Govt okays National E-Governance Action Plan for '03-'07

NEW DELHI: Government has approved the National E-Governance Action Plan for implementation during the year 2003-07 for creating an institutional framework for the same and has also identified over 20 Mission Mode projects at central and state levels to be taken up under the plan.
The plan, which was presented to Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee in November last, has been approved in-principle and endorsement has been given to the overall programme content, implementation approach and governance structure, IT Department sources said.
The plan has approved a number of Mission Mode projects for implementation under the central government like income tax, passport, visa and immigration, DCA21, insurance, National Citizen Database, central excise, pensions and banking.
Under the state government Mission Mode list, which is to be finalised after consultations with states, the Action Plan envisages to take up land records, road transport, property registration, agriculture, treasure, municipalities, gram panchyats, commercial taxes and police in union territories, initially for e-governance activities.
However, for the budgetary outlays, separate approvals from Planning Commission and Ministry of Finance are envisaged. At present, concerned ministries and departments are working out budgetary requirements for priority allocations.
While endorsing the plan, the key observations were that adequate weightage must be given for quality and speed of implementation in procurement procedures for IT services and services should be outsourced wherever possible.
Under the integrated services, e-commerce, e-business, common service centre, India Portal and EG Gateway have been identified as the Mission Mode projects.
The Action Plan, which has sought full potential of the private sector investment, has also embarked on centralised initiative and decentralised implementation.
Approving the governance structures, sources said the missions and overall e-governance plan implementation would be periodically reviewed by the Cabinet Secretary and monitored by the Prime Minister.
Concerned Ministries like Finance, External Affairs, Home, Rural Development, Commerce and Industry and departments like Information Technology, Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances are among the organisations responsible for the Mission Mode project implementation.
The Action Plan would lay the foundation and provide the impetus for long term growth of e-governance and institutional mechanism, set up core infrastructure to create a citizen-centric and business-centric environments.