E-governance is passé, at least in Kerala. At least in design and in thinking. PH Kurian, principal secretary, IT, with the Kerala government, said that the model of a digital society is unique to Kerala. “It was accepted by the state cabinet in June last year and is the last layer of the e-governance model,” he said. The e-governance model is three layered, e-government, e-governance and then the last layer - digital society. Kurian was addressing a gathering at the 22nd state e-consultation workshop held in Thiruvananthpuram on Feb 19.
 
“This is the transformational stage of the e governance programme,” said Kurian talking about the stage when the society would be enabled to handle electronic dealings just as the old societies handled manual dealings. Kurian said that children today are conversant with computers from very early on in their lives and that the coming world needs to be ready for the kind of services their digital awareness would expect from the government.
 
“Reliance 4G is planning to put 3,500 km of optical fibres in Kerala in addition to that put by BSNL. Hence by 2020, Kerala plans to be fully wired,” said Kurian.
 
Apart from being physically connected, the Kerala government also plans to achieve 100 percent e-literacy soon, chief minister Oommen Chandy declared in the workshop earlier in the day.
 
According to Kurian, the time has come to reflect on the way, this kind of a connected society will demand services from the government. “The younger generation wants nothing physical (in the form of cards or papers), are we giving them that?” Kurian said.
 
“By 2030, 90 percent of the people will behave ‘digital’. We need to be ready for that time from now,” he added.
 
It was clear that Kurian was talking about a world which is technologically not very far away in the future but which is waiting to be fully realised because of the lack of awareness of people regarding the benefits of e-governance. “We have an Anglo-Saxon way of working till now. For everything we need to apply on paper. The transformation is happening everywhere but Kerala can make it happen much faster,” he said.
 
“The phrases like ‘humbly request’ which are used in many government applications must be removed from the government dictionary,” he said talking about the language of the various applications which a citizen needs to make to avail various services and benefits of the government.
 
Kurian talked about the plans of the government of Kerala to make the state where the people would live and breathe digitally. “The government is going to sanction Rs 96 crore for digitisation of hospital records,” he said. Also, he said that digitisation in the transport department has doubled in the last seven years. “We have spent Rs 4,500 crore on computers and hardware since 1980 and it is only in the last three to four years that the citizens have started using these services,” he said.
 
Kurian said that every department has to move in this direction so that the next society can completely forget about the manual system of availing services. So that they are able to access citizen services through their laptops or their mobiles but not through queues and applications and innumerable rounds of the government offices. This is the digital society that Kerala aims to move on to very, very soon. “We can do it, but the question is how soon,” he said.
 
“The restless generation cannot be bound in this technology era,” said Kurian.