region and, after a decade, took a leap by launching the first website in 1998 7 within the government departments to facilitate the process of mail and file transfer through NIC Network (nicnet). Presently, nineteen government departments out of thirty-nine departments in Odisha have already successfully integrated e-Despatch with Odisha State Wide Automation System (OSWAS) to enable smooth and hassle-free official transactions.
Figure 3 shows that Odisha State Wide Area Network (OSWAN) created this integrated network, linking the various departments at all the levels of Government-to-Citizen (G2C) that will improve government efficiency through connectivity. OSWAN is regarded as the backbone for network, data transmission, video and voice communications throughout the state which includes one state headquarter, 30 district headquarters, 200 and 84 block headquarters and 61 horizontal offices. Thus, by increasing the bandwidth, better connectivity was enabled among the various departments in the state horizontally and vertically through land area network (LAN) and WAN. With an integrated network system in place, the government departments are able to transfer files, records, information and notifications smoothly through internet. WAN has helped in linking the state headquarters with the district and cities, towns and even the villages as a result of which departments are now able to stay connected with their local units. This helps in sending notices, directives and mails related to policy matters via mail and internet.
Keeping in line with the increased thrust on e-governance across the country, Odisha launched innovative initiatives to computerise various departments since the year 2000, which includes policies, infrastructure and software application development specifically to create an ICT enabling environment to enable citizen-centred services delivery in the fields of education, treasury, commercial tax, registration office, transport sector, Panchayati Raj, election office, etc.
Odisha Information and Communications Technology Policy, 2014, shows that it aims at setting up at least one active CSC in every gram panchayat to facilitate citizen-centric services. The citizens should get the services from either CSC or the confines of their home through electronic means within stipulated timelines as mentioned under the ‘Odisha Right to Public Services Act, 2012’. The state government has also started a number of flagship e-governance projects in recent years which have won several international and national awards such as the e-Abhijoga, e-Pothi, e-Saksham, e-GPF, e-Nijukti, Sarathi, Bhulekh, e-Shishu, e-Despatch, Student Admission Management System (SAMS), Tracking of the Missing Child, Betan, which are in operation in the different districts for delivering state of the art e-services in the state.
E-governance has provided the citizens a choice and a possibility of easy access to government information and services. People today want to participate in the process of governance and control their own destiny by making informed choices. Through network communities and internet, citizens today are using new technologies to influence government policies.
The Odisha Information and Communications Technology Policy, 2015, envisages that every department in the state shall spend two per cent of its plan budget for electronic-enabled service delivery to the citizens and towards capacity building. This policy envisages the creation of a government-wide information network, which would simplify service delivery, better targeting of beneficiaries and reduce duplication and corruption. Further, the government has also implemented Digital India Mission, Skill India and Startup Policy to boost entrepreneurship and job creation in the state.
People of Odisha have online access to nearly 200 public utility forms pertaining to commerce and transport, food supplies and consumer welfare, general administration, home, industries, law, public grievances, pension administration, revenue, disaster management, excise, rural development, science and technology, Scheduled Tribe and Scheduled Caste development, Minorities and Backward Classes Welfare Department, Tourism and Culture and Women and Child Development Department. The state government has also started a number of pioneering e-governance projects, which are in operation in the different districts for promoting electronic governance. Given below are few landmark e-governance projects that are innovative efforts to maximise public interaction and to bring government closer to the people and empower them through ICT.
Bhulekh: The land record web portal in Odisha is a software application, an initiative taken up by Directorate of Land Records and Surveys, which provides online information on land records. The software enables optimised maintenance of records and provides accurate copies of Record of Rights (RoR) to the landowners all across the state. 8
E-Shishu: It is another ambitious project implemented by Odisha Primary Education Programme Authority which is the first of its kind in the country.
This project has two components:
Child Tracking System (CTS) Intervention Monitoring and Information System (IMIS)
These above examples outline how e-governance initiatives in Odisha contribute considerably to the current transformation of the form and functioning of the government.
