E-governance Services Can Ease The Pain Of Each Individual, Says Sanjay Beniwal, Special Commissioner of Police (Modernization)

Technology has taken over our lives in a big way and businesses as well as government services too are not left unaffected by this phenomena. Where the government is trying to ensure state-of-the-art services to citizens, a robust e-governance architecture is pivotal to meet service guarantee landmarks. Dwelling on the topic, a host of eminent panellists came together at 4th BW Businessworld Digital India Summit & Awards 2018.

Talking about the correlation between technology and people, Alok Ranjan, Former Chief Secretary, Government of Uttar Pradesh said, "Two things are very important to identify here, technology and people, as it handled by people. Technology by itself does not change anything, it might give you better information but it is people who change that information into knowledge. Let them work individually, then only there will be a genuine progress."

Sanjay Beniwal, Special Commissioner of Police (Modernization), Delhi Police said, "People usually have a harrowing time going to government offices and getting access to the services, it is a nightmare for them. Providing e-governance services to them by the way of better solutions can ease their pain to a great extent. They do not need to go through lengthy and cumbersome manual processes anymore. Technology has empowered citizens to be able to access the services which a Government agency is mandated to provide."

Ajay Chagti, Special Secretary (Information Technology), Government of NCT of Delhi stated, "Today the issue is - how we can design for a better world tomorrow? We think of technology as a force multiplier, which is not true. Sustainability also is a very important aspect. If a decision is backed by law or rules, it has a far better chance of success."

Munish Chandan, Head- SEMT, E&IT Department, Government of Haryana affirmed, "Haryana is putting a lot of efforts in paperless, cashless and faceless services which are the essence of e-governance programmes. We are exploiting digital platforms to bring seamless services to our people."

Salil Srivastava, Engineer in Chief, Naya Raipur Development Authority cited, "We are a zero discharge city and recycle everything back to the city, we have telecom connectivity, LED street lighting, an ITES backing BRT system, very good educational and healthcare facilities and an international cricket stadium. We are leveraging technology in a big way to ease the lives our people."

Shilohu Rao, General Manager, Capacity Building, National e-Governance Division, Government of India said, "Nothing can be done without building the capacity of human resources whose effective utilization can be enabled by technology. If we intend to deliver e-Governance services to our citizens, we need to increase the human resource capacity building as well. No technology can succeed without humans and capacity building is where Government and private sector can come together."

Anand Vishnu Patel, Commissioner, E-Gov, Tamil Nadu stated, "Technology can be a great enabler especially in the times of natural calamities. Under our e-governance initiatives, we have built more 400 smart classrooms in Tamil Nadu. We invite private partnership across our initiatives to tap the huge opportunities in this space in our state."

Aditya Shukla, Head of e-Governance, Chattisgarh State (NeGD) & Joint CEO of CHIPS, Digital India emphasized, "We only have 65 percent internet penetration in urban areas whereas, then it is only 21 per cent in the rural areas. So, the digital divide is huge. Now coming to the gender divide, only 30 per cent women in urban areas use pone, and only 1 out of 10 women use mobiles in rural areas. mGovernance is nothing but an extension of e-governance. Chattisgarh with an intent to increase the penetration of mobile phones launched Sanchar Kranti Yojana where we are targeting women and will distribute 55 lakh mobiles, particularly to women. The government needs to come up with the capacity building programmes with the help of our corporate and private sector."

Parag Kachhawa, ACP, DoIT&C, Government of Rajasthan highlighted, "The Government of Rajasthan under its e-Governance initiatives has built 55,000 kiosks providing around 350 odd online services to our citizens. Currently, we have installed 3,000-4,000 machines under our Government to Citizen Services (G2C)".