GYANDOOT
DHAR (Madhya Pradesh): Gyandoot is a unique form of Government to Citizen e-commerce activity being performed in Central India, wherein the local elected governing council (District Panchayat, Dhar) is enabling over half a million rural tribal citizens affordable access to various government and market related needs through economically viable state-of-the-art Information Technology.

Gyandoot is an intranet in the tribal district of Dhar in Central India. It is a community-based, highly cost-effective and financially self-reliant approach to bringing the benefits of Information Technology to the doorsteps of tribal villagers.

Bhoomi
Karnataka’s e-governance initiative, through which it has started computerizing the 17-million odd land records throughout the State. The project, the first of its kind in the country, aims to empower the farmer. While this may be a small step for the Government, for the farmer, it is nothing short of a revolution. Instead of being at the mercy of village accountants, a farmer can now walk into any of the Taluk offices and ask for a printout of his computerized land record certificate for a mere Rs 15 from the land records booth. One can also check the details of all land records on the touch-screen kiosk by inserting a two-rupee coin. These kiosks, installed at the Taluk office, will provide for a public interface at the land records centre. Karnataka, with a sponsorship from the Central Government, aims to fight corruption and boost transparency in land record administration through Bhoomi. The computerization of the records, which began last year, is in full swing in the State. It is nearly complete in about 70 of the 177 taluks and is expected to be fully in place by September.

Panchmahals
Villagers of Panchmahals, Gujarat now travel only to their nearest STD/ISD kiosk to obtain their ration cards or sanction for old age pension. Gujarat Online Ltd (GOL) completed the networking of the entire state of Gujarat in record time. They will operate and maintain it for the state and after eight years will transfer the reigns to the state government for a token fee of Re 1 the portal, www.mahitishakti.net is indented to provide a single window to all-relevant information and services on almost all aspects of government and its future plans.

Ushering in the IT revolution to villages where more than 70 per cent of the Indian population lives, is a dream that has come true at Warna in the Kolhapur District of Maharashtra. The special IT Task force set up by the Prime Minister recommended modernizing the cooperative movement through use of state-of-the-art Information technology. This led to the "Wired Village" project initiated by the Prime Minister’s Office. The key objective of the project is to demonstrate the effective contribution of an IT infrastructure to the socioeconomic development of a cluster of 70 contiguous villages around Warna Nagar in the Kolhapur and Sangli Districts of Maharashtra.

FRIENDS
It is the acronym for Fast, Reliable, Instant, Efficient, Network for Disbursement of Services. It is a unique IT project taken up by the Government of Kerala, to take the benefits of Information Technology to the common man. It is a "Single Window Scheme" in which the consumer is given the option of paying for the common services rendered to him under a single roof. The major aspect of this concept is to treat the citizen who is paying for the services rendered to him as a valued customer who must be given all the respect that he richly deserves.

To put it simply, FRIENDS is a multiple agency bill collection system. As per the prevailing system, the customers/ consumers/clients are issued a Bill/Demand Notice by the concerned agency providing services, based on which the various regional/sectional offices of the agency collect the payment. The FRIENDS project envisages facilitating the collection of various payments pertaining to payees within specified area limits like corporation municipality etc at a single centre.

Computerization of land records
It has been concluded in Madhya Pradesh with the completion of data entry, of land records in almost all the villages of the State. Land records have been computerized in the State following which farmers are now being provided the computerized copies of the Government documents like kharsa. The computerization of land records has been completed after nine years of hard work. Of the 55,897 villages in the State, the data entry work of land records has already been completed in 55,677 villages. Along with computers, all the necessary equipment has been installed in all tehesils of the State. The pilot project for computerization of land maps has already been completed. The tables of agriculture computing, weather and crop reports, information of rainfall, cattle census, minor irrigation projects, statements of land settlement, tables of land inspection works of patwaris for scientific scrutiny etc have also been computerized.

Transport dept becomes Smart
In a bid to remove doubts on the Smart Card Scheme, introduced by the Transport department in Madhya Pradesh, officials of the department looked at grievance redressal of participants of the 45 districts, who were present at the district Setcom center. There is great curiosity among people towards the recently launched Smart Card scheme of the State Government and they are eager to know the various implications of the scheme. Representatives of the district administration transport department and public representatives also participated in the discussions. The programme was expected to remove the confusion among the people about the Smart Card. The Smart Card Scheme of the department has been implemented in Bhopal, Gwalior, Jabalpur, Indore, Ujjain, and Dewas districts.

E-agriculture
The next in line, the Agriculture Minister of Madhya Pradesh, Mahendra Singh has announced the ‘e agriculture marketing’ scheme for effective marketing of agriculture produce in the State. As per the scheme, all mandis and interstate check post would be connected to seven regional offices and mandiboard headquarters through computers and the BOT (build, operate and transfer) formula would be adopted for this purpose. Singh said that the scheme would benefit both farmers and traders. Besides, the trader would get all documents from one place. Singh said that the Agriculture department has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Madhya Pradesh Agency for Promotion of Information Technology. He added that initially some mandis would be selected as model for the project and they would be linked through computers.

Ration becomes smart…
In January, Kerala achieved a unique feat by launching the first smart ration card. For the citizens, a smart ration card may not be of much help but it certainly helps the administration prevent hoarding, black marketing and pilferage of PDS goods into the open market. The larger objective is to set up a citizen database using the information on ration cards.

Buses adopting IT
Kerala State Road Transport Corporation (KSRTC), is now implementing an ASP-based business transaction model, Venus, whereby 83 depots and five service depots of KSRTC are linked through a web server. Programmed on visual basic riding on SQL servers, Venus integrates collection, inventory, fuel, payroll, accident, and accounting details on a daily basis and will be available for analysis/batch processing at the head office. Many schedules are cancelled for want of tyre cards. As many as 500 tyres get punctured every day but the repaired tyres cannot be used unless its tyre card which is with the respective bus depot is send on time. At present, it may take a week to get the tyre card. Now the tyre cards can be generated electronically from any depot by feeding the required information on website. Keltron was assisting KSRTC with inventory control and MIS. Later, KSRTC decided to do it in-house. In 1988, KSRTC took up centralized vehicle management and in 1995 one of the depots was made online for waybill, ticket collection and accounting.

Of glorified typewriters…
Keltron is involved with most of the e-governance projects in the state. The most ambitious project is the‘ e-shringala‘, the community information kiosks being set up in all the panchayats in Kerala. The kiosks are designed to provide information of various schemes, downloading of applications, farmer counseling, online SSI unit registration etc. This is launched with the involvement of panchayats and local bodies.

TEAM DQ