To add to it, Satyanarayana sees completely online delivery of services at least a decade away, partly because of the low penetration of the Internet and the small user base. "The aim is to reduce visits and reduce time to offer a service, and both are happening," he says.

According to Malladi of EY, "while elimination of physical processes will not happen in a hurry, biometrics will be the key in the next phase of e-governance. Biometric-enabled devices, which authenticate a user by linking up with their Aadhaar identity, will help reduce the need for a visit."

However Satyanarayana sees completely online delivery of services at least a decade away, partly because of the low penetration of the Internet and the small user base. "The aim is to reduce visits and reduce time to offer a service, and both are happening," he says.

As not every person in India has access to the Internet, e-governance services can be availed from the e-districts (e-districts are government centers which allow the citizens to avail e-governance services) and currently there are about 102 districts which have such centers.

"These will reduce visits and improve quality of service for things like death and birth certificates, land, income, domicile, nativity certificates, payment of taxes, challans and utility bills," says Satyanarayana. "By end-2015, the exercise will be complete."

According to the ministry of IT, 197 of the 252 categories of services, planned by the government, are delivered online. The automation of the land records is a very good example as the records are uploaded and transactions done online.

Complete e-governance in India with complete online transactions, as in countries abroad, needs many more milestones to reach the pinnacle.