 Hello everyone, my name is Deeksha Jain and I secured the 22nd Rankin Civil Services examination 2018. In this video I will be talking about e-governance. So, what is e-governance? It is the use of information and communication technology by the government to enhance the range and quality of information and services that it provides to various stakeholders making governance more efficient, effective, smart and also at the same time strengthening democracy by improving accountability and transparency. So, what are the major pillars of e-governance in India? The first one is the people. For e-governance to work in a healthy manner, they need to be digitally literate people who are able to navigate that digital governance properly. Number 2 is the process. Changing and simplifying the process in the digital sphere is also important. Third is technology. Secure technology which can save the personal data, important information from cyber attacks is also required. Number 4 is resources, financial resources for infrastructure and for improving the technical and digital literacy of people is also required. So, on these four fronts we need to focus to improve our e-governance model. We will now look at the journey of e-governance to some extent as it has developed in India. In 1970, the importance of e-governance was realized for the first time and the Department of Electronics was created for the same. In 1977, the National Information Centre was set up, the NIC. The NIC network also came up in 1987 and state governments like Kerala through Akshaya scheme started delivering some services through e-governance. Recently, Karnataka has taken up the Bhoomi project in which it is digitalizing all its land records which is also a form of e-governance. In 2006, at the central level, e-governance was taken up in mission mode and National e-governance program 2006 was launched. The Department of Information Technology was established in 2012 which was converted into the Ministry of Electronics Information Technology in 2016. After that, the latest we had the digital India project which focuses on creating digital infrastructure, ensuring digital delivery of services and improving digital literacy and making digital India more accessible to people. And the basic legislation which covers the entire information technology sphere in India is the Information Technology Act 2000. It provides a legal recognition for all the transaction carried out by means of electronic data exchange and it imparts lawful recognition to e-commerce and many other digital services that are provided today. This act was also amended in 2008 to focus more on cyber security, cyber terrorism, data protection as well as privacy. So, there have been to improve the data security and cyber security of the country. We have had many initiators like the CERT-IN which was brought in. There has been M-COVERCH, NCIIPC to protect the information infrastructure, NADGrid has also been there. So, there is a lot of focus on cyber security to ensure that e-governance functions in a smooth manner. So, now let us talk about the benefits of e-governance. Why is e-governance so important? In a day and age where more and more transactions are taking place in the digital arena, more and more data is available which is being tapped by commercial institutions for profit. It is important that the government also make use of this digital wave to ensure that it is improving services and its own efficiency so that the citizens can benefit from the welfare schemes of the government properly. So, the major benefits of e-governance are it increases accountability and transparency. Whose responsibility is to do what? Who is the sanctioning authority where the funds are going? Everything has a digital track. So, that increases the accountability and transparency to a great extent. Number two is the least time, least cost and the least space. So, in that way also e-governance is important. It reduces red tapism, then it improves service delivery. It also facilitates centralized storage of data which the economic survey also this year talks about and how it can be beneficial for governance as well as citizens. It strengthens democracy by improving trust of people in the government. It is an environment friendly process because it is paperless. It also facilitates efficient communication and coordination between the various wings and departments of the government thereby improving the efficiency. Sound management of information for planning and decision making through the management information system, geographical information system can be used for better policymaking also. While all these and there are many other benefits of e-governance as well there are certain challenges. First being the technological challenge. Till now there is a lack of interoperability between various applications, various departments of the government. So, if there is a centralized database, if there is interoperability then it will improve the efficiency and it will also help us in reducing leakages. Second privacy, privacy which has been declared a fundamental right by the Supreme Court needs to be at the forefront of the data revolution because in e-governance privacy of the citizen needs to be ensured so that the government or any commercial establishment is not unnecessarily into the citizen's life. Third is standardization of data encoding. Basically this problem is there because earlier when physical records were the sole, were the only records available then most of the data was often non-standard. The unit of measurement from one village would be different in another village, there would be different words used in one region and another region. So, there is a need for standardization of this data. Second is organizational challenges. First is challenge of human resource because the people working within the government, they also need to be trained to be operating all these e-governance modules, applications and softwares. There is bureaucratic resistance which needs to be overcome. Lack of resources and lack of training are other factors in this area. Other challenges are there like infrastructural challenges, there is poor connectivity, we have yet not covered the country 100 percent with the internet or broadband accessibility. Digital divide is there, it is not just about accessibility to internet, but also the language barrier, literacy barrier which manifests themselves into the digital divide, diversity of language. So, e-governance needs to ensure that just because people don't speak a certain language are not left out of development. So, there needs to be focused on interoperability among different languages of all the government portals. And lastly, the e-governance modules, websites, applications need to be more citizen friendly. So, that the more simple and quick that they are, the more people can be taken on board the digital wave. In the end, I would also say that we are making considerable progress. There has been Jandha Nadha linking has led to a lot of e-governance has percolated leakages in by using schemes like Narega Soft, leakages have been plugged, more and more people are being brought under financial inclusion and digital inclusion. The UPI system was formulated by India and it has made digital transactions very efficient. 98 percent of the export and 90.95 percent of the import documents are now processed online and 100 percent of passport and visa information is also present online. So, a lot of considerable development has happened in e-governance and it is continuing to happen. Many state governments have taken initiatives Bhoomi project of Karnataka, Telangana has a scheme where it is co-leading the data of all the people on the basis of their name and addresses. So, it is a revolution which is coming e-governance is the future. We need to ensure that in this wave the privacy and security of people is not compromised. Thank you and that will be all in this matter. Subscribe to our channel and click on the bell icon to get latest updates on upcoming videos.