No new info on govt websites

Azhar Qadri

Tribune News Service

Srinagar, May 1

Websites of various government departments are hardly updated with little information available about the working of these institutions, reflecting poor performance of the state’s prized e-governance project.

Go to the official website of the office of the Divisional Commissioner, the head of civilian administration of the Kashmir division, the latest order made public on the site dates back to January 2015. There are six more orders of which two date back to 2014 and four to 2013.

Visit the website’s “minutes of meetings” section and the details of only three meetings held this year “under the chairmanship of the Divisional Commissioner, Kashmir,” are for public viewing.

Even the official website of the state’s Information Technology Department, which has a “consultative and guiding role in all matters related to e-governance”, has updated the “result” section — which gives the progress report of its work — only up to 2013-14.

A scan of websites of various departments of the Jammu and Kashmir government highlights uninformative reporting of their day-to-day working.

Most of the state government websites are hosted by the National Informatics Centre and the information is provided and updated by the departments concerned.

The mismanagement in updating the websites is a violation of the stated objective of the draft IT Policy 2012 of Jammu and Kashmir. The policy aimed to encourage electronic governance to bring transparency in government operations, improve efficiency and effectiveness of government’s service delivery system and faster dissemination of information.

The state government’s e-governance project began in 2009 and suffered from slow pace of work that resulted in missing several deadlines and lapse of funding.

In the first four years, till 2013, Rs 33.37 crore of Central assistance was received out of which only Rs 19 crore was spent.

The officials, then, had blamed the delays in meeting the deadlines on lack of trained manpower and absence of an implementing agency.

State’s Information Technology Minister Imran Ansari and Minister of State for Information Technology Ajay Nanda were not available for comment.

The Secretary, Information Technology Department, said he would have to collect the details about the progress of the e-governance project before making any comment.