Digital Governance in India: its Impact on Education,Issues and Challenges

Umesh jatav

MA,LLB(2^nd year)

Law centre 1(Delhi University)

Abstract

India is a developing country. Yet, it needs to fill the socioeconomic objectives with effective governance of the Govt. In the era of ICT, all most all nations in the world adopted ICT in their administration, providing essential goods and services to its masses on time. In the context of Indian economy, every sector is being impacted by e-governance. Consequently, Govt. of India has launched the initiatives of e-governance; providing all services electronically as much as possible. Educational governance today increasingly needs to be understood as digital educational governance. The monitoring and management of educational systems, institutions and individuals is taking place through digital systems that are normally considered part of the backdrop to conventional policy instruments and techniques of government; technical systems that are brought into being and made operational by certain kinds of actors and organizations, and that are imbued with aims to shape the actions of human actors distributed across education systems and institutions.

Keywords: Digital governance, issues, challenges, future prospects

Research Article

Digital governance is becoming a buzzword. Since the Beginning of the 21st Century, Technology comes in the way into learning and teaching environments. As the technological advancements has been introduced, the need for literacy levels on the use of technology also been increased.Across the world, we have been hearing about e-governance.as socio-economic issues’ expanding day to day, every government has started to extend its administration from high level to low level for mitigating of the various kinds of problems of socio-economic, science and technology, etc. with immense use of electronic devices (ICT). In fact, mostly in the world, both developed and developing economies extensively using all types of electronic devices to make government administration faster, transparent and accountable. In the context of India, being the one of the largest countries democratically, demographically and geographically; as stated, it still has gap of using govt. services to its large population. E- Governance has also been introduced in education section. The implementation of E-governance in education has led to big innovations in this sector. Advancement of information technology in education has improved research. There are many online libraries that assist teachers and students with comprehensive reading materials.

Teachers and lecturers are also able to post their work online for their students to read. The incorporation of information technology in education has brought so many positive changes. More academic systems should embrace technology because it makes teaching more effective and aids in practical learning. Students should also embrace it because in the future, most of the jobs will be technologically based. With time, everyone will see the significance of

information technology in education. E-governance solution in the field of educational sector has changed the way administration, which is designed to make the system user-friendly, time saving and cost saving also. Many of them are flexible enough to adapt to the changing educational environment efficiently and quickly and effectively. It is an integrated solution in the education sector that facilitates the processing and maintenance of large volumes of information such as: registration, admission, student information, classes, time table, transport, attendance, library, salary, expenses, examinations, performance, grades, hostels, security, reports, management, transport, staff details and fees among various departments in an institution. E-governance enables the Government and Citizens to access easily, to improve new class of quality of services and to provide multi-channel service delivery system. The vision of egovernance is to transform service delivery through the use of IT and Multimedia.

Evolution

E Governance Evolution of e governance in India could be traced back to 1970. Before it, initially, e-governance emerged in the field of defense, economic monitoring, planning and the deployment of IT for elections, census, tax administration, etc. meanwhile, govt. of India established the department of electronics, followed by NIC in 1977.in fact, it had made great efforts to link all the district head quarts in the decade of eighties. Throught, the late 1980s a significant number of govt. officials used computers, but their applications were restricted to word processing .only in 1987, with launch of the national satellite based computer network (NICNET), the egovernance agenda in India gained momentum. Furthermore, since beginning of 90s, it technologies were enhanced by ICT to expand its use for wider sartorial applications with policy emphasis on reaching out to rural areas and taking in greater participations from NGOs and private sectors. Among developing countries, India has been an early adopter of e-governance. After 1970s , there has been several initiatives with projects regarding -governance ,namely, Gyandoot ,e-seva, N-logue, union ministry of it ,smart govt, national e-governance plan, e-kranthi ,digital locker and digital india ,etc.

