E-Governance is the use of information and communication technologies to support good governance. It has the following main dimensions :

GOVERNMENT TO CITIZEN (G2C)

G2C will aim at connecting citizens to government by talking to citizens and supporting accountability, by listening to citizens and supporting democracy, and by improving public services. It will involve better services to the citizens through single point delivery mechanism and will involve areas like:

E-Citizen

Under e-citizen integrated service centres will be created. The purpose of these centres will be to take over the various customer services in due course. It will offer services like issue of Certificates, Ration Cards, Passports, Payment of Bills and taxes

etc . These centres will become one-stop Government Shops for delivery of all services.

E-Transport

The transport aspects that can be easily e-governed include:

Registration of motor vehicles, Issue of driving licenses, Issue of plying permissions (Permits), Tax and fee collection through Cash and Bank Challans and Control of Pollution

E-Medicine

It will involve linking of various hospitals in different parts of the country and provide better medical services to the citizen.

E-Education

E-Education will constitute various initiatives of educating the citizen and the Government with the various Information technologies

E-Registration

E-Governing the registration and transfer of the properties and stamp duty to be paid thereon will bring substantial reduction of paper work and reduce the duplicating of

entries. Further the transparency in work will increase and the overall time of process registration will reduce.

The spirit behind G2C services will encompass all the services that the Government is delivering to its citizens.

Essentials for achievement

Information for All: Keeping the citizen informed, providing him with details of Government activities. The citizen will act as watch dog to Government if the information will be available to him. Certain interest groups like the journalists, opposition will always keep an eye on the expenditure of the Government, status of

which will be available on-line. The same will bring accountability amongst Civil Servants. The rationale is to increase the pressure on staff to perform well and to improve public understanding of government.

Citizen Feedback: Citizen feedback is must for improving the Government Services. Unless the Government listens to its customer, it will not be able to find out what does the citizens want. The elected representatives who are said to be voice of citizens also are not the true voice for they get their votes according to their offerings and not their offerings are according to customer wants. In short it is an effort to make the public sector decision responsive to citizens' view or needs.

Improving services: World’s best companies have done it, Indian companies have copied them, Governments abroad have followed the suit, why can’t the Indian Government. Improving the service delivered to the citizen on dimensions such as

speed, quality, reliability, convenience and cost. Information Technology will have a big role to play in the same; the services can be delivered from 24-hour one-stop

Government shops.

CONSUMER TO GOVERNMENT (C2G)

C2G will mainly constitute the areas where the citizen interacts with the Government. It will include areas like election when citizens vote for the Government; Census

where he provides information about himself to the Government; taxation where he is paying taxes to the Government.

E-Democracy

The e-democracy is an effort to change the role of citizen from passive information giving to active citizen involvement. In an e-democracy the Government will be informing the citizen, representing the citizen, encouraging the citizen to vote,

consulting the citizen and engaging the citizen in the Governance. Taking the citizens input about the various government policies by organizing an e-debate will further strengthen the e-democracy. The concept of e-debate is similar to chat over the

Internet, wherein not only the citizens but also the political leaders contesting the elections participate. The citizens give their feedback about the various policies of the

parties and particularly the manifesto of the party. The initiative will further strengthen the process by enhancing the representative role, improving accessibility of citizens to their elected members and developing the capacity of elected

representatives to engage in e-government. Elected members will also be provided with access to the local authority's Intranet and e-mail systems so that they become available online for decision making and people can easily access them.

Essentials for achievement:

Citizen Participation: For achievement of the above initiative the citizen has to participate in the Government Business and therefore spreading awareness becomes the responsibility of the State. The elections should not be fought on the principle of what one party or other has to offer. But they should be fought

on the principle of what the citizens require. Market research programs should be carried out using the Information Systems to determine the needs of the citizens. GIS could be used as a tool to find out potential gaps in the services offered.

GOVERNMENT TO GOVERNMENT (G2G)

This can also be referred as e-Administration. It involves improving government processes by cutting costs, by managing performance, by making strategic connections within government, and by creating empowerment. It will involve networking all Government offices so as to produce synergy among them. The major areas are:

E-Secretariat

Secretariat which is the seat of power has a lot of valuable information regarding the functioning of the State. The cross-linking of various departments and exchange of information amongst various components will simplify the process of Governance.

