How can we achieve good governance through e-governance model?

#Torwards Good Governance through E-Governance

 The digital governance models bring about a transformation in the existing forms of governance as they change the nature of citizen-governance relationships and bring in new agents and mechanisms to influence the governance processes. They foster democratic control over the government's economic, social, and welfare policies by citizens and civil society organizations- a key process required for and responsive governance.

             The changes brought about in the citizen-governance relationship through digital governance are fourfold:

1. They open up avenues for the flow of information both vertically and laterally to encompass a wider foundation of civil society. A greater density of information flow is achieved between government and civil society, or within civil society itself. The right to voice and expression gets gradually embedded among citizens through means.

2. Information becomes difficult to be capitalized by a few for political gains at the expense of the ignorance of citizens. The power equations shift from being concentrated at select nodes to its even distribution among citizens, opposition parties, and watch guard groups.

3. There is greater scope to influence policymakers and members of civil society through collective opinion, direct participation, participation in public debates, and the use of advocacy tools.

 4. Policy-makers become more aware of the voices of people and can effectively policy-making mechanisms. They realize that their actions are under the scrunting of much more WatchGuard organization and there are greater avenues available with people to obtain any information. Information also becomes difficult to obliterate and is forever archived to increase the institutional memory of society.

5. The widespread applicability of digital governance models synergizes representative Forms of democracy with directory participatory forms This becomes possible because information earlier residing with citizen's representatives in the governance domain is now available with the citizens themselves. People are therefore more aware of the political issues which interest them, and also about the implication of the actions made by their representatives.

                                   OR,

• E-Governance is the key to the-Good Governance for the developing countries to minimize corruption, provides efficient and effective or quality services to their citizens. E-governance increases democratic participation, accountability, transparency, and the quality and speed of services.

•  However, the environment needs to be developed for the effective implementation of e-government. The world has changed a lot over the centuries and all these changes were mainly triggered by scientific and technological innovations and inventions. 

• But over the last fifty years, the world has been craving for more innovations in the field of governance. The opening of the economy in India in 1991 ended with license raj and freed the market forces. But later on, various scams underscored the lack of transparency in the governance mechanism in India. The inability of the bureaucracy to change with time only hampered the credibility of the governments that came in. 

• Therefore there is a need for "A Government which is responsive to the needs of the people, whose transactions have clearly defined time-bound accountability and whose decisions are readily available for public scrutiny." The Indian government has announced 25th December as Good Governance Day.

• In order to ensure good governance for the country, the E-governance system will have to follow various principles:

a) Accountability

• The biggest challenge of governance is the lack of accountability. Problems that a government faces are complex because the needs of the people are complex and rapidly changing. To manage such complex tasks, clear accountability is required.

•  Currently, there is no clearly defined personnel who are responsible for handling any specific task and is solely responsible for the same. There is always a game of passing the buck from one department to the other when a common man tries to access the government services. 

• To avoid this problem, the governance system must define the personnel and the stakeholders who are accountable for the provision of services. Further, there is a need for classifying the requests from the daily administration problems, interdepartmental problems, and policy level problems targeting of problems is more precise.

b) Daily Administration Problems

• Most of the problems that the common man faces in society regular administration problems.

•  For these, it is easier to define the time frame by when the issue would be resolved by the government, and who is accountable for the resolution of the issue. 

• This ensures that the citizen is empowered to know whom to question for the resolution of his issue and also when expecting the service from the government

d) Interdepartmental Problems

• Some of the problems that a common man faces would require the intervention of multiple departments of the government for the resolution. 

• These problems would require a greater amount of time, but E-governance systems can still fix the accountability if departmental jurisdictions are clearly defined.

e) Policy level issues

• These are the most complex issues which arise with the changes coming up in the society and require thorough analysis as these issues have to be addressed keeping the future in view.

•  The ions are of long term and therefore require thorough analysis from multiple stakeholders' of view. 

• E-governance systems can help in such cases by providing an accurate impact analysis of possible decisions.

f) Transparency

• The next major requirement of an effective E-governance system is transparency. The last government suffered majorly because of multiple scams that were unearthed by the media People are now demanding far more transparency in the government transactions than they ever did in past. 

• Therefore there is a necessity for not only working in a transparent manner but also communicate to the people that every transaction is happening as per the mandate without any violation.

•  Therefore E-governance systems should be intelligent enough to automate the decision-making process so that the transactions are highly transparent and are perceived to be transparent by society at large.

g) Responsive

• Lastly, the government as an entity has to be responsive to the need of the people. There is a need for a governance system that is responsive to the needs of the people. 

• Since the major problems of the people are more of administrative nature, the citizen should be given the opportunity to participate in the governance system. The true nature of democracy is to ensure that the voices of the people are heard. 

• Therefore E-governance systems must ensure that the systems created by them are responsive to the requirement of the different sections of the population.