Assam to emulate TN's e-Governance

The state's lean structure of its IT department, along with its initiatives in outsourcing several IT investments will be studied by the Assam government.

Vivek Harinarain, the IT secretary, Tamil Nadu, said the union government had announced a core mission project under which states were asked to work on e-Governance models for various services rendered by Tamil Nadu.

These services would cover departments like land records, road transport, property registration, treasuries, agriculture, commercial tax, municipalities and gram panchayat.

The centre would be partly funding these projects once the states revert to the union government with a detailed roadmap for the implementation of e-Governance modules in these sectors.

Harinarain was briefing the media on the impact of the recently concluded Seventh National e-Governance Conference held in Chennai.

"The conference had clearly brought out the message that good governance is a pre-requisite to e-Governance. The sessions in the conference also drove home the point that citizens would be willing to pay for good quality services delivered through e-governance. This would also make the e-governance initiatives financially viable," Harinarain said.

Under the core mission project proposed by the centre, the development of e-Governance models covering services involving income tax, passport issuance, visa, immigration, central excise, banking and national citizenship database would be perused by the central government.

The national e-Governance conference will be followed by regional conferences in Bangalore, Thiruvananthapuram, Hyderabad and Kolkata.

In all, 22 states took part in the conference wherein 250 delegates, IT secretaries from 14 states and five secretaries from the centre participated in the deliberations, he said, adding that the regional conferences would further help in percolating the understanding of e-Governance across the country.