Governance2.Org

Your passport in three days, the ambitious Rs 1,100-crore Passport Seva Project (PSP) to be launched by the ministry of external affairs(MEA) on October 1 has been postponed – probably for another month.
TCS was expected to roll out the first pilot Passport Seva Kendra, (PSK) at Bangalore and Chandigarh which would be extended across the country subsequently. According to sources, just before the launch in testing the software, the Standardisation, Testing and Quality Certification (STQC) found about 600 bugs in the software that existed till after the third testing done recently. Continue Reading »

A Centre of e-Governance (CeG) has come up in capital New Delhi to disseminate awareness about e-Governance initiatives in the country.
The CeG enhancement plan is a part of the “Awareness and Communication ” activity under NeGP and seeks to bring the achievements under NeGP under one umbrella for the information of citizens. The Centre will provide the visitor an opportunity to experience different e-services as well as digitally record his / her impressions of the CeG. Continue Reading »

The citizens’ dream of “anytime, anywhere” government services could be a reality by 2013 with the Centre deciding to pump in Rs 20,175 crore for as many as 27 projects for this purpose under its National e-Governance Plan (NeGP) in the next four years.
The plan, jointly formulated by the department of administrative reforms and public grievances and department of information technology, will cover almost all kind of services which can be provided to citizens online. While 16 projects worth Rs 10,622 crore have already got the Cabinet’s approval, the remaining ones will be unveiled in due course taking state governments on board. Continue Reading »

Dismayed over the poor response to the facility for online registration of birth and death in its limits, the Coimbatore Corporation is looking at ways to popularise the system.
Establishing a network between the Corporation and private hospitals and reaching out to the public through the media are some of the options that the civic body is working on.
The Corporation gets only two to three online applications a month after spending huge sums on e-governance, which includes birth and death registration. Continue Reading »

Given laptops as part of the civic body’s e-governance programme, councillors now want an extra Rs 5,000 a month so that they can hire a man to operate the computer.
The e-governance programme — according to the municipality’s Standing Committee chairman Vijendra Gupta — is aimed at making the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) a “paper-free office”. Not only have councillors got laptops and printers, there is demand from some to upload minutes of all Standing Committee meetings on the Net. Continue Reading »

Haryana’s Maharshi Dayanand University (MDU) Tuesday became a completely Wi-Fi (wireless fidelity) campus with the commencement of an integrated telephony and internet system – the largest wi-fi campus in Haryana.
Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda inaugurated the facility on the university campus here.
HCL Info-systems has executed the wide area networking project.
The new integrated system provides for high-speed, high-bandwidth and optic fibre connectivity to all offices and departments of the university. Users will be able to access high internet speed, MDU officials said. [Via]

For India’s 375 million-and-growing mobile phone users, 2009 holds the promise of third generation (3G) mobile and WiMax services.
The new technologies bring with it an exciting array of services —super fast internet on the mobile, video calls, interactive gaming et al. But far more important, these will enable rural India to access facilities such as e-governance, e-education, and tele-medicine among others.
The superior connectivity offered by these platforms can be used to bridge the digital divide and provide internet and data services to those who have no access to landlines.
The year 2009 is also set to herald the entry of a slew of WiMax enabled handsets, which will enable consumers to use this platform and internet telephony calls on their mobile. Exploiting WiMax for voice will push mobile tariffs in India, which are already the lowest in the world, to further lows.
However, experts caution that the opportunity lies in seeing WiMax as being complementary, rather than competing with 3G. The battle lines have been drawn — it is no secret that some of the leading names in the global telecom space have intensified their efforts to prevent WiMax platform from taking root and spreading its wings in India. Read on …

e-procurement, the process of online tendering has gained widespread acceptance in a short span of time and it is now being used by 20 State departments, said Secretary e-Governance B L Sridhar.
Delivering a talk on e-governance in the City on Tuesday he said, “The e-procurement programme when implemented fully will result in a saving of Rs 1,000 crore for the Government. It started with three departments and now 20 departments have adopted e-procurement platform. Already Rs 1,000 worth of Government funds have been approved through the e-procurement process,” he said. [Via]

In what could possibly be one of the best e-governance initiatives for the police department, Wipro Infotech has developed an integrated police information system, which will cover day-to-day administration of the department, as well as back-end processes.
The process had been automated to ease the tasks of administration and record keeping, thereby bringing in operational efficiency throughout the police department.
The application is also incorporated with a citizen interface, through which complaints can be raised and status of an already lodged FIR could be known. The user interface can display content both in English and local language.

The benefits include:

1. Faster public response
2. Maintenance of details of criminals
3. Keeping track of the status of cases
4. Monitoring and enhancing departmental performance
5. Significantly reducing paper work and manual register maintenance
6. Eliminating duplicate and inconsistent record keeping
7. Providing quick and easy access to historic data, thus enabling accurate forecasting [Via]

To streamline and improve the civic administration, the Margao Municipal Council (MMC) will be activating its e-governance by encouraging people to post their problems and seek solutions by sending their queries to the e mail id: mmc@gmail.com.
MMC chairperson Savio Coutinho said on Friday that the service will be functional from next week and hoped that it would go a long way in solving the problems of the people who often have to come to the
council to seek solutions to their problems.
Now, queries about documents required for any particular purpose, procedures for obtaining licenses or keeping abreast of the status of certain applications etc., can be provided directly to the people. The queries/information sought will be forwarded to the concerned department/section and the details shall be forwarded on mail, Savio said and pointed out the mail service will be a window to correspondence and redressal of grievances but for actual work to be done, the concerned persons will have to come to the council. [Via]