New Year greetings to all!
Walking into a new more- connected world a lot of issues and problems are opened up, which most current systems are faced with. On a positive note though, it also opens a lot of opportunities and new fields in which the potential of ICTs can be exploited to reach the final goals of economic and social empowerment, which can in turn be achieved through good governance.
Purely from a citizens’ point of view my seven wishes for year 2007 are:
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To have some coordination being developed between people repairing roads and water line, so that they know what’s on each others job list and avoid re-digging just after the construction finishes, after months of work.
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To be able to register properties on a public database, so that people could be spared from spending their hard earned money on buying fake properties, which are often sold several times over, and also to be able to buy property from the government without having to paying bribe.
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Driving licenses in the country also mean a lot of time loss for the person concerned, more so if the license is lost which again results in a load of files to be looked into, more visits to issuing offices. In this case an e- generated driving license which if lost can be regenerated online by the authorities, would solve a lot of issues
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To have the police in the country doing things other than maintaining VIP security arrangements and asking money for registering crimes in their areas. If crime registering can be done online, it may ease the process as well as result in more number of crimes being reported!
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Getting a passport in the country is not possible without going through lot of queues and constant visits to the passport office. It would be great if a passport can be procured in a week’s time using online resources.
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At present buying of high resolution satellite imagery and maps of the country legally from an Indian vendor is not possible and people instead of use free software like Google earth. It would be great if the data from satellites, which are launched with public money, can be made available, even at a cost, in the public domain.
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Even though e-governance is being promoted everywhere, it would be quite a thing if our bureaucracy started using emails for official purposes rather than for sending greetings to their families and talking to their kids staying overseas! Creating a paper-less office to avoid delays in official communication needs to be made a reality!
We all know that all the above stuff is not rocket science. It is all very much doable and there’s perhaps no new technology or scientific research which needs to be done to make all this possible. This is purely a matter of political, bureaucratic will! Can we all pledge to come together to create the ‘pressure of knowledge’ on our local, state and national governments to actually use our hard earned tax money more effectively for making their and our lives easier!
