e-Governance

Topic: Transparency, Accountability and e-Governance · NCERT: Beyond NCERT

Meaning

e-Governance means the government uses ICT (information and communication technology: computers, internet, mobile phones and networks) to deliver services and information to people and to run its own internal work. This covers its dealings with citizens (G2C), businesses (G2B), other governments (G2G) and its own employees (G2E).

It matters because every step is recorded online. Officials have less room for delay or bribe demands, and citizens can see the rules and track their applications. This makes government more transparent and accountable.

Explanation

How it makes government accountable

• It does two jobs:
• It delivers services, such as certificates, land records and bill payments.

• It runs internal work, such as files, approvals and accounts.

• There is a digital trail.

• Every step is recorded online.

• So a delay or a bribe demand is easier to trace.

• There is less face-to-face contact.

• Fewer meetings with officials mean fewer chances to ask for bribes.

• The process is visible.

• Citizens can see the rules and the status of their application.

• Service levels are fixed.

• A service level is a promised time or standard, such as the number of days to deliver a service.
• This reduces an official's discretion (the freedom to decide case by case).

Types of e-Governance

Type	Who deals with whom	Example
G2C (Government to Citizen)	Government ↔ the public	Land records, passports, certificates
G2B (Government to Business)	Government ↔ companies	MCA21 (company filings), e-Procurement
G2G (Government to Government)	Between ministries, or between the Centre and the states	Data sharing, State Wide Area Networks
G2E (Government to Employee)	Government ↔ its own staff	e-Office, online pay and pension records

Stages of e-Governance (in order)

1. Web presence: the department puts information on a website. Information flows one way only.
2. Interaction: citizens can download forms, send emails and file complaints.
3. Transaction: the whole service is done online, such as paying tax or applying for a passport.
4. Transformation: departments are joined up and redesigned around the citizen, so one window gives many services.

Core infrastructure and its limits

• The "3 pillars + gateway":
• SWAN (State Wide Area Network): a secure network linking state headquarters, districts and blocks.
• SDC (State Data Centre): where a state stores its data and runs its applications.
• CSC (Common Service Centre): the village outlet where citizens actually get the service.

• Service delivery gateways (NSDG/SSDG): "middleware" (connecting software) that lets different departments' systems talk to each other.

• Limits:

• Departmental silos: each department built its own system, and many systems could not share data.
• Weak process re-engineering: many old paper processes were simply put online without being changed.
• Digital divide: poor connectivity, low digital literacy and language barriers kept out rural, poor, elderly and women users.
• CSC viability: in areas with few transactions, VLEs (Village Level Entrepreneurs, the local operators who earn a fee for each service) earned too little, and many kiosks closed [1].

In the Constitution and practice

• Legal base: the Constitution does not use the word e-Governance. It rests on laws and schemes:
• The IT Act 2000 gave legal validity to electronic records and e-signatures. Without it, an online document or approval would not stand in law.
• It supports the transparency goals of the RTI Act 2005. For example, e-Office files can be searched, which helps answer RTI requests.

• Handling citizens' data is now tested against the DPDP Act 2023.

• Early milestones:

• NIC (National Informatics Centre), 1976: the government's own IT body.

• State pilots: Bhoomi (Karnataka, land records), e-Seva (Andhra Pradesh, one-stop centres), Gyandoot (Madhya Pradesh, Dhar district, rural kiosks) and FRIENDS (Kerala, single-window bill payment).

• 2nd ARC, 11th Report:

• The Second Administrative Reforms Commission was set up on 31 August 2005 and chaired by Veerappa Moily [6].
• Its 11th Report, Promoting e-Governance: The Smart Way Forward, came out in December 2008 [6].
• It called for SMART government: Simple, Moral, Accountable, Responsive, Transparent [6][7].
• Its main idea was to redesign first, then computerise. This is called business process re-engineering (changing the steps, forms and rules of a service before putting it online). These changes must be backed by procedural, institutional and legal changes [7].

• It also asked each ministry to start with 3–4 high-volume, citizen-centric projects. It suggested PPP (public–private partnership) where suitable, e-Governance wings in state ATIs (Administrative Training Institutes), and evaluation of projects at the Union and State levels [7].

