E-governance is stepping stone for good governance: UIDAI chief

BENGALURU: Unique Identification Authority of India Chairman J Satyanarayana today said that e-governance is a "stepping stone" for good governance and it is all about transformation.

"Technology, policy and governance are more or less inter-connected deeply in several ways... for these three things to function in a vibrant manner we need citizen-centric policies, open technologies which will lead to good governance," he said.

He also said good governance should have elements like efficiency, effectiveness, transparency, responsiveness, accountability, which is again supported by concepts like equity, consensus orientation, rule of law and inclusivity.


Stating that good governance should be at the back of those who create large programmes or design policies, he said "e-governance is a stepping stone for good governance and e-governance is about transformation."

He said there are external and internal symptoms where interventions are required to bring in this transformation like long processes, air of mystification, silo approach and outdated technologies, among others.

"Four pillars of e-governance is people, process, technology and business model- as sustainability is very important," he added.

Satyanarayana was speaking on the topic 'Digitizing Public Services' at the Global Technology Summit 2017, organised by Carnegie India here.

He said the basic idea that Aadhaar is empowerment of the people was mooted in 2009 with a basic intention to give identity to hundreds of millions of people who never had an identity to begin with.

He said it empowers residents of India with a unique identity and a digital platform to authenticate anytime, anywhere because any service begins with identification, whether it is government or private.

"We have 1.19 billion residents enrolled to Aadhar already and there is a possibility of 1.28 billion... close to universal enrollment as such."

About 40 million authentications are done online every day for e-transaction to avail some kind of service, he added.