E-Governance Updates: 01/06/09



 

RS 9.23 CRORE PCMC E-GOVERNANCE PROJECT APPROVED
Pune, May 31, 2009
The Times of <>India

The Union government on Friday gave approval for the Rs 9.23-crore e-governance project of the Pimpri-Chinchwad Municipal Corporation (PCMC). Speaking to TOI on Friday, Subhash Dumbre, additional commissioner, said the approval was given at a meeting held in New Delhi.

"Municipal commissioner Ashish Sharma has gone to New Delhi for a meeting about the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM) projects convened by the Union urban development ministry. The Software Technology Park (STP) has prepared the project report and officials of the STP accompanied him to Delhi," Dumbre said.

Giving details of the project, he added, "The PCMC has completed computerisation of its offices like the octroi department, zonal offices and others. However, all civic departments have not been interlinked. The corporation wants to develop an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solution software that contains all information about all civic departments."

Dumbre added that the PCMC will receive assistance from the Union and state governments under the JNNURM scheme for preparing the ERP software as well as purchasing the related hardware."

 

SMS BOOST TO NREGS PROJECTS
Kolkata, May 31, 2009
The Times of <>India

Muriganga Gram Panchayat employee Bishwapaty Gayne was used to travelling 17 km to the Sagar block office, delivering reports of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) projects under his jurisdiction. Since March this year, though, he has been filing his reports on his mobile phone and dispatching them via SMS.

Gayne is one amongst the numerous beneficiaries of a new state panchayat and rural development (PRD) department project that has introduced mobile telephony into the NREGS.

By enabling NREGS personnel at the panchayat level and above to register data on workers' daily assistance and wage disbursals via SMS, the PRD department is on the threshold of unleashing a possible revolution that could change the face of rural employment in Bengal.

"One of the biggest problems of NREGS was that critical information about the attendance of workers, progress of a project and wage payment weren't being relayed on time. By using mobile technology, we are enabling field supervisors and panchayat employees to send live data on a daily basis that is then uploaded on a publicly available website," Rajesh Kankaria, head of the projects' technology enabler SMSLive said.

The PRD department, along with the tech firm, had entered into a pilot project starting in February across five blocks of the state to test the feasibility of the concept. In addition to setting up a base server and other basic infrastructure at a cost of Rs 15 lakh, 11,000 mobile phones were distributed across the project area.

Consequently, the lives of NREGS personnel like Gayne have become substantially simpler. "Before I was given the mobile phone, travelling 17 km to the local block office was a regular affair. Now, I can file the reports from the actual site or from my office. Not only is the information instantly dispatched, it makes the payment process much simpler as the accounts are readily available to all parties," Gayne said.

Not only does this new technology allow for quicker transactions, it also ensures that NREGS workers many of whom have a hand-to-mouth existence can be paid on time.

"Despite the official guidelines, part-payment to workers is mostly untenable as precise measurements of a project need to be relayed before the wages are paid. In the past, the process could take up to a month. But now, with data moving quicker, workers can be paid in under 20 days. This is a big achievement," Shivshankar Maity of Dhablat village said.

Though the pilot project is yet to be implemented statewide, the PRD department is also looking at utilizing the mobile platform for other schemes.