Effective delivery of public services using information and communication technology

Abstract

ICT has emerged as a powerful tool for enhancing the effectiveness of public service delivery. With a plethora of initiatives India is in the forefront of the global effort to exploit the full potential of ICT for providing a variety of services both in urban and rural areas of the country. However there is scope for achieving better results if a cohesive approach focusing on the customer needs is adopted. This study attempts to evolve a strategy for success with customer satisfaction as the main objective. Feed back from customers, kiosk operators and stakeholders have helped to identify the important factors influencing the success of initiatives aimed public services delivery using ICT. The critical factors for success relate to utility, accessibility, connectivity, reliability, replicability and sustainability. Ensuring the sustainability is the most challenging task and can be achieved through multiple stake holder involvement, sharing of resources especially infrastructure and providing services that customers need at affordable price. Accordingly a suggestive reference model has been developed which could be useful while designing and redesigning ICT based platform s for public service delivery. Case studies pertaining to some of the important ICT initiatives which have made an appreciable impact has helped to identify key features which could be adopted as best practice by other such initiatives. Most of these projects rely on powerful partnership with other stakeholders based on their capabilities. Collaboration between the various stakeholders participating in different ICT ventures can maximize the benefits to the users while at the same time containing the wastage of resources associated with isolated attempts. Suggestions regarding the terms and conditions of engagement between the key stakeholders form part of this study. This framework could enable them to function effectively as a team and achieve the goals with in reasonable time limits. This study includes recommendations for creating the appropriate public policy background to facilitate the rapid growth of public service delivery using ICT.