Digital India in Action

Invited Articles-Dr. RK Bagga & Harish P Iyer 2015
Pi IS EXACTLY 3.2? - PERSPECTIVES IN EMPIRICAL
e-GOVERNANCE RESEARCH
ABSTRACT
Maj Gen(Retd) Dr R.K.Bagga and Harish P.Iyer
The compendium released by the Computer Society of India’s Special Interest
Group on eGovernance in both 2014 and 2015 carry Digital India in their title.
This underscores the importance being attached to the program not only the Govt
of India but also by professional bodies such as the CSI and research institutions
such as the RCeG of IIIT-Hyderabad. This brief paper suggests how and why
research into sustainability of eGovernance projects must go hand in hand with the
roll-out of projects under Digital India initiative. In support of its stance, the paper
offers a very short critique of why studying eGovernance at a component level –
GPR, Project management, change management etc – must be complemented by
empirical research on complexity and systems dynamics.
Introduction
The value of Pi is not equal to 3.2 and yet the Indiana State of the USA attempted
to legislate that Pi should be exactly that [1]. The State was desirous of promoting a
report that “proved” that a circle and a square can have exactly the same area [an
impossibility in the Euclidean sense] if the value of Pi were exactly 3.2. Reading
about it now, after many decades have passed, the whole episode appears comical
and beyond belief but records suggest that the State undertook the exercise in all
seriousness. All that the US State had to do was to legislate that a wrong was a
right in return for royalty free right to use the “wrong”.
Digital India program is a pioneering effort and this paper exhorts that the program
should be backed by sound empirical research so that it sets out to avoid the many
“pi = 3.2” like assumptions and practices that impede speedier maturing of the
eGovernance ecosystem.
As noted in an official Government of India website [2], the Digital India program
is structured as a nine-pillared initiative. The program has a number of facets that
are promising. There are new eGovernance policy initiatives [3], guidelines, and
knowledge sharing efforts to back it up. There are efforts to obtain international
recognition for this new minimalistic government dispensation. The program
acknowledges that eGovernance should not merely transform the government but
that it should go beyond its traditional confines and transform itself [4]. The
prescription under Digital India for transforming eGovernance includes “transform
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