Discourse on e-governance: Bottomline
DURING my stint at the British Home Office as a casual interpreter during 1995-96, I had close contact with some personnel working there who allowed me to see a part of their information system closely.
Being a software engineer, I was really amazed at the design strategy of their distributed database system. In designing, they could successfully align the system with the mission and vision of the Home Office.
Even 10 years ago, they put emphasis on the concept of e-governance in designing their system. They realised that the implemented systems would not be only for the use of the Home Office.
They had the vision that their system would be used by many other government organisations and citizens. I believe that cutting-edge technologies have made their system more foolproof by this time.
The term e-governance was coined with the advent of the internet in early '90s. Developed countries envisioned that new developments in ICT, especially the TCP/IP protocol, would significantly contribute to achieving the objectives of good governance. So, the term e-governance can be defined as efficient and effective use of modern ICT technology with a view to establishing good governance. From the management and technological perceptions, e-governance can also be defined as electronic state management system based on information and communication technologies (ICT), including the internet technology.
The ultimate objective of e-Governance is to establish good governance. The attributes of the good governance can be identified as follows: a) Honesty; b) Efficiency and Effectiveness (in terms of time space and money); c) Justice; d) Reliability; e) Participatory and Democracy; f) Accountability; g) Accessibility and Transparency; h) Equity; and i) Vision in decision making. All of these attributes can be achieved through proper implementation of e-governance using the state of the art technologies.
It has been proved that the corruption level in the public sector has dramatically fallen in the countries where e-Governance has been initiated. A survey in India has revealed that, in the states where e-governance has been established even partially, the corruption rate has decreased dramatically. The survey has found that in Kolkata and Mumbai, due to implementation of e-Governance in some public sectors, the corruption rate has declined to 19% and 18% compared to 51% and 38% respectively in 2000.
Even in Bangladesh, we may observe that due to computerisation of Railway Reservation System, the number of black-marketeers has decreased significantly. Elimination of the middle-men in citizen-government interaction, in fact, is the major factor eradicating corruption levels. If the people interact with the government organs through the web-page then colonial red tape practices will be totally removed. This in turn will reduce the pervasive bribery in government offices.
The computerisation of a system speeds up the performance in terms of time, reliability, efficiency and effectiveness. For instance, had a proper e-Governance system been implemented then a person could have easily applied for a new passport using his digital signature and citizenship identifier, and got the passport within 24 hours without paying any urgent/very urgent fee or facing any other hassle.
In an e-Governance environment, as all the departments of the government are virtually integrated, when a person applies for a passport through the website of the passport and immigration department, the specific data stated by the applicant will be sent to the relevant departments instantly for cross checking and validation.
As for example, for getting police clearance, data provided by the applicant will be cross checked with the police department's data, and a report will be generated automatically and sent to the server of the Passport and Immigration department office. Subsequently, the server of the Passport and Immigration department, after receiving the person's application and report as required from various departments system will decide automatically whether he is eligible to receive a passport or not. Even the printing process of the passport can be automated. So, because of the minimum involvement of the middleman in this case, the corruption and hassles in receiving passport will be approximately at zero level.
e-Governance confirms the active participation of the people in the process of establishing democratic norms in the country. The unfortunate incident that occurred in Phulbari, centring the coal-mine contract with the Asia Energy, could have been avoided if there had been e-Governance. Prior to contract with Asia Energy, the government could take opinions from the local people through website on this issue. On the same issue, a website discussion group could have been formed, which would bring transparency in decision making. With the people's active participation, some pro-people decision, considering the country's resource constraints, local environment, and other socio-political issues, would come out.
e-Governance leads to e-Democracy too. For instance, in an e-Governance environment, any political party can select a possible candidate for the election if it has its own website by seeking opinions through the website. This selection will reflect the opinion of the common people and will thus reduce the impact of black money in the selection of the candidate.
Accessibility to information for all is the prime concern of e-governance. The citizen must have access to e-Governance. In reality, availability and non-availability of information creates the digital gap among different segments of the people in a society, which is one of the major causes of non-equity and social injustice. If everybody gets the same extent of accessibility to e-Governance then the class distance among the different groups in the society will be minimised.
e-Governance reality in Bangladesh: As a nation we are like an empty vessel -- we talk too much but do little in practice. When the buzz-word 'e-Commerce' started to gain popularity, many of our ICT giants paid much attention to it by organising seminars, workshops etc. Accordingly, they persuaded the policy makers of the government and, in 2001, they formed an ICT Task force headed by the incumbent Prime Minister Begum Khaleda Zia for introducing e-Governance in Bangladesh. Assessing their propaganda, it was assumed that the government would implement e-Governance overnight.
However, over the five years, insignificant progress was made. Other than the Planning Commission and ministry of finance, no other ministry could implement any significant software systems even for their internal use. Some ministries (e.g. ministry of Science and Technology) have created some static websites with a view to disseminating information to the public. As these websites are not interactive, there is no scope for active participation of the concerned people. Moreover, as these websites have not been updated regularly, they mislead public with backdated information.
In e-Governance environment all governmental organisations should be networked and interconnected. This connectivity facilitates exchange of information among different organs of the government without any manual intervention. Ideally, for this, we need to build up IOS (Inter Organisational Systems) or EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) software. Unfortunately, all the software systems developed in our government's various organisations are discrete in nature, and so they do not support inter-departmental or inter-organisational data sharing technique.
Computerisation and e-Governance are not synonymous. In fact, computerisation processes in some ministries or government sectors have been initiated. For instance, the recent automation of Chittagong sea-port is a great advancement. But truly speaking it is not e-Governance. We have to go a long way to implement e-Governance in our country.
Road Map to e-Governance: It is true that available resources for e-Governance in Bangladesh are inadequate. The low fixed-telephone density is one of the major barriers to digital communications. However, rapid growth of mobile telephonic network can presumably overcome this barrier. Besides, we can also use the underused optic fibre network of the railway department for this purpose. For global connectivity for e-Governance, submarine cable connection will play a significant role if we use it appropriately.
For establishing e-Governance in Bangladesh, ICT infrastructure can be built step by step, even at village level, if we have a road map or master plan for e-Governance using our limited resources.
Decentralisation of distributed database is one of the essential features of e-Governance. Decentralised or localised database ensures autonomy as well as reduces traffic loads in network communication. Keeping this in mind, we need to design e-Governance for Bangladesh. Strategically, we have to prioritise the sectors of the government that need to be addressed first. For good governance local government is vital and crucial, which is upazilla administrative unit. So, e-Governance in Bangladesh should be initiated at upazilla level first. Perhaps, this bottom up approach strategy for e-governance is the most appropriate in country like ours, where the majority of the people lives under upazilla administrations.
Financial constraints are the major problem in this context. But if the government is really sincere in using resources in an economic way then the funding for e-Governance will not be a big issue. For instance, we can reduce the software procurement cost if we use open-source software or free software for developing various modules for e-Governance. Besides, funding can also be possible from World Bank, UNDP, DFID, EU or other sources for initiating such project. The government may even approach Microsoft in this context. If the government can persuade Bill Gates to help in implementing e-Governance in Bangladesh, presumably he will come forward.
Finally, it can be stated that we have resources in terms of manpower. Among the new generation, many are getting technologically efficient. We can use them in our e-Governance project. But preconditions for initiating such a huge project, the government needs to be honest, transparent, and with a clear vision for the future.
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