Here is your paragraph on Chhattisgarh!
Chhattisgarh, one of the smaller states in India and a very young one at that! Not really known for being as IT-savvy as Karnataka or Andhra Pradesh, but it has a remarkably successful e-governance project in place.
Called ‘CHOICE’ or the ‘Chhattisgarh Online Information for Citizen Empowerment’, this flagship project covers almost all of the government departments that provide service to citizens.
Built on a private-public partnership model, the project currently provides its citizens an online access to ten types of certificates which include the death and birth certificates, the ration cards, the OBC and caste certificates among others.
ADVERTISEMENTS:
“Plans are on to extend the project to cover another 110 services across various other departments,” said Aman Singh, CEO, CHIPS (Chhattisgarh Information and Biotechnology Promotion Society), while addressing a session on ‘E- governance: From Successful Pilot to Sustainable Implementation’ at the Bangalore IT.COM 2004.
Giving details of another flagship project called GIS or ‘Geographic Information System’, which provides not just computerised land records but also maps of the lands to the farmers, he said: “the key to the success of these projects has been involvement of the user department along with a set of good leaders, who believe in ‘thinking big, starting small and replicating fast’.”
ADVERTISEMENTS:
Agreeing with him was Ajay Sawhney, Secretary IT and Communication, Government of Andhra Pradesh, who stressed on the need for e-governance projects to be both citizen- centric and involve private-public partnerships. Citing the example of projects like the e-Seva, CFST, CARD and e- procurement, he said: “These projects attribute their success to all their project champions who are IT-savvy, have a sound domain knowledge and create customised, user-friendly solutions.”