IfG.CC -
Institute for eGovernment

Buoyed by the success and acceptance of e-Jaalakam@School project aimed at promoting e-Governance literacy among students and the community, the Department of Economics, St. Teresa’s College, Ernakulam, has embarked on a new mission. This time they will get to involve in Gender Responsive Planning and Budgeting at the local government level.

“We are trying to cross the last round of hurdles before implementation of the project. We expect to launch it within one month,” said a technical officer with the Corporation associated with the project. He added that over `1 crore-worth system, database and applications developed for the e-governance project have been taken to Thiruvananthapuram to link them with the State Data Centre.

Highlighting e-governance projects and developments in urban transport sector, the civic administrators of Kochi Corporation will present their plans for the next fiscal on Monday. They will also put forward a proposal for treating septage in the budget.

B. Bhadra, Deputy Mayor and chairperson of the Finance Standing Committee of the Corporation, will present the budget at the council hall at 10.30 a.m.

However, with the work of the pilot phase completed, the Corporation authorities are planning to launch the first phase of the e-Governance programme by this August.

Revenue department officials said they had taken measures to solve initial problems. "Some applicants have complained that they had to go to Akshaya centre and village offices concerned to avail services. In some areas scanning and printing facility is limited and lengthy documents will have to be taken to the village office directly for verification. Once we have a facility to e-copy documents, issuance of certificates will become easier," said additional district magistrate B Ramachandran, adding that steps will be taken to ensure that there are enough scanners and printers at village offices.

Chief Minister Oommen Chandy will inaugurate the two-day national conference on e-governance at the Le Meridien Convention Centre here on Thursday.

The conference, based on the theme ‘e-governance – vision to implementation’, will explore the most effective and innovative strategies of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in transforming governance.

As many as 1,000 delegates from the Union and the State governments, the corporate sector, industry bodies and academic institutions are expected to participate in the 17th national conference on e-governance to be held in Kochi on January 30 and 31.

The conference is being jointly organised by the Union Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances, the Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY), the State Department of Information Technology and the Kerala State IT Mission, with Nasscom as the knowledge partner.

Kerala’s pioneering role in the country in implementing e-Governance is one claim that the State government and its functionaries often highlight. However, the State has not always been able to match that claim with achievements when it comes to e-Governance – at least in terms of awards given away for innovative applications at annual national conferences on e-Governance. The tale was no different at the latest edition of the e-Governance national conference hosted by the State in Kochi recently.

Industry body National Association of Software and Service Companies (Nasscom) is also involved in a facilitating role.

Preliminary, he said that the system would be initiated at department of police, health and revenue on experimental basis, which could be implemented in other institutions in different phases. He was speaking while presiding over a meeting of working group on Science and Information Technology here at his office on Monday. On the occasion, the officials gave a detail briefing to Chief Minister about progress of introduction of E-governance system in the province. The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Minister for Science and Information Technology, Shahram Tarkzai along with Additional Chief Secretary Finance, Sahibzada Saeed, Secretary Planning and Development Dr Asad Ali, Secretary Information and Technology and other officials were present.

The civic body has planned an overhaul of its 15-year-old system to make administrative work more interactive and people-oriented.

"A replication of the PCMC's e-governance will be done in the PMC after the standing committee gives a green signal for a revamp. The elected members, including the standing committee members, want to the study PCMC's e-governance system to know if the users are satisfied. They will be give a presentation and interact with people currently using it," said Vishal Tambe, chairman of the standing committee.

In a proposal tabled before the standing committee, municipal commissioner Mahesh Pathak said the PCMC work in e-governance has been applauded by the Union government and all the civic bodies had been recommended to follow the model.

"The Pimpri Chinchwad Municipal Corporation (PCMC) has implemented this system successfully. The PMC standing committee members recently visited the PCMC to understand the system. In the meeting today, we discussed this model and decided to improvise and implement it," standing committee chairman Vishal Tambe told reporters on Tuesday.

Manish Kothari, president of Nashik Industries & Manufacturers' Association, told TOI, "There is a need to focus on e-governance throughout the country and introduce single tax system across all the states. The industrial policy should be improved so that it enables the industries to compete with their counterparts in other countries. The government should also focus on promoting small clusters of industries and sector-wise development."

The civic administration has placed a proposal effecting these changes before the standing committee which will discuss it next week.

The project, sponsored by a group of banks, will cost Rs 2.2 crore and would effectively mean replacing the existing system with 22 new software programs.

Employees proficient in information technology and handling computers will spearhead the initiative.

A circular issued Wednesday said 5-10 per cent of the existing administrative staff would constitute the cadre.

Common Service Centres (CSCs) also known as "Pragya Kendras" is a critical part of the National e-Governance Plan (NeGP), which is a major initiative of the Government of India for ushering in e-Governance for improving the quality of basic governance, on a massive scale in areas of concern to the common man.

The meeting was chaired by Vice Chancellor KU Prof Talat Ahmad who stressed upon ensuring active contribution of the University in the development of the Society through the capitalization of opportunities associated with the Information technology.

He hoped that in tune with its aims the Directorate will serve as a Central Resource for capitalizing the enormous opportunities associated with Information Technology.

IT in governance was introduced in India during the seventies with a focus on in-house government applications. There was a deployment of ICT to manage data intensive processes such as elections, census and tax administration. IT emerged as a transforming force in the early nineties with the deployment of wider-scale applications, with an emphasis on bridging the rural-urban divide and including all sections of the society into a then developing framework of e-Governance.

Launching the NagalandOne Community Service Centres (CSCs) at Indien village here on Saturday, Parliamentary Secretary for IT&C, Science & Technology, Technical Education and Taxes, Tovihoto Ayemi, however, said the Government is trying its best in resolving these challenges by setting up IT infrastructure like the State Wide Area Network (SWAN) and the State Data Centre (SDC).