International Journal of Scientific & Engineering Research Volume 3, Issue 2, February - 2012 1
ISSN 2229-5518
E Governance in Education:
Reasons for introduction and Impact
Dr Sami M. Alhomod, Mohd Mudasir Shafi
King Saud University
Abstract— Information Technology (IT) is said to be the technology of 21st century. There has been a huge growth in the field of information technology. Traditionally IT was used only to provide the back office support to organizations. Nowadays it plays a strategic role in organizations supporting many business functions and also shapes new strategies in organizations. The IT field has also been introduced in the field of governance called “E Gover- nance”. This IT based E governance has also been introduced in the field of education. The implementation of e governance in education has led to new broader innovations. E governance has enabled universities to expand their current geographical reach, to interact to prospective students all around the
world and to establish themselves as global education providers. This paper examines the need for implementation of e governance in education sector and its possible advantages. The aim of this paper is to examine the nature of change in Education with respect to the introduction and growth of IT based e governance.
administration.
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1 INTRODUCTION
Before elaborating about e governance in education, let first know the meaning of e governance.
UNESCO defines e-Governance as:[ 1 ]
“Governance refers to the exercise of political, economic and administrative authority in the management of a country’s affairs, including citizens’ articulation of their interests and exercise of their legal rights and obligations. E-governance may be under- stood as the performance of this governance via the electronic me- dium in order to facilitate an efficient, speedy and transparent process of disseminating information to the public, and other agencies, and for performing government administration activi- ties.”
The main aim of e government is to enable the government agencies to improve the relations with citizens and businesses by the use of modern information technologies like wide area network, mobile computing and the internet and also to facili- tate better communication between various arms of the gov- ernment. E government uses information and communication technologies to promote more efficient and effective govern- ment and makes government more accountable to citizen’s .It facilitates improved access to government services and allows
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Dr Sami Alhomod is currently dean of e learning and distance learning deanship, King Saud University, Saudi Arabia.
greater public access to information. The modern information technology services like the internet, mobile communication,
Wireless devices and a mix of other technologies are used to Implement e government solutions. E government plays an important role in providing services to citizens and industry by providing easy availability and access to the information, providing efficient government management and making governments more accountable and transparent to the citizens.
The ultimate results of implementing e government are:
Convenience to government and citizens.
Decrease in cost of the services.
Less corruption.
Increased revenue.
2 WHY INTRODUCE E-GOVERNANCE IN EDUCATION
SECTOR?
The main purpose for introducing e-governance in edu- cation is to enhance good education. E governance in edu- cation provides new ways of communicating to the stu- dents, new ways of imparting education and new ways of organising and delivering information and services. The advancements in the information technologies, internet and the mobile communication provide opportunities to trans-
Mohd Mudasir Shafi is currently Researcher at King Saud University, Saudi Arabia.
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form the relationship between administration and students in a new way, thus contributing to the achievement of the good education goals .The implementation of information technology may increase the broad participation of the stu- dents in the process of achieving good education goals at all levels by providing the possibility of online discussion groups and by enhancing the rapid development and effec- tiveness of the learning methods. Advantages for the ad- ministration involve that the administration may provide better service in terms of time, making governance more efficient and more effective. In addition, the transaction costs can be lowered and the services become more accessi- ble. [2]
Implementing e-governance in educational systems will enable effective monitoring of academic standards.Fry (2001) proposes that if universities are to compete in a glob- al higher education market they must introduce the tech- nological advancements and use them as a strategic tool, capable of transforming educational and business practices. E-governance in education sector’s allows use of informa- tion and communication technologies with the aim of im- proving education, improve information and service deli- very, encourage student participation in the decision mak- ing process, making administration transparent and effec- tive and give universities a new channel of educational dep- loyment. [3, 4]The effective use of IT services in educational Sector can greatly enhance efficiency of the existing system, decrease the costs, and increase transparency in the func- tioning of various departments. In a broad sense e gover- nance in educational sector provides better service delivery and the distribution of information to students and faculties using electronic means.
E governance can also be an important tool to the go- verning body of the institute. In general u provides follow- ing advantages to the administration:
Empowerment of faculties, students and encou- ragement of their participation in governance.
Transparency and absolute clarity in Administra- tion, Governing and admission process.
Increased efficiency of faculties and of administra- tion processes.
