NEED FOR e-GOVERNANCEMost countries have recognised information technology (IT) as an effective tool in catalysing economic activity and in developing human resource. In India too developments in the IT sector have impacted various sector of the economy.As the era of digital economy is evolving, the concept of governance has assumed significance. The questions often asked in this context are: How can the government become more responsive and accessible? How can the government enhance its role as a catalyst of economic growth? How can one provide better government services? How can the government use advance technologies for transferring benefits, improving health care and education, re-engineering themselves and outsourcing services?These questions are now adequately answered through the well understood concept of Electronic Governance or e-governance. This concept has consequently become an accepted methodology involving the use of IT in improving transparency, providing informationspeedily to all citizens, improving administration efficiency and improving public services such as transportation, power, health, water, security and municipal services. E-governance is a technology-driven methodology to realise economic prosperity leading to transparency, higher velocity of business, improved productivity and new exciting business opportunity.Several initiatives have been taken in India in applying the concepts of e-governance in different domains. Notable among them are in building decision support systems for state functionaries, providing higher layers of information systems for legislatures, efficient monitoring system in state government, collectorates, municipal corporations, information management in tourism, water resources, security operations, land and other civil registrations in various states. Also worthy of mention are the efforts to network various government departments for exchange of data for dissemination and analysis. The awareness of how effective e-governance canbe is slowly but surely increasing. But it needs to be speeded up.One quick way of realising this is to set up demonstratable test beds and replicate them across different states. This would help both to demonstrate customised individual solutions of e-governance in given sectors and build a core of e-governance model, which could serve as basis for further development. This will additionally give opportunities to understand and build core technologies comprising of high-end scalable servers with ATM backbone, building information systems, and offering certain key applications suitably customised to demonstrate their efficacy. This would also serve as an excellent foundation for further replication, and the demonstration of a number of applications.The e-governance model is designed to bring in two main advantages. Firstly, it would set certain standards to be followed across states and the departments. Secondly, it would reduce avoidable duplication of efforts in development, thereby making thereplication more cost effective.An e-governance model would principally comprise of a core system of three-tier architecture hosting high-end scalable servers with an ATM backbone; personal information and management system providing for back office information system in the areas of payroll, personnel information, MIS and other office functionalities.The author is executive director of C-DAC
