India's e-governance plan
The future of e-governance in India depends on the availability of shared nationwide infrastructure. R. Chandrasekhar, Joint Secretary, e-governance, Ministry of IT, sees the National e-governance Plan steering India's IT needs to fulfillment.CIO: Is a consolidated approach to e-governance the way to go?
R. Chandrasekhar: The focus of e-governance in a developing country like India is to enable a great number of its citizens. It is also extremely useful in gauging how citizens perceive the government. When you look at e-governance from a citizen's point-of-view, you sense a need for a common framework and approach. It may not be a grand holistic blueprint for the entire country, but it should be a foundation on which governments and departments can provide citizen services.
What are some of the short-term goals of this blueprint?
There are both physical and conceptual aspects that various players in the framework have in common and these require to be tied in. For example, it is sub-optimal for every department to own a datacenter. It is also not feasible for them to create individual networks. Apart from being expensive, numerous networks could lead to myriad technical snags, which would lead to inefficient service delivery. It is advisable to have common infrastructure that departments and states can draw from.
Second, we need to build capacity. It is evident that there is a serious shortage of capacity to implement e-governance projects. While it's great to propose a confluence of business, technology and financial know-how, it is also true that there is much to be desired in the build-up. People with the required skills, for example, need to be developed. We need to work towards building a common pool of resources across the country.
Third, it is essential to separate the back-end of a project from its front-end. A common back-end can be cared for separately, leaving the front-end in the hands of those at the state and department level.
If e-governance is to be made all-pervasive in India, it's necessary to start work on a national framework that would bring together common physical infrastructure, policies, and standards. This is what the National e-governance Plan (NeGP) is about.
Can you clarify what you mean by separating the back-end from the front-end?
One of the goals of the national plan is to deliver services through shared assisted-service centers. We plan to construct almost 100,000 centers under a public-private partnership so that state governments don't have to deal with the technology and infrastructure hassles associated with the back-end. Evidently, we will need to separate the two ends. There are gateways and middleware to enable this.
What is the status of the NeGP?
The framework has been in place for over a year. We are in the process of getting approval to put it in operation. It is a learning process. Conceiving a network, casting it in stone, only to discover its limitations is not the best approach. It's better to evolve a framework that is approved by a majority. Once we have grasped all the imperatives, we can come up with a composite plan.
This will mean a delay. Is it justifiable?
I don't think it should be looked at as a delay. It is merely a process of evolution. The process of governance in India is very complex, but there is a broadening and a deeper penetration of e-governance applications, which indicates the success of our approach. Individual projects are much more a part of the e-governance plan than they are IT achievements of the department of IT. It is not meaningful to look at the delivery timeline of the program as a whole.
Was benchmarking the projects harder when you drew up the national plan?
We are a multilingual and multicultural society. India is a typical example of a multilayer federal structure that doesn't have many parallels in the world. More relevantly, we are a developing country whose computerization and back-end integration happened much before the mass penetration phenomena of the Internet.
With the advent of the Internet, developed countries only had to worry about connecting their disparate computer systems to enable their citizens to access new services. In India, we didn't have extensive computerization or deep telecom penetration.
Our level of IT literacy requires assisted services at this point, and this means that we have to plan systems that are multilingual. These are complexities that are typical to India. The only cue that we can take from developed countries is to consolidate our back-end, making integration with various front-ends easier. This will enable more citizens to access services immaterial of where they are.
We have also consulted with national and international agencies for different aspects of the national e-governance plan, although there is no one umbrella consultant. To a large extent, we have had to stitch our own quilt.
While building the plan from ground up, which were the areas you sought to concentrate on?
The NeGP admittedly doesn't cover the entire spectrum of governance. It is rather a statement to create efficient systems in high priority areas. There have been strong voices concerned with focusing on areas that affect large groups of people, like agriculture, health, and education, which have been put on top priority.
Is there a level of denial from government employees?
The plan represents a transition from a totally manual to an e-enabled outlook and change brings anxiety. Acceptance -- both inside and outside government -- saw initial apprehensions. There was a belief that only young people could implement and use IT and employees feared losing their jobs. This hasn't come true. Today, the people who plan and implement these projects feel secure. Governments across the board accept that the plan is a priority. Assisted services are a huge success as a concept and if there has been a failure, it has been in making these services available in a reliable and consistent manner. We can achieve this only when we have a strong and shared back-end, which the NeGP addresses.
So far, have people taken to the assisted centers?
