E-governance in India: e-readiness and stakeholder analysis

Abstract

Electronic-governance has become a popular focus of government efforts in all the countries. It is the use of information and communication technologies in public administration combined with organizational changes and new skills in order to improve the services and democratic processes. India has also taken e-governance initiative through National e-governance plan (NeGP). This research aims to study e-governance in India in terms of planning, readiness and challenges. E-readiness assessment and ICT diffusion help indentifying the areas which are weak and should be strengthened. But e-governance study is incomplete without discussing the roles of stakeholders which influence its scenario. The success is not only dependent on technical systems and processes but is also equally dependent on the people. To start with, an attempt has been made to study the planning and strategy of a country which is successful in this field. Singapore is one such country which is very advance in the field of e-government. It was observed that the circumstances in India are different and the goal of e-governance is also different. Therefore, the work was carried forward with the study of e-governance plans of Government of India in the form of NeGP. This helped to understand the strategy of government of India in using information and communication technologies to bring in good governance across the country. The study of various international and national benchmarking reports on e-readiness and ICT diffusion helped identifying the areas which should be developed to improve the readiness. Literature survey helped identifying the stakeholders of e-governance. Their study gave insight to the benefits they derive from e-governance along with the challenges faced by them. This study of e-governance will help in strengthening the weak areas in India in order to improve the e-readiness and knowing the challenges faced by the stakeholders and addressing their issues.