Use of Information Technology in Administration

E-Governance can be defined as the application of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) for delivering government services, exchanging information, communication transactions, and integrating various stand-alone systems and services between Government-to-Citizen (G2C), Government-to-Business (G2B), Government-to-Government (G2G) as well as Government-to-Employees (G2E). The primary objective is to make government administration more transparent, speedy, accountable, efficient, and responsive.

The use of IT in administration revolutionises traditional bureaucratic processes by automating routine tasks, digitising records, and creating networked infrastructure. This leads to:

• Efficiency: Reduction in processing time for services like license renewal, tax filing, and birth certificate issuance.
• Transparency: Making information on government schemes, expenditures, and policies readily available to the public, reducing corruption. For example, online dashboards showing real-time implementation status of projects.
• Accountability: Digital trails and logs make it easier to fix responsibility and hold officials accountable for delays or malpractice.
• Accessibility: Services can be accessed by citizens from anywhere, anytime, breaking geographical barriers and reducing the need to visit government offices physically.

Digital India initiative

The Digital India programme is a flagship initiative of the Government of India launched in 2015. Its vision is to transform India into a digitally empowered society and knowledge economy. It is a comprehensive programme that aims to prepare India for a knowledge-based transformation by focusing on three key vision areas.

Three Vision Areas of Digital India

1. Digital Infrastructure as a Core Utility to Every Citizen: This involves providing high-speed internet as a core utility, a cradle-to-grave digital identity (Aadhaar) that is unique and authenticable, mobile phone & bank account to enable participation in digital & financial space, and a personal, private space on a public cloud (DigiLocker).
2. Governance and Services on Demand: This focuses on seamlessly integrating services across departments and jurisdictions. Government services, especially those related to health, education, and finance, should be available in real-time on online and mobile platforms. The goal is to make all citizen entitlements portable and available on the cloud, facilitating ease of doing business.
3. Digital Empowerment of Citizens: This aims at universal digital literacy and making digital resources and services available in Indian languages. It also involves collaborative digital platforms for participative governance.

Key Services under Digital India

• MyGov.in: A citizen engagement platform where citizens can contribute their ideas and suggestions for policy-making.
• DigiLocker: A secure cloud-based platform for storage, sharing, and verification of documents & certificates, eliminating the use of physical documents.
• UMANG (Unified Mobile Application for New-age Governance): A single mobile app to access more than 1,200 central and state government services.
• e-Sign: An online electronic signature service that can be integrated with service delivery applications to facilitate paperless transactions.
• e-Hospital: An initiative to computerise hospitals, providing services like online registration, appointment, payment, and access to diagnostic reports.

Impact on Administrative Decision-Making

E-Governance is not merely a tool for service delivery; it fundamentally alters the process of administrative decision-making. It shifts the paradigm from intuition-based or opinion-based decisions to evidence-based, data-driven, and participatory decision-making.

Data-Driven Policy and Decision-Making

The integration of ICT allows for the collection, collation, and analysis of vast amounts of real-time data. This creates a foundation for evidence-based policymaking. For instance, the 'e-Office' system creates a digital record of file movements, enabling senior officials to track delays and identify bottlenecks in the decision-making chain. Similarly, data from portals like the Goods and Services Tax Network (GSTN) provides real-time insights into economic activity, allowing the government to make timely fiscal policy decisions.

Enhanced Transparency and Accountability

Transparency is a cornerstone of good governance. E-governance tools promote transparency by making administrative processes and decisions visible to the public. For example:

• Public Finance Management System (PFMS): Tracks the utilisation of funds for government schemes, ensuring that money is spent for its intended purpose and reducing leakages.
• E-Tendering/GeM Portal: The Government e-Marketplace (GeM) has made public procurement transparent by moving the entire process online. This reduces cronyism and corruption in awarding government contracts, as decisions are based on transparent, competitive bidding.
• RTI Online Portal: Facilitates the filing of Right to Information (RTI) applications, making it easier for citizens to hold the government accountable for its decisions.

