Frederick Noronha on Sat, 27 May 2000 09:22:31 +0200 (CEST) |
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<nettime> E-governance India |
E-GOVERNANCE IN INDIA NOW DEPENDS ON INTEGRITY OF "MAN BEHIND MACHINE" by Frederick Noronha fred@vsnl.com PONDICHERRY, May 25: In the quest for the tantilising promises of e-governances, the machines are now all in fine shape. But what about the man behind the system? Skeptical computer professionals from across South Indian states, some of which have seen a speedy race towards excellence in IT, are sternly warning that the real quality of e-governance now depends on "the integrity of the man behind the machine". Senior government officials point to a growing role of IT in the administration, to say that administrations will become more lean, trim... and even clean. But computer specialists meeting here are only willing to adopt a wait-and-watch policy. "Merely putting computers in a government office won't help. We need to win the confidence of people (who are going to man them). Because over time people ingrain ways of living, thinking and working," said Computer Society of India Bangalore chairman M.L.Ravi. Ravi pointed out that the Bangalore Corporation has computerised its birth and death records. Yet due to intertia, instead of taking five to six minutes to issue a certificate, they were still taking five to six days, he said. He added that it was up to the citizen to place higher expectations of his bureaucrat and politician, to claim his right to a better quality of services. Pondicherry industries secretary G. Narendra Kumar, who is also secretary to the region's Lt. Governor, said the new economy provided governments a chance to provide better services to their citizens. "Accessing information becomes easier, some services can get a qualitative boost. But the question of the state's role in allocation of resources becomes more complicated (under e-governance trends),"he said. IT would not change much the state's role in regulating activity -- for business, and in the social and economic worlds -- the senior bureaucrat also suggested. "Under the IT revolution we're trying to reduce the transaction cost of every transaction. The same can be done by governments. But there is also a lurking fear that government servants would be thrown out of jobs (leading to reluctance on their part)," said Narendra Kumar. Managing director of the Coimbatore-based Consolidated Cybernetics, P R Rangaswami, argued that governments -- which could be viewed as businesses of sorts, in a way -- could also improve their efficiency vastly ue to the IT revolution taking place. "Transaction costs in e-business is coming down sharply. The same should hold true for governments," he argued. Planning and budgeting of governments should get more accurate, and monitoring should be more precise compared to what it currently is, said Rangaswami. National Informatics Centre technical director Dr V Siva Rama Krishnaiah said an IT strategy for governents is now as essential as a mouse is to a PC -- "it can't manoeuvre unless it clicks". Krishnaiah, who heads the official national body looking after the IT needs of the government, cited examples of how Andhra Pradesh had computerised land records in sub-registrar's offices to lower corruption levels. He said the Delhi Corporation was now using software to collect property taxes more efficiently. Federal ministers like Ram Jethmalani were having national-level video conferences with state-based Registrars of Companies, without requiring all of them to come to Delhi for meetings, he said. Citizens could also track the progress of their cases in the Supreme Court, and all judgements from 1952 onwards were available now on a searchable CD (compact disk), he added. There is a new software being worked on to help pensioners sort delays, and Tamil Nadu has begun putting out its public exam results on the web to avoid students getting inconvenienced by a teachers' strike, he said. Narendra Kumar, who is also the industries secretary of Pondicherry, said that after this Union Territory declared its IT policy recently, ration cards had been fully computerised and land records had also been done so "to a large extent". But some entrepreneurs complained of the long delays and elaborate paperwork it took to set up even a medical transcription unit here. Citing an experiment by the M.S.Swaminathan Foundation in a Pondicherry village, Narendra Kumar said outdated computers received from abroad were giving villagers vital connectivity to information that mattered. >From helping them to locate doctors in towns, to finding out the right time to take their cane to sugar-mills and avoid waiting for long hours outside mill gates, this 'information dirt-track' was reaching their village market place. Fishermen had also been able to hike their catches by upto 30% by making use of the latest boon of technology, and using satellite information to locate shoals of catch, said Narendra Kumar. But questions lingered on in the minds of computer professionals on whether this really signals a drastic change in governance, or are just stray examples in a country where the government plays a crucial and often time-consuming role in everything from a ration-card (which offers supplies of foodgrains to the poor at cheaper rates), to vehicular documents, passports, university certificates or authenticated land records. (ENDS) # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: majordomo@bbs.thing.net and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net