E-Police

E-Police will help to built citizen confidence. There will be two databases. One of police personnel and the other of criminals. The database of personnel will have the records of their current and previous postings. This will help to track policemen specialized in certain geographical regions and skills. Take for example, we want to look for a forensic expert. The database within seconds gives the list of all forensic experts. The same database will give the track of their details like service record, family background etc which will also be helpful in intelligent posting and promotion

of personnel. The second database will be of criminals. This database has to be upgraded to national database for its total utility. By just typing the name of a criminal a police officer will

be able to know the details of his past activities, including his modus operandi and the area of operation.

Further a database like this will help tap the criminals easily for all the police stations will have simultaneous access to their record.

The module will also include G2C activities like online filing of FIR’s, finding the case status of an FIR. Creating a database of Lost and Found can assist further lost and found of valuables and individuals.

E-Court

The pending court cases in India has brought the legal system to a halt. Not only are the consumers asking for changes in the administration, but also the system will collapse if it continues in this manner. IT can transform the system and bring in the

court cases to a level of zero dependency. Creating a database of cases can do the same. In fact such a system will help to avoid all the appeals to High Courts and Supreme Court, for the Judges can consider the appeals from an intranet wherein the

case remains in the same district court but the Higher Court gives their decision online based on the recorded facts of the case. Such a step will not only help the citizens but will also reduce the backlog of cases. Further the use of IT in the areas like recording

of court proceedings, high resolution remote video to identify fraudulent documents, live fingerprints scanning and verification, remote probation monitoring, electronic entry of reports and paper work will further speed up the court proceedings.

State Wide Networks

This will involve linking all the departments of the Government with various district headquarters and the state capital, facilitating the flow of information between the various state departments and it’s constituents. Here various blocks will be linked to district Headquarters, district headquarters to State Headquarters and State Headquarters to the National Capital.

Essentials for achievement

Cutting Expenditure: With proper process control the input output ratio can be improved. The same can be achieved by cutting financial time costs. Cutting Government expenditure will lead to saving and accountability.

Organize around outcomes, not tasks. This principle suggests that a single person should perform all the steps in a process and that the person's job be designed around the outcome or objective rather than a single task. Say, for example, a citizen applies for a permit – it becomes the duty of the receiving authority that the

citizen gets the same, rather than moving around to get it done.

Managing process performance: planning, monitoring and controlling the performance of process resources (human, financial and other). Informatisation supports this by providing information about process performance and performance standards. The rationale is to make more efficient or effective use of

process resources.

Establish a network: Treat geographically dispersed resources as though they were centralized. Government can use databases, telecommunications networks, and standardized processing systems to get the benefits of scale and coordination,

while maintaining the benefits of flexibility and service. Strategic connections in Government should be established like central-to-local, ministry-to-ministry, executive-to-legislature, and decision maker-to-data store.

Delegate and Empower: Put the decision point where the work is performed, and build control into the process. Thus, for overall GPR to succeed the decisionmaking should pass on to the people who do the actual work from the people who are just monitoring it. People engaged in actual activities should be empowered to

make decisions at the required focal point and hence to delegate such activities on their own so that the process itself can have built in controls. This will not only speed up the process but will cut cost as well.

GOVERNMENT TO BUSINESS (G2B)

E-Taxation

This will constitute the various services a business house needs to get from the Government, which includes getting licenses etc. In a similar scenario, it can also flow from a business house to the Government as in the case of procurements, from such business houses by the Government. This will become a B2G service.

Essentials for achievement

Standards: Standards for Electronic Transactions or E-Commerce needs to be built. The standards will also include standards on content etc.

Payment Mechanism: A secure payment mechanism needs to be built to enable payments over the electronic medium.

PKI: PKI or Public key Infrastructure is required for secure and authentic transactions.

GOVERNMENT TO NGO (G2N)

E-Society

Building interactions beyond the boundaries of government by developing communities, by building government partnerships, and by building civil society. It will involve building various associations or interest groups that will ensure the betterment of the society. Such initiatives deal particularly with the relationship

between government and citizens: either as voters/stakeholders from whom the public sector derives its legitimacy, or as customers who consume public services.

Essentials for Achievement

Publishing: Delivering data to citizens. This will involve open access to Government Information. The citizen has a right to every Government information and its activities.

Interaction: Delivering data to citizens and receiving data from citizens. This will involve taking feedback from the citizens and interacting with the interest

groups.