Pithoragarh, the picturesque district of Kumaon region in Uttarakhand, with a breathtaking panoramic view of Himalayas, summons tourists worldwide to its alluring grandeur of natural beauty. Sharing borders with China (Tibet) on northern side and Nepal on the east, the district has a population of about 5 lakhs spread over an area of 7090 sq. kms. The famous Kailash Mansarovar Yatra conducted by Ministry of External Affairs also passes through Pithoragarh. NIC - Pithoragarh District Unit was established in 1989 at Collectorate, Pithoragarh to serve the Information Technology needs of district administration and to promote computer culture among the government departments and general public by active participation and support in IT field in the district. Ever Since its inception, NIC, Pithoragarh has developed and implemented various Management Information and Decision Support System (MIDSS), to enable government to take informed decisions, formulate comprehensive plans and follow-up on delivery of public services, create user friendly public infrastructures to enable masses to participate in the process of governance at all levels and has helped in establishing different models of good governance in the district Key Projects Public Grievances Monitoring System (PGMS): PGMS is a user friendly system designed, developed and implemented to handle the public grievance related to administration, governance and services. The application also generates various reports & statistics to monitor and track the redressal of grievances. Arms License Information System (ALIS): The ALIS application has been developed for creating and maintaining a database for arms licenses within the district and facilitates their monitoring. The entire information pertaining to a particular license, date of its renewal etc. is fed into the database and updated on regular basis by the concerned official at the district and tehsil level. Integrated Pay and Accounts Office (IPAO): IPAO is an integrated solution for the Payroll System of all employees of the state government and the Treasury Information System (TISNIC) to facilitate timely disbursement of salary to the employees and generation of reports related to Accountant General Office, Finance Department and other user departments with greater accuracy and in lesser time. The easy-to-use software covers execution of all pay related matters of the state government departments and their employees and recently arrear calculation module has been added to take care of the recommendations of the 6th Pay Commission. In the process of establishing a treasury network, the sub-treasuries at Berinag & Didihat have been interconnected with wide area network of NIC through leased lines. Digital map of Pithoragarh linked to district's web site: Map of Pithoragarh district from Google web site downloaded and marked with block, tehsil, and district head quarters. Also distance of BHQ and THQ from DHQ highlighted and this map was then linked to district's web site. The same procedure was adopted by the rest of the districts in Uttarakhand. Land Records Computerisation (LRC): The LRC project was initiated with an aim to reduce corruption & inconsistency of land records data and promote e-Governance in the district. A unicode based application software DEVBHOOMI developed in VB.Net and MS SQL Server has been implemented in all the six tehsils and two sub-tehsils of the district from where the land holders are getting computerised Record of Right (ROR) at a very nominal fee on all working days. The Devbhoomi software automatically creates new KHATAUNIs after every six years and a touch screen kiosk has been set up at sadar tehsil for citizens to have a quick view of their Khata detail and RORs. Commercial Tax Computerisation: A web enabled, VAT software developed by NIC Uttarakhand State Unit has been successfully implemented in Assistant Commissioner's Office of the district enabling registration of commercial establishment, TIN (Traders Identification Number) generation and managing other allied services. The software has facilitated better and prompt G2C services to the traders/dealers, accelerated the revenue collection through “Value Added Tax “(VAT) and helped the district administration in tracking the commercial tax defaulters. Services NIC Pithoragarh has been providing many IT related services such as IT consultancy, video conferencing, Internet, e-mail accounts & training to the different government departments in the district Many G2C applications have been launched for the benefit of people living in and around the district and a number of initiatives have been taken to bring more departments and services in the fold of IT. A comprehensive and dynamic website http://pithoragarh.nic.in has been developed by NIC, Pithoragarh which contains all major information for government and public covering tourism, culture, socio-economic and statistical profile (magazine) of the district. Search facility is available for district telephone directory & district gazetteer while list of Govt. P.G. Colleges, BPL families, Indira Awas Yojna beneficiaries, RTI manuals etc. is also available for enhanced transparency and ready reference. Other important projects Apart from these, NIC Pithoragarh is also involved in many other projects such as SWAN implementation, collectorate LAN, remote updation of tehsil land record data, computerisation of lottery system for liquor shops allotment, computerisation of statistical magazine of the district, implementation of NREGA MIS etc.