Digital Governance in Higher Education

India has one of the largest higher education systems in the world .Despite having the largest higher education system, the quality of education, in general, cannot be claimed to be the best. Technical and vocational Education in India has seen enormous growth in recent years with a large increase in total number of institutes imparting higher education. On one hand, this growth promises to produce more skilled youth to fulfill needs of ever growing Indian industry and on the other hand it poses a huge challenge for the governing bodies like UGC, AICTE, NCVT, NCTE, PCI, MCI, INC, DCI etc and state technical education boards to maintain & improve the quality of education being imparted through these new & existing technical and Vocational institutes. But as has been reported by NASSCOM(National Association of Software and Service Companies) in its 2004 report, out of 3 million graduates and post-graduates added to the workforce in India every year only 25% of technical and 10- 15% of non-technical graduates are employable by growing IT, and other sector. Now a days, our education system is untidy, to say the least. It is characterized by substandard technical and vocational institutions lagging good infrastructure and qualified teachers, teacher truancy, obsolete syllabi, inadequate infrastructure, unemployable graduates and a lot more other problems. The scenario has been further worsened due lack of some effective & real time monitoring mechanism & widespread corruption prevalent in Govt. regulatory bodies that help such substandard institute to start & remain functional without bothering to maintain any quality at all. Mushrooming of a large number of unrecognized & substandard fake universities/institutions distribution fake technical certificates, diplomas, degrees &Ph.Ds, fraudulently, without being caught, is also another outcome of such a untidy system.

Benefits of Digital Governance in Education

The benefits of Digital governance in an educational sector are improved efficiency, increase in transparency and accountability of educational administrative activities convenient and faster access to services, and lower costs for administrative services.

Provide E Services: After the implementation e-governance, we improve the delivery of services to students, faculty by providing services like enrollment, examination, result, feedback, requests for documents, requests for certificates, issuing admit cards and ID cards, employment etc.. The system provide timely alert to colleges through SMS /Emails. E-governance in education provides new ways of communicating to the students, imparting education and organizing and delivering information and services.

Improved education system: E-governance in education sectors allows use of information and communication technologies with the aim of improving education, improve information, service delivery, encourage student participation in the decision making process, making administration transparent and effective and give universities a new channel of educational unemployment. Also, the system can obtain feedback from industry and students to modify course curriculum if deemed appropriate by the authorities. This will allow all the lesser performing colleges to reduce the gap with better performing institutes. It will be help in the betterment of the higher education in the country and increase the number of employable students.

Innovative Teaching Tools: The new technologies offer vast opportunities for progress in all walks of life with the introduction of new technological initiatives the structure of higher educational institutions has changed. The changing role of lecturers, the changeable learning environment and the design of e-Learning facilities all contribute to a potentially more flexible organizational structure of higher education in rural area. The future delivery of education will be based through eLearning technology providing lecturers with superior teaching tools. The online methods enable more effective education and offer significant advantages over traditional teaching methods. This has been possible by technological implementation based environments such as bulletin.

Private Public Participation: almost all e-government project have found it convenient to involve different private agencies for different tasks through public-private-partnership (PPP) arrangements.These tasks include design and development of application software, population of data and content in the regional language, procurement and installation of networking and computer systems, deployment of software and delivery of services.

Centralized Information- E-Governance has provided electronic information infrastructure to simplify service delivery, reduce duplication, and improve the level and speed of service at a lower cost. The centralized information approach of e-Governance keeps all information at one place in electronic form. This approach of making information secure prevents it against any theft or leakage.

Use of intranet: Intranet-based training provides a low cost and knock-on savings, is that it can be a virtual two-way system, with students connected to mentors and teachers receiving real-time feedback and support. Managers with employees scattered among sites and locations, particularly if they are so far flung that they are in different areas, need a cheap and effective way to communicate them. ICT is already proven as the way to access knowledge based information from anywhere to anytime but a limitation of the university that they can’t communicate with other colleges.

Anywhere, Anytime Information: Delivery of publicdomain information to students can be done without any official and student interaction. Students can obtain information related to university processes and procedures through an on-line system without interacting with any university official. In fact, e- Governance allows the average student quick, interactive access to a vast array of information, through computers at home or work or through kiosks in convenient public locations, because this access to information can be available at many different locations and at all hours, there is no pres- sure on individuals to physically visit a university Office.

