How ISVs can Power “Digital India” and drive Citizen Centric Services

The ongoing Digital India campaign by the government of India is opening up new opportunities in from of the Independent Software Vendor or the ISV community in India, as they are in an ideal position to innovate and power application and solution development around citizen centric services.

Whether it is software platform driven by Microsoft, IBM, Oracle or SAP – there are a large number of ISVs in India which are engaged in the development of cutting-edge applications and solutions to better suit their customers in SMB, SME and even the enterprise space.

Powering-Digital-India

There is need to focus on strengthening of e-Governance, an important pillar of the Government of India’s “Digital India” campaign so as to digitally empower the administrative and Governance process for providing Citizen Centric Services.

This was stated by Devendra Chaudhury, Secretary, Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances (DARPG) while inaugurating a Workshop on ‘UN e-Government Development Index’. He highlighted the importance of process change which can be effectively enabled by IT tools and consequential changes in approach to e-Governance as a business model similar to e-Commerce.

Commending the Indian government on its ambitious plan to transform governance and provide Citizen Centric Services, Yuri Afanasiev, UN Resident Coordinator & Resident Representative of the United Nations Development Programme, said “e-Governance is like building a house. Build a strong foundation and everything works”.

In his view, the key challenge for the country was to deliver services to the last mile population, removing the digital divide, towards improving the quality of their lives.

Acknowledging India’s progress, Richard Kerby, Inter-Regional Adviser on e-Government with the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, said that e-Government has to be a part of the national development strategy and sustainable development.

Kerby said that while open data is a key to empowering people, it should support a bottom-up approach, with citizens contributing to the data collection process equally with governments.

While speaking at the Workshop, Tapan Ray, Additional Secretary (Department of Electronics and IT), stressed on the need to “integrate efforts across government to achieve the vision of a digitally empowered India.”

A key focus of the workshop was to understand the United Nations e-Government Survey, which assesses e-Government development across all 193 member states of the UN launched in 2003. The global Survey has three components – Telecom Infrastructure Index, Human Capital Index and an Online Services Index. The Workshop threw up a number of innovative and transformative ideas of which the States have undertaken to serve the Citizens.

The workshop featured presentations by four States, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, and Uttar Pradesh on innovative e-Governance initiatives launched by them to improve service delivery to citizens. The presentation by Karnataka focused on Citizen Centric Services being provided through a mobile one platform, Andhra Pradesh presented on a public grievance redressal system known as Meekosam, Uttar Pradesh shared its experience on IT and e-Governance initiatives aimed at creating a conducive environment for e-Governance including fiscal incentives and “Citizen First” programme and Himachal Pradesh on an online application system to register complaints.

ChannelDrive Bureau
ChannelDrive Bureauhttp://www.channeldrive.in
ChannelDrive Bureau covers the latest developments in the space of ICT, technology, solutions and implementations and delivers content focused around solution providers, system integrators, distributors and technology partner community in India. ChannelDrive Bureau is headed by Zia Askari. He can be reached at ziaaskari@channeldrive.in

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