India has success stories in e-governance

Thursday, 11 November , 2004, 19:05

India is on the move especially in the area of e-governance. Many states
have taken up pilot projects that deal with citizens in large scale and have
claimed to have one successful project to their credit.
Though there is an improvement in the government services compared to
previous years, we are still long way to go to reach the standards that
Taiwan, Singapore and the US have. According to the Fourth Annual Global
E-Government Study, Taiwan, Singapore and the US are in lead in overall
e-governance performance.
Every year, significant resources to the tune of about Rs 2,500 crore go
into implementation of e-governance projects in India. The National Action
Plan on E-governance has an ambitious outlay of over Rs 12,000-crore
involving public and private investments over the next three to four years.
Robert Schware, Lead Informatics Specialist, the Global ICT Department of
the World Bank, who was in India recently, shares his views on India's
performance in the area of e-governance and its pilot projects with Sify.com
Excerpts


What are your views on India's performance in e-governance?

India improved its position in e-governance. The country is doing better now
and it has some success stories unlike other developing countries. The
country is on the growth path now using ICT effectively.

According to the World Bank, how many e-governance pilot projects have been
taken up in India? How many can be scaled up or replicated in other parts of
the country?
India did take up over 200 pilot projects in the area of e-governance. Some
states do have success stories while some do not. I feel that out of 200
e-governance projects, 100 pilots are worth taking up full scale and can be
replicated in other parts of the country.

What is the global scenario in e-governance?
It is estimated that approximately 35 per cent of e-governance projects in
developing countries are totally failures, approximately 50 per cent are
partial failures - only some 15 per cent can be fully seen as successes.
There are equal numbers of very sad statistics about the number of failed
implementations in the US and Europe.
The primary factors for the failures include inability to deliver government
services that provide benefit to citizens or business, lack of clarity on
business perspective, projects are done in departmental isolation rather
than via a single coordination body and lack of political will and
leadership and lack of skills in project managements among some.
There are many countries that have achieved a reasonable amount of success
in their e-government initiatives. For example, according to Cap Gemini
Ernst & Young Consultants, during 2003, Denmark had achieved 72 per cent of
government services on line with an 87 per cent score on degree of
sophistication. Other countries that high rate for particular e-government
services includes the UK, Spain, Greece, Finland, Austria, Belgium,
Bulgaria, Romania and Mexico.

What is the strategy that the World Bank follows for its ICT funding to the
developing countries? Can you share your views on the strategy?
The Global ICT Department of the World Bank is in the process of completing
a study of national e-strategies across a group of 40 regionally
representative countries with a view to mapping common policy focus area and
interventions across the nations.
There is a consensus in the strategies that e-government can provide
realistic and immediate benefits in terms of improved government
productivity, effectiveness and cost savings. In most e-strategies, the
e-government component refers to an e-government portal as the conduit for
online services. Such services often include land and property registration
(G2C), E-procurement (G2B), centralized census and population data (G2G),
for example. Provisional findings show, however, that e-government
bench-marking is left for another stage and rarely included in strategies.
As a starting point, I would suggest that more metrics be used in
e-governance strategies and consequently in monitoring and evaluation.
Reviews may be done on an annual or biannual basis.

Can you share some of the targets in e-governance set by other developed
countries?
The Government of United Kingdom has set a target of providing all
government services online by the end of 2005. Denmark ranks number one in
Europe for government services available online.