Understanding E-Governance: The Indian Context Anitha Research Scholar, Public Administration, School of Social Sciences, Indira Gandhi National Open University, New Delhi, India Online published on 7 May, 2014. Abstract In the light of public sector reforms, a brief review of NPM fundamentals is carried out to understand the e-governance phenomenon. In this context, this Article begins with the theoretical and practical implications that the NPM have had on e-governance deployment. On this ground, the conception of e-governance embedded in the NPM domain seems to concentrate chiefly on performance measures, neglecting political and social outcomes. As such, e-governance evaluation frameworks in public sector seems to have identified certain key parameters like organizational efficiency, information quality, ICT accessibility and usage, reengineering, customer preferences, percentage of services available online and alike. One of the common criticisms among the scholars and practitioners of NPM based ICT agenda is, that it tends to perceive ICT as a tool to rationalize and re-engineer organizational procedures, sidelining social and political values. In this regard, the author perceives ICT as a performance measure used by the government at various levels vis-à-vis centre, state and local, hence, both the terms e-government and e-governance are used interchangeably. Top Keywords New Public Management, National E-Governance Plan, Richard Heeks’ design reality gap analysis, Electronic Service Delivery. Top |