Table Of Contente-Gov 2.0
Policies, Processes and Technologies
e-Gov 2.0
Policies, Processes and Technologies
Jaijit Bhattacharya
Adjunct Professor
Indian Institute of Technology Delhi
&
Director
Hewlett Packard Ltd.
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To
The students and practitioners of e-Governance who want to effect a change
and my father, late Dilip Kumar Bhattacharya
Foreword
Nations across the world have moved forward significantly from the modest
start that they made in e-Governance about a decade ago. This is even more
true for emerging economies. Emerging economies have adopted IT to leap-
frog in the delivery of government services to the stakeholders. The intent
has been to improve both the quality and quantity of services delivered. This
has happened in the backdrop of cuts on government spending and reduction
in size of the government.
Governments across the world had been adopting IT even before the advent
of the Internet. There have been solutions for customs that worked on EDI, for
example, the Bapeksta system in Indonesia. The adoption of e-Governance
has been facilitated by the Internet that allowed stakeholders to collaborate
seamlessly and provide as well as consume government services. That is
why e-Governance is considered to have started after the advent of the
Internet.
This book comes at an opportune time as nations across the world are at a
point of inflexion with respect to adoption of e-Governance. There are many
drivers that are pushing adoption of e-Governance. Primary among them is,
of course, greater demand from citizens and other stakeholders for better
quality of government services. In addition, governments across the world
are under pressure to deliver more with less funds, leading to greater adoption
of IT.
However, as rightly pointed out in this book, there are very few initiatives
in e-Governance that leverage the power of IT.
Most e-Governance initiatives are, essentially, IT enabling existing brick
and mortar processes. There are very few pure play e-Governance solutions.
A good example of leveraging IT for delivery processes and services that did
not exist earlier is the First-in-First-out (FIFO) initiative of Government of
Karnataka in India. With the implementation of FIFO Government officials
cannot process a file that has come in later unless the one before it has been
processed. This takes away the concept of "speed money" since a file that
came in later cannot be "speeded up". This also takes away the discretionary
power of a Government official to process files in any arbitrary order.
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Foreword
Implementing such a FIFO process would have been impossible without the
use of IT enabled e-Governance systems. This is what e-Gov 2.0 is about, and
I am happy that this book delves into this issue with many imaginative
examples.
The book also does a deep dive into the processes of key departments and
some of the common solutions that such Government departments can
implement. It provides an invaluable insight into the working of the
Government and should be of immense value to those who do not know the
workings of the Government but are keen to participate in the e-Governance
revolution.
This book discusses in detail each of the issues of policies, processes and
technologies for e-Governance. I am confident that the book will be of immense
value to both students and practitioners of e-Governance. The book will
also help policymakers in adopting appropriate policies for e-Governance. In
fact, the book is, perhaps, a must read for project teams about to embark on
any e-Governance project.
RANDEEP SUDAN, ex-IAS
Lead ICT Policy Specialist,
World Bank, Washington
Former Special Secretary to the Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh
(During the Chief Ministership of Shri Chandrababu Naidu)
Advance Praise for
e-Gov 2.0: Policies,
Processes and Technologies
Comprehensive, insightful and lucid. A must read for policymakers,
practitioners, teachers, students and observers of e-Governance as a techno-
managerial discipline.
Mr. R. Chandrashekhar, Secretary to Government of India,
Ministry of Communication and Information Technology
This is an exceptional book authored by a reputed expert on e-Governance.
The book covers details of e-Governance in a manner that has not been done
earlier and brings out the policy and process dimensions of e-Governance,
besides just the technology issues. I am sure the book will be very valuable
for students and practitioners of e-Governance.
Mr. Lalith Weeratunga, Permanent Secretary to President, Government of Sri Lanka
and Head of Sri Lanka Administrative Services (SLAS)
Information and communication technology is a game changer. It provides
a vehicle to democratize information and bring about a transformation to
inclusive governance. This is a brilliant book, coming at the right time, when
we are looking for having more trained resources on e-Governance. The issues
of e-Governance are very well laid out in this book and it is a must read for
any student or practitioner of e-Governance.
Dr. B.K. Gairola, Director General, National Informatics Center
A good and timely reference book on e-Gov 2.0. This book, from an experienced
industry practitioner like Dr. Bhattacharya, will be of value to not only students
of e-Governance, but also government officers and industry professionals
embarking on e-Gov projects. I am glad that Dr. Bhattacharya has been able to
cover how various departments can undertake the journey of e-enabling their
public services and put the learnings from the book into practice.
