PM reviews e-governance plan

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh Monday reviewed the National e-Governance Plan (NeGP) which focuses on DeitY, a unique countrywide initiative on mobile governance to provide public services to the citizens through mobile phones and handheld devices.

DeitY has launched Mobile Seva to provide public services through mobile phones and a pilot project connecting 59 panchayats in three states through National Optical Fibre Network (NOFN) for delivery of public services like tele-medicine, tele-education, skill development courses and banking services, according to an official statement.

"The lessons from the pilot project will be useful in utilising the NOFN infrastructure being planned to connect 2,50,000 gram panchayats," said the statement.

As many as 444 departments across the country have been integrated and are offering over 200 unique services to the citizens, it said.

Using this platform, over 15 crore transactional messages for various government services have been sent to the citizens.

The NeGP was approved in May 2006 to "make all government services accessible to the common man".

The prime minister's commitee on natiaonal e-governance plan, which held its second meeting Monday, directed all the government departments and ministries to leverage Mobile Seva for delivery of their services on mobile devices.

The committee also discussed how the emergence of new technologies, concepts and platforms such as cloud computing, mobile platform and the advent of Aadhaar can be leveraged to make the NeGP more effective and speed up its implementation, said the statement.