Government organizes conclave on e-governance

PHD Chamber, along with the Department of Information Technology (Government of India), recently organized a national conclave on 'e-Governance and m-Governance: Challenges & Opportunities'.

Amongst the distinguished speakers were Rajiv Gauba, additional secretary, Department for Electronics & Information Technology, Government of India, N Ravi Shanker, administrator USOF, Ravinder Kumar Chadha, additional(Lok Sabha), Govind, CEO NIXI, Shriram Jaganathan, CEO Airtel Money, and Pankaj Khurana, associate director, PWC.

The prime objective of the conclave, attended by 180 representatives from the industry, was to explore effective strategies for social, financial and digital inclusion and transformation in governance through innovation and technology.

N Ravi Shanker, in his address, mentioned that if we want to achieve the goal of sustainable development, we need to create enabling eco system and address the issue of connect, connectivity, accessibility in a holistic manner. He also briefly spoke about the project on 'National Optical Network' in partnership with Department of IT & Department of telecom which will be useful in making people a part of inclusive growth.

He added that m-governance can be a game changer in the future.

Meanwhile, Chadha said that in order to achieve sustainable development we need o build things in more integrated and systematic manner. He also expressed cconcern about lack of participation in the whole system.

Govind spoke about m governance and how it can be used more interactively in education and health sector. He emphasised on the need for integrating m governance with data available. "NIXI has 24GB data trafficking today and that the entire data in future can be transmitted through NIXI hubs," Govind shared. He briefly spoke about how the data available on government portals can help in creating mobile apps.

While Jaganathan explained how phone can play bigger role in financial transactions in future, Khaitan, highlighted how the the government services can be extended to all geographical segments in the country 24X7, with the help of internet.

Gupta in his theme presentation said that there are large numbers of potential barriers in the implementation of e-Governance such as security, unequal access to the computer technology by the citizen, high initial cost for setting up the e government solutions and resistance to change which should be dealt on priority.