Digital Goa Issue 91 December 2013 Dec 2013 | Page 7
www.digitalgoa.com
1 to 31st December 2013
Sorry
state of Goa
Government
websites
Dr. Nandkumar M. Kamat
A
bout half a million Computer
and Internet users of Goa
need fully functional state
government websites. They have
waited for ten years for the situation
to improve. This is despite the fact
that many state government departments have been sitting on precious
public funded data. I have benefited a
lot from highly accessible and informative, content rich websites of US
government. These are models any
democracy should be proud of. Goa
The much hyped E
governance in Goa has
come to be equated with
IT-phobic politicians’ Ego
governance.
CM Mr. Parrikar should aim to equal
the US government portal ‘firstgov’
- an opportunity which had wasted
when he had ruled Goa for 52 months
earlier. The great American democracy cares for its’ kids by keeping a
special section for them. But in India
there is competition between politicians and administrators to hide as
much as possible from information
Dr. Nandkumar Kamat – An Assistant Professor at
Goa University Dr Kamat is a renowned Scientist,
Scholar , Researcher and a prolific writer who writes
extensively on issues related to Goa and Goans.
The citizens need to make “Improve government
websites” a mass movement to pressurize the
government and get healthy returns for the taxes
which they pay to run the same government
departments which are refusing website services.
hungry public. An exception is the
Indian judiciary ( the JUDIS system)
and the Ministry of environment and
forests-MOEF-both offer in depth
contents. CSIR labs like NCL-Pune
and NIO, Goa also have a dynamic
information policy with up to date
and content rich websites. But central
government’s ISRO and NRSA score
very poorly because they are miserly
in offering rich contents. The much
hyped E governance in Goa has come
to be equated with IT-phobic politicians’ Ego governance. This is the
less discussed, uglier side of Goa’s e
governance. A state which spent two
crores on an IT based experiment
called Poll monitoring system scores
disastrously on functioning, design,
contents and quality of official state
government websites. Chief Ministers and IT ministers who ruled in
the past had shown scanty interest in
this issue. Has anyone checked the
disastrous condition of the government of Goa’s 88 official websites (
or webpages since only a handful of
departments have taken pain to design
and run their own websites) ?. It tells
you that no accountability need to be
fixed if these websites do not work or
offer nothing.
The state of the state portal is a
shame for this educated and affluent
state. The budget documents except
the CM’s budget speech are yet to find
place on the official portal. The CM
is highly tolerant of his own finance
department which has nothing to offer
on its’ website including the speech
of its’ boss. None of these departments welcome people’s complaints,
inquiries or suggestions by e-mails.
They are under strict instructions not
to acknowledge any email. Sending action taken report is just a pipe
dream. The former CM Mr. Digambar
Kamat had to be persuaded to make
arrangements to check the emails sent
on his official email Id and acknowledge them. To his credit he did it. A
majority of the 88 state government
departments do not go beyond just
one sketchy webpage. I can make exception for only directorate of printing and stationary, the Government
printing press, which underwent a
revolution under a dynamic IT savvy
director N.D. Agarwal. He showed
what others couldn’t do. Because of
him now we have official gazettes in
pdf format and 162 major legislations
of Goa uploaded for free downloads.
Free flow of uptodate
non classified
information boosts
economy, enterprise and
productivity.
It is a mystery why 87 other government departments couldn’t follow
his initiative and interest. For past
several years the website of department of information and publicity
has been ‘under construction”. Asia’s
oldest medical college-Goa medical
college has almost nothing to offer
despite having a mountain of data
(Cont on pg. 8)
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