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THE ROLE OF ONE STOP GOVERNMENT PORTAL IN E-GOVERNANCE OF INDIA Abstract This paper on One Stop Government Portal starts with the need for deviation from conventional method of offering govt. services physically to offering it virtually. It talks about the consequences of introduction of e-governance with reference to one-stop govt. portals in India and the way people perceived its services. It also mentions the way in which these services can be enhanced in order to reach the maximum people effectively.
Further, the one stop government portals can be used as a platform to develop Unique Id system for the citizens of India. Thus, the paper throws light on an era of internet that attempted to change the government services in a country where the diversity and population is at its peak. Finally, it demonstrates and analyses some examples of states like Delhi which took an initiative to offer one stop govt. portal services. 1. INTRODUCTION 1.
E-governance has been clearly defined as “The use of new ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) particularly the Internet and the World-Wide-Web as channels of interactive communication connecting citizens and the state, facilitating both the delivery of government information and services ‘downwards’ to citizens and also public feedback ‘upwards’ to government. “, by the UN world public sector report. The report also clearly signifies the importance of E-governance measures in strengthening democracy and good governance.
Analyzing the role of both ICT and World Wide Web as essential enablers of E-governance initiatives, one can conclude that the role of ICT is abstract and limited to the aspects of knowledge, advent of technology and expertise. On the other hand, World Wide Web is not merely a technology but also an interface which primarily depends upon the number of users interacting with it. Therefore, we can infer that the role of ICT is restrained and the primary enabler of E-governance measures is the number of “internet” users (citizen) in a country. Recent study [1] reveals that India has the highest growth rate of Internet users. 2.
With the above explanation it is quite evident that the use of e-governance will benefit the citizens of India, if only the numbers are to be trusted. However there is extreme diversity in culture and thoughts of people in India, hence the effectiveness of implementation can be questioned. This paper analyzes the effectiveness of implementation and suggests some methods to enhance the service. The one stop govt. portal aims at providing all facilities at one platform; it’s an initiative where great resources are involved. This facility is for the benefit of the citizens of India, but still people are reluctant to use the services.
The paper analyzes some of the problems of the portal and discusses some reasons for not opting to go for one stop govt. portals. 3. Though a one stop govt. portal aims at complete interoperability, there are no signs of it in the portals launched by the government. This lack of features promised is still acting as a hindering fact in the promotion of e-governance in India. This paper analyzes these features and tries to improve and incorporate them in the govt. portals to change the way people perceive e-governance, 4. The history of one platform portals and the reasons for their success and failures are also discussed. . Overall, the paper is all about the importance of one stop govt. portals in e-governance practices in India. 2. THE NEED FOR PROVIDING ONLINE SERVICES: 1. There is always a thinking of aiming for better and more advanced facilities, how much ever the best existing facility may be. Initially when the structure and rules of govt. were not properly defined, there was an urgent need to come up with a proper structure of govt. policies and rules. Once this was achieved people tried to adjust to the rules of democracy. However, as the famous saying goes-Human beings are never satisfied even with the best of the best.
Hence, there was a need for optimizing these services using internet, owing to the fact that were are so many internet users in India. The main objective was to avoid the rework performed by Indian citizen to stand in queues just for getting an application form. This was a vexing situation for both the govt. officials and citizens of India. The work would be easier and life would be better if this application form was made available on internet. This provided a start-up idea for the concept of govt. portals in the country. Although, other objectives were also defined but the 2.
The real usage: These services were meant to ease the pressure off the citizens of India. However, there was a difference in a way majority of people perceived these services. For many, it was just a new technology which they felt was far beyond their reach. For some, the security feature was hindering in the process of taking initiative to use the e-governance services. There were also issues regarding literacy, although the portals were meant to be multi-lingual, the initial services were launched in English which was a major factor for not reaching many citizens in India.
Hence all these factors led to decline in the numbers expected to use the e-governance services in India. 3. THE BACKBONE: THE ONE STOP PORTAL INITIATIVES IN INDIA 1. India, like other countries also started adopting the mega e-governance projects with reference to one platform solution. ??? The Government approved the National e-Governance Plan (NeGP), comprising of 27 Mission Mode Projects (MMPs) and 10 components, on May 18, 2006 (Ministry of Communication and Information Technology, Government of India). ??? The National Action Plan on e-governance has an ambitious outlay of over Rs. 3,000 Crores involving public and private investments over the next four years (Ministry of Communication and Information Technology, 2006)). ??? Eleventh Five Year Plan (2007 ??? 2012): Over the next five years, domestic spending on outsourced IT services is projected to more than double, from Rs. 103 billion in 2004 to over Rs. 238 billion in 2009 (Planning Commission, Government of India, 2007). 2. The evolution of e-government has been characterized (Hiller & Belanger, 2001; Layne & Lee, 2001; UN & ASPA, 2002) by providing stages of development: catalogue; transaction; integration (vertical and horizontal).
