Several websites belonging to the state government's various departments are not being updated regularly, resulting in derailment of the e-governance system, which is supposed to make all government services and information accessible to the common man through common service delivery tools.
Chief minister Naveen Patnaik made a commitment to bring transparency in the governance by introducing the e-governance initiatives. Accordingly, the government departments have got their respective websites and a portal - www.edodisha.gov.in - had been created in 2011 to receive and send official communications to the public.
However, the departments' lackadaisical attitude has led to a derailment of the system as neither the officials care about updating their respective websites nor do they put the files on the portal, and in the process, disallowing people to know about the activities of the government.
It is one-stop information portal for the public as several departments of state government upload various kinds of official documents here on everyday basis.
"I used to browse the portal to know about the government's various activities. But, since the past two years, most of the departments on the portal are not updating their files regularly. More so, some of the allied government agencies, including the Bhubaneswar Development Authority, the Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation and few others have vanished from the portal," said social worker Alok Kar.
Kar said several websites were also not being updated. "These days, people prefer to browse Internet. The state government had rightly introduced the e-governance system. But, the practice of not updating the portal is not acceptable," said the social worker.
So far, 1.26 crore letters have been uploaded on the portal.
Subodh Mishra, a retired urban local body employee, said he got to know about the time and amount of gratuity and other amount he was about to receive from government through the edodisha portal.
"We always had to visit offices in person to enquire about various things after retirement. The portal had indeed came to my rescue," said Mishra.
RTI activist Amol Nath also said he used to get the replies to his queries on the edodisha portal much before it was sent to him through post or email.
"I used to file a lot of RTIs to almost all the departments. I check the edodisha portal and get hold of the replies much before it was sent to me since the departments co-ordinates with each other before finalising the replies," said Nath, an Acharya Vihar resident.
Besides having an official government portal, the state has nearly 23 websites belonging to primary departments and nearly 50 websites for several allied agencies. On the edodisha portal, there lie as many as 38 departments of the government.
However, apart from a few such as the school and mass education department, public works department, higher education department and the finance department, no other government departments have been uploading their project files since long.
The departments, which appear reluctant to upload files regularly on the portal include the housing and urban development, general administration, sports and youth services, tourism and culture, and health and family welfare departments among others.
Almost all of the website of the state government, including the edodisha portal, has been developed and maintained by the Odisha Computer Application Centre.
"We have developed the portal and also imparted training to concern department officials to upload the files. It is not our job to upload content there," said an official of the Odisha Computer Application Centre.
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Sandeep Mishra
Quelle/Source: The Telegraph India, 26.08.2018
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