E-governance is slowly gaining momentum in India, but there are several challenges hampering its growth, such as poor human, organisational and administrative capabilities. In a conversation with Biztech2.0, Professor Rajanish Dass, faculty and member of the Centre for Retailing and the Centre of e-Governance at IIM Ahmedabad, shares some prime concerns regarding the implementation of e-governance in India. Dass is also a member of the advisory board of the Ministry of Information and Technology for setting up e-governance standards in the country.

What scope do you see for e-governance in India?

I would first like to draw the need for e-governance in India, because I feel the need would define the scope. Initially, when the government envisaged e-governance, the idea was to deliver government services at citizens’ doorsteps. It started from delivering birth and death certificates, land records etc. But what we missed out on was digitisation of intergovernmental departments and ministries. Overall scope for e-governance is high, so if properly executed the benefits will be far-reaching.

What is your take on the current status of e-governance in India?

In India we have a number of small pilot projects, but till date we have not been successful in scaling them up to the national level. A National E-governance plan (NeGP) had a blueprint strategy for 27 mission-mode projects, but none of them were executed properly and hence failed to deliver. In the whole process, the role of National Information Centre (NIC) and National Institute for Smart Government (NISG) is very critical, but I don’t think they have been able to deliver either. None of the mission-mode projects, except MCA21, has been executed well. Other government departments are still grappling with the challenges.

What are some of the major issues hampering the growth of e-governance in India?

While rolling out e-governance initiatives, the intent of the ministry and government is right; it's the capability to deliver that comes in the way. A majority of e-governance projects in India start as well as end with the purchase of hardware. Major challenges arise due to the fact that technology is still seen as a commodity that can be bought, and not as a service that can be delivered to the citizens.

Every e-governance initiative is currently treated as a project. If a single ministry has ten different e-governance projects, each project team works as a silo. In the absence of interoperability of data, ministry A cannot interact with ministry B, leading to the creation of these silos. When we are talking about implementing e-governance on a scale as huge as India, certainly this scale itself is one of the biggest challenges.

According to you, what measures need to be taken to meet these challenges?

First of all we should try to come up with a framework of standardised enterprise architecture for rolling out the projects. To roll out any IT project successfully, one needs to have the right set of processes and people in place. Existing workgroups have to be reoriented and thus training becomes very crucial. One should stop looking at doing an impact analysis, because this is similar to a a post-mortem study. If one can proactively anticipate the risks that can come up, it becomes easier to mitigate those risks.

You have been involved in setting up e-governance standards; can you share some details with us? What are some of the issues that can be addressed by these standards?

As a country we have not been able to come up with a single charter of key practices; key dimensions that have to be looked at before implementing any e-governance project. As I said, our government departments work in silos due to lack of interoperability. Proper standards of interoperability must be put into place to enable successful e-governance initiatives. We have started doing some work in this area, and very soon perhaps something will come up.

Do you think public private partnership (PPP) can play a major role in pushing the e-governance agenda?

PPP models are going to play a major role in executing e-governance projects. The private party in the PPP model has a substantial and clear profit motive, which takes care of all the other motives that should have been in place. PPP models are already considered effective and successful. Take the PAN card initiative, for instance. After this was given to National Securities Depository Ltd (NSDL) and Unit Trust of India Services Ltd (UTISL), you can get a PAN card in just three days.