| JK’s Khadi Village Board punctures Government’s E- Governance claims | | Board’s official portal not uploaded for three years, blank pages stare at surfer | |
EARLY TIMES REPORT
Jammu, Feb 25: Time when the Jammu and Kashmir government is claims to have been making the governance digital in the erstwhile state, plethora of government websites care little to make fresh content available online, leaving the claims of the UT administration doubtful to the core.
For instance, the official website of Jammu and Kashmir Khadi Village Industries Board- http://jkkvib.nic.in has been last updated about three years ago in the year 2017 and since then the website hosts no fresh official content pertaining to the functioning of the board.
In a photo gallery section, the latest of all pictures uploaded was on 03.01.2017 with the picture titled ‘District Level Awareness Camp under PMEGP at Poonch’. For the past more than three years, there has been ironically no content, no order and no picture uploaded on the website in question.
Furthermore, the seniority list of the officers working in the Board hasn’t been uploaded and the webpage stares blank at the user when opened.
Pertinent to mention that government had taken a major initiative about 16 years back to implement e-governance in all the government departments, Public Sector Undertakings (PSU)s and other organisation under the centrally sponsored scheme. Most of the support is provided by National Informatics Centre (NIC), which is a premier institution of the Government of India, established in 1976. Respective departments have to maintain the infrastructure which includes the software content.
Pertinently, in era of Information Technology, the much-hyped e-governance in Jammu and Kashmir is proving to be a big failure. While the issue of data collection for proactive disclosure of information under the Right to Information Act-2009 is still a distant dream, the estates department website is completely defunct or carry wrong and outdated information.
Furthermore, there has been very little compliance with Section 4 of the legislation which makes it obligatory for a public authority [department falling under RTI Act] to “maintain all its records and indexed in a manner and form which facilitates the right to information.” It also calls for ensuring that “all records that are appropriate to be computerized are, within a reasonable time and subject to availability of resources, computerized and connected through a network all over the state on different systems so that access to such records is facilitated.”
As per the sources within the government, lakhs of rupees out of the state exchequer were invested in introducing Information Technology (IT) and e-Governance in the day to day working of the organisation but it has proved sheer wastage of state exchequer as no regular back system was created to keep the websites updated.
The website of JKKVIB in sleeping mode has put a question mark on government’s e-governance claims and it remains to be seen whether the government acts against such a lethargic functioning of the board or it would continue to play a proverbial ostrich.
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