Smart City E-Governance: Issues and Future

Abstract

Issues for developing Smart City E-Governance in India are unique. Two basic issues are the levels of E-Governance Infrastructure in position, namely information and communication technology (ICT) and relative ability of population subgroups to access the E-Governance infrastructure. There has not been uniform social development of urban and rural population and also population subgroups such as male and female, scheduled caste (SC), scheduled tribes (ST), Muslims and non-Muslims in India. Therefore uniform environment of developing Smart City E-Governance does not exist. These target groups require differing policy set to make their access to Smart E-Governance possible. This partitioning of subgroups into different levels of accessibility to Smart E-Governance is the major issues of Smart E-Governance in India. There has been rapid development in ICT such as telephones, mobiles and Internet in India in absolute terms but when it is converted to percentage figures it gives very negative impression doubting the possibility of Smart City E-Governance in India. Also, E-Government survey conducted by United Nations in 2012 places India in the lowest quartile. However recent development of E-Commerce in India gives considerable hopes for E-Governance. E-Commerce and E-Governance shares the same ecosystem but E-Commerce has shown very rapid development and GDP generated can even surpass health and education sector in India. These developments are mainly generated by potential smart cities in India. This gives positive assurance that carefully selected about 31 mega cities, million pilus cities in India and can be developed for Smart City E-Governance. Other towns from about 8,000 census towns have to wait to overcome their population-related access to Smart City E-Governance. This concluding chapter in the last part highlights the further reaches of E-Governance discussed in all chapters of the book as part of its future.