e-Governance scenarios

I had an opportunity to attend and present my paper in the 8th UNeGov.net Network-Building Workshop on Electronic Governance and the 4th School on Foundations of Electronic Governance organized by United Nations University, International Institute for Software Technology (UN IIST) and National Information Technology Center (NITC), Kathmandu from Feb 12 to 15, 2007. I am happy to see enthusiastic participation from many government agencies, private business and development organizations. I greet all the national and international delegates and participants, who are contributing substantially to bring the change and innovation in the form of governance electronically. I was thinking what topic I can share with you. Today I will further continue to discuss about Citizen Centric e-Governance: Technology and its management.

Good governance is being recognized as an important goal by many countries across the world. They have taken up specific initiatives for open and participatory government. Freedom of information is being redefined and the Internet revolution has proved to be a powerful tool for good governance initiatives. An important dimension of the Internet potential is the possibility of providing services any time anywhere. Along with this there is a conscious effort to put the citizen as the center of focus of the governance. Citizens are being perceived as customers and clients. E-governance has to be citizen friendly and based on the demand of citizens. Delivery of services to citizens is considered as a primary function of the government. Particularly the country like Nepal, where the citizens are out of reach to the government services because of diversity in many ways, e-Governance should enable seamless access to information and seamless flow of information across the country and government in any type of political state setup (system).

Many countries in Asia, Europe, Australia and America have implemented the e-governance and with great success. It is definitely a big challenge before us.

Relevant scenario today:

I visualize an election scenario, where a candidate files his nomination from his/her constituency. Immediately the election officer verifies his/her authenticity from the National Identification (NID) database through multi-factor authentication, through a multipurpose National Identification card (NID Card). All the required identity details arrive at the computer terminal of the election officer within few seconds automatically by the act of e-governance software online service and presents the facts in real-time without any bias. Election officer sitting at the remote area of the country decides on the spot and the election process starts. All the voters vote from their home through virtual polling booths.

Similarly, lets assume we will have a central data center for all the national data and replicated across the regional level data centers. His/her civic consciousness and citizenship behavior comes from the police crime record database. His property record comes from the Land Registration Office database. His income and wealth resources come from the income-tax department database, and other sources. His education credentials come from the university records database. His track record of employment comes from Civil Personnel Records (Nijamati Kitabkhana). His credit history comes from banks database. His legal track records come from the judicial record system database.

Is it just a dream? Is it really possible? If possible, when shall we have it? Can we provide good governance to our all citizens? Can the e-governance speed up the delivery system? Can the e-governance differentiate between genuine transactions and fraudulent transaction? Can the e-governance ensure immediate action for the genuine cases which satisfies the check list for a particular service and pend the action on transactions to be investigated? Can this be done by e-governance at a cost affordable by our country? If not, how much investment we may need to attain this? Will that be justifiable? If we have this system implemented then we call this as a true e-Governance system for the citizen?
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