• National e-Governance Plan (NeGP):

• It was approved by the Union Cabinet on 18 May 2006 [1].
• Its vision was to bring all government services to the common man in his own locality, in ways that are efficient, transparent, reliable and affordable [1].
• It began with 27 Mission Mode Projects (MMPs: projects with clear goals, fixed timelines and set service levels): 9 Central, 11 State and 7 Integrated. It also had 8 support components [1][2]. The list later grew to 31 MMPs.
• The lead agency was DeitY, which later became MeitY. The NeGD (National e-Governance Division) gives programme support. DARPG handles process reform and owns the e-Office MMP [9].

• NeGP was folded into Digital India in 2015 [1].

• Key instances:

• Passport Seva:
  • The pilot Passport Seva Kendras were launched in May 2010 in PPP mode with TCS. The private partner does the front-end work, and the government keeps verification and the decision to grant the passport [5].
  • 77 PSKs were set up as extended arms of 37 Passport Offices [5].
  • 1,53,29,306 passports were issued from May 2010 to 30 June 2014 [5].
• Common Service Centres:
  • The CSC Scheme was approved in September 2006 [1]. The SPV (special purpose vehicle, a company set up for one task) CSC e-Governance Services India Ltd was formed in 2009 [3].
  • In the early phase, there were over 86,000 CSCs [2].
  • The scheme was restructured as CSC 2.0 in August 2015, with the aim of one CSC in each of about 2.5 lakh gram panchayats [1][8].
  • By 2025, there were over 6.5 lakh centres [3], offering over 800 digital services [1].
• e-Office: NIC software that replaces paper files with electronic files. It is a Central MMP. DARPG's framework for it was discussed on 2 December 2011 [9].
• e-District MMP: delivers high-volume district services such as certificates, pensions and ration cards online [4].

Don't confuse with

• Computerisation vs e-Governance: computerisation only puts an old process on a computer. The 2nd ARC said real e-Governance needs process re-engineering first, because computerising a bad process just gives you a faster bad process [7].
• NeGP vs Digital India: NeGP (2006) was a set of separate Mission Mode Projects run by departments. Digital India (2015) took NeGP into itself and moved to joined-up platforms such as Aadhaar, DigiLocker and UMANG [1].
• Integrated vs State MMPs: e-Courts, e-Procurement and CSCs are Integrated MMPs because they need many departments to work together. Land records, e-District and Treasuries are State MMPs.
• G2G vs G2E: G2G links ministries, or the Centre and the states (for example, SWAN). G2E links the government with its own staff (for example, e-Office, pay and pension records).

Prelims Hooks

• NeGP was approved on 18 May 2006. It started with 27 MMPs (9 Central, 11 State, 7 Integrated) + 8 components [1][2], later raised to 31 MMPs.
• SMART (Simple, Moral, Accountable, Responsive, Transparent) comes from the 2nd ARC's 11th Report (December 2008). The 2nd ARC was chaired by Veerappa Moily [6].
• Passport Seva started as a pilot in May 2010 as a PPP with TCS. Verification and the grant of the passport stay with the government [5].
• CSC timeline: scheme approved in September 2006 [1] → SPV formed in 2009 [3] → CSC 2.0 in August 2015 [1][8].
• IT Act 2000 gave legal recognition to e-records and e-signatures. NIC was set up in 1976.
• Pilot–state pairs: Bhoomi = Karnataka, e-Seva = Andhra Pradesh, Gyandoot = Madhya Pradesh, FRIENDS = Kerala. The correct order of stages is web presence → interaction → transaction → transformation.

Mains Points

• e-Governance as an accountability tool:
• Digital records, fixed service levels and application tracking cut down an official's discretion and the chance to demand bribes.
• This supports the RTI Act 2005. Passport Seva is the standard example [5].

• But NeGP's silos show that, without the process re-engineering the 2nd ARC asked for, results stay patchy [7].

• Last-mile delivery vs the digital divide:

• CSCs grew from about 86,000 to over 6.5 lakh through "assisted access" run by VLEs [2][3].
• VLE income, poor connectivity and fees charged to citizens are still problems.

• Digital literacy (PMGDISHA) and linking CSCs with panchayats help inclusion. For example, 3,301 Gram Panchayat Bhawans with a CSC on the same site were approved in 2024–25 [10].

• PPP in governance:

• It brings efficiency and the ability to scale up, as with TCS in Passport Seva [5].
• It also raises two questions: who is answerable when a private partner fails, and how is citizens' data kept safe? Data safety is now tested against the DPDP Act 2023.

Related concepts

• SMART government
• National e-Governance Plan
• Mission Mode Project
• Common Service Centres
• e-Office

Read more

• e-Governance: concept and the National e-Governance Plan