Increased Speed and Efficiency

Traditional decision-making in government is often plagued by "red tape" and procedural delays. E-governance helps cut through this by automating workflows. The e-Office project, aimed at creating a paperless office, ensures that files move electronically from one desk to another. This not only speeds up the approval process but also prevents files from getting lost or deliberately held back, leading to faster and more efficient decisions.

Improved Citizen Participation

Modern e-governance platforms enable a shift towards a more collaborative and participatory model of governance. Platforms like MyGov.in allow the government to solicit public opinion on draft policies and new initiatives. This feedback loop ensures that the decisions made are more democratic, responsive to citizen needs, and have wider public acceptance.

Challenges in E-Governance

Despite its immense benefits, the implementation of e-governance in a vast and diverse country like India is fraught with significant challenges. These challenges must be addressed to ensure that the benefits of digital transformation are inclusive and equitable.

Data privacy and security

As the government becomes the largest holder of personal data, ensuring its privacy and security is a paramount challenge. E-governance initiatives like Aadhaar, the National Health Stack, and various welfare databases collect vast amounts of sensitive personal information (SPI) and personally identifiable information (PII).

Key Concerns

• Data Breaches: Government websites and databases are high-value targets for cybercriminals. Breaches can lead to identity theft, financial fraud, and other harms.
• Surveillance State: The centralisation of data creates a risk of state surveillance, which can impinge on the fundamental right to privacy.
• Lack of a Robust Legal Framework: For a long time, India lacked a dedicated law for data protection. The recently passed Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 aims to address this gap. It establishes the rights of citizens (Data Principals), the obligations of data-collecting entities (Data Fiduciaries), and a framework for penalties for non-compliance.
• Infrastructure and Capacity: Ensuring the security of data requires state-of-the-art IT infrastructure, skilled cybersecurity professionals, and regular security audits, which are often lacking at the lower levels of government. Organizations like CERT-In (Indian Computer Emergency Response Team) play a crucial role in responding to cyber incidents.

Digital divide

The digital divide refers to the gap between demographics and regions that have access to modern information and communications technology, and those that don't or have restricted access. If this divide is not bridged, e-governance can worsen existing inequalities by excluding the most vulnerable sections of society.

Dimensions of the Digital Divide in India

• Rural-Urban Divide: While internet penetration is high in cities, it remains low in many rural and remote areas. The BharatNet project aims to connect all Gram Panchayats with high-speed internet, but last-mile connectivity remains a challenge.
• Economic Divide: The cost of smartphones and data plans can be prohibitive for low-income households.
• Gender Divide: There is a significant gap in mobile ownership and internet usage between men and women, particularly in rural India, due to social norms and affordability.
• Digital Literacy Divide: Simply providing access to technology is not enough. A large part of the population lacks the skills (digital literacy) to use digital services effectively. The Pradhan Mantri Gramin Digital Saksharta Abhiyan (PMGDISHA) is an initiative to address this by aiming to make citizens digitally literate.
• Linguistic Divide: Most digital content and government service portals are available in English or a few major Indian languages, excluding people who speak other regional languages or dialects.

Overcoming these challenges is crucial for the success of e-governance. It requires a multi-pronged approach focusing on building robust and secure infrastructure, strengthening legal frameworks, and, most importantly, ensuring digital inclusion and literacy for all citizens.

Information Technology Act, 2000

The Information Technology Act, 2000 (also known as the IT Act) is the primary legislation in India dealing with cybercrime and electronic commerce. Enacted on 17th October 2000, it was a landmark piece of legislation that provided the foundational legal framework for the burgeoning e-governance and e-commerce landscape in the country. The main objective of the Act was to provide legal recognition for transactions carried out by means of electronic data interchange and other means of electronic communication, commonly referred to as "electronic commerce".

The Act was significantly amended in 2008 (IT Amendment Act, 2008) to introduce new sections on data protection, cyber terrorism, and to clarify existing provisions. It is the principal law that enables the functioning of e-governance services by validating electronic records and signatures.

Legal recognition of electronic records and digital signatures

The most crucial contribution of the IT Act, 2000, to e-governance is its establishment of legal parity between paper-based and electronic documents and signatures. This is enshrined in Sections 4 and 5 of the Act.

