Question

Explain the objectives of e-governance.

Answer 1

Following are the objectives of E-Governance:

1. To build an informed society - An informed society is an empowered society. Only informed people can make a Government responsible. So providing access to all to every piece of information of the Government and of public importance is one of the basic objective of E-Governance.
2. To increase Government and Citizen interaction - In the physical world, the Government and Citizens hardly interact. The amount of feedback from and to the citizens is very negligible. E-Governance aims at build a feedback framework, to get feedback from the people and making the Government aware of people’s problems.
3. To encourage citizen participation - True democracy requires participation of each individual citizen. Increased population has led to representative democracy, which is not democracy in the true sense. E-governance aims to restore democracy to its true meaning by improving citizen participation in the Governing process, by improving the feedback, access to information and overall participation of the citizens in the decision making.
4. To bring transparency in the governing process - E-governance carries an objective to make the Governing process transparent by making all the Government data and information available to the people for access. It is to make people know the decisions, and policies of the Government.
5. To make the Government accountable - Government is responsible and answerable for every act decision taken by it. E-Governance aims and will help make the Government more accountable than now by bringing transparency and making the citizens more informed.
6. To reduce the cost of Governance - E-Governance also aims to reduce the cost of governance by cutting down on expenditure on the physical delivery of information and services. It aims to do this by cutting down on stationary, which amounts to most of the government’s expenditure. It also does away with physical communication thereby reducing the time required for communication while reducing cost.
7. To reduce the reaction time of the Government - Normally due to red-tapism and other reasons, the Government takes a long to reply to people’s queries and problems. E-Governance aims to reduce the reaction time of the Government to the people’s queries and problems because problems are basically Government’s problems as Government is for the people.