Harekrishna Misra

E-governance and millennium development goals: sustainable development perspective in rural India

The year 2015 is fast approaching for the countries and the United Nations pursuing Millennium Development Goals (MDG). In the United Nation (UN) Millennium Summit 2000, 191 countries adopted the Millennium declaration. Information and Communication Technology (ICT) supported E-Governance is a critical element in achieving MDGs. National E-Governance strategies have hastened ICT interventions. Recent global assessments on MDGs suggest that though many countries have shown noticeable results in meeting MDGs with scope for supporting sustainable development strategies. In this paper, it is posited that efforts to meet MDGs in India need to have converged efforts at the village levels. This is desired because local development processes are likely to influence the national agenda. Village households being units of development processes need to understand the contours of MDGs and its effects in lives of the household. Use of E-governance supported services by these units for meeting MDGs has influences to meet sustainable development of the households. This paper includes studies in some sample villages in the state of Gujarat to examine the effects of E-Governance in meeting MDGs and sustainable development. It discusses the process of convergence and contributions of E-Governance services to meet MDG agenda and overall sustainable development.

Convergence in rural e-governance services for sustainable development: a model driven study in Indian context

Innovations in rendering rural e-governance services have remained a challenging area. Though globally e-governance is fast attaining maturity in the life cycle, there are pitfalls to fully garner the benefits of technology driven solutions aimed at rural e-governance. Two major constraints in transforming the opportunities created by benchmarked e-governance services to citizen oriented rural e-governance are i) convergence in rural e-governance services; and ii) creating avenues for disruptive rural e-governance. In this paper, it is argued that convergence and rural e-governance are two essential contributors for sustainable development and disruptive rural e-governance will emerge from such transformation. In order to validate this argument, the paper aims to model the contributions of convergence and rural e-governance services for sustainable development. The model is validated through primary surveys for fitness.

Measuring user's role to assess organisation preparedness in a systems acquisition life cycle: a cognitive framework

Eliciting user requirements is important in software process models and in the context of Information Technology (IT) acquisition. This paper discusses issues related to user involvement and identifies measures of organisations preparedness in IT acquisition life cycle through a framework through Structural Equation Modelling (SEM). It discusses two organisations to support the framework.

Emerging role of systems thinking oriented e-governance for supporting MDGs: learning in Indian context

Discussions for MDGs beyond 2015 critically reveal under utilization of potential of ICT in general and e-governance in particular. ICT for development efforts also have supported ideas related to sustainability at local levels, bridging digital divides etc. Today various agencies are in the process of creating indices for monitoring country level performances including human development, poverty, corruption, digital opportunities, ICT, e-governance etc. that are in line with proposed MDGs beyond 2015. In this paper, it is posited that efforts to pursue agendas under MDGs beyond 2015 need to have implicit inclusion of e-governance strategies. It is also argued that e-governance needs to be more oriented towards systems thinking approaches for inclusive governance. Two cases from India are taken up to explain how systems thinking could contribute to realizing MDGs in a better manner.

Information kiosk based Indian e-governance service delivery: value chain based measurement and acceptance modelling

Globally, e-governance systems are evolving towards wider acceptance. Almost all the countries have embraced e-governance as part of their long term policy. Contemporary e-governance implementation efforts however, are not free from challenges. While some argue in favour of convergence among business, government, civil society etc., many feel citizen acceptance needs to be the primary objective. In cases like European Union (EU), citizen acceptance of e-governance services has become very important because of member-driven benefits. In developing countries, this challenge is enormous despite having prolific growth in e-governance infrastructure. In Indian context, e-governance infrastructure has evolved to a stage of consolidation. National e-Governance Plan (NeGP), National Knowledge Network (NKN) and Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) etc., provide the scope for such consolidation [30]. In this paper, it is argued that value chain management approach is necessary to consolidate the efforts made so far. Consolidation needs wider citizen acceptance and value added services are the basic imperatives. This consolidation phase needs to ensure e-governance efforts having longer life cycles, better convergence and connected e-governance. A measurement and acceptance model is presented in this paper with some case studies drawn from India for validation.

Understanding SOA Perspective of e-Governance in Indian Context: Case Based Study

