Wb Kick Starts E-Governance Plan, Sets March & #8217;02 Deadline

In a bid to deliver transparent and fast services to the public, the re-elected Left Front government of Buddhadev Bhattacharya in West Bengal has started implementing an ambitious e-governance initiative, with March 2002 the deadline for several targets.

A strong votary of information technology, Bhattacharya has created a department for information technology (IT) to implement the task of creating a mother website, hyperlinked to all departments having interaction with the public, and to integrate the different IT systems implemented piecemeal in different government departments.

The concept plan for the entire exercise has been based on recommendations made global consultancy major PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) which submitted a study on the issue to the state in 2000.

To implement its plans, the government is exploring partnerships with several IT giants, the most notable among which are National Informatics Centre (NIC), global software major Micrsoft and Tata Infotech for education related services and NIIT, Wipro and Intel for training.

The cost of the initiative, shared by the IT department and beneficiary departments, may be close to Rs 100 crore, said sources.

Retraining of government staff has been initiated as well so that when the system rolls out by March 2002, there will be enough people to run it. Vendors are developing a competitively priced Begali software and keyboard.

The mother website (www.westbengal.gov.in), for example, will seek to integrate the completely computerised revenue and data collection network currently functioning under the state