State set for e-governance

quot;The e-governance network will make it possible for Chief Minister Keshubhai Patel and his ministerial colleagues to hold video-conferences with State collectors and other district administration officers. The two-way audio-visual communication facility would be set up with the help of Department of Telecommunications DoTquot;, Science and Technology Advisor to the Chief Minister N V Vasani told Express Newsline on Sunday.

Vasani said that after linking the district headquarters with the Secretariat, the taluka-level network would be commissioned by 2002 in the second phase and the villages would be covered thereafter. quot;The DoT should be able to provide Internet connections in all the 25 districts by January 26, thus helping us in e-governance. Places where database access through DoT may not be available will be covered by satellitequot;, he explained.

Once the district headquarters are computer-linked, the political bosses sitting in their Secretariat offices will be able to establish communications faster with district administration officials, helping them in decision-making. The facility will also help the common man as grievances can be redressed at the district-level without running to the State Capital.

To give a boost to IT and make the e-governance plan a grand success, the government has decided to set up a world class national-level Indian Institute of Information Technology IIIT in Gandhinagar. quot;The Centre has given its nod for this institute that will start functioning from the next academic yearquot;, declared Vasani, adding that the estimated project cost would be about Rs 40 crore.

The institute, the second after Hyderabad, will offer post-graduate diploma courses and also carry out research and development activities in information technology, prepare entrepreneurs in software and create IT management personnel and trained manpower.

Gujarat Informatics Ltd GIL, a company set up by the government to develop IT in the State, has already taken several initiatives to help the government usher in e-governance successfully.

Said GIL Managing Director Jayanti Ravi, quot;We have directed all the government departments to prepare their IT action plan with a five-year perspective. It is also proposed to appoint chief information officers for all government departments, each of which has been asked to create a shareable database and document imaging system to reduce paperworkquot;.

Besides, each of the departments has been directed to create web pages under the government website, Jayanti Ravi said, adding, quot;GIL is also in the process of providing details of necessary parameters required by these departments to deploy GR government resolution management software systemquot;.

Under this software system, all government resolutions relating to the departments concerned will be compiled and maintained on CD, with the IT department having already completed this task. A multi-lingual software for word processing will also be prepared and introduced in each of the government departments.

Said the GIL official, quot;As many as 13 common software modules have been identified to be developed and deployed by the various government departments, corporations and boards which relate to subjects like registry, pay and accounts, employee information system, file movement and tracking, enquiries, legislative assembly questions LAQs, pension, court cases, tumar monitoring, worksheet monitoring, budget formulation, annual planning and MLA, MP reference DO lettersquot;.

No Naidus here
E-governance is fine, but a reality that the Gujarat Government seems to be overlooking is that the political bosses do not know much about computers. Though the BJP government had recently made basic computer training mandatory for all the ministers, hardly half a dozen became computer-proficient. The rest do not know even elementary usage. quot;We tried our best to make these ministers computer-savvy during the training programme, but unfortunately most of them failed,quot; said a senior official in the State IT department, adding, quot;they will have to learn to operate their machines, if they want to impart their obligatory duties effectively under the e-governance projectquot;. Said the official, quot;Even Chief Minister Keshubhai Patel will have to learn at least elementary lessons in computer use if he really hopes to emulate his Andhra Pradesh counterpart N Chandrababu Naidu.

A minister has to have basic knowledge of computer handling to have an interface with district officials during an audio-video conferencequot;. Among the ministers who are considered computer-savvy are Suresh Mehta, Jay Narayan Vyas, Jaspal Singh, Fakirbhai Vaghela, Bimal Shah, and Haren Pandya. In sharp contrast to this, many bureaucrats are reported to be conversant with computers.