The stages of development outline the structural transformations of governments as they progress toward electronically-enabled government and how the Internet-based government models become amalgamated with traditional public administration, implying fundamental changes in the form of government. In order to understand how systems of rules affect the evolution of e-government, it is necessary first to comprehend the way in which the evolutionary approach examines e-government stages: from developing a Web page to integrating government systems behind the Web interface.
In this view, governments evolve from one stage to the other (Schelin, 2003). Each of the stages represents different levels of technological sophistication, citizen orientation, and administrative change (Holden et. al, 2003; Moon, 2002). 3. Implementation of e-governance activities in India: There are projects going on in India on integrating the government services at national level, state level as well as local level (Bhatnagar et. al, 2007).
At national level: MCA 21, Income Tax online and Customs on-line are working on providing a one-stop portal for their respective departments. The current objective of these projects is to integrate their departments vertically. At state level (IIM-A, 2007): Property registration (CARD, KAVERI, SARITA); Bill payment (eSeva: One stop shop for many services in Andhra Pradesh have been operational for three years); Land records (BHOOMI: Karnataka); eProcurement (Online tendering in Andhra Pradesh); SmartGov (AP); Khajane (Computerization of treasuries in Karnataka).
At local level: Municipality (Ahemdabad, Vijyawada) – ‘One Stop Civic Shop’ for availing various civic services in the Municipal Corporation premises; Lokvani (Sitapur) – Service Oriented e-Governance system which attempts to provide efficient and responsive online services to the common people and seeks to increase transparency and accountability in Government procedures (Ministry of IT) ; Rural Telecenters: e-Chaupal, Akshaya (district wide e-literacy project of Kerala Government), n-Logue, Drishtee. 4. ISSUES OF E-GOVERNANCE AND ONE STOP GOVT. PORTALS IN INDIA 1. Funding : Funding is the foremost issue in e-Governance initiatives.
The projects that are part of the e-governance initiatives need to be funded either through the Government sector or through the private sector. The role of private sectors purely depends on their commercial interests. An import source of funding can be the advertisements in the govt. portals; however this will be viable only if people start using these portals on a large scale. 2. Management of Change: If one stop govt. portals are to be implemented in true sense then the whole structure and management of the govt. bodies needs to be changed. The methods of operations needs to be compete transparent among the different bodies.
If proper interoperability needs to be implemented then the bodies have to function together as one team. The whole re-structuring of the hierarchy will be a difficult process. However, once the restructuring has been performed, it will be beneficial for the long run. There will be a need for proper change in Government decision management. The employees need to be delegated more authority. De-layering of the decision-making levels leads to re-engineering and appropriate sizing of the decision-making machinery. The changes are not only limited to the employees but also the union groups as they need to accept the changes in a positive spirit.
This will also involve some training to handle the process effectively. The mind orientation of people needs to be changed to adapt to the modern and easy to use portals. 3. Privacy: The privacy of the citizen also needs to be ensured while addressing the issues. Whenever a citizen gets into any transaction with a Government agency, he shells out lot of personal information, which can be misused by the private sector. Thus, the citizen should be ensured that the information flow would pass through reliable channels and seamless network. 4. Authentication: Secured ways of transactions for the Government services are another issue of concern.
The identity of citizens requesting services needs to be verified before they access or use the services. Here digital signature will play an important role in delivery of such services. But the infrastructure needed to support them is very expensive and requires constant maintenance. Hence a pertinent need still survives, compelling the authorities to ensure the authenticity in their transactions thereby gaining absolute trust and confidence of the citizen. { As quoted by MINDLABS } 5. Interoperability: The first issue concerning interoperability is the implementation of all processes in single format.
There are different govt. bodies which carry out proceeding in their idiosyncratic way. Hence they need to adopt a common format which will be a tough job for them. In fact the interoperation of various state Governments, the various ministries within a state Government is a critical issue. Further how the various islands of automation will be brought together and built into one is another key issue of e-Governance. 6. Delivery of services: Although steps are being taken by the government to set up computer centers where poor people can come and access the govt. ortals, but still there is an immense lack in infrastructure. Proper planning needs to be done to provide each and every citizen of India an access to the govt. portals. Once the implementation and usability occurs on a large scale only then the proper structuring of the whole process will take place efficiently. 7. Standardization: Defining the standards for the various Government services is another issue that needs to be addressed. The standards need to be worked out not only for the technologies involved but also for issues like naming of websites to creating E-Mail addresses. 8.