Growth of the internet and mobile phones penetration has played a critical role in transforming the state into a more people-friendly and development-oriented province of the Indian Union. Teledensity, which is equal to the number of telephone connections per 100 population, has grown rapidly in the state. However, it is yet to catch up with the national average. The overall teledensity of the state by the end of March 2014 was 60.90 per cent as against the all India average of 75.23 per cent. In case of urban teledensity, Odisha is far better than the all India level which has reported urban teledensity of 161 per cent in comparison to 146 per cent at the national level. The rural teledensity in the state was 40 per cent as compared to 44 per cent at all India level. Cell phones constitute about 75 per cent of total telephone connections in the state. An ordinary person can use internet with broadband connectivity to avail government and private services reaching every gram panchayat (Government of Odisha, 2015, pp. 360–365).
Odisha Government Budget in Information Technology Sector
Table 1 depicts the year-wise allocation of funds for the ICT promotion and development in Odisha. It shows there has been a steady increase in the governmental allocation for ICT sector from the total consolidated fund of the state from 2011–2012 to 2015–2016. However, looking at the huge prospect of ICT expansion and government’s ambitious plans for the future, the funding seems to be too inadequate. A meagre 0.21 per cent of the total consolidated fund of the state being spent on IT sector does not match the ambitious expansion plan as well as sustenance of the ongoing e-governance projects. Further, it shows that in the five years, though there has been a slight increase in terms of funding in the IT sector, in terms of percentage of the total consolidated fund, there has been no upward swing. The percentage was 0.22 in the financial year 2011–2012 and after five years, it still remained stagnant at 0.21 in the financial year 2015–2016. Although the trend shows a marginal increase to 0.24 per cent in the year 2012–2013, it registered a decline in the two subsequent years, 2014–2015 being the worst, receiving just 0.17 per cent of funds from the consolidated fund of the state.
Total IT Allocation Component in Odisha Government Budget
Common Service Centres: Encouraging Citizen Participation in Governance
CSCs are envisaged as the grassroots agencies of social change in the rural areas providing e-governance facilities in the fields of education, tele-medicine, agriculture, entertainment, etc. Due to their outreach and success, the number of CSCs has increased from 83,000 in 2014 to a record number of 365,000 in May 2019. Various government services through these CSCs were expected to benefit the citizens, who lived closer to the areas of operation and reduce the waiting period for a majority of public services. Recently, the private sector has been involved in the IT development, financing and operation of such systems, where a small transaction fee is charged for providing government services. The objective of involving the private sector and NGOs in CSC projects is to make them partners in developing rural India. The CSCs have turned out to be popular destination of service seekers, ranging from students, pensioners, farmers, women, panchayat-level workers, businessmen, etc. These information centres/kiosks are providing information on health, education, insurance, etc., to the various categories of people and are catering to their variety of needs and requirements (refer to Figure 4).
As per the CSC guidelines outlined by Government of India, there would be one CSC for every six census villages. However, with 51,349 census villages in the state, the target of setting up 8,558 CSCs in Odisha is yet to be achieved. 9 The CSCs played a significant role in the remote areas by providing easy access to government services for the benefit of the citizens. Figures 5 and 6 reveal that through the CSCs, the government and market are working in tandem with each other offering Business-to-Citizen (B2C) services which are indirectly promoting e-commerce in their area.
A Village Level Entrepreneur/Operator (VLE) manages every CSC in the rural area who is a CSC operator and a key element to the success of its operations. An efficient VLE is one who has entrepreneurial skills or traits, strong social commitment and respect within the community. Many studies have proved that there is a direct correlation between the quality of services offered at the CSCs and entrepreneurial abilities of VLEs operating them. 10 The gap between the citizens, state administration/machinery and people’s representatives is thus narrowing down by making the administration process citizen-centric, convenient and transparent.
