"Think big, start small and scale fast"

THIRUVANTHAPURAM: "Think big, start small and scale fast," that is the mantra that the Indian government is adopting in the implementation of e-governance across the country, according to Government of India Ministry Of Information Technology, Joint Secretary, Chandrashekhar. In a video-conferencing address to the delegates at the IT Kerala 2002, he talked about the Government of India’s vision and strategy with respect to e-governance initiatives.

He said that all governing bodies were now convinced that e-governance is definitely the right direction to take. Many states are already well on the e-governance path and have been innovating and experimenting tremendously. The challenge, Chandrashekhar said is now to focus on the efforts that can be made without curbing the innovation that is currently on. In the path of all this innovation, some common threads have emerged which other states can learn from. The success of all e-governance initiatives will be in developing projects that are sustainable, scalable and replicable.

Chandrashekhar said that the current year will also see a national e-governance initiative taking shape and will be based on a shared vision that emerges out of interaction between the state and central governments, the industry and citizen organizations. He talked about the ambitious National ID project of the home ministry that will use a single citizen ID to help the people access various services easily and conveniently. Some efforts have already happened in this direction–with the FRIENDS project in Kerala and e-Seva in AP, though a single ID is still a long way off. And there is still plenty to be done to get all the citizens to benefit from these schemes. The challenge ahead is to give remote access to services and still ensure robust security, he said. With issues cropping at all levels–technological, financial, legal and procedural, he said implementation of the e-governance initiatives would be an interactive and iterative process.