E-governance Initiatives in Assam: A Brief Study

In Assam, e-governance applications in the recent past have demonstrated a significant role in creating good governance. E-governance projects have attempted to minimize the processing costs, increase transparency, and reduce corruptions. The state of Assam has already initiated the creation of State Wide Area Networks (SWAN) to facilitate electronic access of the state and district administration services to the citizens. Public private models have been adopted to ensure cost effective solutions and better public service delivery. This paper presents a brief study of the e-governance initiatives, the ICT projects and application initiated by the government and discussed the challenges and issues associated with the use of ICT for e-governance applications. This paper first discussed the meaning and the application of e-governance in public systems; then discussed about the emergence of e-governance in Assam and the present activities of common service centres (CSCs). Based on these, the author analyzed the challenges faced by the government during implementation of e-governance projects. In the middle, some new initiatives taken by the government have been discussed and finally, the author tried to put some recommendations for better and transparent public service delivery.