Comparative Analysis Before and After E-governance Initiatives
The comparative assessment of the scenario existing prior to the implementation of e-governance and the qualitative changes that have emerged after e-governance was introduced revealed interesting facts. It is observed that a lot of paperwork that involved in the previous system of manual handling of files has been replaced by digital communication and interaction. Now, since the information is available on the government websites, people have a hassle free access to transparent information. E-governance has, to a great extent, reduced unnecessary cost involved at every stage saving a lot of public money and time. The earlier system of governance used to lay emphasis on rules, regulations and norms, the interpretation of which was squarely dependent on the subjective view of the official. The element of subjectivity often encourages corrupt practices and preferential treatment to the service seekers. The e-governance processes being technologically driven have created an atmosphere of accountability, objectivity and transparency. The software and the programming in e-governance are so organised that instant delivery of information and services are guaranteed without delay.
Regarding the efficacy of the government to develop and sustain successful e-governance projects, the study revealed that though remarkable progress has been made in the last one decade in e-governance, still lot more has to be achieved. This depends on more ICT initiatives by arresting the negative trends in terms of bureaucratic apathy and indifference to the application of technology in governance. Furthermore, the study also found the annual expenditure for ICT initiatives to be inadequate, particularly when the vision document of e-governance makes ambitious projections about the future of e-governance in Odisha. Until 2014–2015, IT budget was below 0.5 per cent of the total budget allocation, however for the year 2015–2016, it was raised to one per cent, which is abysmally low to develop and sustain e-governance projects and deliver state of the art e-services to citizens.
Challenges to E-governance
The process of e-governance is not always free from technical and psychological hurdles. The major challenge of the e-governance initiatives is how to get the larger public use the services on a regular basis. Any sound e-government policy must be based on a citizen-centric approach. While e-government may provide ease and convenience in the delivery of public services and offer innovative government services, none of these will prompt citizens to use those facilities, unless issues like unfamiliarity with ICT, lack of access, lack of training, and concerns about privacy and security of information are first addressed and concrete steps are taken to encourage their participation (Sangita & Dash, 2008). Content in the local language is extremely important for increasing usage and delivering the benefits to more people. Customised content for women is also important for increasing usage among them and addressing gender-specific digital divide.
Negotiating the Challenges
Although India has achieved several milestones in the development of an electronic governance framework for the country, certain basic problems exist which come in the way of sustainability of these initiatives. As observed by Pippa Norris (2001), the key issue in evaluating e-governance is the way in which it affects the nature of the relationship between political institutions, bureaucracy and citizens and whether it facilitates a relationship based on public accountability and participation. While the Digital India initiative is an exemplary initiative, its execution in the field has been running behind schedule. The major hurdle in implementing the Digital India Mission is the wide digital divide that exists in the country among the rich and poor, male and female, and rural and urban categories. The primary cause of such divides in India pertains to our under-resourced education system and low level of IT awareness among the people. Even though the mobile penetration in India is high, internet connection and broadband connectivity are one of the lowest in the world (UN E-government Survey, 2016). Without connectivity, the effectiveness of digital services is hugely compromised and gets impacted among the user communities. Digital India content is highly vulnerable and needs to be secured against cyber attacks, so more attention should be given to cyber security. For effective implementation of Digital India Mission, the laying of National Optical Fibre Network (NOFN) has to be completed on war-footing. Risks of fraud, cyber crime and poor connectivity in rural areas are problems that the state must recognise while pushing for digitisation.
Further, it has been observed that despite state funding and assistance to public welfare schemes, the net output in terms of successful delivery in many cases remained significantly low. This has been attributed to the knowledge deficit prevailing among the marginalised sections of the society. Therefore, it is important to build a knowledge society before aspiring to achieve larger objectives of effective democracy. In this context, the focus needs to be capacity building as an enabler for overall empowerment of citizens in the economic sphere as well as in the larger socio-political sphere. Then only citizens can become vital stakeholders and key players in the growth and development of the nation. Further, for the majority of underprivileged Indians, mostly poor and illiterate, the fruits of the ongoing technological revolution continue to be beyond their reach.
