New e-governance centre opens in city

Chief minister Keshubhai Patel inaugurated the Electronic Governance Centre at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, on Thursday. The centre has been sponsored by a consortium of IT industry comprising Compaq Computer (India) Pvt. Ltd, Oracle Software India Ltd. and Santa Cruz Operations Ltd.

Minister of state for transport and information technology Bimal Shah, chief secretary L.N.S. Mukundan and adviser to the chief minister Prof. N.V. Vasani also attended the function.

"I am very happy that the IIMA is setting up a centre for electronic governance with support from three reputed information technology organisations and we look forward to take the benefit from the centre," said Mr Patel before inaugurating the centre.

He stressed on bringing about change in the mindset of the people, who are at the receiving end of the applications, as well as the people involved in implementing the e-governance. "We have been struggling for the past one year to make a change in the mindset and learnt that it is indeed difficult to do so," said Mr Patel in a lighter vein.

The centre will identify e-governance applications that can be implemented to provide improved services to citizens and help the public administration in improving planning, monitoring and other administrative processes. A committee comprising of IIM faculty members and representatives from the three sponsor companies will operate the centre. The centre will also conduct workshops for the government departments and officers to discuss and disseminate use of information technology in e-governance. Education and training programmes for applications of e-governance in various sectors as well as the government set up will also be taken up later.

Compiled from local news media