says Mr BVP Rao, IAS and Deputy Commissioner of Jorhat, Assam, under whose stewardship the National Informatics Centre has achieved remarkable success in the District. The involvement of the District Administration, the co-operation extended, the planned approach and the hard and dedicated work put in --- they all come through in what Mr Rao has to say of his two-year-long association with NIC. Over to Mr Rao. When I came to Jorhat as Deputy Commissioner back in 1991, one of my first priorities was to tone up the DISNIC Programme of the National Informatics Centre (NIC) by introducing computerization in different spheres of the District Administration, specially development administration. Today, I look back with satisfaction and a certain degree of pride at all that we have achieved in the last two years. There is also the realization that this is just a small beginning in utilizing the enormous potential of the District Computer Centres of NIC. Although I had several areas in mind, it was evident that it would not be possible to cover multiple areas simultaneously. Considering the constraints in resources, most notably the lack of technical manpower (till recently, the District Informatics Officer of NIC was the sole technically adept professional in the District), we decided to take up one major area at a time, along with one or two smaller projects so that we would be in a position to cover more areas after consolidating the initial ones.
Acting on this approach, we adopted computerization of the Public Distribution System (PDS) as the first major project. It coincided with the programme to completely overhaul the PDS in the District by eliminating a huge number of bogus population. This was to be done by carrying out an exercise for renewal of family identification cards. All the details of the renewed family identification cards were computerized, and thereafter, the computer was utilized for allotment of essential commodities to fair price shops. Today, this has resulted in a new-look PDS which is not only much easier to manage but also completely transparent.
Along with the computerization of the Public Distribution System, we also started an unique experiment in monitoring immunization activities in the District. Certain areas of the District, under a number of Health sub-Centres, were selected for computerization of child birth and immunization details, on a pilot basis. This system uses a set of pre-designed post cards which the Health-worker concerned sends to the District Computer Centre, with details of inoculation dosages administered. The details are then entered into the computer system. The data so compiled in the computer is processed to serve dual purposes. Primarily, it facilitates overall monitoring of the Immunization Programme. Equally important, the computerized details also enable direct communication with the mothers of the inoculated children. This is achieved through computer-generated printouts of the exact immunization schedule, which are signed by the Deputy Commissioner and sent to the mothers concerned. These printouts in the local language motivate the mother to get her child immunized on time.
The modest success achieved in these two projects spurred us on to build an integrated Management Information System (MIS) for the ongoing Total Literacy Campaign (TLC) in our District. Details of each of the 11,000-and-odd Literacy Centres and 1,20,000 enrolled illiterates were entered into the computer systems to create two large databases which are acting as the core of the MIS. The MIS monitors the progress through periodic reports from the field, which are entered into the computer.
Along the way, we are also working on certain long-term projects which envisage the creation of an MIS for Gram Panchayat (GP)-level infrastructural details, in keeping with NIC's policy of grass root-level informatics development (GRID).
In the coming years, efforts have to be made for orienting the information system structure towards the Gram Panchayat (GP)-level infrastructural details as the Government is putting more and more stress on the Panchayati Raj System. With this in view, we are consciously working towards creation of databases, which in addition to providing the primary service intended, can also be viewed as GP-level Information Systems (IS) and queried on that basis. For example, all the Public Distribution System fair price shop details (of rural areas) and the Total Literacy Campaign master databases can also be viewed as GP-level IS although that is not what they were primarily intended to be. Under this programme, we have created several databases notable among which are Drinking Water Pumps Database, extension personnel database of various development departments, Schools Information Database, Co-operative Societies Details Database in addition to the database on details of Gram Panchayat members. All these databases will help in the development of a Geographic Information System (GIS) which I am sure will be extremely helpful in providing a quick and efficient decision-support system in a wide variety of areas. Another area which has far-reaching impact is that of employment exchange computerization. Work for the creation of a live register of unemployed persons is on.
In addition to these major thrust areas, we are making efforts to use computers in every possible area of work. This has resulted in the creation of small systems such as the Gun License Database, Muster Roll Employees Database, excise prohibition case register etc. Continuous efforts are on to foster a culture of using electronic mail and other facilities of NICNET so that it becomes a major mode of communication in coming years.
One area in which we had to go a bit slow is in the creation of village-level databases under the DISNIC-PLAN Programme of NIC as we have found from experience that creation and maintenance of these databases is an onerous task where the result often does not commensurate with the efforts. This is largely because our planning machinery is yet to gear itself up to fruitfully utilize these databases in the planning process. In case of the Elementary Education Information System (EEIS) also, we have found that even after the creation of extensive databases having every conceivable details of each school of the District, these were hardly used till we finally decided to upgrade the databases and utilize them for the creation of an approach paper on education for all programmes.
All told, it is really a pleasant and satisfying experience working with NIC and helping, in my own humble way, towards propagating a culture of informatics.