Digital Family Issue 89 November 2013 November 2013 | Page 10

1 to 30th November 2013

Goa Government Home Page –

The State Portal
T

he description for the state portal has
tall claims to make and goes as follows
‘The ‘Goa Online’ is aimed as a single point
of access for all the G2B & G2C transactions
offered by Government of Goa through its
constituent departments. The online portal
provides online access to the current, complete
and accurate information related to the functions and services provided by Government
of Goa and its constituent departments to the
Citizens, Businesses and other interested users
(e.g. Tourists and Investors).
The portal aims at educating the citizens
and businesses with access to information
such as expected service fulfillment times for
the Government services, business processes,
applicable rules and legislations, key point of
contacts within the Government etc. It also
educates the citizens, businesses in the state
about their rights, benefits and schemes offered
by the Government, eligibility requirements
for availing these benefits & schemes etc.
In nutshell, the Goa Online portal is a
transparent & accountable portal that creates
a hassle-free environment which has reduced
administrative burden and service fulfillment
costs for the Government, citizens & businesses, to a large extent.’
But when one browses through the links one
gets extremely disappointed as the information
on this State portal is incomplete, sometimes
outdated, and even misguiding and misleading.
Many links don’t work, there are dead links
which nobody has bothered to cross check and
old outdated information is offered to you. Are
the authorities even aware that this is the states
front end to the world!
Links like the schemes link on the home
page under the government tab are but a laughing stock. As per the heading ‘this page displays Schemes passed by various departments
of Goa Government’ . We went through all the
department links. Except for 23 schemes of Art
and Culture, 8 of agricultural department with
details of schemes implemented during 2011
and two of Central Library there is no other
information. And garbage gets displayed on
the three links in the Architecture Department
schemes!
For places like Department website where
there are no schemes available page has a non

clickable line Department of so and so. What
mockery is this! When the departments and
their sites are listed whenever a link does not
have a website/webpage linked to it at least
have the courtesy to make it non clickable.
Who has time for users convenience let them
click on the link go there are realize that it is
not clickable!
The story of the Rules and acts link is much
worse . You go on clicking the departments and
you will only get No acts available , No Links

available all through. If nothing is available
why give people dead hope by putting this
links. Everything is so frustrating.
Even the documents and report link starts
with 2010-11 data. Nothing of 2012 except
the budget and now some action is happening in 2013 with hardly five documents
of 2013.
Surprisingly the orders and circulars link
is one from the lot that has some content
on some of the departments which one
can use.
Go to the Kala Academy Link displayed
prominently in the upcoming events on the
portals home page and you will get a shock
of your lives. This premier institution which
is considered a feather in the cap of Goa’s

infrastructure has a laughable one page
website and that too “Designed by NodeThirtyThree for Free WordPress Themes.
Powered by WordPress” at least that is
what the website states. The page contains
some weird information nowhere related
to Kala Academy and the most pathetic
thing is it is actually an advertisement for
one UK based website of vanity numbers
called City Numbers( www.citynumbers.
co.uk). This can only happen where there
is absolutely no accountability. Any tech
person will tell you that such kind of links
and clear backdoors for all kinds of malware including hackers!
Events on the know Goa link list PDFs of
programs to be held in Goa date backwards
with the previous years events being displayed first. Fine you are not making them
searchable, fine you are not presenting in
a systematic easily accessible manner but
going backwards in the last thing one could
expect! Isn’t there any user interface person
in the department or the audit team who
can put these small things in place so that
people can take advantage of some small
amount of information that is available with
as little hassles as possible. It only shows
the indifferent and care a damn attitude of
the implementers.
As per the procedure to check View Form
I & IV of Land record mentioned in the
state portal to view Form one needs to go to
the link http://egov.goa.nic.in/dslr/homepage.aspx and Click on “Form I & IV”.
But firat of all one gets an error message.
So I tried going backwards to http://egov.
goa.nic.in and lo and behold I was taken
to the Lusofonia Games Website . The IP
address of this URL I guess is now redirected and used for the Lusofonia games
website.
The same website is also mentioned in
the Procedure to view Mutation status for
rural area, Procedure to view Mutation
status for urban area, Procedure to View
Form D and so on.
We keep mum on all this, nobody raises
any concern and the statuesco continues
and will continue for years to come! We
surely deserve an award for this E-indifference!