Hooda stresses on need for technology to improve governance

Haryana Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda today stressed on the need to use new technologies for improving governance and called for re-designing of the system to make it more responsive and accountable to the citizens.
The Chief Minister said this at "e-Haryana event", organised jointly by the Haryana government and a private firm here.
"Successful e-governance initiatives have substantially reduced physical interface between service seekers and service providers on the one hand and reduced discretion and introduced transparency in the delivery of citizen services on the other," Hooda said.
"Information and communication technology (ICT) has become a part of our day-to-day life with overall economic progress," he said.

"Proliferation of mobile communication, with close to 90 crore subscribers over a period last 10 years, has been a silent but perhaps the most visible revolution of the century, greater than even the advent of radio or television," he said.
"Resultantly, a citizen is today much more aware, and this awareness has given a very compelling and natural rise to his expectations.

"We cannot deny that some undesirable practices have crept into the system, which have also led to increased dissatisfaction among the citizens as service seekers," he added.
"The effective role of ICT in meeting citizens' expectations through e-governance has been recognised as a potent alternative and its efficacy has been proved universally without any doubt," Hooda said.

He also listed several challenges in adoption of ICT for providing good governance like lack of re-engineering of archaic practices and lack of required enthusiasm among administrative machinery.