First IT-enabled district in Kerala

Palakad district collectorate in Kerala is all set to be
declared India's first IT-enabled district headquarters among the 600 odd
district headquarters in the country. The total computerization of the district
collectorate had begun in May last year under the Modernization Govern-ment
Program (MGP) initiated by the state government for reforming administration.
State chief minister Oomen Chandy would make the declaration regarding Palakad
District collectorate on October 26.

National Informatics Center (NIC) as the total solutions
provider gave the software and other technical support for the project. "We
had undertaken the project from scratch inclu-ding entire site preparation and
development of software in open source. NIC designed and developed 70 different
modules as part of the govern-ment's drive to have less-paper offices,"
informed director of NIC VS Raghunathan.

Touch screen kiosks, Intera-ctive Voice Response Systems (IVRS),
Internet kiosks, SMS, etc. were all implemented under the total computeriza-tion
drive. This is intended to bring the entire gamut of government services
accessible to the common man. The computerization has been implemented in three
layers- 'e-citizens' at the top, Colle-ctorate intranet in the middle and
functional applications in the bottom.

NIC has posted two of its officers in all the district
collectorates. Intranets titled 'DC Suites' have been deployed in various
district collectorates and NIC expects to have fun-ctional intranets in all the
district collectorates in a month's time.

Meanwhile, a web-based citizen's grievance redressal solution
`e-parati' developed by NIC has been implemented in Malapuram District
Colle-ctorate. Malapuram had alre-ady earned the distinction of being the first
e-literate district in the country through the `Akshaya' program. `E-parati'
Ver 1.0 will be rolled out soon in other district collectorates, according to
NIC officials. With the introduction of web-based grievance redressal system,
the status of a file or an application in the district collectorates can be
tracked from anywhere in the world.

(CyberMedia)