Tuesday, September 4, 2012

Electronic Delivery Of Services In India

Electronic Delivery of Services in India has been in news for years but its actual implementation is still to happen. Despite many rounds of legislative drafting and governmental discussions, the Indian electronic delivery of services bill 2011 could not see the light of the day. The natural result is that e-delivery of services in India is missing.

While rejecting the latest draft of the EDS bill, the parliamentary standing committee on information and technology gave few reasons like lack of resources, amendments must be made to the information technology act, 2000 to accommodate electronic delivery of services, inadequate time to ensure electronic delivery of services by states, etc. All these apprehensions have no merit and they deserve to be ignored.

However, the rejection of the EDS bill by the committee is also blessing in disguise as the proposed bill was highly deficient on many counts. Even the committee has given some very good suggestions that can strengthen the new EDS bill that can be passed by the Indian parliament.

It would be a good idea to involve techno legal experts while formulating the next EDS bill so that various deficiencies can be taken care of. A holistic EDS bill must be formulated that takes care of all the aspects pertaining to electronic delivery of services in India.