The District Rural Development Agency (DRDA) in Arunachal Pradesh has an active role to play in the poverty alleviation programmes of the State. It was often felt that due to the hostile terrain in the State, the conventional communication set-up between the various DRDAs, State Departments and the Ministry of Rural Areas and Employment was insufficient and led to time overrun.
To overcome this problem, in June '97, the State Rural Development Directorate, along with NIC decided to adopt NIC's software called CRISP (Computerised Rural Informatics Systems) for computerization of DRDAs in the State and extend NICNET connectivity to DRDAs.
In the first phase, DRDAs of Upper Subansiri, Tawang, Papumpare and Changlan Districts were computerized by 15 August, 1997. Subsequently, an MoU was signed between the State RD Department and NIC Arunachal State Unit in October, 1997 in order to implement CRISP in all the 13 Districts and a week long training programme on the same was conducted by the experts from CRISP Group, NIC Headquarters which was attended by various State officials.