Leveraging the Service Paradigm for Producing Next Generation E-Governance Applications

The 21st century is aptly being termed as e-age. This is with the arrival of a suite of path-breaking and trend-setting computational and communication technologies and tools besides the grand and global installation of wired as well as wireless network infrastructures. As many of yesterday's concepts, ideas, dreams, vision and desires are being translated into reality today through a host of resilient and robust software, hardware, networking, sensing, perception, and decision-enabling technologies and best practices, it is natural for the total human society to embrace IT and enjoy its direct as well as indirect fruits in a big way with a tinge of assurance. In this context, e-governance methods, platforms, processes and practices also became the cornerstone for effective, efficient, energetic, fast, timely, transparent, and people-centric governance. In this chapter, the author brings forth a new promising, matured, proven, dependable and easy-to-use service technology for designing, developing, deploying, and delivering applications for many of the tasks associated with digitally inspired e-governance. The author has zeroed down on service and cloud technologies as the major drivers for new-generation digital governance. This chapter throws more light on these technologies. Services are stimulating the process-centric approach for application development, modifiability and sustainability. Further on, all kinds of programming models, methods and mechanisms (agile, aspect, component, composite, and event model building blocks) are easily gelling with the supple service paradigm and principles in articulating and actuating dynamic, real-time, instant-on, smart and sophisticated systems.