NGO's as custodians of ICT in government.

ABSTRACT

Whenever government has tried to make ICT (Information and Communication Technology) a thrust area of its programmes, it has been viewed with cynicism. Governments also tend to be unrealistic with their thrusts, often driven by political motives than genuine priorities. There is also a lack of ownership and inability to analyse the economy and efficacy of an e-governance initiative before put to implementation.

The contention, not very new, is that ICT initiatives for development need not necessarily rest with the government. Private organizations may be much more capable, often and have a stronger economic motivation to make things work. The government may be better off subscribing to the services offered by these private parties. When it comes to developmental work, the NGO's seem to be able to play the perfect role. Using a specific case study in India as a reference, this paper argues how private NGO's are better to provide electronic citizen services.

1. INTRODUCTION

A major shakeup that has taken place in the new millennium is the emergence of market driven economy across all political hues irrespective of their basic ideologies. Yergin and Stansislaw who have examined this phenomenon through their scholarly work have this to say, "Today, in response to the high costs of control and the disillusionment with its effectiveness, governments are privatizing. It is the greatest sale in the history of the world". (Daniel and Joseph, 1999). They further go on to show how this has been beneficial to the economies in the modern circumstances. One of the factors that have accelerated this phenomenon, according to them, is technology as technology is the most significant driver of change. The role of private parties in governance has become so ubiquitous that formal rules are being set up that govern these partnerships, as the guide of British Columbia indicates: "When to partner with the private sector

Local governments can consider partnerships with the private sector where any of the following circumstances exist:

* the service or project cannot be provided with the financial resources or expertise of the local government alone

* a private partner would increase the quality or level of service from that which the local government could provide on its own

* a private partner would allow the service or project to be implemented sooner than if only the local government were involved

* there is support from the users of the service for the involvement of a private partner

* there is an opportunity for competition among prospective private partners

* there are no regulatory or legislative prohibitions to involving a private partner in the provision of services or a project

* the output of the service can be measured and priced easily

* the cost of the service or project can be recovered through the implementation of user fees

* the project or service provides an opportunity for innovation

* there is a track record of partnerships between local government and the private sector

* there are opportunities to foster economic development" (1)

Addressing a gathering of senior government officials, as well as technical people, in New Delhi, Douglas Holmes (2) pointed out that the government was very inefficient and government services rarely worked because, "it operated on an industrial-age model, centralized mass-produced services, used stove pipe delivery channels, enjoyed inherent monopoly, resulting in inflexible bureaucrats, long queues, unanswered telephones, inconvenient opening hours, pushed from pillar to post." (Douglas Holmes, 2001)

The author's study also indicates that it is more effective and, perhaps, more economical if e-governance services are handled by non-government bodies than government agencies or departments.

2. THE BELLANDUR PROJECT

Belandur is a rural district in the Indian state of Karnataka with its own Panchayat. (3) It is managed by elected representatives, the chief referred to as the president. A government representative, appointed from the bureaucracy, designated as the secretary, is actually the finance manager of the Panchayat and is supported by a couple of petty officers. The president happens to be in his early thirties and was still in his 20's when this project was undertaken. He is an agriculturist by occupation as all other elected members of the governing council.

Compusol was set up 1995 as software services and integration solutions provider, in partnership with IBM and Micro Soft. It also provides what it calls an "e-governance solution suite". Accordingly, in order to show case it as an e-governance solution provider it approached the Belandur Panchayat and offered to host a solution for it, including the hardware that consisted of a single PC, contributed by the company.

The offer was accepted with enthusiasm and consequently all the transactions affecting administration (and citizen interface) was computerized. Fig. 1 below is the schematic of the computerized services of Belandur. (Pande and Jois, 2003)

The following services are offered by the system:

Citizen details: Demographic information.

Land records: Title Deeds, property Transfer, Mutation, and Division.

Tax Collection: Tax Assessment, Payment, Notices, renewal, Certificates.

Water Connection: Application, Monthly bills and Reports, Complaints.

There is no wait time for any resident of Bellandur to obtain land records, pay taxes, obtain receipts for payments and the like; and, the Panchayat officials have been strongly supportive of the initiative. They have invested on 3 more machines and a Local Area Network. The original machine acts as the server with the other three as clients. Data operators use the graphic interfaces to carry out transactions from any of the machines. Technically, the entire system consists of a strong database and web based interfaces.

In short, it is simple, inexpensive and it works.

A direct consequence of this is that Compusol was invited to implement similar systems at two other local bodies in the state; and both of them are working fine. In the latter cases, all investments, including professional charges of Compusol, was made by the Panchayat.

It is to be noted here that the entire initiative for the project, and its management itself, was that of a non- government organization; and, a government body has been able to use the system to provide its services with efficacy.

Having been accepted by more local bodies, the current plan is to host the system on a central server and provide connection to all the Panchayats. Another private organization that offers data management services with its own backbone of fiber optic network has agreed to be a partner in this endeavour.

3. N-LOGUE'S CHIRAAG:

The telecommunication and computer networks group of an Instititute of Technology in India, entered in to a partnership with a not-for-profit company, "Vishal Bharat Comnet" to set up a company called n- logue(Jagadish,2003). N-logue's mission has been to leverage technology to "connect" rural India. While its service is being used by many agencies, mostly government, one of its own initiatives has been unique and proven to be a very effective platform of e-governance.

Melur is a Taluk (4) in the South Indian district of Madurai and was chosen for this project, christened "Chiraag", because it was considered a very backward region.

n-Logue has a unique offering to small town and rural areas. It offers a Village Kiosk (which provides simultaneous telephone and 35/70 kbps Internet connections) consisting of:

   a corDECT wireless system
   a Pentium/Celeron PC with color monitor
   Speakers, Microphone, CD-ROM Drive, Printer and Sound Card
   4 hour power back-up for Personal Computer
   an application suite consisting of word-processing, browsing and
   email software all in local language as well as English.

In addition to the kiosks connected through the Internet, this project consists of providing services by roping in partners from the agriculture university, an eye hospital, schoolteachers and also by hosting data services.

3.1 Examples

The following is an illustration of a typical scene in Melur, thanks to Chiraag:

A villager goes to a kiosk, and for a prescribed nominal fee, gets to access a government form through the web, fill it up and submit it as required. Instead of having to make several trips to the tashildar's (5) office, he needs to go there only once at the prescribed time and collect his required certificate.

Encouraged by this the government plans to introduce more e-governance schemes through this medium.

An elderly villager goes to a kiosk, complaining about blurring vision. A web cam attached to the PC takes a picture of the eye and sends it to Arvind Eye Hospital, Madurai, via the Internet. The doctors discover that he suffers from cataract, fixes up an appointment and cures him through quick surgery. Another villager, an old lady who also suffers from some eye discomfort comes to the same kiosk and the doctors diagnose at as some mild infection, prescribes some medication and the lady is cured without having to move out of her village.

White patches were found on the under side of a crop of ladies' fingers. An infection had once destroyed the entire crop of ladies' fingers resulting in heavy loss. This time, the snap of the leaf was captured by the web cam and transmitted to the Agricultural University. The disease was diagnosed and treatment advised on time thus saving roughly forty thousand US dollars worth of crops.

n-Logue offers other services from its hub. For instance, school students can visit a kiosk and get to see the solved mathematics papers of the 10th standard. They also host English coaching classes' and so on. The possibilities are limitless.

In fact a major epidemic was prevented in one of the villages, when, on detecting a couple of chicken pox cases, a kiosk operator sent the information to the health department and an army of doctors arrived the next morning and prevented the infection from spreading.

The services are not free but the charges are such that while it is very nominal for the users, it creates profitable business opportunities for the kiosk owners and n-logue itself, which charges the kiosks on an hourly usage rate of its connectivity. This ensures sustainability of the services.

4. E-SEVA

Contrast the above examples with that of "e-seva" (6) (Government of Andhra Pradesh, 200). "E-seva", started as a utility payment service by the government of Andhra Pradesh. It is one of the larger states of India. It covers an area of 2,76,754 square kilometres and has a total population of 75.73 million people. The state is divided into 23 districts.

What it wanted to do was to develop a citizens' interface, primarily to be able to download and submit governmental related forms as well as payment of utilities, other bills and related services. Only payment of some utility bills was possible when it was first introduced and other services were introduced gradually. Many of the services, particularly those referred to as B2C or Business to Citizen services are not yet implemented. The system is still used largely for payment of utility bills and also to reserve government bus tickets.

The system was implemented in the year 2000 at the capital city of Hyderabad and the idea was to extend the services to 46 towns in 2002 and all the remaining towns by 2003. At this moment, however, it continues to serve only the capital city, though it was introduced in a couple of more districts very recently. (This service, though available in most districts now, consists of independent centres and not part of the integrated system)

The system operates on a public private partnership mode. The kiosks (centres) are owned and managed by private contractors while the government provides the infrastructure that covers the architecture beyond the centres. There is a fee to use the services. The kiosk owners who pay the government a certain percentage of collections as commission collect this fee. Apparently, the number of transactions is such that the business is quite lucrative since there have been no complaints from the kiosk owners. Whether such volumes will be sustainable in other towns is a moot question.

The thrust of this model has been in the leveraging of technology. Accordingly, it is built around a heavily integrated network, managed by powerful servers and comprehensive databases. Fig.2 below is the schematic of this architecture. The system is built around dedicated ISDN lines. "e-seva" has been chosen here as the representative of major government initiatives in providing citizen services because it is one of the most talked about examples of e-governance in India. Most of the government initiated projects are massive as this one (there are exceptions though).

[FIGURE 2 OMITTED]

While it does provide a useful service to the citizens, questions that can be asked about it are: did it warrant such a technologically heavy, capital-intensive, approach? It has been three years since its inception; yet, why has it not been able to cover the entire state as it was intended to? Could a private party have afforded such a luxury? The Andhra Pradesh government has also set up a portal, at a fairly high cost, to offer e-citizen services, that has the look and feel of the British portal, "UK.gov". Will e-seva become a parallel service if it does get extended to the entire state as intended? Do we note a degree of callousness w hen it comes to government expenditure?

The point that I am trying to make here is, whether such initiatives are more meaningful than those taken up by private parties or NGO's like the ones above. To what extent should the government leave it to private parties? It is interesting to find out which ones are more economical, which ones more effective and which ones more sustainable?

5. GYANDHOOT

"Gyandhoot" (7) is a very quiet revolution that took place in the Dhar district of Madhya Pradesh. This system consists of local area networks in each village, where the server hosts relevant information and downloadable forms; and, clients consist of PC based kiosks owned and operated entirely by private entrepreneurs.

Thanks to this system, a farmer gets to know market prices for his produce in and around his location, can place complaints against any governmental malfunctions, can seek maintenance help for his pump set, conduct personal business like trading his cattle across villages to obtain best price.

The system also provides e-mail facility, a village auction site, on-line matrimonial site and so on.

The technology is simple--using dial up lines in most of the sites, except eight that use wireless local loop (Cordect technology) connectivity. It was perhaps the first showcase for India in applying ICT for rural development. Consequently, it won the Stockholm award in the year 2000.

6. NGO'S AS CUSTODIANS

Researchers and general interested parties have been assessing e-government or e-governance, by the number of services that are offered over the Internet. The Bertelsman Foundation along with Booz/Allen/Hamilton undertook a comprehensive investigation in year 2000 and came with a balanced score card to put a value on e-government services offered by many governments across the globe. The measure, called the "Begix", for balanced e-government index, considered how well an e-citizen service was balanced in the form of benefits, efficiency, transparency, participation and change management. (Bertelsmann, 2001). While this may serve the needs of comparison most often, it does not answer questions like, how much and what kind of investment is justified in offering e-services to the citizens. Why is it better to encourage more of private parties here than the government itself engaging in building up e-services? Is it good or bad to build e-citizen services in the big bang mode, like 'e-seva' or to do it in an evolutionary style like that of Compusol's Bellandur project?

No empirical measure may be available to argue this but fundamental management principles seem to have an answer here:

According to Systems Theory, a system should possess the following characteristics, in order to be effective: (Johnson, Kast, Rosenzweig, 1973)

* Simplicity

* Flexibility

* Reliability

* Economical and

* Acceptability

This rule straightaway questions the wisdom of implementing large-scale systems with a big bang approach.

If one were to compare Compusors Bellandur project with that of e-seva, apart from its simplicity and economy, we see the former possessing the necessary flexibility to replicate it at other places and, now ready to evolve into an integrated large-scale system. Comparing it with n-logue, clearly shows the relatively higher acceptability of n-logue because the system addressed needs that were difficult to meet otherwise. We don't have any measure to check whether tying up e-seva system with expensive ISDN line was necessary, while one can note that the at the very heart of n-logue is exploitation of appropriate technology.

With the kind of pressures a government set up is under, like the need to show case achievements, budgeted allocations of large amounts that should be shown as investments towards better governance, political interests in choosing applications, difficulty in selecting vendors, and so on, it is very difficult for it to think small and quiet.

