Efficient and effective public sector management is a key for attaining the goals of good governance such as accountability, transparency, legitimacy, openness and enabling an environment for citizen services.

E-government implies exploiting Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) to build the capacity of the public sector to deliver and sustain good governance. The executives need to build awareness of ICT potentials, create organizational readiness, and become involved in preparing and implementing e-government plans for high-value projects.

Effort should be designed to make

• Better use of Information Technology (IT) investments to eliminate crores of rupees of wasteful government spending (especially in a developing country like India)
• Reduce the government’s paperwork burden on citizens and business, and improve government response to citizens— from weeks down to minutes.
• The key goal should be for citizens to be able to access government services and information with the click of the mouse.

The three guiding principle should be:

• • Citizen-Centered—not bureaucracy or agency centered.
  • Results-Oriented—producing measurable improvement for citizens.
  • Market-Based—actively promoting innovations.

Apart from these guiding principles, the next requirement is for a Government Enterprise Architecture. Enterprise architecture is a comprehensive view of what an organization does, how it does it, and how IT supports it. Keeping this in mind the overall E-Government strategy should address the following areas:

• • • Driving results and productivity growth: Driving results and productivity growth: IT and management reform investments that create an order of magnitude improvement in value to the citizen, especially in the areas of homeland security information sharing and knowledge flow;
    • Controlling IT costs: Consolidating redundant and overlapping investments, enterprise licensing, fixing cost overruns, and competing away excess IT services charges;
    • Implementing the E-Government Plans: Including government-wide architecture governance and web-based strategies for improving access to high-quality information and services;
    • Improving cybersecurity: Desktop, data, applications, networks, threat and vulnerability-focused, business continuity, and privacy protection.
    • Building an effective IT workforce: Obtaining needed project management – CIO staff and architects who have a passion for solutions for success in leveraging IT spending for strategic results

Adaption of ICT in governance started in India very late and it was around 1999 when Indian government understands the importance of IT created a separate ministry for the same and also came up with a 12-point E-governance strategy in 2000 to achieve the above-mentioned initiatives related to the E-governance. This vision of E-governance has progressed well with 2005 seeing the announcement of National E-Governance policy and currently, we are in the Digital India phase.

With 4G penetration across the remotest part of India and net accessibility becoming economical and handy on mobile the online boom has given a real thrust to pushing the E-governance utilities as mobile apps and many app initiatives by the local bodies governing the cities and villages have made life simple for the citizens who can now access the basic utilities related to civic administration online and pay their dues etc. without queuing up at the offices of the civic bodies.

Apart from this smart city missions and smart village concepts co-supported by Wi-Fi across the city and villages have really boosted government’s initiatives of promoting online services to the citizens, business houses and internal stack holders in the government machinery.

Though the foundation has been laid a lot needs to be done to push and comply to achieve the above-mentioned vision of the Government. Let us analyze some of the key trends and technologies is which is bound to impact governance and smart city installations in the long run.

Some of the trends are:

• • • Process automation through deployment using ICT enabled services in a secure way
    • App penetration facilitating customers, businesses to use E-Governance utilities over the smartphones thereby enabling anytime anywhere usage for the citizens
    • IoT integration over the Citywide framework being created to interconnect the cities
    • FTTH using the fiber rings
    • Analyzing the collected data to enhance customer services
    • Engaging customer is Policymaking

Having analyzed the trends lets looks are some of the key technologies that will be widely used while designing and deploying E-governance and Smart City/Village solutions. The technologies are:

• • • 5G – which will facilitate higher bandwidths to end-users
    • Wi-Fi 6 – will facilitate bandwidths up to 10G and will be real game changes to the civic bodies who will be able to push more graphical and real-time video contents on their applications which can be browsed without interruptions as higher bandwidths are support per AP
    • Artificial Intelligence (AI) – Managing the IoT for applications like traffic management, water supply management, etc. aided with AI will enhance efficiency and productivity without manual interventions
    • Fiber Grids – It will help to create a converged communication backbone for Intranet and City IoT services over the public/private cloud and FTTH will become the extension over which Triple play services will be delivered to the citizens
    • Renewable Energy Sources: Using renewable power sources like Solar and Wind is going to be the way ahead and this will ensure minimal pollution by reducing carbon footprints
    • E Vehicles and Urban Transport – promotion of fuelless vehicles that will use electrical power and promoting citizens to use Urban transport will be a key to reducing road congestion and pollution
    • Big Data analytics – For analyzing the collected data which will be used to enhancing citizen serviceability

These are glimpses of the important trends and technologies which are bound to impact the design and deployment of e-governance and smart city/village solutions.

Having the trends and upcoming technologies please find the below recommendations for the ICT solution deployment for the next generation E-governance services.

• • • Since this is a multi-location scenario the interconnect foundation must be strong enough ensuring the flow of data seamlessly with minimal latency ensuring better customer experience in case of application like video conferencing etc. The backbone should be based on Service on Fiber within the city and intercity or city to villages can be connected over the service provider dark fiber or MPLS as per the feasibility
    • All e-governance centers should also be connected on Fiber/MPLS with last-mile fiber connectivity.
    • In all government offices and civic center, the internal LAN should be designed using the cable that supports 40-100G speeds from day one as the same would be required to facilitate uncompressed 4K Video traffic over LAN
    • All IOTs, Lighting and AV integrations devices should be POE enabled an ensuring reduction in usage of power which in turn would lead to a greener solution
    • Hosting of all apps can be done on Service Provider Data Center with enough resourcing to cater to the traffic being generated for a period of 5 years
    • Omni Channel Multimedia contact center should be deployed to facilitate customers as the same will enable them to approach help desk using any channel (voice, video, email, chat, mobile app)
    • Engage in software selections which are an upgrade and have open API’s to customize the solutions and app as per the requirement. The same should also have integration capabilities with upcoming technologies like Blockchain, AR and VR, etc.
    • Integrate back end analytics for the betterment of customer services and efficient marketing
    • On all of the above deploy robust, proven and stringent security policies for avoiding cyber crime incidents like hacking or data theft, etc.

This is just a brief of the setup we are recommending in general for more details contact us on info@tandmconsultants.com