E-Governance: Issues and Challenges in India

I have taken up E-Governance as a Course of Independent Study and have been studying the various projects being undertaken by the Government of India under NeGP (National E-Governance Plan) along with evaluation of the impact assessment parameters for these projects. I am also working on a paper elaborating the issues and challenges being faced by the E-Governance initiatives in India. Below is an abstract for the paper.

 “E-Governnce: Issues and Challenges in India”

The E-Governance implementation and acceptance has achieved tremendous growth since its inception in India. Several E-Governance projects have been initiated globally across countries and have been successful in introducing transparency within the system. India however has still not been able to get the due benefits of its E-governance projects even though a huge amount of investment has been done in this direction. There still exist several roadblocks to the successful execution of these projects. The paper will primarily focus on the various issues and challenges being faced by the E-Governance projects in the Indian perspective. The issues will include challenges like E-Governance projects planning, government process re-engineering, security issues, usage of emerging technologies, project evaluation and funding issues. The existing structures, processes and regulations of the Indian system have a strong effect on a project’s success. A fundamental change to the model is difficult and unacceptable across the Indian bureaucracy. Also, the integration of new technologies with the “legacy” system is another important issue impacting the E-Governance success in India. Through this paper I am trying to identify the various obstacles to the success of these projects and what can be done to tackle these issues for the common good. Leadership failures across the diversified Indian geography and lack of co-ordination between the government machinery hold back the benefits of E-Governance projects. As per studies, only 15% of E-Governance projects implemented in developing countries are a success. In India, this percentage is further low. E-Bhoomi is an example of such project which had great prospects of building transparency and improving the lives of the people but faced initial complications because of several issues related to effective planning and implementation. The project was an attempt to computerize the Records of Rights Tenancy & Crops for the Indian farmers. The implementation however was affected due to two factors; firstly fraudulent land records went online and secondly the kiosks were located at places which implied additional costs in terms of time and money for the farmer. Thus, though a good initiative, it did not meet initial success because of negligence on the part of the authorities. There are several examples of successful E-Governance projects in India like Gyandoot, Lokmitra, MCA21, etc but each suffers the impact of corruption, neglect, illiteracy, infrastructure and inaccessibility amongst the various other factors which are inherent part of India. Through this paper I will try to unfold the various E-Governance projects in India which have not been able to meet their objectives, the issues and challenges faced by them in the various stages of the project and the action that can be taken to improve the success rate of these projects.