Types of E-Governance

Who the government is dealing with

Just as e-commerce is classified by who is on each side of a transaction, e-governance is classified by the parties the government interacts with. The three main types are G2C, G2B and G2G, where G stands for government.

1. G2C — Government to Citizen

This is the largest and most visible type: government delivering services and information directly to individual citizens. It covers everyday needs such as paying taxes and utility bills, applying for and downloading certificates (birth, death, income, caste, domicile), filing income-tax returns, checking land and property records, booking railway or bus tickets, registering complaints, and accessing health, education and welfare information. The aim is to make public services available to any citizen conveniently and without repeated office visits.

2. G2B — Government to Business

Here the government interacts electronically with businesses and firms. It includes online registration of a company, obtaining licences and permits, online filing of taxes such as GST, applying for government tenders and contracts through e-tendering (e-procurement) portals, and complying with regulations online. G2B reduces the time and paperwork businesses spend dealing with government, makes procurement more transparent, and improves the ease of doing business.

3. G2G — Government to Government

This is the electronic exchange of information and services between different government departments and agencies, or between the central, state and local governments. It includes sharing data between departments, coordinating between offices, electronic file movement within government, and linking central and state systems. Though the citizen does not see it directly, G2G is what makes the other two work smoothly — a certificate a citizen requests can be issued quickly only if departments can share the underlying records with each other.

A fourth type sometimes listed

Some texts add G2E — Government to Employee, meaning the government's electronic dealings with its own staff: online salary, leave, pension, service records and internal communication. It is essentially G2G applied to the government's employees.

Comparison …