Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (ASSOCHAM), in its recommendations to Department of Information Technology on the draft ICT Policy Bill 2011, has advocated adoption of mobile platform for better public service delivery and internet access for all, besides adoption of social media platform for participatory governance and use of vernacular languages in e-governance to cater to the diverse regions of the country.   

With nearly 827 million mobile phones in the country, all government websites should be made mobile-compliant, ASSOCHAM said in its recommendation.  The vision should be to touch and transform lives of citizens through the use of IT, and lead the nation into a globalised knowledge economy.

The ministry of communications and IT is consulting various stakeholders to formulate a national policy on information technology with many experts suggesting that access to internet should be made a fundamental right.

Umang Das, chairman, ASSOCHAM national council on e-governance, said “e-governance and m-governance have a tremendous potential of growth to address the inherent problems of service industry. But government support is imperative for structured and sustainable growth of electronically delivered services.”

Social networking sites like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter as well as blogging software and mobile technology allow governments to tap into the collective knowledge of society quickly and directly.  This would enable citizens to move from being passive consumers of government services to advisers and innovators contributing ideas that are in better accord with their individual and group needs.

 “Public feedback and collaboration can help policy makers set priorities, encourage citizens to ‘buy in’ programmes, increase satisfaction levels and thus augment the chances of successful policy outcomes,” D.S. Rawat, secretary general, ASSOCHAM said.

Given the linguistic diversity of India, technology tools, applications and content should be developed in regional languages. The government should ensure that support infrastructure like electricity and computer connectivity is made available at village level.