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Top1. Introduction
The United Nations (UN) E-government Development Report, 2016, ranks India, 107 among 193 countries with a score of 0.463 on the UN E-government Development Index for 2016 (UN E-government Survey, 2016). In 2015, the Government of India (GoI) launched the Digital India Program with the aim to bridge this gap by fostering a climate of investment in digital infrastructure, improving digital literacy among the citizens and provision of online services to the citizens. The Digital India Program provides key emphasis on the E-governance services in India with the objective to change India into a digitally empowered economy and society. The GoI has come up with the framework of ‘e-Kranti’ under the Digital India program. ‘E-Kranti’ mainly focuses on e-governance to provide government services through an electronic medium to the citizens. It ensures an economical cost of e-governance services with efficiency and transparency of services (NeGD, Policy Document 2016).
The use and application of ICT and internet-based web applications by the government for the provision of information and public services to the citizens is defined as E-government (Irani et al., 2005; Freeman and Loo, 2009; Sivarajah et al., 2015, 2014; UN E-Government Survey, 2016). Enhanced connectivity and better access raise the effectiveness and efficiency of e-governance services (Lin et al., 2011, Sun et al., 2015, Sá et al., 2016). E-Governance services are provided in different countries, however, there are challenges faced regarding its adoption and use. Prior studies discussed that in developing countries, it faces obstacles like lack of awareness, infrastructure, technical skills, human resource capacity, well defined government regulation and inexpensive technology (Irani et al., 2007; Rahman et al., 2012; Dwivedi and Irani, 2009; Alshehri et al., 2012; Gupta et al., 2008; Al Awadhi and Morris, 2008; Ibrahim & Ithnin, 2016).
India is a land of millions of students, a million workplaces and billions of citizens who avail government services. Millions of transactions and millions of documents exchange hands every day. These documents include school leaving certificates, degree certificates, birth certificate, electricity bill, water bill, property tax bills, driving license, Voter ID/Election card, PAN card, no objection certificates and Aadhar Card - unique identification number issued by the Indian government to every individual resident of India. Huge efforts are invested in creating these documents by the various government agencies and also in collecting them by the consumers. There lurks the fear of vital documents getting tampered with or even getting lost. Every single document is of utmost importance for the citizens in the process of getting admission to colleges and universities and for the creation of passport and Visa. There is a mad frenzy for documentation and it calls for humongous efforts on the part of citizens.