Will the Minister of ELECTRONICS AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY be pleased to state:
(a) whether the Government has utilised technology to bring transparency;
(b) if so, the details thereof;
(c) whether the websites of the Ministries and subordinate offices remain either out of order or are not updated regularly; and
(d) if so, the action taken by the Government in this regard so as to provide the benefit of present technology for transparency to the people and the outcome thereof ?
(a) to (d): A statement is laid on the Table of the House.
STATEMENT REFERED TO IN REPLY TO LOK SABHA STARRED QUESTION NO.*318 FOR 02.01.2019 REGARDING TECHNOLOGY TO BRING TRANSPARENCY
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(a): Yes, Sir.
(b): National Informatics Centre (NIC) an attached office of Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology, provides ICT services to Government offices across the country. Following are some key projects that help in promoting transparency.
1. Central Public Procurement Portal
Government has mandated online electronic tendering and also emphasized that all tender enquiries be published in Central Public Procurement Portal which provides complete transparency on the various tender notices issues , bid received , results of bid evaluation and also the details of Award of the tender.
2. Eoffice
eOffice is being used by government offices to usher in efficient and transparent inter-government and intra-government file transactions. eOffice is digital workplace solution for automating file processing in government offices. It is based on Central Secretariat Manual of e-Office Procedure (CSMeOP). The product is built as single reusable system to enhance transparency whereby files can be tracked and their status is known.
3. National Portal of India
National Portal of India – https://india.gov.in, along with the services portal - https://services.india.gov.in are the one stop solution for information dissemination for the citizen. This has created transparency in government function, policies, schemes, services, etc.
4. Open Government Data (OGD) Platform India
Government of India under the aegis of National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy (NDSAP) initiated Open Government Data (OGD) Platform India (https://data.gov.in). The objective of the policy is to provide proactive access to Government owned shareable data in open/machine readable format. OGD India has datasets in an open format that citizen could use, reuse and redistribute free of cost.
5. MyGov
MyGov (www.mygov.in), is Government of India’s citizen engagement and crowd sourcing platform, aims to promote active citizen participation for better governance. It facilitates continuous engagement between government and citizens using a range of engagement methodologies.
MyGov has created a participative democracy, making optimum use of technology to reach out to citizen and motivate them to chip in ideas and endeavours for nation building, metamorphosing these ideas into action and acknowledging specific contributions. To solicit the ideas and views of the citizen, various activities on MyGov consist of essays, quizzes, surveys, blogs, discussions, talks, etc.
6. S3WaaS - Secure, Scalable and Sugamya Website as a Service
S3WaaS has been built with an objective to empower the District Administrations across India to generate, configure, deploy and manage the district level websites for publishing district specific information and services in an accessible way. The standard Information Architecture of the sites helps districts to disseminate information such as schemes, services, tenders, jobs, and other local governance activities, etc. in their local language. This has helps in promoting transparency at the grassroot level. Till date more than 477 districts have been migrated to this system.
(c) and (d): NIC hosts the Government Websites. However respective Ministries/Departments are responsible for their Websites along-with the Content.
There are Guidelines for Indian Government Websites (GIGW, URL: http://guidelines.gov.in) which have been adopted by Department of Administrative Reforms & Public Grievances (DARPG) and made a part of Central Secretariat Manual of Office procedure. The Guidelines deal with entire life cycle of a Government website and also guide on the types of web information which a Government website should provide. It is the responsibility of the respective Ministries/Departments to ensure the citizen centric information as prescribed in the GIGW is available on the website and is kept up-to-date for the consumption of the citizen.
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