Indian governments both at the central and state levels, in the federal set up, have been moving rapidly towards ushering in a more transparent and efficient service backbone of governance through the establishment of several departmental online services. Though the various departments and ministries are at different stages in the evolution of providing electronic governance, it is a very encouraging move forward.
Delhi Government has taken the lead in creating a host of online information and services, which we have featured. The need for one-window access at the user or citizen end is absolutely critical, as also the need to develop architectures of these services, which are inter-operable.
This is possible when standards are followed and metadata indexing becomes the key to reduce workloads in digitizing data that are already uploaded by several departments. With emphasis on need of building an e-literate citizenry, the services of the e-Governance projects of various governments must be designed to create an inclusive society addressing the key functions of servicing in multitudes of languages that are characteristic of a diverse country like India, and to ensure that issues of access also get addressed.
The importance of security and trust as a precondition to the successful introduction of online services needs no reiteration. This is essential in order to ensure the confidence in e-Governance applications and services while respecting privacy. These and other critical issues will be discussed in the upcoming issues.
We look forward to your feedback, and contributions to make egov your own forum to build a knowledge resource platform.
Ravi Gupta
