It is evident in some of the developed countries that IT enabled services can be used very effectively to help bridge the Digital Divide and provide good governance to the citizens of any geographical region. In developing countries, like India, it is imperative that the governance should be transparent and cost of governance should be minimum so that the scarce resource can be deployed for development and enhancement of quality of life of citizens. The authors of this paper have taken a standard framework for E-governance that uses Knowledge Aggregation, Process Constructs, Content Constructs and Delivery Methods with appropriate connectivity, to extend personalized services to the citizens through multi-mode access mechanisms by creating integrated information chain called 'e-Chain'. In this paper we describe the key technology drivers and enablers at the Delivery and Personalization levels because it is at the last two levels that a conventional delivery system faces many lacunae. In technology parlance it follows the classic 'last mile' and 'last foot' problem. The citizens of any country have a right to expect good governance but there is a huge cost to any governance services that must ultimately reach the citizens. The citizen-to-government interactions and transactions are customized at a geographical, community, group, or individual level. The 'cost of two-way transaction' depends on time taken to complete the transaction, accuracy and reliability of transacted data or information. It needs to be reduced in order to create a cost-effective, highly personalized delivery mechanism, which should be scalable to incorporate additional services or to handle growing transaction density. We propose that low cost, mobile computing devices (like 'Simputer') will play an increasingly important role in the Delivery and Personalization levels of the E-governance framework. One of the authors of this paper has been involved in the development of such a platform, called the Simputer which is now being deployed in certain proof-of-concept applications such as micro financing, land record management, GPS and GSM based tracking to enable E-governance. The Simputer, a mobile, hand-held device is simple to use and shareable by multiple users through personalized smart cards that allow access to the desired applications. It has multiple connectivity options such as USB Port, built-in IrDA and Modem. It has local language interfaces, Text-to-Speech capability and the touch screen features that enable even an illiterate (computer or otherwise) citizen to interface with E-Governance services. Further, its ability to handle downloadable applications makes it a fairly comprehensive tool for application delivery. This paper describes the hardware and software interfaces that are being developed and tested to lower the entry barriers for a common man into the world of E-Governance
