How to realise the Digital India dream over the next decade
Information Technology (IT) revolution has transformed the standing of India in the global comity of nations over the last two decades. It’s no less than a revolution, the effects of which can be seen in the eyes of a large number of expatriates working in Silicon Valley or in the exuberance of young residents powering their way in the streets of IT hubs in India.
Each one of them typifies the face of a new vibrant India, clearly manifested in the political and strategic attention given to our country in global sweepstakes these days.
If IT is believed to have catapulted India to glory in the last decade, it would be fair to assume that this may augur well for our country over the next decade, provided we strategise and implement the plan professionally and well. Government’s recent pronouncement to create a Digital India is a well-intentioned step in that direction.
There is no dearth of literature and paradigms on what India needs to do to transform this vision into reality. Amidst a surfeit of acronyms, buzz words, and alliterations, I wish to propound my own framework, which I call as 6I framework to realise the Digital India dream over the next decade.
As a practitioner and observer of our IT movement, this framework always provided me an easy approach to grasping the complex, insurmountable and issues connected to it and thereby finding solutions to those.
Let me start with the first "I", which without any doubt would have to be the digital Infrastructure. This entails sufficient availability of bandwidth for data movement until the last mile and an equally big virtual space for storing such data securely and strategically especially in a vast country like ours where regional disparities are significant.
Opening up of the spectrum and its availability would mitigate this situation for the producer while "affordability" and "value for money" should guide the consumer. Although difficult to fathom and forecast, consciousness and adoption of advancements in technology would have to be an imperative here. We would also have to address the challenges posed by emerging and conflicting stands on differential charges and net neutrality.
The second "I" leads us to "instruments", which comprises the devices and the electronic hardware eco-system. Almost the entire requirement of hardware in our country is currently being met through imports. With increasing focus being given to the development of smart cities and IoT devices, it’s essential that indigenous manufacturing capabilities get enhanced. The two main flagship programmes of Digital India and Make in India would, therefore, have to move hand in hand.
Instrumentalities occupy the third "I" in this list. This includes the e-governance applications and the software that power the instruments. In order to advance the benefits, it would be essential to foster applications in areas of e-business, e-education, and e-medicine. Aadhaar has emerged as one of the biggest identification systems in our country. The trinity of JAM (Jan Dhan accounts, Aadhaar, and mobiles) would have to be harnessed to ensure transfer of benefits directly into citizen accounts. It would also be essential to develop "over the top applications" to magnify the gains accruing from this change.
Unless the involvement of citizen is ensured, the gains of Digital India would remain limited to few. The size and diversity of our country offers challenges and opportunities in tandem. A significant change that has happened over the last few years globally and in a more pronounced manner in our country has been the reach of mobile devices that are smart, easy to use and now with local language transliteration tools, legible to even the so called illiterates. The use of social media has also changed the paradigm of digital literacy in our country. Large numbers of people coming from various backgrounds have now become digitally aware.
The impact of these changes would in due course be felt by our democratic system and by implication on our electoral process. The experiences from the past good practices reveal that though champions may drive the IT initiatives, it’s the Institutions that sustain and take such practices forward. It is also important that a bottom-up approach is evolved while developing such projects. District e-governance societies headed by district collectors can act as a good pivot. It is also important that every government department including the offices of chief ministers and prime minister has a CIO to drive the change. A standard operating procedure, which simplifies and codifies such acts would help matters.
The last "I" would surely have to be the investments. There is a need to build revenue models that provide adequate gains to multiple stakeholders. There is also a need to ring-fence such investments so that the demand from the essentials does not crowd out this necessary requirement. Public Private Partnerships (PPP) and cost effectiveness of such investments would also need to be woven into such investments.
Notwithstanding a good framework, providing flesh and blood always remains the elephant in the room especially when it comes to e-governance solutions. There is also a need to drive this change across all tiers of the government.
With technology now being all encompassing and empowering, development of applications across the spectrum has become easy. Many such applications can ease the work processes and also help improve the interface on the other side.
One thumb rule, however, could be to find applications that can help in ensuring "ease of doing anything’, inside or outside. There is also a need to avoid e-governance applications, which barely skim the surface and do not look at solving the problems fundamentally and comprehensively.
IT is a great aid in solving computational problems, but those are its limits. It can't help us solve problems of math, societal problems of mindset, social exclusion and ignorance would need different approaches. If one looks around, it’s not difficult to find many archaic rules, practices, and procedures, which we can do without. The key is to locate such things and get rid of them. IT solutions in such cases can only perpetuate an already bad situation. There is a need to focus on a holistic plan that can weave in and find smart solutions to the needs of the society at large and help it break free from the vested interests.
Within the government, converting the ideological non-believers is always a challenge. To change management, therefore, becomes critical. Another challenge is to break the artificial silos and allow IT tools to enable governments to become a cohesive whole.