Lowering Costs of education: Digital governance saves universities money. Putting services on the Internet gets rid of the wasted time that is spent on get- ting the services that otherwise would have been available only in the university. University/collage Web sites are managed through a content management tool. This tool makes it easier to make changes on university Web pages. The E-Governance also provides hardware and software needed to create and update state Web sites. This results in reduction of licensing fees and increases the ability of the state to maintain its Web sites.

Improved Decision Making and Better Planning:The ability of e-Governance to provide centralised information helps governing body, decision makers and faculties to perform extensive analysis of stored data to provide an- swers to the queries of the students. This facilitates taking well informed policy decisions for student facilitation and accessing their impact over the intended section of the students. This in turn helps them to formulate more effective strategies and policies for student facilitation.

Better Security and Protection of Information:The centralised information approach of e- Governance keeps all information at one place in electronic form. This approach of making information secure prevents it against any theft or leakage.

Eco friendly: Digital governance reduce the use of paper and makes the environment more fruitful by introducing paper less system.

Issues and Challenges

The benefits of e-Governance are not easy to achieve and must go far beyond mere computerization of education processes. The successful implementation not only presents technical challenges but also asks for a fundamental change in the manner in which the education sector operates today. In fact, the challenges that are most likely to occur would be how to adapt with reinvention of the Education processes and functions and related issues of new responsibilities for employees, faculties and students.

Cost:High cost involved in implementing the e governance is an other important issue.Now-a-days the high cost of internet data create barrier for economic vulnerable student

Technical Issues:IT infrastructure is the backbone of Egovernance. Interoperability with existing software and hardware platforms is a key success factor. Finally, some legal aspect, like security and privacy, must be considered, as personal data are processed and stored, and financial transitions must be executed.

Privacy Issues: Citizens’ concern on privacy of their life and confidentiality of the personal data need to be technically supported Privacy and confidentiality has to be highly valued in establishing and maintaining websites. An ideal Cyber policy and strict appliance of it is the backbone for citizen’s support.

Securities:The financial transaction demands for transactional security. All support for full security is necessarily needed to maintain. An ideal Cyber Security Policy will ensure the existence of a sound and secure egovernance and critical infrastructure base in India.

Social Issues: Acceptance and usability by a large variety of people make e-governance successful and The interface must be usable by rich or poor, disabled or elderly people, understandable by low literacy or nonnative language people, etc.

Infrastructure: Social, geographical and economical disparity issues have to be removed and proper infrastructure is required to establish egovernance. The ICT facilities need to be developed and should be available to one and all citizens. Internet connection through satellite, phone linesor through cable or Television should be accessible for all especially to the people in rural.

Accessibility: Any service should be accessible by anybody from anywhere at anytime. Even if Internet population is exponentially growing in India, still there is a significant portion of the people who may not be able to access services for various reasons like limited access to ICT technologies and devices, low literacy, or phobia for Computer etc. Therefore, universal access is still a mirage.

Internet coverage :Many rural areas have internet coverage issues due to which a large section of students unable to access.

Lack of adequate training programs:it is another important issue in implementing the e governance system. The success of many e-Government projects suffers immensely from lack of adequate training programs. Train ing is of vital necessity in familiarizing users with computers and breaking their fears.

Conclusion

The most important driving force behind digital governance establishment and development in education is Innovation. To achieve a world class standard in education it is imperative to have an improved and innovated means of access to information all over the world which is possible only by the introduction of information and communications technology based digital governance in educational institutions. For achieving the goals of efficient administration and to meet the challenges of globalisation, international competition and modern science and technology development, it is necessary to implement fast and reaction based e governance into education sector.The way in which higher education is designed, implemented and delivered is changing with the introduction of e governance. Higher educational institutions have been tra ditionally static in their functioning and delivery of programs. However as there is an increased demand for quality learning there is a need for higher educational institutions to broaden their geographical limits to introduce e govern- ance initiatives. E governance provides higher educational institutions like universities with a way to exceed competi- tion and take full advantage of their traditional and already established reputations. Digital governance and education is an institutional thinking that seeks to entrust in building, managing and sustaining students, teacher, learner and others for achieving the larger benefits of e-government system.it provides the benefit lead to enhance the outcomes, as well as the performance criteria and better informed students or learners leading to improve delivery of objective, etc.

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