Smart Government Impacting Smart Cities
The idea of smart governance is now being realized as engine of progress and growth for the country like India with billion plus people requiring a hyper efficient and responsive administration commensurate with challenges and needs of time. As traditional mechanism adopted and implemented so far as interface between people and politico-administrative structure of the country seem to lack in vigor and fastness with which services are required to be delivered to citizens. If the state wants to perform its responsibilities as caretaker of its citizens it must always be on the lookout to explore and invent new ways to hasten and speed up its progressive and welfare oriented agenda.
In recent years efforts have been made by the government to tap technological potential to bring in smart governance to benefit the masses. Before we elaborate on what constitute smart government we should focus on elucidating the word smart prefixed to the government. Smart government simply means a system of governance whereby we digitalize system of delivery of services in administrative, political and economic spheres that may include bringing electronic revolution in governance by utilizing vast and seamless power of internet technology. With 14 million internet users in India connected to broadband, along with a massive 900 million mobile subscribers in last decade; it opens floodgates of transforming the way various services are provided. Our imaginations are further stimulated on digital front when we come to know that not less than 25 per cent of our population has easy access to social media for multiple uses forcing the Economist to declare India “a web less social network”.
It is these advantages that made the present elected government on assuming the power, under the leadership of Shri Narendra Modi, set priorities of catapulting nation to digital power and launched broad based ambitious Digital India Program that laid foundation of e-Governance Plan. It is this programme that harmonizes into Smart Governance Structure, with clear cut objective of making whole array of services online for the citizens from Kashmir to Kanyakumari and creates smart class of citizens who are empowered electronically and digitally and are well versed with nitty-gritty of this new phenomenon. The government envisages a sound e-Governance system covering electronic services, products, devices, manufacturing and job opportunities.
It was realized that in order to achieve digital goals of the government a strong Digital infrastructure need to be laid first to interconnect departments and jurisdictions to make services available in real time for both online and mobile platforms. The Smart Governance or Digital India, in official terminology has three major areas to fulfill :
- Infrastructure as Utility to Every Citizen-Under the plan: This component lies at the core and aims to facilitate availability of High speed internet in all gram panchayats, whole life digital identity, linking of Mobile phones with Bank accounts, easy accessibility to common service centre within the locality, making available shareable private space on a public cloud and safe and secure cyber space.
- Governance and Services on Demand: This is the second focal point of government policy targeting single window access to all citizens through seamless integration of departments or jurisdictions, availability of government services in online and mobile platforms, all citizens’ entitled easy access on the cloud to ensure digital transformation of services for improving ease of doing business, making financial transactions above a threshold, electronic and cashless and leveraging GIS for decision support systems and development.
- Digital Empowerment of Citizens: It is the third area of concern to realize the smart governance with commitment to provide universal digital literacy, accessibility to all digital resources , availability of all government documents/certificates on the cloud, availability of digital resources/services in Indian languages, collaborative digital platforms for participative governance and portability of all entitlements for individuals through the cloud.
The government has launched smart city project to transform hundred chosen cities into smart cities along the lines of global smart cities such as Toronto, Tokyo, Singapore and London. These smart cities are proposed to be developed and equipped with all the required smart technology in handling their own administrative affairs including transportation, sewage and drainage system. Maharashtra’s Lavasa and Gujarat’s Gujarat International Finance Tec-City (GIFT) are worthmentioning examples and to have a understanding as to how our proposed smart cities would look like.