According to the United Nations E-government Survey (2018), India, which was ranked 118 in 2014, improved its rank to 96 in 2018. The jump shows how digital technologies and innovations are impacting the public sector and changing people’s everyday lives. However, India has a very low rank (0.5484) in promoting e-governance as compared to Denmark, with an index value of 0.9150 which topped the list (E-government Development Survey, 2018) followed by Australia with 0.9053 scores and the Republic of Korea with a value of 0.9010. Until recently, South Korea has consistently been the global leader in broadband deployment and internet penetration surpassing other developed nations including the USA, United Kingdom, Singapore and Japan (Kim, Pan, & Pan, 2007). Another noteworthy country with advanced e-governance framework is Singapore. The e-citizen web portal in Singapore is an example of one-stop shop for citizens to access information and services from various government departments in a fast and convenient way. Thus, citizens of Singapore are able to access nearly 1,600 e-services pertaining to business, health, education, recreation, etc.
E-governance and related innovations involve blending of hardware, software, networking, process-re-engineering, training, infrastructure and change management. The task is a complex management of diverse challenges that emanate from a multitude of sources. The key challenges with electronic governance in India in general and with Odisha in particular, are not technology or internet issues but organisational, technical and institutional issues. Although ICTs are playing a significant role in enabling governments to pursue the agenda of good governance, the lack of human resources, organisational and technological infrastructure, committed political leadership and bureaucracy have posed hindrances to the effective implementation of ICT in governance.
Some major concerns continue which include:
India faces the problems of low connectivity, technical professionals, finances coupled with inappropriate planning Lack of a clear vision for implementing various e-governance initiatives. E-governance applications should be preceded with the re-engineering of the administrative processes in the government departments and organisations. Most ICT applications are implemented in a quick time frame without any change in the organisational structure and work procedures.
According to the United Nations Survey Report (2014), 75 per cent of projects are not able to sustain due to poor planning (UNO E-government Survey, 2014). Most ICT projects fail to take off because of their inability to address the existing divides in society in terms of rural and urban, rich and poor, male and female, literate and illiterate. There is a lot of hope on the potential of e-governance to transform the internal efficiency of government and the relationship of government with stakeholders (Deva, 2005). To overcome the issue of the digital divide, the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (CDAC) has developed multilingual software which helps to reach out to the rural population in their local languages thereby creating an effective information and communication system for the rural and agricultural sector.
Senior IT officials observed that e-government initiatives in a democratic set up are often constrained by lack of financial resources, low level of skills and capacity deficit within governments. This is all the more evident in the absence of incentives and structures for suitably rewarding performance. The case of Odisha seems to be no different. Despite an exhaustive e-governance roadmap outlined in the Odisha Information and Communications Technology Policy, it still lacks a full-fledged ICT framework for implementation of e-governance. Public–private partnership models in e-government can help overcome many of these constraints and can simultaneously increase opportunities for the private sector.
Conclusion
The e-governance has given a fillip to the overall re-engineering process in the governance structure of Odisha today coupled with strong political and administrative desire to redefine the existing work culture, rules and procedures. However, for e-governance to actually lead to empowerment of citizens, the focus needs to be on multi-level institutional change, which would create opportunities for the people to utilise the associated benefits.
It is only a few e-governance initiatives in the state of Odisha which seem to have ventured into the more complex areas that transcend the efficiency and management concerns of the state government and address common man’s quality of life issues. Experiences suggest that there is a need to first determine citizens’ needs and then design the system. Despite the initial encouraging signs, the long-term results of e-governance efforts are not very promising with most systems that are implemented in Odisha only partly meeting their objectives. Thus, any system, policy or government would succeed only if its processes are accountable, transparent and its citizens are engaged. Successful implementation of the various digital programmes is made possible by strengthening the basic foundation of the digital economy and making the internet accessible, open and safe for all the citizens.
The Way Forward
Electronic governance applications should be widespread to cover the rural and remote areas of the country so that the rural population can access internet for information that is useful to them. It has been observed that most of the projects make use of business models, public–private partnership models, localisation, appropriate technology and interface with smart government, however most fail to replicate the initial success story. The need of the hour is to address the substantive issues and examine the problems which pose a challenge for the e-governance projects. The induction of technology alone will not improve governance rather there is a need to adopt a balanced approach for implementation of e-governance initiatives. With firm commitment towards digital empowerment, Odisha has the potential to transform itself and accomplish the desired goals of inclusive development and social justice.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.