India’s E-Governance Journey: Looking Through Common Service Centres
| Author | Samar Nanda |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/00195561221098108 |
| Published date | 01 December 2022 |
| Date | 01 December 2022 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
India’s E-Governance
Journey: Looking
Through Common
Service Centres
Samar Nanda1,2
Abstract
India has seen unprecedented growth of information technology (IT) lead in govern-
ance structures in the past decades. IT-enabled systems have ushered in a new era
of digital transformation of traditional ways of functioning of citizen service deliveries
in the country. Governance, thus, has found a new meaning through the currency
of digital change. Services which earlier were exploited as reserved for privileged
and classy people have become available for common citizens without any rent-
seeking or exploitation. The most important factor associated with digital transfor-
mation is nothing but access to information and transparency. Every service has now
a trace, a link and a face, which can be analysed at a later stage to provide the efficacy
of the system and certain room for improvement. Having said these, it may not
be concluded that there are no challenges and stumbling blocks on the way of e-
governance, ‘digital divide’ being the most prominent challenge in the way of bigger
mandate to reach out to all the citizens by the state. However, growing Smartphones
and falling data rates have enabled substantial part of the citizens to avail digital
services rendered by the state. Even though the common service centre has been
operating for quite some time efficiently and effectively, some important challenges
have been flagged in the article. A glimpse of the best practices from leading countries
doing good in e-governance initiatives is also included in the analysis.
Keywords
E-governance, Common Service Centres, Open Government, Transparency,
Digital Divide, Service Delivery
E-government has proven to be a powerful generic and strategic tool for public sector
transformation, and an unavoidable support for broad policy implementation in almost
all areas of society.
—OECD (2008)
Article
Indian Journal of Public
Administration
68(4) 599–609, 2022
© 2022 IIPA
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DOI: 10.1177/00195561221098108
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1 Directorate General of Analytics and Risk Management (DGARM), CBIC, Government of India,
New Delhi, India.
2 Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York, United States.
Corresponding author:
Samar Nanda, Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York 13244 1100, United States.
E-mail: samar.nanda@nic.in
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