Grid Computing: A Desirable Tool for Electronic Governance

Abstract

This paper explained how Government at different levels can apply Information and Communication Technology (ICT) to achieve efficiency, effectiveness, transparency and accountability in Government to Government (G2G), Government to Employee (G2E), Government to Citizen (G2C) and Government to Business (G2B).   This application is referred to as Electronic Governance (e-Governance).  The system enables citizens to make best use of automated administration processes that are accessible on-line.  Grid computing is an ideal solution to this type of administrative processes.  This paper therefore presents how Grid computing can be used to effectively and efficiently meet the yearnings of citizenry.   Generally, we demonstrated the creation of a virtual environment by using Grid technologies to a specific e-governance application on distributed resources. We presented a framework for the adoption of grid computing for                   e-governance management using Electronic Bill server (EB server), Comprehensive Welfare and Social Services server (CWSS server) and Corporation sever (C server).  Experiments were run with the Grid environment and without Grid environment by considering the number of jobs completed and the period to complete various jobs submitted for processing using MATLAB.

The numbers of jobs completed by EB server by using Grid are: 20, 40, 60, 80,100 and 120 while 15, 25, 33, 60, 72 and 90 were completed without Grid under the same condition.  The numbers of jobs completed by CWSS server with Grid are: 30,50,70,90,120 and 130 while 22.5, 37.5, 52.5, 67.5 90 and 97.5 were completed without Grid.   The numbers of jobs completed by Corporation server under Grid are: 30,50,70,90,120 and 130 while 24, 40,56,72,96 and 104 were completed without Grid.   The period to complete various jobs submitted for processing by the EB server under Grid are: 18, 30, 42, 54,72 and 88minutes while 30,50,70,90,120 and 130minutes were required without Grid.  For CWSS server, the period to complete various jobs submitted for processing under Grid are: 6.5, 19.5, 32.5, 45.5, 58.5,78 and 84.5minutes while 10, 30,50,70,90,120 and 130minutes were required without Grid.  For Corporation server, the period to complete various jobs submitted for processing under Grid are:  6.4,19.2,32,44.8,57.6, 76.8 and 82.2minutes while 10,30,50,70,90 120, and 130minutes were required without Grid.

The result of simulation revealed that implementing an e-Governance solution was cost effective, efficient, consistent and reduced job processing time with high quality of result and providing better services to citizens.

Keywords: E-Governance, Grid Applications, Grid Computing, Grid environment, Grid Infrastructure and Grid Resource Broker.