Two National e-Governance Golden Icon Awards in the year 2006 for ePension (under the Innovative Operations - Professional Category) and HIMRIS software (under the Process Reengineering - New Entrant Category) and nomination for the Stockholm Challenge Award 2006. NIC Himachal Pradesh has proved its strength at the national level yet again. The Secretary (IT) Government of India visited Himachal Pradesh in December 2005 and inaugurated the land records computerisation in 15 tehsils through VC in Shimla. He was appreciative of the role of NIC HP in carrying out major e-Governance activities in the State. Every great accomplishment has a small beginning. NIC HP State Centre was set up in 1986 in Himachal Pradesh Secretariat with a modest infrastructure setup with the objective of empowering the state administration with IT tools and promoting informatics culture in the government. NIC HP has fulfilled its objectives in all the three institutions of democracy viz Executive, Legislature and Judiciary. The weighing factors have been neither technology, nor Internet/Email or e-Commerce. It is the unprecedented change that is brought about in the work culture through informatics by bridging the gap between the Government and the people. NIC HP has achieved the set target of IT promotion in the state and recent years have seen pace in terms of expanse and magnitude along with its application and technological advancements. On the infrastructure front, NIC Himachal Pradesh can today boast of its state-of-art equipments, be it Servers Storage Equipments, Video Conferencing Network or Internet/ E-mail Service. The professional services towards Software Design & implementation need no emphasis. PROJECTS €| Lokmitra A vital lifeline of a democratic society is a Government to Citizen interface. The central theme of governance revolves round its citizens and their quality of life. Hence G2C interface assumes a very important position with respect to entire delivery mechanism of Indian Administrative setup. The underlying objective of Lokmitra to expand the domain of public access and speedy redressal of grievances has been well established. Ever since the success of ‘LOKMITRA’ there has been an exponential growth in recent years in the establishment of thirty (30) e-Governance centres in district and tehsils and these centres disseminate the information available in databases on various socio-economic sectors that NIC has built over a period of time. Besides they are providing services like Driving Licenses, Registration of Vehicles, Passport Status and many more. These centres are not only self sustainable, but have become a source of revenue generation to the government through service charge collections and till date revenue to the tune of rupees two crores (approx.) has been collected through these e-Governance centres. €| Land Records Application of ICT in land records is a novel and challenging experiment altogether in view of the whole system being unwieldy, laborious and space intensive besides being costly and tardy. Land records forms the backbone of basic and vital statistics required for policy formulation and decision making and with this spirit; NIC HP took up the challenging task of Land Records Computerization. NIC HP has been successful in not only designing the software to suit the intricate requirements but implementing it in all the 12 districts of HP. Presently as many as 76 tehsils have been computerized and their data is available online and efforts are on to cover 100% tehsils by the year-end. The operational tehsils are generating revenue by issuing computerized copies of land records. On similar lines, the implementation of HIMRIS (HP Property Registration) is in the pipeline. It is already under implementation at 15 tehsils and has been made fully operational in live mode. The replication in all viable tehsils will be done by the year end. €| Treasuries & Budget The Treasury Computerisation captures data directly from vouchers and challans which goes through validation and consistency checks (in the background during data entry) to guarantee the accuracy and efficiency. Similarly the computerization of state budget not only guarantees accuracy in figures but also saves many laborious man hours. The State budget for the year 2004-05 onwards is made available on the website, CDs and printed budget volumes. €| Examination Results The board examination results are a source of great anxiety and attract vast media attention. Anxious students and parents used to throng their respective schools on the day of results. The revolutionary technology of Internet and its application by NIC HP brought about an end to these queues all over. The board results are not only available globally online but the results are disseminated through the most popular mediums of SMS (BSNL/AIRTEL), emails, Touch Screen Kiosks, IVRS and Soochna Kendras (Information booths). Disseminating the results through various media won accolades for NIC HP from various authorities and press media. It was hailed as, “A remarkable public utility exercise aimed at serving common masses and making the lives of students easy by effective utilization of ICT”. Similarly results of PMT