Legal Recognition of Electronic Records (Section 4)

Section 4 of the IT Act states that if any law requires a piece of information or a document to be in writing or in typewritten or printed form, then such a requirement is deemed to be satisfied if the information is:

• Rendered or made available in an electronic form; and
• Accessible so as to be usable for a subsequent reference.

This provision is the bedrock of e-governance. It means that a government application form filled out online, a bill paid electronically, or a notice served via email has the same legal status as its physical counterpart, provided it meets the specified conditions.

Legal Recognition of Digital Signatures (Section 5)

Similarly, Section 5 addresses the requirement of affixing signatures. It states that if any law requires a document to be authenticated by a signature, that requirement is deemed to be satisfied if the document is authenticated by a digital signature affixed in a manner prescribed by the Central Government.

A digital signature is more than just an electronic image of a signature. It is a secure cryptographic technology. In India, the IT Act specifies an Asymmetric Crypto System and a hash function for creating digital signatures. The process works as follows:

1. A hash value (a unique digital fingerprint) of the electronic record is created.
2. The sender encrypts this hash value using their private key. This encrypted hash is the digital signature.
3. The signature is attached to the electronic record and sent to the recipient.
4. The recipient uses the sender's public key to decrypt the signature, revealing the original hash. The recipient also independently creates a hash of the received document.
5. If the two hash values match, it verifies the authenticity (the sender is who they claim to be) and integrity (the document has not been altered) of the record.

Later, the concept of an Electronic Signature was introduced by the IT Amendment Act 2008, which is a broader, technology-neutral term that includes digital signatures and other specified techniques like the Aadhaar e-Sign.

E-Contracts and E-Evidence in Administrative Proceedings

The legal framework established by the IT Act, 2000 extends to the formation of contracts and the use of electronic records as evidence in legal and administrative proceedings, which are critical components of modern administration.

Validity of E-Contracts

An electronic contract (e-contract) is an agreement that is created and "signed" in electronic form. Examples include accepting "Terms and Conditions" on a website, placing an order on an e-commerce platform like the Government e-Marketplace (GeM), or finalising a deal via email.

Section 10A of the IT Act, 2000 explicitly clarifies the validity of e-contracts. It states that where a contract formation involves the communication of proposals, acceptance of proposals, and revocation of proposals and acceptances, as the case may be, are expressed in electronic form or by means of an electronic record, such a contract shall not be deemed to be unenforceable solely on the ground that such electronic form or means was used for that purpose.

This means that as long as an e-contract fulfills the essential conditions of a valid contract as laid down in the Indian Contract Act, 1872 (offer, acceptance, lawful consideration, etc.), it is perfectly valid and legally enforceable.

Admissibility of E-Evidence

For e-governance to be effective, electronic records must be admissible as evidence in courts of law and before administrative tribunals. The IT Act, 2000 amended the Indian Evidence Act, 1872 to facilitate this.

Section 65B of the Indian Evidence Act is the key provision governing the admissibility of electronic records. It states that any information contained in an electronic record (like a printout, a CD, a pen drive, etc.) shall be deemed to be a document and is admissible in any proceedings, without further proof or production of the original, if the conditions mentioned in the section are satisfied.

The crucial conditions under Section 65B(2) are:

• The computer that produced the record (the "computer output") must have been used regularly to store or process information for the purpose of any activities regularly carried on over that period by the person having lawful control over the use of the computer.
• The information contained in the electronic record must be of a kind that was regularly fed into the computer in the ordinary course of said activities.
• The computer must have been operating properly during the material part of the period.
• The information contained in the electronic record must reproduce or be derived from such information fed into the computer in the ordinary course of said activities.

Section 65B(4) further mandates that a certificate identifying the electronic record and describing the manner of its production must be submitted. This certificate must be signed by a person occupying a responsible official position in relation to the operation of the relevant device. The Supreme Court of India, in the case of Arjun Panditrao Khotkar vs. Kailash Kushanrao Gorantyal (2020), has held that this certificate is a mandatory prerequisite for the admissibility of electronic evidence.

Answer: