Keywords: e-government, corruption, case study, bhoomi, CARD, Sukaryan, CVC, E-seva. Abstract:
This paper studies the potential and capability of e-Government to rule out corruption in governing system of India. It introduces e-government and corruption problems in the country and the discuss how e-government can be directed towards combating with corruption. Several examples have been discussed regarding use of e-government in the past to diminish corruption and their success rate. This paper also discuss about the challenges that is faced during ICT implementation in the system.
The authors conclude that e-governance can be a lethal weapon to fight corruption in developing countries and can help achieve societal harmony.
1. Introduction:
A. E-Government :
Technology has played a significant role in improving lifestyle of people by globalization of trade, improvement in health facilities, communication and many other advancements to make life easy. Thus, modern communication technologies or information and communications technologies (ICT) have been credited with not only improving efficiency or productivity in the business world but also with improving the standard of living for global citizens. Recently many countries aroud the world have utilized ICT as an attempt to efficiently provide information and governmental services to the population. The use of ICT to provid information to citizen and to connect citizens to gvernment has been called e-governance or e-Govenrment.
Wikipedia definition for e-Government is : E-Government (short for electronic government , also known as e-gov, Internet government, digital government, online government, or connected government) is digital interactions between a government and citizens (G2C), government and businesses/Commerce (G2B),
government and employees (G2E), and also between government and governments /agencies (G2G). As described by Mr. Suresh Chandra in his lecture, vision of e-Government is “ To provide citizens services in most efficient and convinient manner by improving the way government worls by Reengineerig the technologically empowering Government Processes.
B. Corruption :
Corruption in sense of politics and government is the use of power by government officials for illegitimate private gain. Main and popular form of corruptions are :
i. Bribery: A bribe is a payment given personally to a government official in exchange of his use of official powers. This act is called bribery.
ii. Trading in Influence : Trading in influence, or influence peddling, refers a person selling his/her influence over the decision making process to benefit a third party (person or institution). iii. Patronage: Patronage refers to favoring supporters, for example with government employment. iv. Nepotism: Favoring relatives (nepotism) or personal friends (cronyism) of an official is a form of illegitimate private gain.
v. Electoral Fraud: Electoral fraud is illegal interference with the process of an election.
vi. Embezzlement: Electoral fraud is illegal interference with the process of an election. Similarly many more forms of corruption exists throughot the world. The activities that constitute illegal corruption differ depending on the country or jurisdiction. For instance, some political funding practices that are legal in one place may be illegal in another. Worldwide, bribery alone is estimated to involve over 1 trillion US dollars annually.[1] A state of unrestrained political corruption is known as a kleptocracy, literally meaning “rule by thieves”. The work of Rose-Ackerman (1978, 1994) and Klitgaard (1995a, 1995b) is especially pertinent here. Professor Klitgaard’s and Rose Ackerman’s corruption framework is succinctly summarized in the following equation. Corruption = Monopoly + Discretion – Transparency (in governance) There is an inherent relationship between effective e-governance and reduced corruption in the society. In this study
the relationship between these two i.e. Successful e-governance and reduced corruption is examined by critically analyzing some of the successful e-governance initiatives in India.
2. Extent of Corruption in India .
Though India has proved to be a stable democracy, it cannot be said that it had good governance. The most important reason for this is the corruption, which has become endemic to all walks of life in the governance. The extent of corruption in India can be gauged from what late Mr. Rajiv Gandhi, Ex Prime Minister of India has said about anti poverty programs. He observed that out of each rupee spent on such programs only 15 paisa reached the beneficiary with 40 paise being spent on overheads and 45 paisa lost due to corruption. Corruption is the most important factor that contributes to the poverty and under development of countries. In today’s scenario, if a person wants a government job he has to pay lakhs of rupees to the higher officials irrespective of satisfying all the eligibility criteria. In every office one has either to give money to the employee concerned or arrange for some sources to get work done. There is adulteration and duplicate weighing of products in food and civil supplies department by unscrupulous workers who cheat the consumers by playing with the health and lives of the people. In the assessment of property tax the officers charge money even if the house is built properly according to the Government rules and regulations.
A 2005 study conducted by Transparency International in India found that more than 62% of Indians had firsthand experience of paying bribes or influence peddling to get jobs done in public offices successfully. In its 2008 study, Transparency International reports about 40% of Indians had firsthand experience of paying bribes or using a contact to get a job done in public office.
In 2012 India has ranked 94th out of 176 countries in Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index, tied with Benin, Colombia, Djibouti, Greece, Moldova, Mongolia, and Senegal. Most of the largest sources of corruption in India are entitlement programmes and social spending schemes enacted by the Indian government. Examples include Mahatma
Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act and National Rural Health Mission.
The causes of corruption in India include excessive regulations, complicated taxes and licensing systems, numerous government departments each with opaque bureaucracy and discretionary powers, monopoly by government controlled institutions on certain goods and services delivery, and the lack of transparent laws and processes.
3. Effect of Corruption:
Supreme Court of India compared corruption to cancer, plague, HIV Virus leading to AIDS, and also royal thievery. On the effects of corruption the honorable court said “The socio–political system exposed to such a dreaded communicable disease is likely to crumble on its own weight. Corruption is opposed to democracy and social order, being not only anti people, but also aimed and targeted at them. It affects the economy and destroys the cultural heritage. Unless nipped in the bud at the earliest, it is likely to cause turbulence to shaking of socio economic political system in an otherwise healthy, wealthy, effective and vibrant society” (AIR, SC 870). According to Peter Eigen chairman Transparency International,”corruption is a major cause of poverty as well as a barrier to over coming it” ( Transparency International’s (TI) Corruption Perception Index 2005). Corruption makes public investment more expensive, reduces government income and its capacity for investment, retards country’s growth potential and growth of GDP, results in poor public infrastructure, shifts investments from priority sectors (socially important areas) like education or health and social welfare projects aimed at under privileged sections of society to large investments with capacity to provide illegal earnings like defense purchases. Corruption restricts access
of citizens to the public services they are supposed to get freely, generates black money which in turn generates corruption and increases rich poor divide. The costs of corruption to the nation also include personal losses, loss of time, development cost, political cost, and decline in work ethics and degradation of values and cost to the economy (National Integrity
Report, 2001). Politically, corruption increases injustice and disregard for rule of law (Sondhi, 2000). Corruption also affects the foreign direct investment and also foreign aid. Amongst the number of factors that contribute to poverty, corruption is the most significant contributing factor that leads to the continuat ion of poverty and underdevelopment of a nation, society, government and economy. Every person suffers because of the corruption. But the worst sufferers are poor and developing countries and the poorest people in these countries. All these factors collectively lead to poor development of the country, social tensions, and disharmony in the society.
4. Corruption and e-Governance.
Secrecy in government, restrictions on access to information by citizens and the media, ill defined/complex and excessive rules, procedures and regulations can all lead to a low chance of discovery. A lack of transparency in the functioning of the government agencies can make it easy for the perpetrators to cover their tracks and unearthing corruption becomes very difficult. The weak character of institutions which are supposed to investigate charges of corruption and prosecute the guilty as well as an inefficient or corrupt judiciary further exacerbate the problem of corruption and facilitate immunity against prosecution.
Lately there has been much focus on the use of e-government as one of the key tools to fight against corruption. by opening up government processes and enabling greater public access to information. The need to understand the challenges to reap the benefits The Swedish Program for ICT in Developing Regions (SPIDER) is a national network supporting partners in developing countries in the areas of health, governance and entrepreneurship. While ICT is not a magic bullet when it comes to ensuring greater transparency and less corruption, SPIDER is convinced that it has a significant role to play as a tool in a number of important areas: • ICT can improve transparency in the public sector by increasing the coordination, dissemination and administrative capacity of the public sectors’, as well as improve service delivery by employing user-friendly administrative systems. • ICT facilitates the collection of digital footprints and complete audit trail
which increase the opportunity to hold individuals accountable and ultimately increase the possibility to detect corrupt practices. • ICT can facilitate the work of civil society organization working towards greater transparency and against corruption by supporting a mix of methods of campaigning on transparency and educating citizens on what corruption is about and their civil rights.
• ICT can facilitate information sharing and social mobilization and ultimately provide digital platforms where citizens can report incidents anonymously.
egovernment systems may lead to greater transparency resulting in reduced administrative corruption.iv If the right
procedures are in place, egovernment can make financial or administrative transactions traceable and open to challenge by citizenry. Those responsible for particular decisions or activities can be readily identified. By providing enhanced accounting, monitoring and auditing systems, egovernment applications can ensure that public finances are fully open to senior managerial and external scrutiny. Several case studies of egovernment applications from developing countries report some impact on reducing corruptionv. Many governments have chosen to go on-line in departments such as customs, income tax, sales tax, and property tax which have a large interface with citizens or businesses and are perceived to be more corrupt. Procurement by government is also seen to be an area where corruption thrives. The very process of building an on-line delivery system requires that rules and procedures are standardized across regions and made explicit (amenable for computer coding). This reduces the discretion and opportunity for arbitrary action available to the civil servants in dealing with every applicant on a case by case basis. Egovernment can be used as an entry point for simplification of rules and reengineering processes.
E-government can lead to centralizes data which can be used for improving audit and analysis. Unbiased sampling procedures can be applied for audit purposes. Integration of data across applications can provide improved intelligence. Egovernment can make decisions traceable. As the possibility
of exposure of wrong doing gets enhanced, the fear of consequent embarrassment can be a deterrent to corrupt practices. By providing an alternate to a departmental channel for service delivery, egovernment introduces competition which improves service levels and lowers corruption. Web publishing of Government information builds accountability by providing documentation to citizens to substantiate their complaints against corrupt practices. However, benefits from egovernment such as reduction of corruption opportunities are often incidental and not part of the design objectives. To extract maximal benefit from such applications, some features that can lead to greater transparency and accountability need to be consciously built in the design objectivesvi. There is an implicit hierarchy and sequentiality of objectives on which egovernment applications must focus to reduce corruption. Increasing access to information, presenting the information in a manner that leads to transparency of rules and their application in specific decisions, increasing accountability by building the ability to trace decisions/actions to individual civil servants represent the successive stages in the hierarchy. All these objectives in tandem can curb corruption significantly, and ignoring some of them can defeat the whole purpose. For example, numerous web sites created by Government departments are ineffective because they tend to focus on the single objective of providing electronic access to information. Not enough effort is made to ensure that transparency and accountability are increased.
Transparency International India study of 2005 concludes that corruption facing the common man can be tackled by simple initiatives including introduction of technologies (TII – Center for Media Studies, 2005). Yisheng (2002) says that it is the honesty and integrity that e-governance provides. He further mentions that e-governance helps prevent corruption and uphold integrity in public administration, and overall helps to promote democracy and rule of law.
Bhatnagar’s (2003, 2005) studies have highlighted the effect of e-governance on corruption. His studies confirm reduction of corruption in Indian States. According to him e-governance introduced transparency in data, decisions/actions, rules, procedures and performance of government agencies,
simplified the processes and rules, taken away discretion by automating the processes, made decisions traceable, built accountability, provided greater access to information through web publishing, provided documentation to citizens for follow up. It has also introduced competition amongst delivery channels, standardized documentation of comments/ objections leading to effective supervision, centralized and integrated data for better audit and analysis and enabled unbiased sampling for audit purposes. With effective e-governance, citizens no longer have to pay bribes to the officials because the chances for exposure of manipulation for exchange of bribe and corruption are high. This results in greater civic engagement and creates disincentives for corruption leading to good governance. Mahmood(2004) in his study has shown that e-governance has the potential of fighting corruption but has explored this by using three elements identified by Heeks(1999) which are (1)a sense of crisis, (2) a renewed ideology, and (3) the political will or power to carry out reform and incorporated his own variable of regime type. Mahmood’s proposition on the role of e-governance and its accessibility are satisfied in the case of Andhra Pradesh. The assessments are that the time and money needed tocomplete government transactions are down substantially and the scope for corruption has waned.
A study of 21 successful e-governance projects in India, conducted by Skoch consultancy services (www.skoch.org,
2005) titled ‘Skoch e-governance report card 2004’ has brought out very interesting results on e-governance effect on corruption. According to this survey there is a considerable decline in corruption as a result of e-governance project. According to this report 81% respondents reported reduction in corruption.
6. E-Government Anti Corruption impact: A conceptual model
Figure 2 : A conceptual model of e-government anti corruption impact
7. Case Studies of e-governance projects leading to reduced corruption. Bhoomi
Bhoomi, a Government to Citizen e-governance project implemented by
Karnataka, is a shining example of how ICTs can help reduce discretion of authorities, improve accountability and transparency and reduce corruption. Farmers of Karnataka needed RTCs (Record of Rights, Tenancy and Corps) certificates for many purposes like getting a bank loan, verification and government pensions. Before this e-governance project became operational, in the manual era 9000 Village Accountants (VAs) managed all the land records. Land records held by VAs were not subject to scrutiny and there was no accountability or transparency in the process of providing the service. VAs enjoyed many discretionary powers and consequently farmers faced many problems. Mostly these village accountants were inaccessible and the service was delayed or denied unless bribes are paid. Getting RTC certificate used to take 3 to 30 days depending on the bribes paid.
As a part of Bhoomi, Karnataka government has setup computerized land record kiosks, the Bhoomi centers, in Taluk (sub district) offices (expanded later to180 kiosks) to provide these services to the farmers. Bhoomi project involved automation of 20 million land records pertaining to 6.7 million farmers. Now a farmer can obtain a copy of RTC on line by paying Rs 15/- only from any of the 180 computerized kiosks in less than 10 minutes time.
Delays and denials have been eliminated as the transactions were taking place in a public place and by following simple ‘First In First Out’ procedure and by spreading awareness that no bribes need to be paid. The Bhoomi project saved the farmers Rs 806 millions in bribes and Rs 66 millions in wages annually. Computer-aided Administration of Registration Department (CARD) Computer-aided Administration of Registration Department (CARD) is one of the major success stories of e-governance in Andhra Pradesh, one of the most IT savvy states in India. The conventionalprocedure of registration was cumbersome which included 13 steps like ascertaining the value of the property, calculating the stamp duty, getting the legal document written, verification by sub registrar, copying the document, posting entries into register etc. Even a person selling a small piece of land had to go through multiple agencies like stamp vendors,
document writers, registration agents (middlemen) and registration offices.
Each step and each person in the process caused and contributed to corruption.
In Andhra Pradesh there are 387 registration (sub registrar) offices, and they are heavily loaded with work, with total number of registrations running into 120,000,000 documents a year. The entire processes were clouded in secrecy. The procedures were very complex, rigid, and not comprehensible by ordinary citizens. There was total lack of transparency in evaluation of stamp duty. Not withstanding the guidelines available for the calculation of duty, which is a major source of revenue to state government, the procedure provided a lot of discretion to the officials. This discretion gave rise to lot of corruption.
The aim of CARD project was to purge the corruption ridden registration system by demystifying the process, bringing in transparent valuation system which is easily understandable by citizens, speeding up the processes, improve efficiency and citizen interface with electronic document writing and document management system. At present CARD has been made operational at 387 sub registrars offices across the length and breadth of Andhra Pradesh. The service levels for various services have been established and prominently displayed in the offices. After the implementation of CARD, the time for registration has come down from 1 to 7 days to 1 hour, issuing encumbrance certificates from 1 to 5 days to 10 minutes, issue of certified copies from 1 to 3 days to 10 minutes. Document writing, which used to take a number of days, could now be completed in 30 minutes and issue of valuation certificates, which used to take 1 complete day, now take less than 10 minutes. With in six months of operation of CARD 80 % of all transaction were carried out electronically and CARD had brought in transparency in valuation of properties and citizens themselves can calculate the duty. The most significant achievement of CARD is elimination of middlemen and organized corruption. The corruption is down by 90%. In absence of bribes, the savings to the citizens is more than Rs 1 billion and also increased the revenue to the exchequer. (Satyanarayana, 2001) Computerized Inter-State check posts in Gujarat
Gujarat has an extensive road network. There is a heavy movement of
interstate goods carrier vehicles on Gujarat highways and it is estimated that more than 25000 interstate transport vehicles ply on these roads every day. More than 70 % these vehicles were found to be overloaded posing grave danger to other users of the road. Gujarat government also established 10 Interstate check posts. Gujarat Motor Vehicles Department (GMVD) controls road transport activity in the state. These check posts are managed by Road Transport Offices of GMVD. The primary duties of the officials include checking whether these interstate vehicles have paid the required road taxes or not, have all the documents like insurance and permissions and alsoto ensure that they are not overloaded. These check posts were known to be highly corrupt. The extent of corruption can be gauzed from the fact that these officials were known to purchase the jobs at lucrative check posts by paying bribes to the tune of Rs 10 million and during 1999 out of 137 officers of the department, 27 of them were under suspension for corrupt practices. It also indicates the presence of political corruption.
Under the old system, suspect vehicles had to wait in the queue at the check post (CP), if stopped by the staff. The average waiting time used to be 46.6 minutes. Only a few vehicles could be checked in a day resulting in loss of revenue to the state. Truck drivers are normally held up for several hours and the penalty charges are arbitrary. Truck drivers are normally forced to pay speed money (bribes) to the officials. To speed up the service and to ensure hundred percent inspections, the Government of Gujarat has implemented the e-governance project called Computerized Interstate Check Posts.
In the computerized system, all the vehicles (100%) were checked at the check post, in the order they arrived. In case of any default in payments, the system sends and displays a message to that effect on the CP computer. Further the permissible weight and actual weight are also displayed. The software computes the penalty automatically and the system generated receipt is issued to the driver for making the necessary payment. To ensure transparency, all these details are also displayed on an electronic board displayed out side for the benefit of the driver. The driver makes the payment using a prepaid card. The vehicle driver is also required to make
good any other aspect observed by the computer like repairing headlights before exiting check post, as only then the automated barrier would open. The total time involved in the entire process is 2 minutes in spite of the 100% check. The net result is, it was no longer possible for the officials at the check posts to be arbitrary or collude with erring truck drivers for bribes and personal gains. This has been reflected in the annual income generated by the check posts. The income quadrupled from Rs 627.75 million to Rs 2.6 billion. This project has succeeded in eliminating the corruption. However later this project has become defunct due to reasons not related to the functioning or efficiency of the system. This case amply demonstrateshow crucial the support from the project champion and the government is, to sustain the successful e- governance projects that root out corruption.
Saukaryam
Saukaryam in Telugu language means ‘comfort or facility’. Like in all other municipal organizations in India, Visakapatnam Municipal Corporation in the state of Andhra Pradesh was known for inefficiency, corruption, complicated procedures and poor services to the citizens. Even simple services like getting a birth certificate or property tax assessment used to take a number of days and citizens had to pay bribes. Traditionally bids and tenders for public works and procurement by municipality were fountainheads of corruption. Saukaryam was the pilot e-governance project aimed at taking municipal services to the door steps of citizens, in a transparent manner. It is also the first project in the country developed on the philosophy of Public Private Participation in the e-government projects. This project covers whole gamut of provision of municipal services online. Citizens can access the Saukaryam through web site or by going to civic center kiosks or by conducting transactions through a network of banks. With Saukaryam, citizens can check their tax dues and pay online, apply for building plan approvals and track their status/get approvals online, get birth/death certificates instantly, and register their complaints. They can also get redress to problems regarding taxation, water supply, works management and information about town planning, leases of municipal property on line. Hospitals can forward birth/death information online. With Saukaryam
project, Municipal Corporation started publishing all information relating to biddings and auctions, tenders, and procurement decisions on their web site. Interested parties can apply on line and also can follow the progress on line, which resulted in transparency.
The success of the project can be gauged from the increase in municipal tax collections, the municipal corporation which was running in debit of Rs 350 million has made a surplus of Rs 1000 millions after the project was implemented. The names of tax defaulters were published on the web site. In two years 37000 birth certificates were issued on line and 17000 of 18000 complaints received were answered. After five years in operation, Visakapatnam city and Saukaryam have proved to be inseparable. (Jaju , 2003, www.saukaryam.org, 2005, www.stockholmchallenge.se 2001)
Customs On line
This is an e-government initiative of central government (Government of India). Customs department undoubtedly used to be the most corrupt department and was known for delay in providing service to the public. Customs department was perceived as one of the most corrupt departments even by Indian standards. Much of this malice has its origin in lack of transparency and discretionary powers. The government of India has introduced online functioning in all 23 customs offices all over the country. The process has been reengineered and the number of stages of processing in imports has been reduced from 18 to 6 and in exports from 15 to 5. Use of digital signatures and payment gateways has been brought in. E-filing of customs documents for imports and exports was in place and the remote filing through an electronic gateway has become functional from January 2004. Now 95% of all documents are being filed on line and 100000 people visit the customs web site daily to file the papers or to check the status. With effect from 01 April 2005, customs department has started accepting electronic payment of duties. Users can now make payments through designated banks. Various studies conducted into the effectiveness of the new system have termed it as simple, transparent, fast and on the whole a great success. The reduction in corruption is estimated in billions of rupees. In absence of detailed data it is difficult to quote exact figures.
However there is ample evidence that online functioning has brought down corruption substantially, increased transparency in functioning and enhanced the citizen services. (www.nasscom.org ,2005)
Vijayawada Online Information Center (VOICE)
The Vijayawada Online Information Center (VOICE) was an e-governance initiative launched in 1999 by the Vijayawada Municipal Corporation. Municipal corporations are well known for their corrupt practices and Vijayawada Municipal Corporation is no exception. Citizens are dependent on Municipal Corporation for services and had to make a number of visits to the municipal office and pay bribes. Speed of service entirely depended on the amount of bribe paid.
To provide the services at places nearer and convenient to the citizen, five kiosks located close to the citizens were opened in the town connecting them to the central server, eliminating the need for personal visits by the citizens. Some information was also provided on voice response system. After implementation, VOICE provided efficient services to the citizens in a transparent and speedy manner. Citizens could get most of the services or information including building approvals, payment of taxes, public health, and engineering, municipal budget allocations, tax payment, grievance registration and monitoring, birth/death certificates on line. Rent calculations for advertising space are made automatic removing discretions and bringing in transparency. In just one year the system issued 15000 birth/death certificates, 2100 building approvals, 224000 demand notices for taxes. 7700 grievances were registered and 97% of
them were resolved. This project has reduced corruption, made access of services convenient and also improved the finances of local governments (Kumar and Bhatnagar, 2001, www1.worldbank.org; CMC Limited 2004; Government of Andhra Pradesh, 2005).
Karnataka Valuation and E-registration (KAVERI)
Kaveri is a Karnataka government e-governance project aimed at speeding up the registration process and delivery of documents to citizens through fully automated registration process. Like in Andhra Pradesh (CARD project) the maladies afflicting the registration system are similar i.e. lack of transparency, complicated procedure, discretionary powers, middlemen and insensitive officials. Corruption flourished in such a situation. In addition to paying bribes, the process was a burden on the people’s time also. Earlier attempts of government in improving the system with automation did not producethe desired results.
Various studies into the functioning of the old system clearly indicated that unless all the processes are reengineered, the project might not be able to achieve the sated aim. Also large amounts of funds were needed for implementing such a large project of automating 201 registration offices. The government of Karnataka had overcome this problem by opting for public private participation model, where by private parties operated the front end operations (interactions with citizens) through kiosks and the registration department handled and controlled the back end process. The role of private partners was to provide the hardware, office furniture and manpower needed for front end operations like data entry, scanning and also archiving data on regular intervals. They are expected to recover their costs from the service fee charged to the users.
The registration department was responsible for providing software, complete registration process and issue various certificates. The project became fully operational during 2003 and turned out to be a successful project. A survey conducted by Skoch International in Bangalore found that the project was user friendly, simple, and fast in delivery of service. One of the major finding of the study is that the corruption has come down by 80% and respondents to the survey rated reduction in corruption at 8 on a scale from 0 to 10. (Murthy, Mujibshiekh and Patil, 2002).
Chief Vigilance Commission (CVC) Web site
By any standards web site by CVC is the most innovative experiment of e-governance undertaken by a government department entrusted with the responsibility to control corruption in the government. Following direction from Supreme Court of India, CVC was made a statutory body in 1988. CVC under the leadership of the then Commissioner Mr. N Vittal, with the idea to propagate zero tolerance of corruption, launched a web site to share the information on corruption with the general public. In many aspects this web site is unique.
The features of web the site include information on its role, responsibilities and strategies to fight corruption. The web site guides the citizens on the procedure to be followed to lodge complaints without fear of reprisal. Other information on the web site include the list of nominated officers from different departments who are entrusted with the responsibility of taking the complaints and the corruption statistics are published. The most important aspect the web is publishing the list of corrupt Indian Administrative Service and revenue service officers, who have been charged under corruption or punished. This easy procedure of making complaints against corrupt government servants, and likelihood of publication of names on the net had acted as quite a deterrent.
This initiative has generated a lot of resentment among senior officials but was well received by the public. A public survey into the effectiveness of this experiment by Economic Times revealed that 83% respondents believed that naming charged officers would have a deterrent effect and 90% of respondents of Hindustan Times study welcomed this action. This has brought out an important fact that some officials tainted with corruption were found to be occupying sensitive posts which they should not have been occupying. Another benefit of this web site is the mass media i.e. the print and electronic media have been able to transmit important information further to the public. This has offset the problem of low computer and Internet density in India. This undoubtedly is a bold attempt to make information available to general public and also deter unscrupulous officials from indulging in corruption. (Bhatnagar, 2003; Vittal, 2004; www.cvc.nic.in )
E-seva
E-seva literally means electronic service. The aim of eSeva is to provide citizen services under one roof. eSeva project implemented by Andhra Pradesh government on 25 Aug 2001 was an endeavor to provide a number of citizen services like payment of utility bills, taxes, registration of births and deaths, issue of birth/death certificates, registration of applications for pass ports, filing sales tax returns, and also Business to consumer (B2C) services like payment of bills to some Telecom companies under one roof. In manual era, provision of these services involved running around a large number of offices, petty bureaucratic corruption and generally resulted in a lot wasted time for citizens. As on today, e-Seva provides ‘One-stop-shop’ for over 66 Government to Consumer (G2C) and B2C services to the citizens. Many more services like railway reservations are in the pipeline. 46 eSeva centers, with 400 service counters are spread over the twin Cities of Hyderabad and
Secunderabad, and also Ranga Reddy district and any citizen in the twin cities can avail of the services at any of the e-Seva service centers. These centers function from 8.00 am to 8.00 pm, on all working days and 9.00 am to 3.00 pm on holidays (Second Saturdays & Sundays). Payments can be made by cash, or cheque or DD or through credit card or on Internet.
This project is a tremendous success. From a modest collection of Rs 43 lakhs (Rs 4.3 million) in August 2001, the collections went up Rs 2500 cores (Rs 2.5 billion) by 2004. With the stupendous success the project has been extended to other parts of the state including rural areas. For a project which costed Rs 360 million, now e-Seva centers are collecting revenues of Rs 3 billion per month and are serving 3.5 million citizens. eSeva has succeeded in providing all citizen related services under one roof and also eliminated the corruption totally and made the entire processes transparent (www.esevaonline.com, Raghuveer,2005).
All these cases were discussed to look into the histroy of e-Governanc in India and there ability to combat corruption. These cases from India represent both success and failure in tackling corruption through egovernment. These cases highlight the potential and pitfalls in designing egovernment applications that focus on the twin objectives of transparency and combating corruption. In most of these cases we realise that if implemented properly, e-Governance has always proved handy in diminishing corruption to a large extent.
8. What are the Challenges?
Integrating e-government in anti-corruption programmes: Using e-government to fight corruption is often incidental and not part of the design objectives.
Building political commitment: Even if anti-corruption and e-government strategies are in place this does not guarantee that corruption will be curbed. Commitment of decision makers (and adequate financial resources allocation) is key to the success of all government anti- corruption programmes, including those with an ICT component. Backed by political leadership and
commitment, ICTs could lessen the traditional resistance for change. The cross-cutting and multistakeholder nature of e-government initiatives makes it more important that there is strong leadership and political commitment among different government ministries and agencies. Providing legal support: e-Government can lead to transparency provided that the legal framework supports free access to information. Until a few years ago most countries still had strict national secrecy laws. These have been repealed in favour of Freedom of Information Laws in the U.S. and much of Europe, but only after decades of lawsuits. Secrecy laws are still in effect in many of the developing countries. While increasing citizen’s access to information, governments must also address risks to privacy and security.
Selecting appropriate technologies: The cost of introducing ICT in government organizations is high. Selecting appropriate hardware and software is also a challenge due to the rapid advancement of new technologies. ICT specialists need to work closely with public officials to ensure that the design of the ICT system is coordinated with other reform processes. Capacity and resources need to be in place for systems maintenance, upgrades and troubleshooting. Securing the ICT system is important to prevent corruption by those who know how to manipulate the ICT system.
Ensuring interoperability: Overlapping roles and responsibilities among government departments and lack of cross-departmental cooperation in developing common hardware, software, data collection methods, and rules and procedures proves a challenge when designing a national e-government system. However, e- government can be used as an entry point to improve the system and ensure interoperability. Promoting access and use: Increasing availability of information on the Internet is not sufficient. Providing universal access, promoting literacy, fostering people’s participation in governance are some of the key challenges in any e-government applications.
Ensuring scrutiny and sanctions: Parliamentary scrutiny is often cursory or non-existent. Those responsible for missing or misused funds are rarely sanctioned except where the actions are politically motivated, and in those cases officials may be unfairly victimized.
Showing evidence: Much of the evidence linking e-government with reduction in corruption is anecdotal. Only in a couple of cases has e-government’s impact on corruption been audited independently. Systematic surveys of citizens and other stakeholders can help establish the linkage more clearly and will also provide invaluable feedback on the parts
of the system that need improvements.
Conclusion
Corruption destabilizes the society by creating social tensions. Corruption also indirectly increases the crime rate and violence in the society. Analysis of terrorism in different parts of India proved that corruption in government (specially relating to government jobs) is prominent and misled many young people to join terrorist outfits. E-governance project discussed above made the governing process transparent, took away arbitrary and discretionary powers of government servants, and made them accountable. The citizens started having a better say in governance and felt empowered. E-governanceprojects analyzed above demonstrated that innovative use of ICTs not only enhance the citizen services but also and reduce corruption in a number of ways. Also, E-governance not only reduced corruption but also improved the revenues of the government which could be used for socially relevant areas like health, education, eradication of poverty and uplifting the down trodden.
These projects from the past have proven that if implemented efficiently, e-governance has the capability to root out corruption eventually. There are also many challenges in its implementation as mentioned in the paper. We have seen that middlemen between government and people result in weak links in the system. E-government can be fruitful in removing those links.E-governance alone may not be one-step solution for eradicating corruption, but certainly can complement all other efforts. Elimination of corruption results in good governance. Thus in the light of Indian experience, we conclude that e-goverment has the potential to tackle corruption effectively and usher in societal harmony.
Acknowledgement
I would like to thank my e-Governance professor Mr. Harish P Iyer and Maj.Gen.Dr. R.K. Bagga for providing me with the opportunity and Mr. Kiran Kumar and Mr. Dhruv Data for their priceless guidance in the successfull completetion of this paper.
References:
a. An Empirical Analysis of the relationship between e-government and corruption by Jamshed J Mistry and Abu Jalal.
b. Role of E-Governance in Tackling Corruption and Achieving Societal Harmony: Indian Experience by Dr. R.D. Pathak.
c. Transparency and Corruption: Does E-Government Help? by Subhash Bhatnagar. d. E-gov projects to reduce corruption and improve entrepreneurship by Manan Kakkar. e. E-governance to weed out corruption by Sreejiraj Eluvangal f. http://www.researchgate.net/post/Is_e-government_helpful_in_minimizing_corruption
