E-Gov should shift focus from dept to user: PWC

BANGALORE, INDIA: At the Highlight Lecture on Day 2 of BangaloreIT.biz, India's premier ICT event organised by organized by the Dept. of IT, BT and Science & Technology, Government of Karnataka, STPI - Bangalore and MM Activ, G V Subrahmanyam, Executive Director, E-Governance, Price Waterhouse Coopers Pvt Ltd underlined the need for transformation of e-governance processes. "There should be a customer centric approach in e-Governance and shared services to make them more useful to users and make transactions for the common man hassle free.”

"It is five years since few state governments in India embraced e-Governance and this time is enough to translate the ideation to implementation and now time came to transform the system. Though e-Governance in the pioneer states is a success, it is unfortunate that other states have not replicated it. Even the pioneering states should move quickly to transform the system as the system so far is organised around govt departments. As over 50% of Indian population is in their 30s or below and tech savvy, they have the capability to use e-Governance services more than the previous generation”, added Subrahmanyam.

Subrahmanyam further said, “A user wants to relate himself to a service, but not to the many departments. So Govt policy makers should keep this important requirement in mind while transforming e-governance system to achieve twin objectives of increasing the service levels and reducing the costs of the processes. When more and more complex systems are added without making them customer centric, the whole system will become inefficient. E-Governance or shared services should integrate various services of several departments where there is just information service and no transaction and the transaction services."

Subrahmanyam advised the governments to have cultural shift while designing the best practices for managing ICT. He suggested the following for the purpose:

* Design organisation structure to drive the success from the customer point of view instead of making it department centric.

* Identify the opportunities to enhance business value.

* Implement change management initiatives to secure employee support for IT transformation.

* Maximise the return on IT with clearly defined goals.

* Source IT to support business strategies.

"By taking all these points into consideration, there should be a strategic planning for the transformation process so that it can pool in nore core and similar functionalities of different departments together," Subrahmanyam added.