From Governance to e-Governance
e-Governance is rapidly influencing the architecture of governance. The difference between the two is embedded in the understanding of governance itself. While the origin of governance goes deep into the constitutional and political framework of the count
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From Governance to e-Governance
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Catching Up with Governance Reforms or Racing Through ICT
In the decades to follow, the nature of governance will be highly influenced by the spread of information and communication technology (ICT). ICT (information and communication technology) is commonly used for a combination of IT (information technology), IS (information systems) and CT (communication technology), particularly the Internet. It would be interesting to place at this point the concern expressed by Cees Hamelink in his keynote address to the first preparatory meeting for the UN World Summit on Information Society (WSIS) in 2003, ‘It is disconcerting that in the context of the “Information Society” the notion “communication” has disappeared. Yet the real core question is how we should shape future “communication societies”…’. However, the fact that ICT does not observe geographical and cultural boundaries demands a new form of regulatory system which applies surveillance without dispiriting and monitoring without protectionism. With the world societies increasingly moving onto the Internet-driven world, governance is likely to redefine its boundaries to suit the needs of changing times. The perplexing question is to encourage the use of technology for facilitating inclusive governance without letting government sink into technological determinism.1 Undoubtedly, governance is likely to acquire an extended reference to e-governance to be able to describe its full potential of influencing policies and lives of citizens. Notwithstanding the technological control of the nature and direction of information, governance across nations would have to deal with the technological simulation of human consciousness in institutional processes. The change from ‘rain-weather-daylight’ regulated work culture of the pre-industrial era to the ‘clock-driven’ industrial societies – the world has transcended all of these defining 1
Technological determinism is a condition when governments start treating technology as one-stop solution to all governance problems. They would then ignore larger substantive governance reforms, deliberative democracy and interactive society to implant mega models of technology. A. Singh, A Critical Impulse to e-Governance in the Asia Pacific, DOI 10.1007/978-81-322-1632-2_1, © Springer India 2013
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From Governance to e-Governance
features and moved into one of the most fundamental transformation in recorded history. Eric Hobsbawm (1995, p. 8) writes that the revolution in transport and communication has virtually annihilated time and distance. Countries which have already moved in the direction of applying information and communication technology tools in governance suggest that this change is much more than just a wadding device to governance as some perceive it to be. Governance is already a matted with ‘e’ which suggests ‘electronic governance’ or ‘digital governance’ so that many of the traditionally inherited pathologies of bureaucracy and politics may be surpassed to achieve a ‘low cos
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