The Eighth Five Year Plan of the National Informatics Centre is a blue print of action for the Organization. Each Leaf of NICPLAN presents an extract from the Plan to provide the Reader with an insight into just how the Organization visualizes the future. Today, three years since the plan was formulated, Readers will also be able to judge for themselves whether NIC is maintaining its course on time. In this issue we present the Tele-Informatics Development and Promotion Programme (TDPP).
The Tele-Informatics Development and Promotion Programme will implement the following four projects:
- Teletext Project
- NICNET-based Videotex Project
- NICNET-based ISDN Project
- Compunication Promotion Project
To give an identity to the Tele-Informatics Development and Promotion Programme (TDPP), the existing project group is proposed to be organized into an Advanced Centre for Tele-Informatics which will be continued to be located in Delhi.
NIC is already implementing a UNDP-supported teletext project which aims to promote mass dissemination of information using tele-informatics technology. NIC has developed and implemented the teletext software which provides, through Doordarshan, information on a large number of aspects relating to important news items, Indian Airlines departure/arrival, train departure/arrival, tourist information, railway reservation information etc.
During 1990-91, Indian Airlines Reservation Information and other teletext information will be available anywhere in the Country, using NICNET. This will logically lead to NICNET-based Videotex project which will give videotex service to a number of important Users who can afford to buy their videotex terminals. For enhancing the capability of NICNET to data communication, limited voice mail communication and fax between important nodes, videotex special purpose ISDN features will be introduced on NICNET.
With such facilities and capabilities established in the Advanced Centre for Tele-Informatics (ACTI), the stage gets automatically set for promoting synergetic merger of computer and communication into a single subject of compunication. This will enable ACTI specialists to offer consultancy for office compunication, factory compunication and home compunication which is expected to develop around the world in the 90s. Some pilot projects in this will be set up by ACTI to prove the technology in real-life application areas. One such pilot project will be set up in Delhi, called Educated Housewives Employment Scheme, to enable housewives, educated war widows and other such people to take, on hire-purchase basis, a television and a telephone linked by a low-cost PC-based compunication terminal and carry out word processing, text editing, data entry, data preparation and other such works from the home by dialling up the computer in the office. The pilot project will aim at utilizing the talents of women for data preparation, word processing etc. sub-contracted by the NIC.