icegov2012 proceedings

E-Governance and Millennium Development Goals:
Sustainable Development Perspective in Rural India
ABSTRACT
The year 2015 is fast approaching for the countries and the United
Nations pursuing Millennium Development Goals (MDG). In the
United Nation (UN) Millennium Summit 2000, 191 countries
adopted the Millennium declaration. Information and
Communication Technology (ICT) supported E-Governance is a
critical element in achieving MDGs. National E-Governance
strategies have hastened ICT interventions. Recent global
assessments on MDGs suggest that though many countries have
shown noticeable results in meeting MDGs with scope for
supporting sustainable development strategies. In this paper, it is
posited that efforts to meet MDGs in India need to have
converged efforts at the village levels. This is desired because
local development processes are likely to influence the national
agenda. Village households being units of development processes
need to understand the contours of MDGs and its effects in lives
of the household. Use of E-governance supported services by
these units for meeting MDGs has influences to meet sustainable
development of the households. This paper includes studies in
some sample villages in the state of Gujarat to examine the effects
of E-Governance in meeting MDGs and sustainable development.
It discusses the process of convergence and contributions of E-
Governance services to meet MDG agenda and overall sustainable
development.
Categories and Subject Descriptors
H5.2. [Information Systems]: Information Interfaces and
Presentation- User Interfaces Evaluation/Methodology, Theory
and Methods.D4.8. [Software Engineering Performance]:
Measurement, Modeling and Prediction.
General Terms
Management, Measurement, Documentation, Performance,
Design, Experimentation, Human Factors, Theory, Verification.
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ICEGOV '12, October 22 - 25 2012, Albany, NY, USA
Copyright 2012 ACM 978-1-4503-1200-4/12/10...$15.00
Harekrishna Misra
Institute of Rural Management Anand
Anand, Gujarat, India
91-2692-221612
hkmishra@irma.ac.in
354
Keywords
ICT for Development, E-Governance, Millennium Development
Goals, Modeling Convergence, Sustainable Development, Citizen
Centered Services
1. INTRODUCTION
MDG is considered as an important agenda for the United Nations
(UN) with the aim to address poverty reduction globally. UN, in
its Millennium Summit in the year 2000, resolved to acknowledge
poverty as a global phenomenon. MDG having a set of eight goals
aims to achieve targeted objectives by the year 2015 and
recognizes inter-twined relationships among all these goals in
order to foster sustainable development. UN, in its declaration,
aims to address two major dimensions. One of the dimensions is
to have commitment of developed nations to extend increased
Official Development Assistance (ODA) with better export
market for developing nations. The second dimension is to ensure
that each developing nation has its own national policy with the
objective to reduce the gap between goals and achievements
[41],[42],[43],[33]. While the deadline for achieving MDG is fast
approaching, the results of the planned activities under UN’s
mandate are found to be discouraging and all the member
countries are showing mixed results across all the eight goals.
ODA has reduced over the years and the assistance has so far been
0.31 percent of the Gross National Income against the UN’s target
of 0.7 percent [44],[40],[39]. As regards role of E-Governance for
development with specific reference to MDG, goal 8F suggests
effective inclusion of ICT as component for the development
process. While recognizing the progress in embracing E-
Governance among all participating nations, UN acknowledges
the persistence of digital divides in the form of affordability,
access to technology, usage and usability of the services rendered.
However, most of the countries have shown considerable progress
in establishing ICT infrastructure and services to implement E-
Governance strategies. World Summit on the Information Society
(WSIS) have acknowledged the impact of E-Governance on the
development and suggested a ten-point agenda for ICT related
interventions for supporting sustainable development and achieve
committed targets by the year 2015 [14],[15],[37],[38],[36]. In
real terms MDG has not been able to focus on the role of ICT to
ensure that all the goals are inter-twined for a converged effect on
sustainable development.
ICT for development globally has shown mixed results despite
wider deployment and acceptance of E-Governance services[4].
The core area of successful ICT enabled development processes
has been limited to E-Governance efforts with direct support to