The "e-citizen Center" of Singapore is regarded as the model portal, offering integrated online services. It was built gradually from a pilot that began in 1997 and grew into what it is today by 1999. According to Douglas Holmes, though, by choice, Australian state of Victoria's system--considered to the next most advanced portal--was launched with a big bang, the government officials there feel that a phased approach, like that of Singapore, on a smaller scale would have been more appropriate. (Douglas Holmes, 2001)

After studying the history of several IT-driven strategies, Mckenny concludes that three roles--a strong CEO convinced of the utility of IT, an empowered entrepreneurial manager of IT (the Maestro) who understands the business, and an innovative group of IT technologists--are essential to the effective deployment of IT (McKenny, 1995). This is somewhat difficult to organize in a rigid bureaucratic set up where seniority, feudalistic hierarchy and impersonal approach matter. The author's own experience, corroborated by others' also indicates that the factors needed for successful deployment of ICT in a government requires, political will, bureaucratic commitment and project leadership. With frequent transfers of officers, with an eye on elections and with a generalist approach to administration, this happens more by accident than by design.

The gyandhoot project became a great success in a place not particularly known for it being IT savvy. Yet it was the ownership of a bureaucrat, backed up by political leadership and the social ethos of the citizens that made it such a success.

Actually, there was a period of stagnation after the much-proclaimed success when the officer who initiated this programme got transferred and people began to point at it as a typical government project that lacked sustainability. It has limped back into prominence, because of the interest taken by the new current bureaucrat.

This particular example, clearly demonstrates the success due to its simplicity, acceptability and leadership. It also demonstrates government's incapability to be consistent. It also shows that acceptability and usefulness corresponded with the fact that there is a major participation of private small entrepreneurs in this scheme.

7. E-GOVERNANCE AND THE SERVICE MODEL:

A strong argument in favour of NGO's comes from the quality of service model.

This argument is based on the premise that e-governance--online citizen services--is basically a service issue and not that of administration. The SERQVUAL or the Gap Model (a model that addresses quality of service) is therefore applicable here (Zeithaml, Parusuraman, Berry, 1990)

According to the Gap Model, there are at least five gaps between the initiation and the final delivery of a service. The quality of service depends on how well these gaps are covered by appropriate management actions. Fig.3 below is a diagrammatic representation of this model and is almost self-explanatory.

[FIGURE 3 OMITTED]

To begin with, there is a gap between the management's perception and the actual expectation of customers (gap). Translating even this into a quality policy has severe limitations (gap 2). Service is something that is always delivered though an interface that is quite removed from the deciders. Example, it is the bank manager who may decide to sanction you a loan, but it needs to be processed through clerks lower down the line who might not see the same value in this service that the manager does. In other words, the decision maker--the one who holds a major stake in the delivery of the service--has little control on how exactly the service is delivered.

In the context of e-governance, this is a very significant gap and will remain wide as long as there is a long chain of many links between the decision to deliver and the ultimate delivery.

The entire issue of expectations and satisfaction is, again, governed by various kinds of communications that take place between the service provider and the service receiver.

The impact of e-services is in fact, to eliminate Gap 4. It does this by supposedly getting rid of the intermediary layers. But does this really happen when the government itself is behind deployment and management of e-enabled services?

The most notable set back to this is the inescapable fact that governments are department-centric in their design rather than service-centric. Departmental objectives take precedence over total service objectives; and service objectives, most often cuts across departments.

In one of the strongly IT driven states of India, every department has its own web site that not only broadcast the department's presence but also offer some kind of an e-service. By last count, there were nearly, 40 such sites. There is no central coordination and, consequently, it is a situation of the left hand not knowing what the right hand does. Because of this, information that pertains to another department is often misrepresented in the portal of the concerned department. Integrating across departments, would involve major decisions about ownership of the service process, creating imbalances in the hierarchy, breaking political patronage, and so on. Most importantly, the bureaucrat who is currently heading this department is often appreciated for innovative achievements of his department; so, he /she ends up becoming very possessive of the department and its operations and would be very reluctant to submerge it into holism of a service oriented process.

This is where the NGO has a great advantage over the government.

In the first place, by their very philosophy, NGO's are organized to work at the grass roots level of any community. This makes a big difference where Gap 1 is concerned. This gap is very minimal and, more often than not, the members of the NGO become part of the very community, thus getting a direct feel for the customer expectations. This also contributes to acceptability, a required attribute of an effective system.