Technology Issues: A number of organizations, both in the Centre and the States, have taken commendable initiatives to develop hardware and software platforms to address the challenges offered by e-Governance. At the central level in particular, the C-DAC, CMC and a number of others are noteworthy. The e-Governance initiative would have to address these Technology Issues/Objectives by identifying the appropriate hardware platforms and software application packages for cost-effective delivery of public services. This knowledge repository should be widely available through appropriate Demo- Mechanisms.
Offering a basket of these models to the State departments, both in the Center and the State, could be suitably customized as per location and work specific requirements. 9. Use of local languages: The access of information must be permitted in the language most comfortable to the public user, generally the local language. There already exist technologies such as GIST and language software by which transliteration from English into other languages can be made. 5. SECURITY: An important factor why people do not trust e-government services. 1.
On July 23 2001, even casual Internet surfers were surprised to find some confidential and secret files of the External Affairs Ministry scattered all over cyberspace. Why was the Ministry suddenly handing over its secrets even to those who were not interested? It came out to that it was not the bosses in the Ministry but a minuscule virus, nicknamed w32. sircom, that had got into the Government’s computer system and was pilfering and scattering the state secrets. 2. The information wizards rushed to initiate the damage control operations. They disabled the servers in the Government network from sending any attached files whatsoever.
The problem stands resolved for the time being. Till a new virus that can pierce through this disability comes along, there will be no unauthorized pilfering of government files. The trouble is, till then, that those on the governmental networks will not be able to send or receive even normal attachments as e-mail. 3. Such type of incidents creates doubts in the mind of people to switch to the electronic services. After the successful implementation of online banking, even the technical nerds feel uncomfortable in switching over to online banking from the conventional one. Same is the case with online govt. services.
Citizens of India feel the conventional method of receiving the govt. service are much better than the online services because of the security factor. These online services do not ensure security, hence the excellent benefit of avoiding the rework for both citizen and govt. official is ruled out. 4. Measures have been taken in the recent projects to overcome the security problems, but the way people think about security is not changed. Government has to come up with techniques and strategies which will change the way people perceive online services. The citizens of India should be made aware of the benefits of switching over to online govt. ervices. 6. DELHI GOVERNMENT PORTAL: Analysis of what was expected and what was achieved. 1. The snapshot of the Delhi Govt. portal: The image below is a snapshot of the web portal of Delhi government. This was a major step towards establishing e-governance. Several facilities like online application was provided which reduced the effort of manual collection of forms from the government offices. 6. 2 The figure shows the different services offered by the govt. portal of Delhi. This includes vehicle registration, bill payments, court matters and other major needs of citizen of India. 6. Achievements: This was a breakthrough in the field of e-governance. People could save time by avoiding long queues for just the collection of application forms. The workload at the government centers also reduced potentially. Telephone exchanges and centers could now focus more on providing value services rather than handling long queues for collecting the bill. The customer care section in the web-site was of great use to Indian citizen as there was no clarity of rules and regulations before. Also the web-site was handled by learned people; hence user could get effective feedback from the administrators. . 4 What went wrong: This portal was given a name “One Stop Government portal”. This means it was designed to be one platform solution to avail all the govt. services. However the name was just a misnomer. Many services were provided online, but there was no interoperability among the various services. Ex ??? If a user wants to apply for passport, he has to undergo certain process. The same process is repeated if he has to apply for Voter ID Card. The repeated process may involve address verification, filling in of demographic data etc.
Hence the real motive, the real definition of interoperability or ‘One Stop Govt. Portal’ was not met. 7. THE NEED TO ADOPT ONE STOP GOVERNMENT PORTAL 1. The actual role of one stop government portals in improving the management of govt. policies in India needs to be conveyed to the citizens. The reasons why people did not opt for these govt. portals should be analyzed properly and steps should be taken to address to the requirements. 2. One of the primary need of shifting to one stop portals is the solution to the so called “Unique Id” can be approached in a better way.
There have been issues regarding the allotment of unique IDs to all citizens of India. If the responses to these portals are very high, then it can be shifted from state implementation to nation-wide implementation and thus the solution to unique Id can be found. 3. The advantages for not only the citizens but also the govt. should be explained to the user. At one end, citizens can enjoy the one platform services, avoidance of rework etc while at the other end government can enjoy the facility oh having a common database at one platform to monitor effectively. 4. Initially govt. odies may be reluctant to go for a change in the structure of the administration but as more people register in the govt. portals they will be bound to offer effective services to the registered users. Hence, people need to participate in true spirits for a successful implementation of the portals. It can be considered as a two way process. Efforts should be made form both ends in order to ensure smooth functioning of the process. 8. THE ISSUES IN IMPLEMENTAION OF CITIZEN ID 1. This section describes about how one stop govt. portal can lead to the possible implementation of the Citizen Id in India.
