Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Bhoomi in Karnataka facilitated the digitization of 20 million land ownership
records, saving farmers 1.3 million workdays in waiting time (Bertot et al.
2010
),
and in Andhra Pradesh the Smartgov project expedited processing times for paper,
squeezing efficiency from India's notoriously hidebound public bureaucracy. In
Chandigarh, Project Sampark has allowed for digital filing of taxes, filing of birth
and death certificates, and payments of utility bills. Kerala launched a project called
FRIENDS ('fast, reliable, instant, effective network for disbursement of services') in
2000 to provide one-stop IT-enabled payment counters (Madon
2004
). More
broadly, more Indians know more about their government today than ever before
(Paul
2007
). However, Indian e-government faces several serious problems (Faisal
and Raman
2008
; Gorla
2007
,
2008
), including widespread illiteracy, relatively low
internet penetration (10 %), discriminatory caste and gender norms, and under-
funded and at times mismanaged programs.
Pakistan's e-governance lags far behind that of India, and beyond a few gov-
ernment websites, has been primarily manifested in a network of telecenters
designed to spur rural development in its 50,000 villages (Mahmood
2005
). One
major obstacle is that the administrative duties for Pakistani e-government are
spread over a vast array of agencies, with little centralized coordination (Shafique
and Mahmood
2008
). Nonetheless, the country boasts the Virtual University of
Pakistan and a growing capacity in telemedicine, and the tax department was
reorganized electronically to minimize chances for bribery (Bertot et al.
2010
).
Likewise, in Bangladesh e-government has taken a few halting steps, although it is
plagued by bureaucratic inefficiencies (Hasan
2003
).
5.3.6 Central Asia
Central Asian governments exhibit a variety of levels of sophistication in their pre-
paredness and willingness to adopt e-government. The region as a whole lags far
behind the developed world in this regard. According to the United Nations' e-
government index, Kazakhstan and Mongolia are best situated in this regard, Uzbe-
kistan and Kyrgyzstan exhibit somewhat less ability to adopt e-government initiatives,
and Afghanistan, devastated by decades of invasion, war, and unrest, ranks at the
bottom. As Bhuiyan (
2010
) notes, Kazakhstan's e-government initiatives include
interactive government portals (
www.e.gov.kz
)
with more than 900 information
services in Kazakh, Russian, and English; interagency electronic workflows in 39
government branches; and almost all akimats (municipal governments) have virtual
reception rooms. Most countries in the region have distance-learning programs in
varying stages of development and effectiveness. Similarly, Mongolia has imple-
mented government portals and explored the possibility of web-based distance
learning programs in rural areas (Sukhbaatar
2005
). Yet the motivations behind the
implementation of e-government in this region are not necessarily benign. Morozov
(
2011
, p. 87), in a sobering analysis of internet freedom, argues that
