PwC to document white paper on e-governance

KOLKATA: Price Water House Coopers (PwC) is documenting a white paper on the
different aspects and directives of e-governance in India. E-governance will
bring about assistance to local, state and union bodies through efficient
services to citizens. The paper, which will be out within two months, will help
governments implement with its technological architecture and work applications,
certain avenues of governing like manpower retention, outsourcing and bringing
about an eventual change of traditional mindsets through training.

PwC has worked with various state governments like West Bengal, Andhra
Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh in areas of computerization of the state and local
bodies. There would be a blue print on both the set-up and implementation of
e-governance. The transition to e-governance will institutionalize systems
through training, change in management and re-organization of departments.
Citizens would be able to meet their informational needs about government
policies and issues through these web-sites. Foreign investors too would be able
to have their queries answered and doubts cleared through them thus expediting
the crucial and initial process of system evaluation and information gathering.

The white paper so prepared by PwC will have three sections in all. The first
will be on standards and implementation along with a complete IT strategy and
architecture before the government embarks on computerization. Thus
communication technology, web interface and Internet accessibility to the masses
will become pressing issues for the government to implement them at all levels
of the government.

The second section will address how e-governance should be organized and
delivered to the system. The work would also involve a view into the manpower
retention and outsourcing of IT jobs like maintenance of hardware and
development of software. The third section of the paper will be on training
issues of civil servants. The adoption of e-governance becomes an imperative
decision for the government of India because very shortly this will be a proven
tool for market boom for vendors willing to invest in the technology. PwC is of
the opinion that e-governance will soon become an imperative choice for all
governmental bodies of India.