Uttar Pradesh to update official websites on real-time basis

Uttar Pradesh government websites containing stale information will be thing of the past.

To maintain transparency in the working of different departments and enable faster information dissemination, the state government today decided to update all the official websites on real time basis.

Although, the websites of various departments have been functioning for several years, the latest information is not updated either due to laxity of the concerned department or lack of technical expertise.

It was decided in a high-level meeting here that all the official websites numbering around 80 would be updated by the end of this month with the help of National Informatics Centre (NIC).

Thereafter, the concerned department would ensure that the respective websites contain fresh information and are updated regularly.

UP IT and Electronics principal secretary Chandra Prakash told Business Standard that NIC would man six special centres in the state secretariat to smoothen any technical glitches faced by the concerned departments.

Further, he would hold monthly meetings to review the status and ensure strict compliance.

Established in 1976, NIC is a premier central science and technology institution for providing state-of-art e-governance solutions in the government sector.

UP has been making fast strides in the field of e-governance. A smart card system is also likely to be introduced for public distribution system (PDS) under the food and civil supplies department to stop pilferage and illegal diversion of ration.

The government had been running a pilot project in select PDS shops in Sitapur district with smart cards entailing bio-metric identification. It was found 35 per cent of BPL card holders were not coming to procure ration in the pilot outlets, which could possibly mean these cards were not legitimate.

Besides, 6,000 common service centres known as Jan Suvidha Kendras (JSK) had been set up to offer services online. These would be ramped up to 17,000 with the help of private parties.

JSKs provide online income tax, caste, death, birth and domicile certificates, besides issuance/renewal of ration card, old- age pension etc.