E-Governance: Short Notes

e-records

e-records are ‘born digital’ records which includes emails, databases, images, word-processed documents, intranets, websites etc. Electronic records helps in ensuring effective and efficient business environment.

e-office Mission Mode Project

e-office is one among the 44 mission mode projects (MMP) under the National e-Governance Plan (NeGP). The project aims to improve efficiency, productivity, quality, resource management, and increase transparency by replacing the old manual process with an electronic file system.

e-districts

e-Districts provides a platform for Government-to-Consumer or G2C interactions. It was envisaged to provide integrated and seamless delivery of citizen services by district administration through automation of workflow, backend computerization and data digitization across participating departments. e-district is one among the 44 mission mode projects (MMP) under the National e-Governance Plan (NeGP).

Key objectives:

• To promote efficient delivery of services.
• Improving capacity building for field functionaries
• Improving access to efficient, reliable, transparent and accountable Services
• Reducing service time & costs for the Government and Citizens
• Enhancing perception & image of the Government

National e-District Service Tracker

National e-District Service Tracker is a mobile App which will enable the citizens to interact with the e-District Application by using hand held devices like mobile and tablets.

E-Courts

e-courts is a mission mode project to transform justice delivery by ICT enablement of courts. The project was conceptualized based on the action plan, “National Policy and Action Plan for Implementation of information and communication technology (ICT) in the Indian Judiciary – 2005”.  The project aims to provide efficient, time-bound citizen centric services delivery and automate all the processes involved to provide transparency of information access to the stakeholders. The projects also aims to make the justice delivery system affordable, accessible and cost effective.

E-Governance Initiatives Of Other Countries

• Singapore One: It is an e-governance initiative of Singapore government to offer very comprehensive services to its citizens. The initiative keeps track of a person right from his birth and continues tracking his/her graduation degree, employment, marriage, housing loans, passport, business etc.
• South Korea has also initiated a number of e-Governance initiatives and boasts of having one of the best connectivity in the world.
• UK is an example of having excellent e-Governance system on whose processes Indian processes are based on. However, Indian processes have remained antiquated.

Criticism of e-governance initiatives

E-governance initiatives are criticized on the basis of following.

• No person to person interaction.
• Concerns on transparency as the system is maintained by the government itself. It can add/delete/manipulate data and paint a different picture to the public.
• Not all citizens are tech savvy to avail of these services. It brings up the issue of lack of equality in public access of services.
• There exists a lack of privacy due to the hyper surveillance activities of the governments.