Where the services are of a reasonable quality, the centers have not needed selling. Experience has shown that despite a nominal fee, citizens prefer to use the services. But, to make centers all-pervasive we need to improve service-oriented architecture.
How will the NeGP finance itself to ensure continuity?
The cost of delivering any service under the NeGP is the sum of three parts: Back-end systems and processes, front-end and the middle-ware including gateways, datacenters, networks, security, etc. On the other end, there are a range of prices that depend on the kind of service. Some services have recovered their costs, which has enabled a swifter spread because they are not dependent on budgetary allocations. In some cases, however, the price may be different from the cost. Pricing is a matter of government policy.
How much has been allocated in the past years?
Current spending on e-governance is in the tune of Rs 2,000 (US$446 million) to 3,000 crore a year. NeGP budget and spend will not be differ significantly from the past years. At best it may require about Rs 20,000 crore over the next five years, which is not very different from the current spending pattern. It also has the government's willingness to allocate and spend money because the project has very high priority. The real issue before us is implementation. And implementing means doing it all: Changing technologies, changing processes, building capacities, managing transition, ensuring both the delivery of services and that people to use them.
Is there a formula for quicker implementation?
We are already seeing changes. There is no magic wand to enable this transition overnight. We are progressing fast. In a country, as complex as India, when something becomes a movement, it develops very fast. We are seeing the beginning of that movement. We have already seen e-governance go from being supply-driven to demand-driven.
How then do you explain the success of only 15 percent of projects?
We see the harsh reality of that figure. The question before us is how to deal with it. First, we have to do away with both holding someone responsible for failure and with it the fear of failure. We are in an experimental stage -- we are bound to see some failures. What a 15 percent success rate tells me is that the problems were far more complicated than were anticipated. NeGP will deal with some of these issues.
Fifty percent of the failures are typically small pilot projects, which gives us room to make a call on dumping them or starting afresh. Of the 35 percent that were partial successes there is a litmus test. Has it given value for money? If it has, then irrespective of its part success, we should strive to scale it up. We have to keep in mind that successes involve a change in mindset.
This has been a teaching exercise. Some of the lessons we have taken away include the need to invest in people who have skills. Second, failures should only occur at the lower levels. Therefore, our approach is to start small and scale up fast. NeGP is a giant project, but this doesn't mean that we should go the whole hog in a single shot.
What happens to failed projects?
There are several cases of failed projects that other states carved success from. There are many projects around common service delivery models that succeeded but even greater number of such projects that failed. Each of these failed projects has driven a different set of people to make them a success.
How transparent are e-governance projects?
As far as procedures are concerned, they are all laid out. It is a public process. Transparency is an area in which we have taken best practices from across the world. In this respect all governments have the same kind of issues.
Simultaneously, one must recognize that in the knowledge domain there are many services whose deliverables cannot be tacked down to our grid. Those that pose a difficulty include consultancy and advisory services. Their processes are not conducive to evaluation. Therefore, we sometimes look at them through the lens that is applied to a different space. In this paradigm, cost is not the only variable to consider. One of our challenges is to device evaluation methods that are not only consistent to government procedures but also cost effective -- though not necessarily the cheapest solution.
Are there mechanisms to audit these projects?
This is one area we are looking at. Under the NeGP, there is a clause called 'assessment and awareness'. Assessment forms part of what we know as an audit, although it is not restricted to a financial point-of-view.
What is the concept behind e-champions?
Part of the NeGP is to build capacities on a large-scale, including capable people -- or champions. These include CIOs and CTOs, though they don't have to be IAS officers. In fact, most officers will come from government domains. They will drive the overall vision of a project, and not be bogged down with its day-to-day functioning.
The program will train people already working on projects and those who have shown an inclination for e-governance. They will be positioned for specific projects and will have fixed tenures. However, a project will only be funded if a person agrees to be accountable for it.
What's your advice to younger government IT leaders who want to drive successful projects?
First, it's important for them to define an e-governance project. They have to look at the outcome of project and evaluate how it benefits citizens. If they cannot spot a social benefit, then it is merely an IT project.
Second, to be able to achieve results, they must keep in mind two mantras: They must work as a team and there is no shortcut to success in e-governance projects.
What can we expect to see in 2006-07?
In 2006-07, we will see extremely exciting developments in the e-governance space. This is the period during which common infrastructure for service delivery across the nation will be put up, including the State Wide Area Networks (SWANs), datacenters and delivery centers. Capacity building will happen simultaneously. Various departments involved in these projects will be ready to deliver services within the next two years.
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