Digital India: Are we there yet?
Digital transformation is the clutch word in every environment across the world. All companies are embracing digital transformations in a manner that the world has never seen. Governments across the world are becoming increasingly digital savvy and India is no different. India has been at the heartland of digital transformation by being the source of the executors of digital transformations in the form of workforce deployment. There are initiatives by the government and top MNCs to digitally upskill people and reach new heights. Why is the digital age being embraced so much?
Digital Transformation intends to simplify processes and make the lives of people easy by eliminating roadblocks and demystifying archaic processes. While private enterprises are at the forefront in digitization, the public sector is still coming to grip with the digital age in India. There could be a self-bias effect, but the inconvenience in being borne by the public who rely on public services for essentials. My personal experience over the past few weeks has highlighted that the public sector is still fixated on its archaic processes relying on heavy paperwork when the same set of tasks can be done 70% less time by embracing digitization. There could be multiple reasons to it, but the following indicate the key factors that are putting India far behind in this digital age for basic processes.
1. Inability to embrace new processes: Any digital initiative comes with a caveat of brining new and simplified processes. The public sector employees often end up in the loop of not embracing new process (even if they are simple) because of the mechanical nature of the existing process which makes it difficult for them to come out of that routine of process. This results in a failure to realise the real benefits of digital transformation.
2. Hierarchical Structure/Limits: Even if digitally driven processes are embraced, the hierarchical limits in terms of explanations and pushbacks from senior officials hinder the journey towards digital transformation. For example, a simple signature of a document which usually takes over 4–5 days in a police station can be reduced to merely hours, if there was a portal that would update a verification status and the senior official would have to approve with a digital signature. However, the reluctance to digitally approve demotivates the juniors as well to proceed with such an approach.
3. Paper = Trust: Despite digital copies of Aadhar card and PAN card being accepted, the paper proof is the ultimate source of trust, and this misconception results in limited number of approval processes on digital tools. The moment documents are shared as a hard copy with all details, that build trust in the approver leading to even more effort from the people seeking verification of documents. At the same time, we are not doing a favor to the environment.
4. Lack of digital opportunities in public sector: India is a powerhouse of executors of digitization. However, we lose most of them to corporates owing to better opportunities. There is a need for public sector and organisations to create roles for digitization where the executors can not only build tools for the people but also help onboard public sector employees on the tools and processes associated with it.
The begging question of India reaching a digital age is still far-fetched. The government of India needs to put serious thought into bringing digital opportunities within themselves and introduce self-learning policies to ensure that there is a digital transformation in the next 5 years as Artificial intelligence will already be holding fort by then as well. Embracing digital age with open arms will not only push India to be more digital savvy, but also ensure that citizens of the country do not bear the bunt of unnecessary processes and paperwork that the government is taking too much time to do away with.