The possible areas of implementation of e governance in educational sector are: [2]
E – Administration: It involves the use of ICT (In- formation and Communication Technology) in or- der to improve administration processes and the in- ternal working of the departments within a Educa- tional organisation
E – Services: The main aim is to improve the de- livery of services to students by providing interac- tive services. Some examples of interactive services are: requests for documents, requests for certifi- cates, issuing admit cards and id cards.
E – Participation: It asks for greater and more ac- tive student , faculty and administration participa- tion and involvement enabled by ICTs in the deci- sion-making process
The use of Information Technology (IT) in every aspect of life has resulted in faster, easier and much better delivery of services by redefining the fundamental principles of de- livery of services and operation of service sectors [6]. Uni- versities and higher educational organisations all around the world have started to implement the advancements in IT to be utilized to provide better services to students and faculties. The information technology imparted, E govern- ance when applied in education has provided a huge im- pact on the functioning of the educational sector by revolu- tionising the way information is provided to the students and other related people to the way education is imparted and the way learning is done. As a result, a wide range of IT applications are being custom developed and delivered in various educational organisations. Some of the areas of which have been immediately impacted are:
The quantity and quality of output from education sys- tem has been substantially improved with the introduction of e-governance in this sphere. However in order to be really effective, the e-governance system deployed needs to go beyond mere computerisation of records or processes. The implementation of the e governance been able to pro- vide the management of the educational institution infor- mation about the areas of concern so that adequate action can be taken. An integrated e governance system can enable the authorities to analyze the performance of one of the best performing institute in related field and compare it with other colleges to identify the gap areas. This will allow all the lesser performing colleges to reduce the gap with better performing institutes. It will be help in the betterment of the
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higher education in the country and increase the number of employable students.
There has been rapid development in learning technolo- gies so as to turn them to advantage in learning. A student who is learning in a way that uses information and com- munication technologies (ICTs) is using e-learning. With the introduction of new technological initiatives the structure of higher educational institutions has changed over the past decade. Scott (2000) supports this opinion that eLearning is now facilitating a more flexible learning approach. The im- pact of eLearning initiatives has direct effects on the future structure of universities on both strategic and tactical levels. The changing role of lecturers, the changeable learning en- vironment and the design of eLearning facilities all contrib- ute to a potentially more flexible organisational structure. The future delivery of education will be based through eLearning technology providing lecturers with superior teaching tools. The online methods enable more effective education and offer significant advantages over traditional teaching methods. This has been possible by technological implementation based environments such as bulletin boards, virtual lectures and e Libraries. In an eLearning en- vironment lecturers can offer constant educational support, as students are able to communicate with classmates and lecturers, visit web sites and view course material regard- less of their time and location.
E-Governance has provided electronic information infra- structure to simplify service delivery, reduce duplication, and improve the level and speed of service at a lower cost. It allows for creating, managing, and sharing information electronically among the various university/collage depart- ments and the different courses offered by them. That is, information captured once can then be shared and re-used by all authorized users. This avoids manual transcription and re-entering of the same information repeatedly when- ever a student goes to a new university/collage department for some services.
Different types of services offered by different de- partments like collecting fees, granting admission, adminis- tering regulations, paying salaries and benefits, can be availed at one place. This greatly facilitates the students by allowing them to perceive the administration as a single body to interact with instead of a number of unrelated enti- ties, operating at different locations in different univer- sity/collage buildings.
Delivery of public-domain information to students can be done without any official and student interaction. Students can obtain information related to university proc- esses and procedures through an on-line system without interacting with any university official. In fact, e- Governance allows the average student quick, interactive access to a vast array of information, through computers at home or work or through kiosks in convenient public loca- tions, because this access to information can be available at many different locations and at all hours, there is no pres- sure on individuals to physically visit a university Office.
E-governance saves universities money. Putting services on the Internet gets rid of the wasted time that is spent on get- ting the services that otherwise would have been available only in the university. University/collage Web sites are managed through a content management tool. This tool makes it easier to make changes on university Web pages. This, in turn, reduces the time and energy required to keep university Web pages up-to-date.
The E-Governance also provides hardware and software needed to create and update state Web sites. This results in reduction of licensing fees and increases the ability of the state to maintain its Web sites.
