BY NANDKUMAR KAMAT

NOW serious is Government of Goa about information technology and electronic governance? The published facts before us do not match the announcement made by the Chief Minister recently.

He said that 50 services of the government would be available online by December 19, 2011. But probably he forgot that the same government had promised 600 services by the end of March 2008 after completion of the much-hyped Goa broadband network.

E-Governance Behind Schedule

First let us have a compliance report of GBBN. Commenting on e-governance the economic survey of 2007-08 had mentioned, ‘as a step towards attaining the status of a fully e-governed state, the directorate has prepared an e-governance roadmap, with a focus on citizen centric (G2C) and business centric (B2C) services. Through this initiative, more than 600 services have been identified to the citizens and business community. All the services are prioritised based on the volume of transactions. The department has also prepared the capacity building roadmap for the state of Goa.’

Scaling down a bouquet of 600 online services to just 50 is no consolation and only the CM and the officers briefing him on IT may know why it should take another 16 months in a small state when the implementation of e-governance roadmap is already four years behind schedule.

Having interacted with major government departments from time to time, it is my considered opinion that the Goa administration has e-governance and IT phobia. The officers hate to correspond on e-mail. Recently, I received a reply from the Fisheries Department that their computer system is down for a long time and they don’t have a functional e-mail id. The top officer was not sure when the system would get repaired and the e-mail activated. More or less the same state of affairs continues in other state government departments. After inauguration, the departmental websites are forgotten.

Governance, an Alien Concept

I have found that governance is still a magic, a mystery for people in the villages. The political class and the administrative culture is unwilling to make governance appear simple, people friendly, free of bribes, favours, corruption. A corrupt and morally-bankrupt state like Goa fuelled by parallel economy transactions cannot afford real e-governance. It would throw thousands of power brokers and middlemen out of their jobs.

One unimpressive website with outdated contents is the official portal of the Goa government. But we know nothing about the state data centre which was promised three years ago. Things may change radically if beginning with the Chief Minister’s office and the portfolios handled by him we experience good e-governance. But again here we may face disappointment because I discovered to my horror that several emails of public interest sent from July 2007 on the Chief Minister’s official e-mail id cm.goa@nic.in were received in the CM’s official mailbox but were never printed and shown to him. This included important drafts of new legislations and public policies. If this is the treatment a member of state’s planning board gets in the name of e-governance, then the plight of other citizens waiting to send their petitions to the CM can be imagined.

For about three years, I was under the impression that the CM was aware about the contents of the emails sent to him. But the negative forces in the government took care that such communication is blocked or sabotaged for reasons which only the vigilance department can find out. The first principle of e-governance is honesty, integrity and transparency. E-governance works best only when people know that the Chief Minister of the state, all his cabinet colleagues , the chief secretary, the collectors and the top officers do take personal interest to go online and directly communicate with the people. It was only after I complained to an OSD of the CM and resent him the important emails on his departmental address that the sabotage was discovered and I began receiving sporadic acknowledgements from the CM’s office.

There is absolutely no machinery and trained, courteous, professional people with the state government for prompt, judicious, electronic redressal of citizen’s grievances. The non-seriousness of the Goa government on e-governance can be proven by comparing the importance given to information technology (IT) in the official publication-Economic surveys. From 29 detail paragraphs in 2007-08, we have just 14 paragraphs on IT in 2008-9. And the latest survey, 2009-10 winds up IT in just three paragraphs. Is there any explanation for such ridiculous treatment of IT?

IT Phobia

Goa was one of the pioneer states in India to plan about economy, industries and services based on knowledge way back in October 1988 when the Centre for policy research, New Delhi was commissioned to prepare a report–Economic development of Goa through application of science and technology, under P D Malgavkar and V A Pai Panandiker. The silicon valley of Goa then proposed at Verna later changed its’ track and became a hub of pharma industries. The government knows that it has missed all the targets for e-governance promised since 1995. These were revised time and again but failed. The state was held to ransom by forces which remained silent for five years and then suddenly struck to stop the work on Rajiv Gandhi IT Park at Dona Paula which has now become a graveyard of concrete after spending ` 50 crore. Three years ago I had told my students that GBBN would get them broadband at doorstep. Where is our 2 MBPS domestic broadband connectivity promised by state sponsored GBBN in 2007?

The mindset, attitude, perception and culture of Goa administration is not still conducive for e-governance. I discovered this during the DISNIC workshop organised two years ago by National Informatics Centre (NIC), Porvorim. NIC is the backbone of public sector e-governance. DISNIC was aimed at developing holistic, integrated district level knowledge databases with inputs from all stakeholders. The workshop convinced me that NIC and state government need to work closely together to meet the targets and give the people of Goa the best district level databases. But the state government was not interested in active collaboration with NIC in DISNIC project.

As has been shown in the voluminous replies to 2000 assembly questions in monsoon session, each department of the Goa government is sitting idly on mountains of public funded information. Is the CM willing to upload this and similar information ‘suo moto’ on the government portal? That would be the real test of e-governance. The CM needs to review the GBBN progress and get real last mile 2 MBPS broadband connectivity at the doorstep of every household. The technophobia in administration needs to be treated. Best IT practices in India need to be followed. The half million IT savvy young, educated voters of Goa need to advocate this issue urgently.