Similarly E-Government projects also face various issues as
- Funding – Funding is the important issue in e-Governance initiatives. E-Government projects can be funded either through the Government or by the private sector. Private sector involvement needs ensuring their commercial interests but, government’s interest of value addition also needs to be taken care of while transferring the services to private sector. The projects can be built either on BOO (Built Own Operate) or BOOT (Built Own Operate Transfer) basis. Also the. Advertising, sharing of Government information etc could be a few revenue generators.
- Management of Change – The delivery of Government services through the electronic media involves usage of EDI, Internet and other IT technologies which require procedural and legal changes in the decision and delivery making processes. The employees need to be delegated more authority. These changes should be accepted by the Government, citizens and various interests groups like Employees unions. Under such conditions bringing in a change involve s changing the mindsets of the people, and a complete Reengineering process is needed. Also, requiring training of the personnel at all levels. There will also be a loss of vested interests and power amongst the legislature and the executive, which may lead, to resistance to change.
- Privacy – The privacy of the citizen also needs to be ensured as citizen provides lot of personal information while transacting with a Government agency, which can be misused. Thus, the citizen is ensured of information flowing through reliable channels.
- Authentication – Secured ways of transactions for the Government services are another issue of concern. The identity of citizens requesting services needs to be verified before they access or use the services . Here digital signature will play an important role in delivery of such services. But the infrastructure needed to support them is very expensive and requires constant maintenance. Hence a pertinent need still survives, compelling the authorities to ensure the authenticity in their transactions thereby gaining absolute trust and confidence of the citizen.
- Interoperability – A major design issue for integrated service delivery sites is, how to capture data in a Web-based form and transfer it to an agency’s systems for processing and sharing that information in a common format. In fact, the interoperation of various state Governments, the various ministries within a state Government is a critical issue. Further how the various islands of automation will be brought together and built into one is another key issue of e-Governance.
- Delivery of services – The ability of citizens to access these services is another major issue. Since the penetration of PCs and Internet is very low in the country, some framework needs to be worked out for delivery of the e-Services that would be accessible to the poorest of the poor. What will be the Government’s network to deliver those services? Could we have something like a single stop shop of the Government? A proposed mechanism is delivery of the same through the Government Post Offices, for they already have the brick and mortar support and the most extensive network in the nation.
- Standardization – Defining the standards for the various Government services is another issue that needs to be addressed. The standards need to be worked out not only for the technologies involved but also for issues like naming of websites to creating E-Mail addresses.
- Technology Issues – A number of organizations, both in the Centre and the States, have taken commendable initiatives to develop hardware and software platforms to address the challenges offered by e-Governance. At the central level in particular, the C-DAC, CMC and a number of others are noteworthy. The e-Governance initiative would have to address these Technology Issues/Objectives by identifying the appropriate hardware platforms and software application packages for cost-effective delivery of public services. This knowledge repository should be widely available through appropriate Demo- Mechanisms. Offering a basket of these models to the State departments, both in the Center and the State, could be suitably customized as per location and work specific requirements.
- Use of local languages – The access of information must be permitted in the language most comfortable to the public user, generally the local language. There do already exist technologies such as GIST and language software by which transliteration from English into other languages can be made.