As the example of Compusol shows, NGO's operate in small cohesive groups with few links in the chain of decision-making and communication; and, this leads to the closing of Gap 3 of the Gap model. Thus whatever is intended to be delivered gets delivered with the efficiency and efficacy that was planned for (as against that of the e-seva situation).

An important feature of the gap model is that it exhorts good management to monitor the quality of service based on the attributes of these gaps. This is much more feasible in a realistic manner with small groups, interacting directly with the beneficiaries of a service, than with a large, impersonal government. The only feedback that governmental departments use is the number of people who use the service. For all one knows, they may be using it for want of any option; and this is a poor measure. Also, if at all, any action based on feed back is likely to have a very large lag with the way government machinery works.

It is also observed that private parties, ngo's in particular, have a personal stake in the success of their projects. The government is too impersonal. Which is why projects of ngo's are designed carefully, with low risk and high acceptability as major concerns. Ngo's represent the community, in general and hence for true development, they would be the best custodians of e-governance.

CONCLUSION

Simple reasoning based on principles of Systems and the SERQVUAL, or Gap Model, has been used to argue that citizen services through Information & Communication Technology, other wise known as e-governance are more effective when handled by private entrepreneurs, especially the NGO kind. As Daniel and Joseph point out, the commanding heights are moving towards market forces, which, in turn imply, a shift from government control to private hands (Daniel and Joseph, 1999). This would mean the gradual withdrawal of the government from running any businesses. E-governance, being essentially a service business, it is logical that it should move out of it. From a provider, it should become a user of the services.

Finally, the following statement, taken from the report of the workshop on building e-governance capacity in Africa, sums it all (8).

"The proactive initiatives of the people in self-help projects have transformed the concepts of government and governing, as well as peoples' attitudes towards governments and those in government: politicians and bureaucrats. Governments have ceased to be viewed as untouchable institutions of command and control, to be feared and uncritically obeyed. And the political leaders and senior bureaucrats viewed with suspicions and cynicism. The shift to self-help--what people can do for themselves without the help of governments--revealed the potential powers of the people and the weaknesses and inefficiencies of the government. The inability of the governments to deliver the essential services, coupled with the exposure of the inefficiencies and corruption of politicians and civil servants, gradually shifted the focus from governing to governance. Governance is a process by which people utilize collective power for the management of public or community affairs. It entails relationships and cooperation based on principles and values between people and groups in pursuit of common objectives. Governance is people centred. Appropriately structured governance is empowering." (Mohiddin, 2002)

REFERENCES:

Ahmed Mohiddin, Prof., "General Report: First Regioanl Workshop on Building e-governance Capacity in African Countries", October 2002

Department of Information technology and Communications, "e-seva", Government of Andhra Pradesh, Brochure.

Holmes Douglas, "EGov--eBusiness Strategies for Government", Nicholas Brearle, London,. 2001. http://compusolsoftware.com/iceg-2003-asprj-egovbellandur.pdf

Jagadish S., "The ice has broken with ICT", Economy & Business, Deccan Herlad May 12, 2003.

Johnson Richard A., Fremont E. Kast, James E. Rosenzweig "The Theory and Management of Systems (3rd ed.) Tokyo: McGraw-Hill Kogakusha, Ltd., 1973

Mckenny James L., "Waves of change", Harvard Business School Press 1995.

Stiftung Bertelsmann, "E-Governement--Connecting Efficient Administration and Responsive Democracy", a study by Bertelsmann Foundation with Booz | Alllen | Hamilton, 2001.

Yergin Daniel, Stanislaw Joseph, "The commanding Heights", Simon & Schuster 1999.

Zeithaml V. A., Parasuraman, Leonard Berry, "Delivering Quality Service", Free Press, 1990.

END NOTES

(1.) Minstry of Muncipal Affairs, British Columbia, "Private Public Partnership--A Guide to Local Governmnets", May 1999.

(2.) Global authority on e-government & author of the book" eGov: e-Business Strategies for Government." published by Nicholas Brealy

(3) Local Government body.

(4) A block of villages.

(5) Registrar

(6) Seva means help or assistance

(7) Gyandhoot means messenger of knowledge

(8) General report of the "First Regional Workshop on Building e-governance Capacity in African Countries", Oct 2002

Author Profile

Professor S. Jagadish is currently professor and chairperson of the Quantitative Methods and Information Systems area, Indian Insititute of Management Bangalore, India