[This article was published in the July 2008 issue of the eGov Magazine (http://www.egovonline.net) ]
It is widely discussed that governments in developing nations cost too much, deliver too little, and are not sufficiently responsive or accountable.
Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, India announced the establishment of 60,000 Common Service Centres (CSCs) in rural India by the end of the financial year.
The Government of India plans to issue e-passports to diplomats from next month and to the citizens from the September 2010 onwards.
In a move to serve the ex-servicemen of the armed forces better, Jharkhand state announced the launch of a separate website which will contain latest database of retired personnel of the defence services, like Indian Army, Navy and Air Force, residing in the state.
The National Spot Exchange (NSEL) of India in association with Infrastructure Leasing and Financial Services (IL&FS) has been appointed to upgrade the working of the existing network of Common Service Centres (CSCs) which are a part of the National e-Governance Plan (NeGP) of India. Both the organisations will work towards the development of synergies between the NSEL and CSC projects which will provide e-trading platform to the farmers.
In the upcoming Lok Sabha next year, Bharatiya Janata Party is planning to use technologies such as free and open-source software, which will bring video conferencing, Internet telephony and unified communication to approximately four million party workers by the year 2011.
“Today, both government and private sector is investing extensively in infrastructure upgradation and new technology implementation.
“SDC is one of the most sophisticated component of the e-Governance project in India for which experts with specific skill sets such as security, software, hardware are required. Besides these, managing the entire activities of different departments of the government is also crucial,” says Dr. Kshatrapati Shivaji, Secretary IT, Government of Maharashtra
“SDC being a critical infrastructure requiring uptime of the highest order, selection of right technology, monitoring, operation/management and conformance to the security and data privacy will be major issues to be addressed,” says S P Singh, Senior Director, Department of Information Technology, Ministry of Information and Communication Technology.
“The Kerala e-Governance Strategy 2008 is in furtherance of the intentions expressed in the IT Policy 2007 and proposes to provide a more definitive framework for leading Kerala into an era of ICT-enabled citizen friendly efficient and effective governance”
