E Governance

E-GOVERNANCE IN INDIA: PROBLEMS CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES

E-Governance is a new version and a novel variety of governance. E-governance is not only the new, but also the now trend occurring in India. It is fast taking the form of a movement. Many benefits are flowing from its adoption in various spheres of administration. Several advanced governments of the world have switched over and many other seem to be switching over to electronic administration. India lacks however, a national perspective one-governance, although, there is space of flourishing eloquence among some ministers, bureaucratic techno experts and other pundits combined with a fairly widespread awareness and more or less universal realization of the positive aspects of this informative revolution.

With most aspects of citizen life and most sectors of governmental functions coalescing, in a mutually beneficial, friendly ambience through an electronic convergence system, there will emerge one day, a one stop, non stop shopping approach in the governments, involving ‘cross-cutting’ over-joined up governance – the idea simply being to create capability for providing the citizens access to government services across departments though electronic networks.

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There is no doubt that seriously implementing e-governance programme calls for basic restructuring of an age-old archaic and colonial procedures – it indeed involve almost wholesale elimination of the existing dysfunctional system of governance. What is urgently needed is change in the mindset of the people in government, change in the philosophy, spirit and processes in bureaucracy, development of a national infrastructure, and a governing body on e-governance for the whole country.

There seems to have come about a welcome change, rather dramatic. Inaugurating the first meeting of state IT ministers on July 15, 2000 in New Delhi, Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee announced major initiatives aimed at propelling...