It also describes about the challenges to be faced in order to implement the same. 2. The primary idea of the paper is to understand the reasons as to why people are reluctant to avail the one stop govt. services. It also suggests methods to create a mass awareness of these portals. This awareness will lead to nation-wide implementation of one stop portals and thus will lay the platform for the unique ID implementation in India. 3. Case Study: Recently initiative was taken by the govt. of Himachal Pradesh to take steps towards providing unique Id for all citizens (iGovernment Bureau).
The first step that was planned was connecting all the databases together, i. e. linking all the departments of the government by sharing their database. The project aims at ensuring better planning and monitoring of the schemes and online delivery of government services across departments. There needs to be a restructuring of the system in order to link the databases. However, if the state already had a well established one stop govt. portal in use used by most people of Himachal Pradesh, then the effort and restructuring required to link the databases could have been well avoided. One stop govt. ortals require the different departments of govt. to communicate and collaborate, hence providing the structure to connect the database. 4. The decision of providing unique ID in Himachal was supplemented by the decision of opening of 3,366 Common Service Centres (CSCs) across the state. The opening of centers has been described in the paper as one of the most important features of implementation of one stop govt. portals. The citizens not having technical availability can avail the facilities of one stop govt. portals in these centers and become well versed with the usage of the system.
Therefore, when the concept of unique ID will be implemented in these centers, there wont be any problem in getting equipped with the technology and system. 5. The direct implementation of unique ID without the implementation of the one stop govt. portals would be a difficult move by the government. The implementation of one stop govt. portals on a large scale will give a training/simulation of the unique ID scenario. The essential step of linking the database can easily be achieved by communicating the services among the departments of govt.
However, the transparency will increase and hence there might be little resistance in taking this step of collaboration. Each department has its own method of functioning and they do not follow standardized procedure to carry out tasks. The primary step towards the implementation of the unique ID would be to provide standardized methods of carrying out various govt. tasks and policies. This would ensure that there is no difficulty in establishing a one platform service for the citizen of India. There would be both transparency among the various departments and also the proceedings would be clear to the citizens of the country. . The hierarchy of the govt. departments will include a major change as the forms of reporting would be extended to other departments. Single department would not be functioning as a single unit now; it needs to run in collaboration with other departments. The restructuring would lay the foundation for Unique ID proposals. Different units functioning together will be able to attract many citizens at a single platform, thus making them ready for the unique ID system implementation. 7. The whole idea here is to avoid the problems in starting up an entire new department of handling the Unique ID Services. The one stop govt. ortals can act as a perfect platform for data collection and having a common database at one platform. The coordination among the departments can improve the likelihood of implementation of Unique ID. The user also will have a clear picture of the facilities he can avail with the help of the unique ID given to him by regularly logging in the govt. portals. 9. RECOMMENDED FEATURES TO BE INTRODUCED IN GOVT. PORTALS 8. 1 Schemesponsorship search: An important characteristicfeature that remains unaddressed in most of the research done in context of e-governance or the one stop government portal is the “provision of scheme search procedures”.
As in every budget the government of India announces numerous schemes for the welfare of the different sections of the society. Our paper therefore proposes a scheme/sponsorship search on the one stop government portal. 8. 2 One of the most erratic drawback of the different schemes launched is that schemes are uploaded in “proposed formats” (as snapshots or scanned documents) over the internet/portals without classifying them under the categories they exist in, because of which data is generally not clear and he search process in order to find the right scheme is cumbersome and inefficient. For example various schemes defined for the backward classes of India are not classified with respect to the income group, or with respect to the region hence the user (citizen) has to “sequentially” scan through numerous schemes to find a scheme suitable to him. 8. 3 Therefore, we propose a more comprehensive and easy ???to-use search wizard which would take in input parameters such as age, region, annual income etc and output schemes available in reverse chronological order. . 4 Since the one stop government portal aims at establishing interoperability among the various govt. services, it is important to analyze the types of possible methods. Primarily we propose three methods to achieve interoperability among the various services. The three methods are centralized body, data sharing and digital signatures. 10. REFERENCES [1] Pippa Norris, Deepening Democracy via E-Governance, Draft chapter for the UN World Public Sector Report. 2] Adrienne Muir and Charles Oppenheim, National Information Policy developments worldwide I: electronic government, Journal of Information Science 2002. [3] K. S Muthupandian, Electronic Filing Of Forms In Mca 21??? An Overview, published in The chartered Accountant, May 2006. [4] Sameer Schadeva, E-Governance Strategy in India, December 2002. [5] Ian Curry, An Introduction to Cryptography and Digital Signatures, March 2001. ———————– Scheme/Sponsorship Search Age Region Income Recommended Scheme