Kerala is bracing to be the first digital state in Digital India as the work on high-speed internet infrastructure nears completion and most of the government services come online.
The next cabinet meeting is expected to take a decision on announcing the landmark achievement. The Kerala IT Mission has prepared a report on the progress of the digital Kerala project to Information Technology Minister P.K. Kunhalikutty.
The state, however, is facing stiff competition from Goa to be the first digital state. Though the smaller state had an advantage in making internet and internet-based services universal, it lags Kerala in providing government services online.
Work on the National Optical Fibre Network intended to ensure high-speed internet in all panchayats will be finished this month in Kerala. Idukki has already been declared the first district in the country to finish work on the project.
The government has shifted its State Data Centre in Technopark completely to the cloud, doing away with separate servers for each of the government departments. This is the second such cloud service in India.
The government is moving beyond e-governance to m-governance. Preparations are in full steam to allow citizens to access government services through mobile phones.
A simple app being developed by the IT Mission would help citizens access a slew of government services through mobile phones. From paying electricity bills to collecting birth-death certificates, everything can be done through phones. The app is designed to help even those without a smart phone.
The Information Technology Department has started a project to set up wi-fi hot spots in each local self-government bodies. As many as 100 panchayats will become wi-fi within a month in the first stage of the project.
IT@School is already on the job of covering the more than 5,000 government schools in the state by wi-fi technology.
Kerala also leads the digital race with a digital textbook project run by IT@School and a digital locker system to help citizens store their digital documents in the cloud.
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Mahesh Guptan
Quelle/Source: onmanorama, 20.07.2015
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