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Some non-IT aspects of e-governance-Part III

The first time I travelled to a prominent European destination a few years ago, as warned by the travel agent, I lost my baggage. But what was surprising to me was the presence of about twenty airline staff at the lost-baggage claim counters of a relatively small airport. Perhaps, it is more cost effective for them to pay compensation or to provide door delivery later ( as they did in my case) rather than retaining some human elements in baggage handling at the airports. In any case, I as a customer remain more satisfied with the human intervention in the Indian sector.

I am prompted to cite another example in a fairly sophisticated hospital. The basic infrastructure is excellent. The patient data acquisition at the registration stage, storage and retrieval are computerised. This hospital was once organising a week long campaign about preventing 'hospital acquired infections'.

When this event was being covered by the press at length, no body took notice of the perennial confusions at the hospital registration counter ! The first point to prevent hospital acquired infections was, in fact, the registration counter itself, where the patients had to inevitably bully at each other, first to see the face of the counter clerk, then to transact with him, and finally to hear him calling the name when all the records are retrieved. The counters were obviously not ergonomically designed.

The patient has to keep all his sensory organs alert and spend anxious moments to avoid missing an opportunity for registration, not to mention about the fact that the whole struggle involves lot of mixing, pull and push among patients who have come with different diseases.

A simple token system with a display at the cash counter would have done wonders in this kind of a situation. Instead, much of the money would be spent, probably, on an intranet without passing on the benefit to the public. To top it all, I have found a very senior doctor taking five minutes to examine a patient and twenty minutes to make the entries in the computer! Among a few possible reasons, the most alarming issue was the absence of pop-up word options that would have facilitated quick entries.

In some places, IT enabling works very much to the convenience of the society. Nearly four years ago, I have seen the touch screen terminals at the Dubai Economic Department, where commercial establishments can check all their dues to various government institutions, get a print out and walk to the cashier and make the payment, without uttering a word, unless, of course, there is a discrepancy on the billing. Now, of course, most of the interface with the citizens are web-based.The one-stop payment counter named 'Friends', set up by the IT department of the Kerala government in India is a very good example of how governance should aim at saving productive hours of the citizens.

While receiving payments is a revenue to the government, making the citzens run around and stand in long queues is a national waste. Therefore, a place where one could pay all his dues — from utility bills to taxes and even school/university fees — is something remarkable.

But 'Friends' is limited to the city of Thiruvannthapuram, and behind the curtain , it cannot be a networked , neatly interfaced or integrated mechanism among the disparate and unorganised organisations. It might continue to be so in an environment of several years of administrative complexities, unless there is so much money available for large-scale technology solutions, and more importantly the political will for drastic changes.

Now you know how difficult it is to have in place an e-governance delivering material benefits to the citizens. Any e-governance is a failure, if people continue to travel hundreds of kilometers to the capital city to make enquiries, collect forms, to know the status of filed applications, or to do follow-up activities. Neither should the citizens get lost in the wilderness of new technologies and new ways of interacting with the government.

It is also a catastrophe if there is no legal framework to sanctify electronic transactions. Digital divide even within developed economies is a hard reality, which needs to be addressed through different approaches in service delivery. Learning from the experience of the telecom revolution in India whereby ISD/STD booths (often manned by handicapped people) have become so common in every nook and corner of the country, we may infer that government reaching out to people always does not mean total government spending.

If there is a strong desire, the all-in-one IT Kiosks could be just about anywhere, including villages. Many of the present cyber cafes could reorient themselves to provide such value-added services.

The 'Akshaya' project, which is being experimented in a relatively backward district of Malappuram in India is such an initiative. For the IT literate citizens, self service through a one-stop-shop portal is an easy solution. For a little more sophisticated citizens, their mobile phones could be the all-in-one gadget to keep in touch with the governmental system. (To be continued)

Dr A.M. Sherif is Chief Engineer (Industrial Planning)

Ministry of Commerce and Industry, Sultanate of Oman e-maill:amsherif@omantel.net.om