Time to Address Connectivity, Accessibility Issues in a More Holistic Manner to Take e-Governance to Next Level

Besides fast delivery of services, Internet technology brings more transparency to the governance and many benefits to the e-governance community. Govt of India undertook many initiatives under its e-governance policy over the last few years, including setting up community information service centres in villages in few states.

PHD Chamber, along with the Department of Information Technology organized a Conclave on e-Governance and m-Governance: Challenges & Opportunities. Amongst the speakers were Rajiv Gauba Additional Secretary, Department for Electronics & Information Technology, N Ravi Shanker, Adminstrator USOF, Shri Ravinder Kumar Chadha, Additional (Lok Sabha) and others.

The prime objective of the conclave was to explore effective strategies for social, financial and digital inclusion and transformation in governance through innovation and technology.

‘If we want to achieve the goal of sustainable development, we need to create enabling ecosystem and address the issue of connectivity, accessibility in a holistic manner', says Ravi Shanker, Adminstrator, USOF in his address. He also spoke about "National Optical Fibre Network" and how m-governance can be a game changer in the future.

‘In order to achieve sustainable development we need to go ahead in a more integrated and systematic manner so as to ensure larger participation from every stakeholders'. ‘Helping people learn how to use new tools and technologies is another important area that demands attention', adds Dr Ravinder Kumar Chadha, Additional Secretary (Lok Sabha).

Dr Govind, CEO NIXI spoke about m governance and how it can be used more interactively in education and health sector. He emphasised on the need for integrating m-governance with data available already. He shared that NIXI has 24GB data trafficking today and that the entire data in future can be transmitted through NIXI hubs. He also spoke about how the data available on government portals ca help in creating mobile apps.

Sriram Jaganathan, CEO Airtel Money in his presentation explained how phone can play bigger role in financial transactions in future. He sought participation of private sector in the m-governance activities.

There are large numbers of potential barriers in the implementation of e-Governance such as security, unequal access to the computer technology by the citizen, high initial cost for setting up the e government solutions and resistance to change which should be dealt on priority, says Sanjiv Gupta, Chairman ICT Committee PHD Chamber in his presentation.