Mr. Som Mittal, President, NASSCOM
Many congratulations to Jaijit Bhattacharya for the textbook, not only
because the book unveils grassroots level concepts that go missing many-a-
times but also because the book gives a deep insight on what is being done
and what needs to be done.
Dr. Ravi Gupta, Editor-in-Chief, e-Gov magazine & Executive Director,
Centre for Science, Development & Media Studies
x
Advance Praise for e-Gov 2.0: Policies, Processes and Technologies
An exceptional book that presents the complexities of e-Governance in a
lucid and brilliant manner. It is a must read for anyone planning to implement
e-Governance.
Ms. Neelam Dhawan, Managing Director, Hewlett Packard, India
This is one of the most comprehensive books on e-Governance. It brilliantly
covers the ground-level issues of e-Governance and is a must read for students
and practitioners of e-Governance. Undoubtedly, e-Governance is the way
forward for superior citizen services, accountability, efficiency and
transparency in the Government. Dr. Bhattacharya has skillfully crystallised
the thought process around e-Governance in a manner that may shape the
things to come.
Sanjeev Kapoor, Business Head, Government and Telecom, Infosys Ltd.
This book has captured the key issues pertaining to the challenges of various
e-Gov initiatives and has looked into the issues from a more holisitic thinking
providing clearer insights from planning to execution of such initiatives given
the social, organization and managerial perspectives. Im sure that this will
provide better insights to the practitioners and policy makers towards better
Government.
Prof. Rajanish Dass, IIM Ahmedabad
Preface
It has been almost a decade since my first co-authored book on e-Governance,
Government Online: Opportunities and Challenges, was released in the presence of
the former President of India, Shri APJ Abdul Kalam. Incidentally, it was also
the first book on e-Governance in India. The book was co-authored along
with my esteemed colleagues Prof. M.P. Gupta, IIT Delhi, and Dr. Prabhat
Kumar, IRS. Since then, I have published three more edited books on e-
Governance that compiled the cutting-edge thoughts of many e-Governance
scholars.
In the last 10 years, since the release of the first book, I have been giving
lectures and conducting management development programs in e-
Governance. However, I soon realised that when it came to a Masters' level
curriculum, there was no book I could recommend as a text to students. On
discussing this issue with many of my colleagues in academia I , soon, came
to the conclusion that there was a dire need for a text book on e-Governance.
As I started planning such a textbook, I also realised that one of the key
issues inhibiting the rapid adoption of e-Governance was the need for capacity
building. It is, perhaps, a well-known fact that given the fuzziness of the
concept of e-Governance, where the complexity is compounded by a rapid
change in technology and technological paradigms, there is limited
institutional capacity in the Government to rapidly roll-out e-Governance
initiatives. Most e-Governance initiatives are driven by very few people and
supported by an overstretched team that is constantly battling other
stakeholdersMinistry of Finance as well as other line ministries. Clearly,
there is a need for a book that will help readers develop an understanding of
the complexities of e-Governance. Such an understanding is required to
educate the various stakeholders who could then be better equipped for a
constructive dialogue with the implementing Government agencies.
Therefore, I have attempted to address the needs of the Government agencies
as well in this book.
To circumvent the problem of the Government not having sufficient skills
in technology and e-Governance, consultants are being sought. This is indeed
a wise move. Consultants bring in a wealth of knowledge, best practices and
expertise. They also play a key role in cross-breeding of knowledge across
xii
Preface
multiple projects. However, a significant drawback of consultants is their
limited experience in Government processes. This becomes a challenge in
designing appropriate solutions and change management techniques. While
there is a growing need for consultants with expertise in e-Governance finding
and hiring them is a challenge. Hence, on advice of my friends in the consulting
firms, I have attempted to ensure that this book is also valuable for
consultants who want to operate in the area of e-Governance. Consultants
will get deep insights into the workings of the Government.
The book also delves into not just how to change traditional governance,
but also to leverage the power of IT to come out with new governance solutions
that would not have been possible. I have captured this under the concept of
e-Gov 2.0.
This book is my first attempt to structure a curriculum on e-Governance
that would cater to students and e-Governance practitioners such as
government stakeholders and consultants. I must confess that a book such as
this would have gaps. It took three years to write within which new jargons
and paradigms constantly kept emerging. For an example, utility computing
started to be called cloud computing, with some additional nuances that
differentiated it from utility computing. I realised I might get into a never-
ending trap of trying to catch up with the fast changing world. Therefore, I
took a call to stop and publish the book. I would be grateful for feedback and
critical comments from the readers that would help improve subsequent
editions.
I hope the book will be of great help to readers and contribute towards
effective governance.
JAIJIT BHATTACHARYA
