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Gujarat e-governance project on a roll

Batuk Vora in Gandhinagar

Inside the parking lot of the Gujarat Assembly building, a small room - with a "core router" and a digital camera atop a television set - has become the focus of the state government's e-governance initiative.

The small room is the nerve of the Gujarat State Wide Area Network that organises voice and videoconferences between the state secretariat and 25 district offices and sub-district offices across the state to expedite the decision-making process.

Though a late starter, Gujarat has taken big strides on the path to e-governance in recent months.

The government offices in Gandhinagar have been brought under a single network while key officials now have videoconferencing facilities with district and sub-district chiefs. Just the networking of the Gandhinagar offices will save the state government Rs 100,000 a day on telephone calls.

The digital phones the officials will use have built-in answering machines and conference call facilities. Furthermore, a few top government officials and ministers have been given satellite phones to save communication channels from any disaster-breakdown.

Satellite phones came in handy during the January 26 earthquake, which completely destroyed communication lines for days. The state government now has plans to set up a 'server farm' capable of storing records of various departments and enabling data file transfers.

But Gujarat still lags behind the southern states as far as using information technology for citizen-centered services is concerned. Andhra Pradesh, for instance, has put the database of various departments online while Karnataka is concentrating on human resources development by introducing computer education in 1,000 schools.

According to a recent survey, Gujarat is also far behind other states so far as attracting IT projects is concerned. Out of the 372 projects countrywide with an investment of Rs 331.30 billion, Gujarat bagged only eight projects worth Rs 7.76 billion.

Karnataka has 86 projects worth Rs 115.88 billion, Andhra Pradesh 41 with Rs 27.15 billion, Maharashtra 54 projects with Rs 76.87 billion and even Uttar Pradesh has 45 projects with Rs 25.95 billion of investment.

But officials in Gujarat take pride in fact that the state has covered a lot of ground on the IT front despite working with a slashed budgetary allocation due to natural calamities and overspending in non-planned sectors.

The allocation for IT development in the current year has shrunk from about Rs 1 billion to Rs 588 million, said Neeta Shah, deputy director of the Gujarat Informatics Ltd, the nodal agency for all IT development and planning.

By September this year, all the sub-district level offices are going to be connected. Voice, data and video communication has been put in place at the district level so far, said Shah.

The two departments forming the core of the emerging Gujarat State Wide Area Network are revenue and panchayati raj (local self-government) as they have the maximum data and direct relation with the common people.

Following that would be a program to train the chief information officers of 23 departments. Ministers and legislators are to be trained within the Assembly building. "This is an attempt to change the traditional mode of working and the entire mindset itself," said Shah.

In the long term, the state plans to set up information kiosks for the people throughout, develop human resource, promote new enterprises and attract new industries.

"In contrast to the project-based top-down approach of Andhra Pradesh, we have adopted the bottom-up one within a well worked out framework. That includes citizens' all-encompassing identity cards, ration cards, voters' Ids, etc," said Shah.

But there is some opposition to the government's IT march. A section of social workers and non-governmental organizations in Gujarat is critical of the process, saying IT is meant for the elite and the government should instead concentrate on eradicating poverty.

Those in favor of developing the sector argue that some aspects of poverty could be abolished by faster electronic means like IT and any attempt to downgrade IT's mass utilisation could boomerang and harm the people's interests.

Meanwhile, among the infrastructure projects under implementation is Infocity, which is to provide state-of-the-art facilities to entrepreneurs with a brand new Videsh Sanchar Nigam Ltd earth station that would establish high-speed connectivity.

The twin towers of the complex are expected to be ready by September.

Infocity is a joint venture, led by a Florida-based nonresident Indian-owned company Creative Choice, and is being built in Gandhinagar.

The existing Gujarat Software Park at Gandhinagar now has 346 registered firms. Export turnover of software from Gujarat has gone up from Rs 63 million in 1997-98 to Rs 1.05 billion in 2000-2001 (provisional), he said.

In comparison, Karnataka's software export figure is around Rs 500 billion. One modern experiment under implementation is an incubation center to train new investors and entrepreneurs in IT utilisation.

Indo-Asian News Service

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