Critique of Legal Framework Regulating E-Governance in India

An imperative investment for economies across the world today, especially for developing countries like India, is e-governance with a vision of ensuring effectiveness and transparency in governance. At the outset, the focus of e-governance outlay was primarily on strengthening the hardware aspect of Information and Communication Technology hardware. However, the second generation expenditure now is more focused upon making e-governance a driving force for creating SMART governance wherein SMART stands for simple, moral, accountable, responsive and transparent governance. In India as well, the focus of e-governance is to realise the vision of digital India i.e. to ensure that governmental services are made available to public at large via electronic media. This paper begins with tracing the development of ICT in India and highlights the need for having a holistic statutory backing for E-Governance in the country. The paper further progresses to scrutinize the present legal & regulatory framework addressing e- governance initiatives. The paper ends with the argument that there is an inadequate legal framework in India to regulate e-governance since these existing legislations do not address all aspects of e-governance, such as e-procurement, data protection, privacy policies and re-use of information. Moreover, the is absence of legal framework in the country that mandates that general public, businesses and other institutions can claim e-governance as a matter of right. Therefore, the paper proposes that there is need for new legislation that comprehensively deals with all legal aspects associated with effective delivery of e-governance services in the country like cyber security, privacy protection, data safety and protection thereof etc.