Role of information and communication technologies (ICT) in managing business processes has been phenomenal. Today, ICT is aggressively used for development process and results are showing positively in this direction. E-governance projects are no exception. In today’s context, e-governance projects have become a part of national policies across the world. Globally, e-governance projects have remained restricted to delivering government interfaces digitally with the focus to optimize transaction latency, improving transparency and extending on-line services. However, e-governance projects have fallen short of citizen expectations in developing countries (Mehdi, 2005). Most of the developing countries around the world have adopted e-governance systems strategically to provide better, transparent and value added services to its citizens with the help of ICT. Millennium development goals (MDG) have also included ICT as means of development (WSIS, (2004)). In India there is rapid progress in implementing e-governance strategy keeping pace with the global scenario. With the national e-governance plan (NeGP), the pace of progress in setting up information technology (IT) infrastructure has been accelerated (Ramarao et al. (2004)). NeGP has identified various projects on “Mission Mode” for scale up nationally and have allocated funds for “Common Service Centres” (CSC) for deployment of ICT enabled services including e-governance services at the door steps of citizens (Chandrashekhar, (2006); NeGP, (2005)). Besides, there are many mission mode projects like Gramin Gyan Abhiyan (GGA) as per agenda set through Mission 2007, National Rural Employment Guaranty Act (NREGA) and Ministry of Company Affairs (MCA-21) have been taken up. However, alike the experiences worldwide (Heeks, (2006)), the scale up exercise for egovernance has not been yielding results as expected in India (Janssen, (2005); Mishra, (2007)). Various reasons including inadequate local level planning with least participation of citizens and challenging situations to spread effective infrastructure contribute to this poor adoption of e-governance services. Despite improved ICT infrastructure, penetration of telephony and internet, Indian e-governance applications and services are below expected levels of delivery standards. In this paper, it is posited that e-governance projects in India need to follow SOA principles in order to make them successful in terms of sustainability, providing appropriate services to citizens. It is argued that Indian e-governance initiatives to be termed successful should

Organisational readiness and its impact on ERP acquisition: A longitudinal study of an indian dairy processing unit

ERP systems acquisition is an organisational issue since it brings in a new environment. This not only changes the way process is handled (process re-engineering), but also influences the organisation¿s culture and people. ERP imposes technology-driven environment with an aim to enhance process productivity, information integration and user interfaces. Research indicates many ERP projects still ¿fail to deliver¿ results due to organisational complexities instead of commonly perceived technology dimensions. In this paper a framework is discussed to understand the ¿readiness¿ in an organisation. An ERP acquisition is said to be successful if it is put to effective use and benefits are achieved as expected. Organisation¿s ¿readiness¿ is essential to manage these issues and the ¿readiness¿ should be well planned before initiation of ERP systems acquisition. The framework is applied to a dairy processing unit over a period of time during which ERP system was acquired and impact of ¿readiness¿ is observed.

e-governance and digital inclusion: creating smart rural women in India

E-Governance in India is fast progressing to the era of digital opportunities. Digital opportunities in India have shown the paths of collaborative governance and mission 2007 recognizes the role of women to be more important. Role of women in overall development of society needs no debate. In India, women who constitute almost half of the population are integral part of overall development of the nation and policies are abundant to support the cause though a lot is still needed to be accomplished. One of the major challenges at the hands of policy makers and implementers is to empower the women and especially in rural India. Rural India is still under the grip of digital divides, though overall India as a nation has shown the promises of digital inclusion and digital opportunities. However, these opportunities are yet to have its outreach in rural areas. National Informatics Centre, a national agency in India is striving towards supporting the digital inclusion strategies of India with active deployment of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) enabled services. In this paper, it is argued that digital inclusion outreach is better achieved through collaborative and group based approaches and thus Women Self-Help Groups (WSHGs) show these promises. This paper presents the success story of some women WSHGs in Ganjam district of Odisha province by introducing web-based applications for better dissemination of information regarding their products and performance.

Facilitating financial inclusion through E-Governance: Case based study in Indian scenario

with the mandates of Millennium development goals followed by sustainable development goals, the United Nations have argued in favour of eradicating poverty and achieving economic growth with equitable access to resources. Financial inclusion that aims at extending financial and related services to all citizens is considered an important contributor to development. It is argued that financial inclusion, as a strategy, would encourage citizens to enhance their activity portfolios and would encourage savings, empower women, facilitate remittance, boost production and consumption. E-Governance services are aimed at interventions with the primary purpose of enhancing citizen engagements on line, creating enabling conditions for interactions. Focus of E-Governance services is also on empowering citizens with the scope to reduce information asymmetry, transact on line; establish networks to augment their activities in production, consumption, income, expenditure, access to government services and participation in decision making etc. Therefore, it is important to explore the scope for E-Governance strategies to support financial inclusion services and provide synergy. In India there are considerable efforts to foster financial inclusion and E-Governance (NeGP V.2.0). This paper seeks to explore whether these two efforts have progressed for convergence and assess the present status through a proposed framework and case based study in Indian context.

Smart city and E-Governance: Exploring the connect in the context of local development in India

Smart governance was the buzz word when E-Gov 1.0 was lunched with lot of emphasis on citizen charters and citizen led governance systems in India. The concept of smart city with E-Gov 2.0 in India has provided the impetus to bring in holistic approach to the local development in a city. Globally, smart cities have come up and providing best of the amenities to local people in urban set up, is quite challenging. In Indian context role of E-Governance is quite essential and logical. While E-Governance supports the idea of citizen centered service orientation, local development issues in a smart city is also citizen centered. In this paper connect between the concept of smart city and its link with E-Governance is explored through a developed architectural framework.