Information is one of the important entities to affect the decision making, therefore effective and efficient management of information in bureaucratic, strategic planning and decision making will affect the governance process. e-Governance is a panacea for all the problems in government or public sector, public transportation is not the exception too. The public transportation sector has to manage the information, resources, people and process in an effective and efficient manner using information and communication technology to provide effective and efficient services to their commuters. In this paper we discusses about the need of BPR in public transportation, their steps for implementation followed by recommendations and its expected benefits. The paper also elaborates our analytical and foresight based strategic model for e-Governance in the public transportation sector in India. Based on the case study and the issues in the public transportation a set of recommendations for service delivery in the public transportation sector. Following these recommendations sector will be able to deliver integrated and quality services to their citizens of India using National e-Governance Plan (NeGP) service delivery model.
TopIntroduction
According to (Kettl, 2002) “Governance is a way of describing the links between government and its broader environment - political, social and administrative” whereas e-Governance is developed for the purpose of increasing transparency and accountability, allowing greater access to the information’s about representatives, institutions, decisions, laws, regulations and project development. Therefore effective implementation of e-governance will be helpful to achieve efficiency in public transportation too. Public transport sector in developing countries like India carries more than 90 percent of passengers by buses because of its door to door availability, and about 65 percent of freight discussed in (India Transport Sector – Roads, 2007), even though the sector is facing severe problems such as lack of financial resources which restricts investment and up gradation of the existing transportation system. In addition, the lack of proper and effective planning in public transport sector of India has led to rapid growth in cars, two wheelers and motor vehicles, which causes congestion on roads that slows down the bus services, which ultimately increases the operating cost and, will discourage the use of public transportations (Bharti, A.K, & Dwivedi, S.K., 2011a).
According to the review report (Review, 2010-11) published by the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways of India State Road Transport Undertaking of India (SRTU) are severely facing the financial crisis as shown in Figure 1. Out of 34 SRTU’s in India only five earned profit in financial year 2010-11.This huge loss of Rs. 5492.28 crore (Rs. 54.9228 billions) in financial year 2010-11 and 4737.10 crore (Rs 47.371 billions) in 2009-10, which means SRTU’s are facing severe financial problems which requires a rethinking of the governance process and reengineering of the business process for the essential improvement in the public transportation sector.
Figure 1. Financial performance of state road transport undertakings (Review, 2010-11)
TopNeed Of Bpr In Public Transportation
The mobility of people through public transportation plays very important role in social and economic growth of a country. Therefore reengineering of public transportation involves the remodeling or reorientation of existing government process to provide quality services to their citizens as well as improving social and economy of the country. Globalization in the service delivery sector and dysfunctions in the public transportation has made it essential to look forward for certain reforms in the public transportation sector. The reasons to look for process reengineering are given below:
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Dysfunction: The public transportation system suffers from number of dysfunction like inefficient or poor e-Governance, limited inter-connectivity between states, lack of communication between depots of State Road Transport Corporation (SRTC), lack of online services etc. These problems were identified in an e-Governance usage survey conducted in the initial phases of this research for the public transport department of the state of Uttar Pradesh (India) (Bharti, A.K, & Dwivedi, S.K.,2011b);
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Globalization: Because of the increasing trend of integration and globalization in the delivery of public services, paradigm shift is taking place in terms of technological changes and greater expectations of citizens from the government (Meena, G., 2006) for the quality services in public transportation;
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Competition: Due to competition in the service sector, government is moving from owner-operator-producer to a facilitator-enabler-regulator and ensuring integrity, efficiency and transparency;
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Good Governance: National e-Governance Plan’s, (NeGP, 2010) huge investment for e-governance and common centralized network infrastructure such as State Wide Area Network, (SWAN, 2005), to globalize the services of public sector for the citizens of India it also pressurize for inevitable change to adapt new dimensions of governance in public transportation too.