Research Centre for eGovernance

Governance signifies the processes and actions that a government exercises over its citizens. e-Government is the utilization of ICT at various stages of these processes. e-Government initiatives seek to play a transformative role and try to provide an efficient and resource-effective means for a government to engage with it’s citizens.

While e-Governance as a concept and a philosophy appears to present few problems in gaining acceptance and understanding, in its manifestation as a tool and as a practice, it appears rather tentative and experimental. There is something of the kaleidoscopic in much of what pervades the domain of e-Government – with even the smallest shifts in stakeholder positions and interests producing new patterns of behaviour and outcome. This then has been challenge for practitioners of e-Governance – this need for making sense out of the complexity which surround large scale transformations [which is often what e-Government initiatives are all about] and preparing suitable behavioural and technological responses to it.

Before e-Government initiatives are able to produce more lasting and more balanced set of benefits to all stakeholders with greater degree of predictability, e-Governance knowledge base has to considerably strengthened. The Research Center for e-Governance [RCEG] of IIIT-H aims to be at the frontier of research into how the forces of ICT and the philosophies and practice of governance interact and shape each other.

Being situated amidst other research centers of IIIT-H - which too are renowned for their cutting edge knowledge advancement in the areas of signals, security, natural languages, open source, exact humanities etc - and being able to collaborate with them actively, RCEG holds a special vantage point from which to conduct and promote research on various aspects of e-Governance – whether technological or social.

Through its research, RCEG aims to further value based e-Governance. By values, it is implied a balanced approach where cutting edge technological prowess of ICT in all of its manifestations in cryptography, machine learning etc is harnessed through considerations for culture and humanities, and promoted in a spirit of openness and freedom.

As the host of the Computer Society of India - Nihilent e-Governance Awards and having helped study over 1,000 of the best e-Governance initiatives in India, the research center is supported by a team of experts which embodies one of the richest sources of knowledge of e-Governance anywhere in the World.

The think tank meetings of RCEG too serves as a focal point for regular, formal gathering for these remarkable personalities.

Dr K S Vijaya Sekhar, Principal Researcher [vijay@iiit.ac.in]

RCEG’s areas of interest include

• e-Governance Knowledge creation
• e-Governance Knowledge application
• e-Governance Knowledge and practice assessment

Faculty

1. R K Bagga