e-Gov: From Information Systems to Workflow Automation

Red-tapism, corruption, endless queues leading to harassed people, etc have been a bane of the waste-full manual processes prevalent in almost all Government departments and processes. Recently, we all have experienced the rising of civil society which has come of age to stand against corruption. We have also witnessed voices emanating from various sources including social networking to curb the same.

While IT solutions can eliminate the demons to a large extent and bring transparency into the whole system, implementing an IT solution in the Govt system is very difficult because of scalability issues. However, these factors are not deterring the Govt from embracing IT. Let's take the example of one of the most ambitious and difficult to implement IT projects till date--the nationwide UID project. This project was initiated in Bihar to complement the NREGA scheme, to remove cash transactions and with it instances of corruption. Even a novice would understand the difficulty of implementing a process of such magnitude which would be the largest of its kind in the world when it is completed. The benefits of the same exceed the difficulty in multiples. This explains how the people and the Govt itself have come to realize the importance and benefits of IT. During the course of the PCQuest Best IT implementation awards, 2011, we realized that the Govt departments have increasingly been taking steps to bring IT into the game to bring transparency and ease out cumbersome processes which earlier used to be nothing more than a waste of time, energy and money. The scale of these projects ranged from region specific to Pan India.

The two key drivers of e-Gov projects have been the National e-Governance Plan (NeGP) and Right to Information Act (RTI) 2005. Where roll out of National e-Governance Plan (NeGP) envisions bringing public services closer to its citizens, the RTI Act 2005 requires each public authority to computerize their records so as to disseminate it widely, and proactively publish certain categories of information. So that citizens need not request information formally every time.

This year, 10% of the overall 270 projects we received as nominations were from the Government, which is 3rd highest in our list. And interestingly, close to one third of the projects were from the BPM & Automation category. Information systems, ERP and online portals together constitute the other major chunk of the pie. This clearly reflects the focus of the Govt sector in effective implementation of the NeGP and RTI. These projects also reflect the growing importance of bringing IT into the setup, automate various Govt processes and do away with the wastage of manual labor. It is pleasant to find that ERP deployments have started picking up in the Govt.