| Jharkhand : Bridging the Digital Divide | ||
| Shahid Ahmad & Amar Sinha, NIC Jharkhand | ||
| Jharkhand – the ‘Land of Jungles’ is known for its rich and colorful tribal culture, vast treasure of natural resources, spectacular waterfalls and thick forests. Formerly a part of Bihar state, Jharkhand was formed as a separate state on November 15th, 2000 with Ranchi as its capital. Jharkhand is one of the richest states in mines and minerals in the country. Spreading over an area of more than 79000 sq. km, the state has 5 divisions, 22 districts, 33 sub divisions and 212 blocks. The Literacy Rate is around 54%.NIC Jharkhand State Center came into existence in the year 2000 and since then it has been providing valuable ICT support to the government departments at various levels. The major areas include consultancy, training, establishing network and ICT infrastructure, video conferencing, design and development of application software, project implementation, etc.
Network Infrastructure is the backbone for all IT enabled services. NIC Jharkhand took up the challenge to connect 12 administrative buildings of the secretariat including the 2 main buildings – Project Building and Nepal House. A Campus Area Network of more than 500 nodes, with its hub centre at Nepal House, has been established to provide Intranet and Internet connectivity to the State Administration through NICNET. The hub centre is equipped with high-end routers, managed switches, antivirus servers, Firewall, NMS, etc to provide a secure connectivity.
The State Government’s dream of facilitating easy interaction with the villagers of remote districts came true in November 2001, when four Commissionaries of Jharkhand got connected through Video Conferencing network of NIC. The initiatives of NIC Jharkhand to bridge the digital-divide bore fruit when the then PM of India Shri A. B. Vajpayee inaugurated the ‘Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan’ and interacted with the villagers of a remote Koinjhari village through Video Conferencing. Subsequently, NIC extended the VC facility to His Excellency the Governor of Jharkhand, Hon’ble CM, Ministers in the State Cabinet, senior functionaries of the State Govt. and all the Districts. The installation work of VC facility at Jharkhand Bhawan, New Delhi is in progress.
Hon’ble CM chairing a VC session with all DCs in a meet on the issue of Drought
Through the websites developed for various departments, NIC has not only presented Jharkhand to the national and international community, it has also highlighted the mineral rich remote tribal districts of the state. To name a few websites developed by the State Centre:
Almost all the districts of Jharkhand have a website furnishing details of the districts. The websites are available at http://districts.nic.in.
NIC Jharkhand publishes results of various examinations conducted by Jharkhand Academic Council and Central Institute of Psychiatry on the Internet. In some cases, the admit cards are also made available on the web.
An ‘INTRAJHR’ portal has been developed by NIC Jharkhand on open source using Zope/Plone Content Management Framework. NIC employees use this portal extensively for official communications, discussion forums and knowledge sharing.
In an attempt to extend the benefits of ITES in the health sector – a single window system for registration and enquiry of patients was developed and implemented at the Mahatma Gandhi Medical College, Jamshedpur. The software was inaugurated by Dr. Dinesh Sarangi, Hon’ble Minister of Health, Govt of Jharkhand in August 2003 and has the following features:
Treasury Computerization in Jharkhand started in the year 2005. A LAN based solution has been designed and developed on a 2-tier architecture (VB/Oracle 9i on Linux server) incorporating a tight role based security for different types of users. The application has automated all the major processes of the treasury functions and authentication procedures. Transactions through bank have been made online using Dial up connectivity or LAN. The application has helped in timely generation of accounts, reduced paper work and removal of offline entry of vouchers. The system also facilitates GPF accounting and is fully operational at 17 locations and will soon be extended to all treasuries and sub-treasuries of the state. A centralised web-based interface (http://jhr.nic.in/treasury) has been implemented to monitor the daily transactions being made in the districts. The State Government officials are extensively using this interface for monitoring the financial health of the state.
The Directorate and all the District GPF offices are computerized for maintaining the subscribers details, their contributions, advances and refunds and generates the necessary accounts and reports as and when required. A web interface has also been developed for the subscribers of the Directorate.
NIC Jharkhand successfully implemented VAHAN and SARATHI software in all the 18 District Transport Office (DTO), 4 Regional Transport Authority and State Transport Authority offices in the state. The registration of vehicle, tax realisation, issue of permits and vehicle fitness details are done through VAHAN software whereas SARATHI is used for issuing driving license, conductor’s license and license to driving schools. Jharkhand won the Silver Icon award at the 9th National Conference on e-Governance under Service Delivery category for VAHAN software. In six districts, namely Dhanbad, Ranchi, Hazaribag, Jamshedpur,
Hon’ble Minister of Transport, Transport Commissioner and SIO-Jharkhand at the inauguration of Smart card Based Driving License and Registration project at Ranchi Bokaro and Koderma, the Registration Certificate Book and Driving License are being issued in smart card medium. Efforts are being made to extend this facility to all the 18 DTOs in the near future.
