Goa government signs memorandum with Google India

The Goa government on Tuesday signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Google India to promote digital literacy, develop internet safety education for students, promote android development and make government websites mobile friendly.

The MoU was signed by Chief Minister Laxmikant Parsekar and Vice-President Google South East Asia and India Rajan Anandan in Panaji.

"We look forward to working with the state government to create an enabling environment and ecosystem to help students, small and medium businesses and entrepreneurs to realise the full potential of the internet and the opportunities it offers," Anandan told reporters after signing the MoU.

For starters the state government, along with Google, will launch 'Internet safety education' for students in Goa, which, according to Anandan, will help students use the Internet more productively and with safety.

"Google India has initiated teacher training and will soon expand to cover 460 schools and 80,000 students," Anandan said.

Parsekar said that another aspect of the MoU was to provide internet knowledge to women in rural Goa, so that they could use technology to lead better lives.

"We plan to expand the scope of this association to launch digital literacy drive amongst women in our state and also introduce programmes to help small and medium businesses..." Parsekar said, adding that a mushrooming start-up community in Goa, would also benefit from the association with Google India.

Anandan also said that Google India would help make state government's websites mobile friendly as most websites were not being accessed by users on mobile phones.