Digital Family Issue 89 November 2013 November 2013 | Page 8

1 to 30th November 2013

Postmortem of Goa Government Websites !

T

he Information Technology (IT) Department of any
state is expected to be the department where the best
brain in the field brainstorm to come up with methods to
deploy technology for the benefit of the masses. We in Goa cannot
know what is happening in this department as it does not have a
dedicated website where it can share information about itself with
the public. There is a link for the department of the state portal
but there is hardly any concrete information here with reference
to the current state of the IT projects in the state like the GBBN
and other E-Governace initiatives on which crores have been
doled out.
Most other states IT departments have power packed websites reflecting the expertise available in these departments.
For instance the IT department of Rajasthan gives information about IT Policy, services, Circulars and notices, Acts
and rules and so on and so forth and has in addition detailed
progress reports of various E-projects undertaken by the
Government.
Have a look at the Government of Tripura IT department website
and you will realise how backward out IT department contents
look in comparison with them.

Government of Tripura IT department website

public through RTI etc. as this is also specified as an integral part
of the Freedom of Information Act. But newer hurdles are presented
for information seekers under RTI in our state when departments
in states like Chattisgadh are meticulously following Proactive
disclosures of information.
We indeed have a dedicated cross department portal http://egov.
goa.nic.in/rtipublic/ which is supposedly designed to facilitate
Right To Information Across departments the state of affairs of
the website is pathetic.
With an almost user unfriendly interface the site hardly has any
information on offer. For instance the RTI page of the Administrative Reforms Department has an array of links -Organization
Duties & Powers of Officers, Acts /Rules/Instructions, Functions/
Procedures, Document Categories, Commitee/Board, Employee
Directory,Budget(2007-2009 only) ,Projects, Schemes,Jurisdiction
Chart,Info dissemination Modes and Information Facilities, Public
Information Officers and so on. But none of these links have any
information listed under them. The plight of the other departments
is more or less the same. And wherever there is any information
available it dates way back to 2007 at the most 2009. Looks like
time has stopped for this important RTI state portal after the year
2007. Or maybe whatever data is there was entered during the
time of the first run of the system after it was initiated. Nothing
has happened after that!
Interestingly other department website prefer to guide/misguide
the surfer to the central government http://righttoinformation.
gov.in/ website instead of this state RTI portal through their RTI
tabs.
The government should at least have the guts to pull this websites
down and go out to the public and the nation at large saying no
we don’t believe in sharing information with the public! Let them
go through the rigmarole of applying through RTI and waiting for
petty pieces of information!
We say so many things about Governance in Bihar but they
have a working and updated Government RTI website and that
too with information in local language! Even the Andaman
& Nicobar RTI site has more information than what we have
on ours.

RTI Related Information on the web for Goans
Right to Information laws not only require Governments to
provide information upon request, they also impose a duty on
public bodies to actively disclose, disseminate and publish, as
widely as possible, information of general public interest even
before it has been requested. This has a number of positive effects: It minimises the time, money and effort required by the
public to access important but routine information; It helps people
to better understand what information they can access and how
and where to seek it; It reduces the overall number of individual
requests that bureaucrats have to process, thereby reducing the
administrative burden on government of implementing access to
information laws.
Governemnt agencies are expected to opt for proactive disclosures using the internet. They are expected to make their records
publicly available without waiting for specific requests from the

Chattisgarh State Right to Information Website – Department wise disclosure