India E-Governance: 27/06/09

 

SMSLIVE SOFTWARE TO TRACK NREGS
Kolkata
Business Standard

The state panchayat and rural department in association with the Kolkata-based Pixel Informatics Private Limited is planning to distribute close to 50,000 mobile phones uploaded with SMSLive software by the end of the year, in a bid to track the implementation of NREGS.

This is a part of the m-governance or mobile governance project, a new initiative taken up by the P&RD department to expedite the implementation of the 100 days National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme.

The department roped in Kolkata-based Pixel Informatics for designing mobile-based software for transmission of live data under its brand SMSLive. The department successfully completed the pilot project of m-governance, which was conducted by Pixel Informatics in two districts of Purulia and South 24 paraganas.

Ankur Banerjee,director, Pixel Informatics Private Limited said, “We presented a proof of concept to the state P&RD department February last year and got the clearance after the success of the field test in two districts of South 24 paraganas and Purulia. We plan to complete the entire implementation of this m-governance project in West Bengal by the end of the year.” SMSLive, the mobile-based enquiry system, would help collect data of the beneficiaries under the NREGS.

In the first phase, beginning April 7 the state P&RD has handed over 1,100 mobile handsets to members of gram panchayats, panchayat samity and supervisors of NREGS in seventeen districts of Bengal. The department planned to distribute 50,000 phones in all the 18 districts of Bengal by the end of this year, he said. SMSLive will help the department collect field data of the number of men and women who reported for work and the amount disbursed instantly at the click of a message.

The supervisors of NREGS working on the field who have been entrusted with the job of collecting status of daily attendance and payment disbursal to wage earners, would have to send live attendance data by 2pm trough mobile message on a daily basis.

As on date, Rs 940 crore has been disbursed.

 

MCD BACK TO MANUAL TENDERING
New Delhi
The Hindu

Describing as “poor” the response to its model of preparing project estimates online, the Municipal Corporation of Delhi has decided to revert back to accepting tenders of up to Rs.10 lakh manually.

The e-tendering model was initially introduced to bring about transparency in the workings of the civic agency but according to municipal councillors, the online system was causing delay in fast-tracking projects in their wards as officials were still struggling to get a grasp on the workings of the system.

Speaking on the issue at a meeting of the MCD House on Monday, Leader of the House Subhash Arya said: “The online system known as Engineering Data Information System was not workable due to several reasons including lack of required technological training for the civic body staff. Even now all our junior engineers and assistant engineers do not even have laptops and Internet connectivity and they find it easier to work manually. Hence we have now asked that estimates for projects with a budget of up to Rs.10 lakh be prepared manually.”

MCD Commissioner K. S. Mehra also consented to the demand of the councillors and stated that till the problems being faced under the EDIS system were not ironed out, work on smaller projects would be done manually.