Goa sets up task force to expedite e-governance

PANAJI: Eager to embark on a major e-governance drive, Goa government has set up a ‘Task Force For Good Governance’ headed by chief minister Manohar Parrikar. Power minister Digambar Kamat is the vice chairman of the task force, sources in the government said here on Thursday.
The task force will try to speed up the implementation of the various policy announcements by the state government in the recent past for introducing good governance in administration, said a member of the task force.
“In the draft on IT policy submitted to the state government, we had recommended this idea of the task force to be headed by the chief minister. The idea essentially is to ensure that all the IT projects being undertaken by the government will automatically get a high priority as the chief minister himself heads the task force,� Anupam Saraf, IT advisor to Goa government told ET.
In fact, Goa government commissioned an ambitious pilot project over 20 months ago along with a private sector IT company to ensure speedy issue of land record documents to the people through information kiosks, locally known as Mahiti Ghars. The chief minister has recently announced plans to expand the kiosk network by around 30 to reach the talukas and even rural areas. The plans are also there to expand the area of services available for the people through the information kiosks.
The government has been currently undertaking a major computerisation programme of some of the crucial departments including transport and sales tax. In recent future, the services of transport department would be also made available on-line to the people through information kiosks, said sources in the government.
For Mr Saraf, the things like computerisation of government departments is a secondary thing. He says, “the number one agenda for the task force is to change the mind set of the people in the government for good governance. We must identify the mission of the existence of the government departments as sadly most of the departments do not know why they exist in the first place. Our task primarily would be to get these departments into the good-governance mission mode.�
The term of reference for the task force for good governance include, to lay down policy framework to achieve the objectives of good governance including e-governance to ensure flow of sufficient funds to IT Department to carry out e-governance in government departments as a package.
The task force would also ensure that the initiative on e-governance benefits common people by setting up of more IT Kiosks and networking them for easy accessibility, ensure the citizens’ charters prepared by the departments are implemented , to prepare an agenda for good governance and broadly lay down the steps required to be taken to improve administrative efficiency and accountability besides several other references.
Baleshwar Rai, chief secretary is the member secretary of the task force while IT minister Francis D'' Souza, Laxmikant Parsekar, BJP MLA C. Chandran, and Anupam Saraf, vice president Infotech Corporation of Goa, are some of the prominent members of the task force.