Unicode based application software has been developed in VB.Net on MS SQLSERVER for the Land Record Computerization in the state. The pilot implementation is being carried out in east Singhbhum district to maintain the information regarding KHATIYAN and REGISTER-II in digital format. Once the pilot is successful, the application will be rolled out in the entire state.
NIC is providing necessary support for the computerization and preparation of the State Budget every year. The Budget is also uploaded on the state website and a budget CD is released every year.
( L to R) SIO-Jharkhand, Principal Secretary-Finance, Chief Secretary, Minister-Finance, George Dieken-Mission Director, USA at the release of Budget CD
NIC Jharkhand provides active support to the state Government during the Lok Sabha and Vidhan Sabha elections. This includes management of entire range of pre-poll and post-poll activities, data transmission, website management, etc. An application software has been developed to take care of activities such as personnel deployment at the polling booths, management of booth information, support in counting processes, etc.
The Birsa Munda Central Jail, Ranchi has been computerized on the pattern of the Tihar Jail, on pilot basis. The system maintains a comprehensive database about the prisoners – their photographs and biometrics, physical locations, their movements, medical history, actions taken by the court and crimes committed by them, etc. The Visitors information and monitoring is also done through the system.
ISDN based video conferencing facility has been setup between the Birsa Munda Central Jail and the civil court, Ranchi for the hearing of cases without physically moving the prisoners. On an average 50 cases are attended daily using the VC facility. Another 16 pairs of Civil Courts and Central jails are being taken up in the current financial year.
Ranchi civil court has been taken up as the pilot site for the city civil court computerization project. A state of art LAN has been established covering 50 courts and offices in different buildings in the campus. The software for maintaining the case details, judgment orders and causelist generation has already been made operational.
Jharkhand High court computerization has been a major achievement of NIC State Centre. The court information system maintains the status of cases right from its filing and generates the causelists on Daily and Monthly basis which is uploaded on the court website. The system also maintains the Judgment of the cases for future references and the litigants can enquire their case status through the IVRS facility.
An Appointment Management System has been implemented for His Excellency the Governor and Hon’ble CM of Jharkhand. The system maintains and manages the appointments and engagements and prepares the daily schedules resolving the time conflicts. The system operates on authority based security model.
NIC is extending full support for computerization of Raj Bhawan and CM Secretariat. A technical expert has been posted at both the locations to support their computerization activities and a Campus Area Network is in place to cater to the connectivity requirements.
NIC Jharkhand is conducting both – general awareness programmes and specialised training programmes on application software for the officials of Jharkhand Government.
The pilot implementation of PGMS is being carried out at the district of Palamu. The system captures the grievances from the point it is lodged till the time it is redressed. The application is used for monitoring of pendencies and helps in early redressal of grievances.
e-Personel is a web-based system that maintains the details of government officials posted in the department. The MIS supports generation of different reports based on the requirement. Pilot implementation is underway at Dhanbad district and some of the secretariat departments.
A web-based application has been designed for monitoring the cases in District Magistrate’s court. The application allows the DM to enter the next hearing date right from the courtroom without intervention of any other staff. The application generates date wise causelist and has been implemented in Dumka district on pilot basis
The E-Vikas application enables district level officials like DC, DDC and BDO to monitor the implementation status of various schemes and projects. The highlight of this application is that state level officials can also monitor the individual projects. This is a web-based application using Unicode. The individual schemes/projects can be monitored upto the village, panchayat, block and district level. This has been implemented at the district of Lohardagga on pilot basis.
The 22 District Centers of NIC are broadly contributing in areas like DRDA, schemes monitoring, arms licensing, education, health, revenue, recruitment and transfer processes, welfare, Old Age Pension Scheme, Court Cases Monitoring, internet and email support through local RAS, Training, etc.
The PCIS (Passport Control and Issuance System) package has been implemented at Regional Passport Office, Ranchi since April 2003. The entire process starting from receiving application to printing and dispatching of Passport is now on-line. A computer generated file number is given to applicant during submission of application for future enquiry over telephone or through passport website (http://www.passport.nic.in). Various modules covered under this project are:
In addition to this, the District Administration, Jamshedpur (East Singhbhum) launched a site (http://jamshedpur.nic.in/login.asp) where the applicants applying for passport in District Passport Cell can view the status of verification being done by SP and CID office. The verification details can be viewed using the receipt number allotted by the District Passport Cell.
It is a web based Integrated Management Information System for FCI which captures the complete workflow of FCI from depot to head office levels and extends a new way of reconciliation of stock figures, thereby transforming the current depot setup into a computerized environment. NIC is supporting the computerization activities at the District Centres of Ranchi and Hazaribagh as well as their depots too.
For Further Information, contact Shahid Ahmad email: sio-jhr@nic.in |
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Jharkhand : Bridging the Digital Divide
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