The ability of e-Governance to provide centralised informa- tion helps governing body, decision makers and faculties to perform extensive analysis of stored data to provide an- swers to the queries of the students. This facilitates taking well informed policy decisions for student facilitation and accessing their impact over the intended section of the stu- dents. This in turn helps them to formulate more effective strategies and policies for student facilitation.
The centralised information approach of e- Governance keeps all information at one place in electronic form. This approach of making information secure prevents it against any theft or leakage. Proper backup mechanisms valuable information helps in protecting the information from getting lost due to natural calamities such as fires, earthquakes, and floods.
The benefits of e-Governance are not easy to achieve and must go far beyond mere computerization of education
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processes. The successful implementation not only presents technical challenges but also asks for a fundamental change in the manner in which the education sector operates today. In fact, the challenges that are most likely to occur would be how to adapt with reinvention of the Education processes and functions and related issues of new responsibilities for employees, faculties and students. It also raises important questions in terms of protecting information from unauthor- ized changes and safeguarding personal privacy. Proper user authentication and access control mechanisms need to be implemented in order to ensure that only authorized us- ers can have access a particular piece of information. An- other important issue is the cost involved in implementing the e governance. Lack of adequate training programs is another important issue in implementing the e governance system. The success of many e-Government projects suffers immensely from lack of adequate training programs. Train- ing is of vital necessity in familiarizing users with com- puters and breaking their fears.
The most important driving force behind e governance establishment and development is Innovation. To achieve a world class standard in education it is imperative to have an improved and innovated means of access to information all over the world which is possible only by the introduction of information and communications technology based e gov- ernance in educational institutions. For achieving the goals of efficient administration and to meet the challenges of globalisation, international competition and modern science and technology development, it is necessary to implement fast and reaction based e governance into education sec- tor.The way in which higher education is designed, imple- mented and delivered is changing with the introduction of e governance. Higher educational institutions have been tra- ditionally static in their functioning and delivery of pro- grams. However as there is an increased demand for quality learning there is a need for higher educational institutions to broaden their geographical limits to introduce e govern- ance initiatives. E governance provides higher educational institutions like universities with a way to exceed competi- tion and take full advantage of their traditional and already established reputations.
The ways to enhance learning by enabling access to uni- versal information are possible with the introduction of e governance initiatives. For lecturers, e governance pro- grammes represent a change in the way teaching was im- parted. For students, e governance has provided an alterna- tive to the ways learning was done by implementing the means in which learning can take place outside the lecture hall. E governance will change the way Students relate to
institutions as much as it changes how students relate to each other. It will bring forth, new concepts of governance, both in terms of needs and responsibilities.
[1] Governance and good governance http://mirror.undp.org/magnet/policy/glossary.ht m
[2] Defining E-Governance - Updated: 03-08-2005 18:57 http://portal.unesco.org/ci/en/ev.php- URL_ID=6616&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SEC
[3] Fry, K. (2001). ELearning Markets and Providers: some issues and prospects. Training and Education, 43(4), pp. 233-239.
[4] Gurmak Singh, John O'Donoghue, Harvey Worton "A Study Into The
Effects Of eLearning On Higher Education "
[5] N.N. Sachitanand," 'Integrate e-governance in education sector'" http://www.digitalopportunity.org/comments/inte grate-e-governance-in-education-
[6] Dr. Pradeep Sinha "Engineering eGovernance Solutions" http://www.cdac.in/html/connect/3q2000/art02.ht m
[7] Scott, T. (2000). The Wired Campus, Business Weekly, p. 102.
[8] SHAJEE MOHAN B .S. (Assistant Professor, C .S .E .D. )"Impact of IT on Higher Education through Continuing Education " http://arxiv.org/ftp/cs/papers/0411/0411038.pdf
[9] Naim Shaikh & Kishori Kasat. E-Governance In Education As An Effective Management Control Tool In Developing Human Resource- Faculty Appraisal System Retrieved 9 April 2011 on http://www.computer.org/portal/web/csdl/doi/10.1109/ICETET.2009.
[10] RESOURCE-FACULTY APPRAISAL SYSTEM” http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnum ber=05395002
[11] Rev. Fr. Paul Raj Kumar,Dr. K. Murugadoss"E-Governance and Impact in Educational Sector" http://www.indianmba.com/Faculty_Column/FC1
[12] e-GOVERNANCE : CONCEPTUAL FRAMEwORk http://arc.gov.in/11threp/ARC_11thReport_Ch2.p df
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