E-Governance: 20/1/10

EASTERN RLY E-PROCUREMENT
Kolkata
The Hindu Business Line
The electronic procurement system in the Stores Department of Eastern Railway (ER) was launched at ER's headquarters at Fairlie Place here on Tuesday. With this, the uploading of stores bulletin tender to EPS will help reduce the lead time for making the items available and save the expenditure. Inaugurating the system, V.N. Tripathi, General Manager of ER, stressed the need for achieving early the targeted procurement and sale of scraps through the new system, according to an ER release.

NSPOT, PEC TO SELL IMPORTED PULSES THROUGH E-AUCTION
Chandigarh
The Financial Express
To galvanise sale of pulses imported by state-run PSUs, NSPOT, promoted by leading commodities exchange National Commodities and Derivatives Exchange (NCDEX) and state-run trading company PEC will now expand their operations by selling pulses and other imported agri-commodities through e-auctions.

NSPOT and PEC had earlier successfully traded urad and tur on an electronic platform on a pilot basis.

This new effort aims at helping traders and processors from satellite locations apart from the main trading hubs to actively participate in the e-tendering system and get accessibility to PEC.

NSPOT is the only spot exchange to have traded pulses successfully on spot exchange platform.

By this association, NSPOT and PEC hope to bring in price transparency, convenience and efficiency to traders and bring the PEC, pulses traders and Dal millers/processors on to a common trading platform where varied market participants can buy directly from PEC.

This particular welcome move has enticed and brought in lot of enthusiasm among the pulses trading community.

AVAILABLE FROM JUNE: ONLINE ACCESS TO CENTRE-FUNDED STATE SCHEMES
Tarannum Manjul, Lucknow
The Indian Express
The National Informatics Centre (NIC) Uttar Pradesh is working on a website linking project that will enable one to access the progress of Centrally-funded state schemes on the click of a mouse.

The linking will enable any state to not only see Uttar Pradesh's progress chart on the scheme, but will also make accessible the good practices being followed by the state. Uttar Pradesh is the second state being linked with the Government of India (GOI) websites after Karnataka.

This forms part of the National E-Governance Programme (NEGP) that has been undertaken by the state. The GOI schemes that will be under focus in the linking project include: National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS), the Janani Suraksha Yojna under the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM), the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojna (PMGSY), the Total Sanitation Campaign (TSC) and the Rural Drinking Water Mission.

GOVT'S E-GOVERNANCE POLICY BIASED, SAY OSS LOBBYISTS
Harsimran Singh, New Delhi
The Economic Times
India's open source software (OSS) lobbyists allege that popular software solutions from large companies, such as Microsoft, are being favoured in the proposed draft recommendations for the country's e-governance policy. The policy aims to adopt open technology standards and software for automating different government departments and functions.

It intends to guide the billion-dollar e-governance purchases and tenders, across government departments, for software and hardware over the next few years. The government has already allocated about $6 billion for various projects under the national e-governance plan.

According to people familiar with the draft recommendations, a meeting of the apex body on standards for e-governance was held last week, and the policy is close to being approved. ET was shown a copy of the proposed recommendations by one of the persons who requested anonymity.

"The recommendations given by an expert committee would make the policy very weak and would not favour open standards," said G Nagarajan, chairman, Free Software Foundation of India, which advocates that software should be free and open for all. The draft is also not clear on whether it will also impact existing e-governance projects or only new tenders. The draft policy, in its preamble, recommends that standards that are 'mature and have a large proliferation' will be considered. This is being contended by the OSS community that says that it will favour proprietary standards that have large proliferation amongst masses.

E-Governance News: 19/01/10

CORP BANK LAUNCHES E-STAMPING IN KARNATAKA
Mangalore
Business Line

Corporation Bank has launched e-stamping facility in Karnataka as a part of its strategy to increase services being offered to its clients.

The pilot launch was done at the Ram Bhavan Complex branch of the bank here on Monday by B.R. Bhat, General Manager (Government Transactions), in the presence of the Sub-Registrar of Mangalore and Regional Manager of Stock Holding Corporation of India Ltd (SHCIL).

A bank release said here that the arrangement is working well since April 2008 in Delhi.

It is now being extended to other states such as Karnataka, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and Gujarat in a phased manner.

Quoting Bhat, the release said that the facility will be rolled out in other cities such as Mysore, Hubli and Bangalore here very soon.

The release said that e-stamping is a computer-based application and a secured electronic way of stamping documents.

The prevailing system of physical stamp paper/franking is being replaced with the e-stamping system.

It is secure and reliable collection mechanism and storage of information in electronic form.

It would prevent the paper and process-related fraudulent practices.

Those intending to buy stamp papers can remit the eligible stamp duty amount at the designated bank branches of Corporation Bank.

The remitter will get e-stamp certificate on payment of the amount at the bank with all the details printed on the certificate.

This certificate becomes part of the valid document for the purpose of registration.

This ensures credit of legitimate revenue to the Government directly without any intermediaries being involved, it added.

ALL WIRED UP FOR THE GAMES
Vijaita Singh, New Delhi
Hindustan Times (Delhi edition)

A policeman sitting at the police headquarters near ITO in central Delhi will be able to see the person entering the Commonwealth Games Village in east Delhi, five kilometres away.

That's not all.

The cop will also be able to see every vehicle entering the city, a shopper at Karol Bagh market, a motorist on Parliament Street and all of them at one go.

If there is a threat anywhere in Delhi, the information will be fed into the system.

They will be colour coded in red, yellow and green based on the severity of the threat and will flash on screens.

Delhi Police are all set to install giant screens at a new center for command, control, coordination and communication called C4i.

The centre would be linked with cameras installed at 58 markets, 27 border check posts, 1,000 police control room (PCR) vans, 12 police video monitoring vehicles, 700 traffic vehicles and two city hotels.

"The live feed from the cameras would be displayed at the C4i centre. Any untoward movement or emergency would be spotted by the policeman sitting at the centre and relayed to the local police for necessary action," said a police officer.

SECURITY AUDIT OF 1,100 PCMC COMPUTERS SOON
Pune
The Indian Express

Pimpri-Chinchwad Municipal Corporation (PCMC) would soon do a security audit of a total of 1,100 computers installed in its various offices. Recently, the municipal corporation introduced several initiatives such as e-governance, online building permissions, e-tendering process and accepting complaints through e-mails.

PCMC officials said that various departments in the municipal corporation are being computerised and an emphasis is now laid on greater use of technology to increase work efficiency of the staff. Works like paying taxes, building permissions, tender process and birth and death registration are now being done with the help of computers and the internet. Information pertaining to environment status reports, various initiatives started by the different departments, information pertaining to Right to Information Act are all available on the website.

NEW SOFTWARE TO KEEP TRACK OF YOUR FILE, LETTER AT GOVT OFFICES
Dharmendra Jore, Mumbai
Hindustan Times (Mumbai edition)

The state Information Technology department is working overtime to provide relief to those whose files and grievance letters have been gathering dust at government offices because of red tape.

The department is fine-tuning the 12-year-old software that currently tracks movement of files in Mantralaya and other government departments across the state.

In the new system, any person, who has a mobile phone or Internet ID, will be given location of his letter or file through SMS or e-mail alerts.

The new system is essential because the old pending file tracking software -- the document journey management system -- does not help in fixing responsibility on the officers concerned.

"The various departments in Mantralaya receive around 15,000 applications or files every day. Most of them are carried manually, while others are moved through government's online system," said a senior officer, requesting anonymity because of lack of authorisation to speak with the media.