E-Governance In India Needs Better Management

E-governance in India has miserably failed. The reason why e-governance is a big failure is because neither our political parties nor our elected governments take e-governance seriously. To be serious means formulating effective policies and strategies on the one hand and their dedicated enforcement and management on the other.

Take the recent example in this regard. The website named E-Governance Standards is a platform that aims at providing suggestions to the Government of India (GOI) regarding e-governance in India. However, the site is down for maintenance/ revamping or perhaps withdrawal. The big question arises that from the date of its inception to till now what valuable contribution this site or the working groups or committees constituted under its banner have provided to the GOI? I think none. Much better and effective inputs have been provided by private individuals than the governmental machinery.

For instance, under the Chairmanship of Mr. Praveen Dalal, Managing Partner of Perry4Law and leading Techno-Legal Expert of India, the First and Exclusive Working Group on Cyber Law in India was constituted last year. It is the first and exclusive Techno-Legal ICT Think Tank of India and includes International and National ICT experts as its Members. It is providing valuable suggestions and recommendations to the GOI regarding Techno-Legal ICT Policies and Strategies that India must adopt. The areas include cyber law in India, cyber security in India, cyber forensics in India, alternative dispute resolution (ADR) in India, online dispute resolution (ODR) in India, etc. Besides it is also “coordinating” National and International Techno-Legal ICT issues and is striving towards an “International Harmonisation” of abovementioned issues.

If we analyse the inputs of this platform we can easily deduce that the platform is not only much more actively participating in matters touching techno-legal ICT policies of India but is also providing its suggestions to GOI on a regular basis. This is what is required from E-governance Standards platform or any other similar platform. In short, GOI must take e-governance seriously as India needs better e-governance management.

SOURCE: ITVOIR

Malware Attacks Are Increasing In India

Malware attacks against Indian Government websites have increased a lot. Even private websites are not spared. Mr. Praveen Dalal has communicated the concerns of Perry4Law to Government of India in this regard.

Recently the website of Department of Telecommunication (DOT), Government of India was found “malware infected”. Now if you try to visit the “All India Congress Committee” website [www.aicc.org.in/new/] through Google you would come across a warning by Google that “this website may harm your computer”. Of the 301 pages Google tested on the site over the past 90 days, 33 page(s) resulted in malicious software being downloaded and installed without user consent. The last time Google visited this site was on 2009-05-26, and the last time suspicious content was found on this site was on 2009-05-26. Malicious software includes 80 scripting exploit(s). This is tremendous malware activity for a single site.

Let us hope the Government of India would consider and apply the suggestions and recommendations of Mr. Dalal immediately and keep the issue of cyber security in mind while implementing its e-governance projects in India.

SOURCE: ITVOIR