Obsolete websites no more!

Gurvinder Singh

Tribune News Service

Ludhiana, June 18

Websites for districts across the state are either ill-designed, static or based on obsolete web design. On top of that, there is no uniformity of design for all districts of the state.

However, the district websites of many other states, including those of neighbouring ones, have better design, are well-organised and have a uniform format.

While the Punjab Government has been pitching the state as an investment destination and making efforts to boost tourism, the poorly-designed websites of districts can become a spoilsport, because websites nowadays are a significant platform for giving information about districts and states to prospective visitors or tourists.

When asked, Kashmir Singh, District Informatics Officer, said the work on the project of redesigning websites of districts in the state is under way and would be completed within two months. In fact, the format for the districts would be selected from pre-designed themes under ‘Swaas’ initiative of Digital India. All themes have similar format, which lends uniformity in design to the websites of all districts, making it user-friendly, easier to navigate and better in design.

The redesign of the websites of districts would be done on a priority, he said. The redesign of different state departments’ websites, in case these were developed by the National Informatics Centre (NIC), would be done in the second phase.

The themes which are available for websites for the districts have similar format, with slideshow of pictures related to the district and links like ‘About District’, ‘Directory’, ‘Departments’, ‘Tourism’, etc. bordering on top of the slideshow space and information about Deputy Commissioner appearing at the bottom right corner of the screen, statistics in the middle and quick links, helpline numbers are likely to come at the bottom of the web page. Like the websites being designed nowadays, the new website of districts is likely to have ‘responsive design’ that changes according to the screen size, making it easier to view them on a smartphone as well.