Benefits of Digital Governance in South Asia

All India Institute of Local Self- Government and United Cities and Local Government Asia Pacific (UCLG ASPAC) organised a webinar on “Digital Governance in South Asia” on January 19 2023. It focused on the benefits of digital local governance, challenges of the local governments in South- SouthWest for adoption of digital technology and sharing of good practices of digital governance in the region

Ravi Ranjan Guru, Chair SSW Standing Committee and Deputy Director General, All India Institute of Local Self-Government talked about how the SSW Committee started under the umbrella of the UCLG ASPAC and that it provides necessary support and networking within the South –Southwest Asia region and the urban local bodies on growing urbanisation. He mentioned how digitalization can be helpful for the urban local bodies and the governance system if they leverage the benefits of the digital solution. Abhishek Pandey, Editor, Urban Update who was the moderator for the session requested Praveen Bhardwaj, senior Urban Expert to talk about digitalization in local governance. Explaining in brief on how e-governance started in the country and its necessity, Bhardwaj mentioned about the e- governance system and its services like government to citizen services (G2C), government to business services (G2B), government to employee services (G2E) and government to government services (G2G). There are many G2C services, like online building plan approval, public grievance management system, municipal license management system, property tax management system, human resource management system, water connection and water billing, real estate regulatory system and so on. Talking about G2B services, he highlighted that earlier, procurement used to be done through the paper-based system. Now, we have e-procurement system, which is mandatory for most of the municipalities at both state and central levels. It has become more reliable and transparent for the common citizen. G2E is one of the systems which is very applicable as it provides online facilities like human resource training and development to the employees and one can also check if salary has been credited or not.
Mukesh Mathur, Professor, National Institute of Urban Affairs, mentioned the key elements of good governance which are accountability, transparency and participation. He also mentioned that the Government of India prioritizes and has announced many new projects for this sector. He spoke extensively about the financial ecosystem of urban local bodies before the introduction of digital governance and the current scenario. The 15th Finance Commission has mentioned it clearly that all audit reports need to be made available online for the public scrutiny. This is a major initiative which has made it easier for the citizens to go through the reports and know how their money is being spent, the kind of subsidy they are getting and so on. Recently, the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs has launched a city finance portal which will collect financial information of the urban local bodies as well as the grants of the 15th Finance Commission, be it the tied grants or the untied grants and those linked with the performance of the local bodies.
Nagarajarao Vijayshankar, Founder-Director of Cyber Law College, spoke about the challenges of digital governance. One of the major challenges is that the e-governance tendering system heavily favors IT entities, most probably the MNCs and international companies alone can participate in tenders because the tender specifications make it necessary that an organisation needs to be of a particular size and form. The reliability of a software is linked to the size of an organisation which, according to him, is not the correct way of adjudging the capacity of a vendor. In the tendering system, the small vendors are losing out to the larger organisations which needs to be addressed in some way. The government also tends to go to a well-established company, increasing the cost of the project and wastage of funds which could have been utilized in a better way. Therefore, having reliable vendors who can be trusted is important and it is one of the most important aspects of good governance. The second challenge is whenever a government project is implemented, there is always a perception of corruption in the system. Corruption proofing of e-governance projects is one of the major requirements which one needs to be looked at.
Pashim Tiwari, Technical Director, All India Institute of Local Self Government (AIILSG), explained how the SSW region is moving towards e-governance system. The availability and the accessibility of a digital platform which is inclusive in nature, and which has certain ability to be done in a low resource environment has led to a maturity where most governments, today, are present on the electronic platform. He stressed on the four key components that need to be available for an effective digital system. First is digital identity like the AADHAR (Unique Identification Authority of India) card in India. Second is the network system that is available and accessible to everyone through a digital platform. Third is the ability to transact, which means payment based on the services provided through digital network like the UPI. Fourth, locational services, where all the cities are in GIS platform. Four other key components are to get Government, Industries, Academia and Citizens (GIAC) together and involved in the system and help to transact and disseminate information. To achieve this, one has to increase the capacity of the governance system. He also mentioned about the barriers- accessibility of internet at an inclusive pricing, digital literacy and making it gender inclusive.
The webinar came to an end after Dr Bernadia Irawati Tjandradewi, Secretary General, United Cities and Local Governments Asia –Pacific (UCLG ASPAC) highlighted the importance of developing digital infrastructure and the challenges faced due to linguistic barriers, lack of technical awareness, and availability of digital tools. She stressed that digital e- governance should also be inclusive in nature and be gender sensitive.