India Should Move towards E-democracy

Tuesday 21 August 2012


When we talk about e-governance in India, the E-gov efforts are directly enabled by law, but on the other hand, the Open Gov initiative is not. However, E-gov and Open Gov both produce significant advances in government transparency, but Open Gov should also produce more participation and collaboration mechanisms. E-gov and Open Gov both are “unfunded mandates” and must be implemented with existing resources in order to bring e-democracy to the masses.
India Should Move towards E-democracy


E-gov and Open Gov both rely heavily on web-enabled technology adoption, but many Open Government-related technologies (i.e. social media tools) are rapidly evolving. E-gov has largely become a compliance exercise for the Chief Information Officer (CIO), but Open Gov expands the responsibility for openness outside the CIO organization.

Administration to ensure the Open Gov initiative avoids the compliance fate of E-gov, while creating a framework to make significant headway in Government transparency, participation, and collaboration efforts.

The E-government initiatives are divided into four portfolios and the lines of business: Government to Citizen, Government to Business, Government to Government, Internal Effectiveness and Efficiency, and Lines of Business.

The E-government efforts of the last decade and the new Open Government initiative share many similar goals and characteristics, the largest being that they both strive to make the state and central Governments more transparent in nature and in manner. However, they are not synonymous at all. They are different efforts that are overlapping phases in an incremental growth towards Edemocracy for everyone.

E-gov was a first and crucial step towards E-democracy. However, the Open Gov initiative is not the end-state solution. It is the most recent maturation of the Government’s growth towards Edemocracy, but we must understand that it is not the final step in this direction, however it is a very important milestone of course.

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