Write short notes on the following: Challenges in E-Governance

Challenges in E-Governance Lack of IT Literacy and awareness regarding benefits of e-governance: There is general lack of awareness regarding benefits of e-governance as well as the process involved in implementing e-governance projects. The administrative structure is not geared for maintaining, storing and retrieving the governance information electronically. Moreover a majority of users especially in rural parts of country lack the intra skill sets to use an IT enabled system. Underutilization of existing ICT infrastructure: To a larger extent, the computers in many departments are used for the purpose of word processing only, resulting in the underutilization of the computers in terms of their use in data processing capacities for supporting management decisions. Attitude of Employees: Employees have derived their sustenance from the fact that they are important repositories of data and any initiative to e-governance may harm them. Thus any effort to implement DMS and workflow technologies or bringing out the change in the system is often met with resistance from the employees. Lack of coordination between Government Department and Solution developers: At present the users do not contribute enough to design the solution architecture. Consequently the solution developed and implemented does not address the requirements of an e-governance project effectively and hence does not get implemented. Resistance to re-engineering of departmental processes: There is resistance in almost all the departments at all the levels. Additionally there is lack of expertise of departmental MIS executives in exploiting data mining techniques, updation and collection of real time content onto website etc. Lack of Infrastructure for sustaining e-governance projects on national level: Infrastructure to support e-governance initiatives does not exist within government departments. Further, infrastructure creation is not guided by a uniform national policy, but is dependent on the needs of individual officers championing a few projects. Language Divide: The local dialect of communication for a majority of population still remains the regional language or Hindi. They are not too familiar with English which still remains the most prevalent medium of interacting with any IT based application. Population: India is the second largest country in terms of population. It put forth challenges like establishing unique person identities, reaching the last mile, addressing challenges posed by diverse culture etc.