Brighter Kashmir: Srinagar: Thursday, March 22, 2018.
Electronic
governance or e-governance is the application of Information and Communication
Technology (ICT) for delivering government services, exchange of information,
communication transactions, integration of various stand-alone systems and
services between government-to-citizen (G2C), government-to-business (G2B), government-to-government
(G2G) , government-to-employees (G2E) as well as back office processes and
interactions within the entire government framework.
As we live in
the world of internet e-governance is now the thrust area. In Jammu and Kashmir
state some ten years back the bugle was sounded that e-governance is going to
be ushered all around , but despite much talk nothing is seen on ground.
Majority of the websites of the government departments are hardly updated
regularly and do not contain much fruitful information for the masses. .
E-governance is right initiative to ensure
prompt service delivery. It is also needed to bring transparency and
responsiveness in the administration to attend the needs of people on
development count.
Pertinently,
through e-governance, government services will be made available to citizens in
a convenient, efficient and transparent manner. The three main target groups
that can be distinguished in governance concepts are government, citizens and
businesses/interest groups. In e-governance there are no distinct boundaries.
On the other
hand, experts have time and again stated that e-governance will remove
red-tapism and bring a “revolutionary turnaround” in the system.
But the
implementation part of e-governance in the state is still laggard. JK Tourism website is quite slow and lagging
impressive character, the all important R&B Website looks quite stale, Most of the university websites are quite
slow for students liking and contain limited information . The Handicrafts
sector all important for Kashmir but the website of Handicrafts is not updated
regularly.
While talking
to the Kashmir News Bureau, DrSheikh
Ghulam Rasool, Chairman J&K RTI Movement stated – “e-governance claims of
the government are nowhere visible on ground, as we are still lagging far
behind. Just last year we conducted a study with Commonwealth group and found
that out of 280 government websites a majority of them are unimpressive and not updated regularly. We have called in
letter and spirit the implementation of RTI Act section 4 (1 ) (a) which calls
for digitalization of all records of public authority and would have reduced
the RTI Flow by 85 percent . Despite the clear orders by high court and our
pleas before Chief Information Commission we are yet to see much headway in
this regard and thus overall e-governance still remains a distant dream for all of us in the state.”
(KNB)