Akshaya; An E-Governance Initiative in Kerala, India Vijay Gopal Vazhoth Palliyil
Technical University of Darmstadt “Mundus Urbano” International Cooperation in Urban Development Introducing Smart City 2.0 Abstract There is an existing ‘digital divide’ within the growing population of India and most developing nations. A large section of society lacks the know-how for making use of modern digital platforms. As the Kerala government identified the need to embrace ICT (Information and Communications Technology) for higher efficiency and quick access to data and easier provision of services to citizens, the inequality in terms of technical knowledge within the population was evident. ‘Akshaya’ was launched as an initiative to bridge this gap so that quicker ‘e-services’ may be taken advantage of by all strata of the society. This study aims to analyse if Akshaya has succeeded in achieving its aim of bridging the digital divide. Secondary objectives are to identify the limitations of Akshaya in the current scenario and to come up with suggestions to finetune the functional programming for improvement. Keywords: E-Governance, E-Service, Information-Poor, Digital Divide, Digital Literacy
1