entrance, JBT entrance, B.Ed, UIIT entrance, Polytechnic entrance and HP Public Services Commission are made available to common masses. €| Elections NIC assumes central role during Assembly/Lok Sabha elections in forming polling parties, their deployment as per ECI guidelines and support at counting centres in implementation of GENESYS of ECI and result transmissions to media for live coverage. In May’2004 and Matrch’2003 the results were transmitted through NICNET and these results/flashes were displayed on Doordarshan Screen through Interface developed by NIC. € | REFNIC The implementation of References Monitoring System of NIC (REFNIC), that keeps track of the file/letter movement, marked the start of E-Tracking of correspondences (letters/files) in HP Secretariat. Reminders are generated automatically in printed form as well as by e-mail and pop-up message on the screen. The application is running on approximately three hundred nodes in secretariat and emboldened with its success, the government has decided to implement REFNIC in all the districts and government departments. €| Court Computerisation There has been a wholesome involvement of NIC in the HP High Court Computerization. In the year 2004, a new LAN was designed and setup in High Court building. Already Software implementation for making Cause List online and computerization of judicial register and record room has been done. The case status will be made online shortly after the platform conversion of software is complete. €| Assembly Computerisation NIC HP has been providing manpower and technical support to HP Legislative Assembly for various office automation works. The daily proceedings of the HP Vidhan Sabha are made available on the Internet on the Vidhan Sabha website at http://himachal.nic.in/hpvs instantly. In addition, list of business, rotation of ministers, assembly questions and brief of days’ proceedings are also hosted on the website during the assembly session. The ID Cards Issuance Software was developed and implemented for the HP Vidhan Sabha and now all ID cards for the last two sessions are being generated & issued through this software only. €| 7th AISES The design of the software for 7th All India Education Survey speaks of the image of NIC HP at National Level. The Software has been designed and distributed to all state units of NIC for implementation. €| ICT Training Induction Level & In-Service ICT Trainings for various categories of Officers/ Officials in Himachal Pradesh have been conducted at Himachal Institute of Public Administration. So far, about 450 Training Programmes of 3 to 6 days duration covering topics starting from Basic Computer to E-Governance have been conducted including 12 Batches of Officers of the State Civil Service (HAS) & Other Allied Services. These programmes have resulted in successful implementation of many of computerization and e-Governance projects in Himachal Pradesh. €| INFRASTRUCTURE The success story of NIC, Himachal Pradesh would not be complete without a robust server platform (9 servers), a vibrant network and its highly secure and safe services. NIC HP provides INTERNET service through 4 Mbps Managed leased line connectivity. A 500 node strong network connecting various buildings through Fiber and providing 100 Mbps desktop access is served through a central Anti-Virus and Patch Management server apart from application servers. Security concerns are addressed with a highly secure LAN setup using hardware and software firewalls. A 1.2 TB of SAN storage installation in (Network Operations Centre (NOC) caters to the data storage requirements of the state. €| Video Conferencing Himachal Pradesh is one of the leading states with the state-of-art Video conferencing equipments established in all the districts including the CM Secretariat. The network is extended to the remote sub-divisions of Bharmour, Pooch, Kaaza and Pangi as well. NIC Himachal, inspite of being a small state with just 12 districts, is among the leading states to utilize the VC facility for e-Governance applications at the national level. €| Web Services The Himachal Pradesh Govt. website http://himachal.nic.in ,developed and maintained by NIC State Centre, provides comprehensive details about anything and everything related to HP, including 55 government departments and 12 districts. The website has assumed the significance of a single source of reliable reference information about Himachal Pradesh. NIC has been in forefront to help automate government business and continues with this commitment to reach new vistas of IT enabled Govt, services. With the pervasive support of NIC HP to the Government at all levels, it has been made possible to reduce the communication gap between central-state governments on one hand, the state government and the district administration on the other and above all between the people and government on different fronts and thus bringing rural masses in direct contact with the government by acting as a transparent mediator. For further information, contact – Shri Rajesh Bahadur State Informatics Officer NIC, Himachal Pradesh State Centre, 6th Floor, Armsdale Building HP Government Secretariat Shimla - 171 002 Email- sio-hp@nic.in