Looking beyond E-Governence

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.