icegov2012 proceedings

Global perspectives in providing E-Governance services for
development indicate that e-readiness for India is of great concern
and needs improvement in order to enhance its effectiveness.
Most of e-readiness parameters assessed by the INSEAD indicate
that the digital divide continues to exist despite improvements in
many areas including individual readiness. However, analyses of
the survey conducted in the sample eight villages in the district of
Panchmahals in the state of Gujarat suggest that most people
living in rural areas are yet to gain access to such services. Rural
teledensity too is a prime concern in India despite mobile
penetration having gone up. As regards services’ usage in India
vis-à-vis global contexts as per INSEAD, India has not shown an
encouraging performance and has been ranked low in all the areas
including broadband services, bandwidth availability and network
coverage etc. Thus it is important to note that there is a designreality
gap in all the parameters that may be used to assess the role
of E-Governance to support MDGs and sustainable development
in Indian context. It is worth mentioning following statements
that are relevant for Indian E-Governance and its role in
supporting MDGs.
“India lives in Villages”
“ You must be the change you wish to see in the world”
- Mahatma Gandhi
“You have to decide whether development means affluence or
whether development means peace, prosperity and happiness. “
-Sunderlal Bahuguna
“While the distribution of wealth and income need not be equal, it
must be to everyone’s advantage, and at the same time, positions
of authority must be accessible to all.”[27]
It is imperative that MDGs in India need to ensure its
contributions to sustainable development while making efforts to
make quantifiable progress in achieving the goals. Role of E-
Governance services needs to concentrate on bringing in
transparency in government and governance while ensuring
adequate measures in optimizing the costs and time for the
citizens dwelling in the access layer of the governance. In India,
people in this access layer form the core of the development
process and they are poor. These people are still affected by the
digital divides. In absence of an appropriate strategy to enforce
convergence among E-Governance services and with an aim to
empower people in access layer to collaborate, it would be
difficult for India to have sustainable development despite
improvements in MDGs.
4.1 Limitations
This research has several limitations. First, the research has been
limited to a homogeneous sample of respondents in a particular
district which does away with the scope for generalization. A
larger number of samples need to be included covering diverge
demographic areas with heterogeneity. Secondly, E-Governance
services considered for the study are limited to government webaccess
alone. Other sources like civil society and business
organizations providing such services need to be included in order
to make the analyses broad-based. Thirdly, User Centered Designs
(UCD) are quite relevant in such studies to assess Quality of
Services (QoS), cost and latency. These could not be assessed as
most of these services are yet to be availed by the sample
respondents. There is scope to include these dimensions while
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validating the model (especially in capturing information needs of
uses and their intentions to use E-Governance services).
5. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The author acknowledges the support of the SDTT, Panchmahals
District Collectorate and Panchmahals District Milk Cooperative
Union for the successful conduct of the study.
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