E-governance: From Citizen to Netizen

With initiatives like e-visas, e-FIRs, e-praman patras and now Mobile One, one can see e-governance shaping up as it was envisaged more than a decade ago, making a citizen's life easier as a netizen.

For the citizen, a concept which originated in ancient Greek city-states and granted rights along with duties, these initiatives make life easier. For the netizen, where a citizen can virtually move across the world through internet, it puts the responsibility of duties.

All netizens are citizens of a nation or the other but the reverse is not true as a big chunk of world population does not have Internet facility. As netizens treat cyber-space as an extension of the public realm and regard them as a site for civic engagement, it is the duty of the netizen to ensure that this platform is not used for nefarious purposes.

The Karnataka government's recent Mobile One e-governance project tag-lined 'Governance at your fingertips' allows citizens to pay utility bills for electricity, property tax in addition to getting services like driving licence, passport, pan card, also pay up for traffic challans, and book tickets on rail and road transport, among others.

This new app integrates nearly 600 government-to-citizen mobile services and 4,000 business-to-services on mobiles. This first-of-its-kind project in the country signals a new era in governance. President Pranab Mukherjee said that this application integrates technology, innovation and governance to create a new process of citizen-government engagement where a citizen can call from anywhere in country on 161.

Our Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, is a great netizen and strongly believes in the current age of Hi-Fi and Wi-Fi, which relate to quality and connectivity. It is obviously very relevant as the political participation from far-flung areas has become possible by the Internet. This has strengthened the belief in direct democracy.

Recent elections turnout shows that the Indian citizen is becoming more aware and is participating in government formation. Modi has emphasized that he wants them to get connected (whether through wire or wireless) and be always quality conscious.

The connecting media - the Internet - plays a significant role in opening up spaces for citizens, regardless of their gender and social status, to participate in political, economic, social and cultural life. In India, the Internet took more than a decade to move from 10 million to 100 million users. However, it took only three years for it to jump from 100 to 200 million. According to the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI), the Internet user base in the country stood at 190 million at the end of June 2013.

With the mid-year figure estimated to touch 243 million, India becomes the third-largest user of the Internet next to China (300 million) and the US (280 million). With more and more people accessing the web through mobile phones, it has become easier for the government to communicate with its netizens instantly.

Tablets and smartphones are rapidly replacing television as the preferred screen as nearly twice as many surveyed Indians (43 per cent) are willing to give up television for the Internet, compared to American (17 per cent) and European (22 per cent) respondents, according to a report 'Connected World II' report by Tata Communications.

As technologies evolve and adapt, there is a huge potential for the Internet to affect different aspects of life, politics, economy and society. The governments in various countries have started employing the Internet and the world-wide-web for delivering government information and services to the citizens.

It employs the digital interactions between a citizen and their government (C2G), between governments and government agencies (G2G), between government and citizens (G2C), between government and employees (G2E), and between government and businesses/commerce (G2B).

The United Nations released e-Government Development Index of 50 countries in which South Korea tops the list but India does not find a place.

The prime minister's exhortation about Hi-Fi and Wi-Fi is, therefore, more than justified as the ultimate goal of the e-government is to be able to offer an increased portfolio of public services to citizens in an efficient and cost effective manner. Many changes, such as marital status or address change, presently, are a long process and take a lot of paper work for citizens.

E-governance allows these tasks to be performed efficiently with more convenience to individuals. Use of internet is an easy way for the public to be more involved in political process as well.

It increases voter awareness, which leads to an increase in citizen participation in elections. Further, it is convenient and cost-effective for businesses and the public by getting easy access to the most current information available without having to spend time, energy and money to get it besides ensuring transparency in governance.

All citizens, therefore, need to become netizens, that is, the penetration of the Internet has to increase at faster pace. Additionally, the government needs to change its traditional method of governance to efficient e-governance to deliver quality service and continuously improve the political process.

(Dr. Arunaditya Sahay is Dean of Research at the Birla Institute of Management Technology. His twitter handle is @asahay7.)