Looking Beyond
E- Governance…….
When we talk of
E-Governance, what is it we are looking to achieve? A sound e-governance
initiative should trigger tangible improvements in the social and economic
conditions of citizens. This absolute focus on achieving desired outcomes can
help administrators see beyond the razzle-dazzle of 21st century technology to
its true potential to create value.
Second, the long term effort and focus will be
to establish strong relationships with the citizens and deliver him services to
ease his life.
While as an
industry we are all strongly focused on providing e-Governance applications and
infrastructure, we rarely think about the adoption of the services planned to
be produced by this same expensive deployment. The question is very simple and
basic. When the applications and services are finally rolled out, what will be
the usage ?
A successful e- program has three phases –
My observation
of the evolution of e-Government worldwide suggests that it has followed three e-
waves of development so far
and is on the threshold of a fourth:
Wave 1 - Promote
access and connectivity: New technology (ICT) introduces newcapabilities,
and the opportunity of e-Government. The focus was on developing
infrastructureand adapting the legislative framework in order to encourage
adoption. Within government, thefocus was on building the infrastructure that
would enable future cooperation.
Wave 2 - Provide
services online:
e-Government was viewed as an ‘add on’, that is, anadditional communication
channel, and the primary emphasis was on developing customerinterfaces to make
existing services available online (for example, paying road tax).
Withingovernment, common portals were established as signposts to largely
autonomous PublicServices.
Wave 3 -
Transform the enterprise: the current phase has in part been driven by
efficiency agendas, and the focus has changed from basic provision of services
to impact, in terms ofbenefit to end users and government. There has been an
increasing emphasis on theautomation of back office processes (for example,
claim processing) and integration (both withinand between services). The
measurement emphasis has been on efficiency and effectiveness.This is where
most governments currently are, and in our view, will be for a few more years.
Within this
third wave we discern two sub-stages:
– Wave 3a: The
focus is on the automation of existing processes: claim processing,appointment
booking and other basic transactions.
– Wave 3b:
Governments fundamentally re-engineer their business, implementing
smarter,quicker processes which are enabled by ICT. Capitalising on
these leaner processes, theyalso restructure the organisation itself - creating
leaner organisations or moving staff tomore value added roles to improve
service effectiveness.
The fourth wave
Wave 4 will move
beyond the re-engineering of existing services to radically newways of
realizing policy objectives enabled by ICT and which we have seen are improvements
in the social and economic conditions of citizens.
Wave 4 - Next
generation government:
ICT becomes so ingrained that defining e-Government as a separate entity ceases to
be helpful. Traditional channels are ICT-enabled inthe back office and
offered alongside electronic channels in a seamlessly integrated
fashion.Merging of channels, for example, Internet telephony, allows
governments to offer blendedchannel solutions as part of their channel
management strategies such that electronic channelsbecome mainstream.
Wave 4 will
ultimately be theadoption of the service
and usage. If the citizens are not enabled or see value to using the services
provided, then all the efforts and the expense of the initiatives are wasted.
So in essence, what do we see beyond e-Governance ?
I call it “p-Governance”, where p
stands for personal. Why? Because unless the services are not personalized to the citizen, they will never
be valued and never be used.
What does
personalization really mean and involve? With the availability of great
supporting technologies, personalization can not only be done in an effective
manner but also can become a great accelerator of the adoption of such
services.
We are very sure
that the next wave (wave 4) of
investments will be in the area of adoption of services by a variety of agencies
because the mass of usage in India is at the bottom of the pyramid. A potential
base of 1.2 B users cannot be ignored by any agency.
Furthermore,
personalization will involve multiple technologies being integrated and working
together, across disparate databases, sharing information and continuously
processing information for my personal needs. It will involve solutions and
technologies in
A.
Mobility
B.
Languages
C.
Diction
and Dictionaries
D.
Localization
of content
E.
Personalization
of user interfaces
F.
Personalization
of data
G.
Convergence
between Mobile, Televisions and computers
H.
Cloud
computing
I.
Call
centers
J.
BPOs
K.
E-Learning
technologies
The list is NOT
exhaustive. The point is that technology will no longer be the end ( as it is
today) but a means to the end. And the end being the adoption of the plethora
of services which can be availed.
