The Fourth Industrial Revolution has catalyzed e-Governance, integrating digital technologies into government processes. This evolution enhances efficiency, transparency, and citizen engagement. E-Governance leverages digital tools to deliver public services, streamline administration, and foster a responsive and technologically advanced government in the era of rapid technological innovation.
UPSC Mains General Studies Paper – 2 Mains 2020
UPSC Mains Civil Services IAS Exam Question Paper – 2020
Tags: Important aspects of governance, transparency and accountability, e-governance applications, models, successes, limitations, and potential; citizens charters, transparency & accountability and institutional and other measures.
Approach
- In Introduction, discuss Fourth Industrial Revolution.
- In Body,
- Impact of Fourth Industrial Revolution on governance.
- e-Governance and its examples.
- In Conclusion, importance of Fourth Industrial Revolution in strengthening governance.
Answer
Millions of algorithms and codes are there around humans to understand their commands and perform human-like tasks. The First Industrial Revolution used water and steam power to mechanize production. The Second Industrial Revolution used electric power to create mass production. The Third Industrial Revolution used electronics and information technology to automate production. Now the Fourth Industrial Revolution is characterized by a fusion of technologies in AI (Artificial Intelligence), IoT(Internet of Things),quantum computing and others.
Fourth Industrial Revolution and its impact on governance
- Better Policy measures: Newer technologies such as Big Data, Data Analytics, Data Mining etc., have the ability for better identification of important aspects from a large dataset. This could be helpful for policy makers to make clear distinction for the usefulness of data and ensure better policy measures.
- Faster Resolution of Grievances: Artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies have helped in bringing new grievance resolution techniques to the table, such as bots. This has led to increased efficiency in reducing public issues.
- Transparency: Technology growth has created new opportunities for ensuring transparency in the governance. This includes monitoring misgovernance issues such as corruption or favoritism.
- Efficiency and better delivery of services: Initiatives like PM Gatishakti National Master Plan, which aims at developing our infrastructure smarter, Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC), which aims at democratising E-commerce, GeM which has made a significant impact for government procurement – all these are leveraging AI to bring efficiency and better delivery of services.
- Logistics ecosystem Improvement: The government is using AI to redefine the way it works such as Unified Logistics Interface Platform (ULIP), which is leveraging AI to improve the entire logistics ecosystem of the country.
e-Governance: e-Governance can be defined as the application of information and communication technology (ICT) for providing government services, exchange of information, transactions, integration of previously existing services and information portals.Mumbai Declaration on e-Governance has a ten-fold goal to take forward the roadmap for e-Governance defined in the Shillong Declaration of 2019 focuses around improving public service delivery, exhausting digital platforms, particularly concerning health, agriculture, education and land.
Examples of harnessing e-Governance
- Digital India: Through technology improvement and Digital Revolution, easier access to government services has been ensured. Technologies such as cloud computing have resulted in improved connectivity which has been helpful in dealing with connectivity issues of digital governance.
- UMANG (Unified Mobile Application for New-age Governance): It is developed by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) and National e-Governance Division (NeGD) to drive Mobile Governance in India. It provides a single platform for Citizens to access pan India e-Gov services ranging from Central to Local Government bodies.
- DBT(Direct Benefit Transfer): Under this initiative, the scholarships and subsidies are directly credited in the bank account of the beneficiary which helps to ensure targeted delivery of benefits and also reduces the instances of corruption in the system.
- BharatNet: This is an initiative to facilitate the delivery of e-governance, e-health, e-education, e-banking, Internet, and other services to rural India. The aim is to connect all the 2,50,000 Gram panchayats in the country and provide 100 Mbps connectivity to all gram panchayats. To achieve this target, the existing unused fibers (dark fiber) of public sector undertakings (PSUs) (BSNL, RailTel and Power Grid) have been taken advantage of and incremental fiber has been laid to connect to the Gram Panchayats wherever necessary.
Conclusion
Fourth industrial revolution has a lot of potential to harness the converging technologies to create an inclusive, human-centered future. It presents the opportunity to help everyone including the people and the government policy makers. Initiatives like PM Gatishakti National Master Plan, which aims at developing our infrastructure smarter, Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC), which aims at democratising E-commerce, GeM which has made a significant impact for government procurement – all these are leveraging AI to bring efficiency and better delivery of services.
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