Uttaranchal, the land of origin of Ganga and Yamuna, occupies a special place in the hearts of people in this country and summons tourists worldwide to its alluring grandeur of natural beauty. It is a place, which once mesmerized Mahatma Gandhi with its natural beauty and peace and had forced him to express this place as better than any place in entire Europe. Uttaranchal is the 27th state of the Republic of India. It was formed on 9th Nov 2000 and was carved out of the state of Uttar Pradesh. The State today, has 13 Districts, which can be grouped into three distinct geographical regions, the High mountain region, the Mid-mountain region and the Terai region. Dehradun is the interim-capital city. In the state, maintaining pace with the global world, the Government is drawing up a comprehensive programme to ensure that the benefit of e-governance reaches all sections of the society and economy. Various IT activities, such as development of software applications packages, creation of e-governance infrastructure, databases, digital/ educational content, etc., in e-governance domain, are part of Government’s strategy in driving the IT penetration in Government offices. NIC Uttaranchal State Unit, Dehradun has been instrumental in steering Information and Communication Technology applications in Government Departments at various levels, facilitating improvement in Government services, wider transparency in Government functions and resulting improvement in decentralized planning and management. The state unit was inaugurated on 10th November 2001 by the then Chief Minister of the state. Since it’s inception in year 2001, major activities undertaken by NIC in Uttaranchal can be catagorised as follows. ?| Sectoral ICT ??Computerization of Treasuries All the treasuries of the state were computerised by NIC. The main features of the system are online system of data processing, online cheque generation, cash book (receipt & payment), posting registers, posting schedule, warrant register, CCL & DCL report, PLA reports etc. ??Chief Minister Letter Monitoring System This application is for tracking of all the in-coming and out-going references from Chief Minister Office and has also been integrated with Public Grievances System. This system is web-enabled. Major modules consist of Automatic Reminder Generation & Printing Acknowledgement Printing, Queries by letter number, Acknowledgement confirmation, Receiving and Dispatch details, Administrative queries and Location/Constituency-wise Reports. A similar system has been implemented at the office of H.E. the Governor of Uttaranchal. Hon’ble Governor inaugurating the Lok Ayukta Website ??Integrated Pension Management System (IPMS) This software has been implemented in Pension Directorate of Uttaranchal at Dehradun and Haldwani. Its main features are Registration of pension documents, Calculation sheet, Pension payment order, Gratuity payment order, Commutation payment order, Objection letter and Arrears. The facility of scanning of the pensioner’s photo is also available. ?? Sarv Shiksha Abhiyan The results of a survey of village/town level, called ‘Sarv Shiksha Abhiyan’, conducted by Department of Education, Government of Uttaranchal were generated using the system. The details of the data captured is the number and names of school going / not going children in a family in addition to other family details. The package provides a comprehensive analysis. ?? Lok Ayukta NIC has taken up certain activities at Lok Ayukta, Uttaranchal such as networking, design, development & hosting of the website, providing email/Internet facility, training to staff etc. Application software has been developed for registering complaints, sending letters, reminders and summons. This module generates various reports like districts/ department-wise reports, history of complaints and Annual Reports. ?? Registrar of Firms, Societies and Chits The Software for Automation of Registrar Firms, Societies and Chits (AURES), registering different types of societies, firms and chits like religious, educational, social, government, sports and cultural has been implemented at the two regional offices of Assistant Registrar firms, Societies and Chits at Dehradun and Haldwani. It provides four kinds of user access levels. Some of the outputs are new certificate, objection letter, district and class-wise summary etc. ??Forest Land Transfer System Forest Land Transfer Cases Monitoring System keeps track of work status of individual projects and also provides information about the history of the case. In addition to that, it generates Forest Division Wise, Sector Wise, District Wise, Level wise, Circle and Zone-wise detailed and summarized outputs. It also provides information for the timely disposal of Forest Land Transfer Cases for non-forest developmental purposes. The software is bilingual since the rule on which the package has been developed is governed by Forest Conservation Act 1980. ??MPR Of Rural Development Schemes Software for Monthly Progress Report of Rural Development schemes captures information at district level. Each month, data related to various developmental schemes running in rural areas is entered in all the districts offices. This data is collected at NIC State Unit and ported in the database using specialized software and finally State level consolidated reports are printed. All the outputs are to monitor development from the top level. MPR covers monthly progress of various R&D schemes, agriculture, animal husbandry, sericulture, forestry, horticulture, education, rural development, health & family welfare, handicrafts etc. ?? Uttaranchal High Court Nainital Filing of new cases, order sheets, next date of listing, generation of the web-enabled cause lists, including fresh, supplementary and weekly are the main features of this software. It also keeps track of cases transferred from UP to Uttaranchal Case status and Inquiries. Computerisation of the library has also been done. ?? Sankhiki Patrika Annual Statistical Magazine giving details of various socio-economic indicators and sectoral statistics of resources of all the districts is being published through a software developed by NIC. It is an important publication, which is used for planning purposes by different agencies. The software captures general information about the district, land use, production of crops, irrigation sources, agricultural equipments, educational institutes, electricity usage and electrification, cities, villages, transport & communication facilities, gram panchayats etc. ?? BPL Survey This software is for Below Poverty Line Survey. Package developed at National Level was customised according to the need of Uttaranchal and has been used for baseline data entry at districts. ?? GPIS-NIC (Gram Panchayat Information System) This software collects information related to various non-human and human resources pertaining to the Gram Panchayat. The other category is that of personnel information related to Gram Pradhan, who is the representative of the public at the lowest level. A number of reports of Panchayat, Block, District and State level are generated by State Finance Commission. ??Group Insurance Management System The GIS has features of claim listing, calculation sheet, objection letter, claim register, pending claim list, paid/unpaid/ issued cheques. ??Computerization of Budget Directorate It generates Major Head-wise, Minor Head-wise, Scheme-wise, Standard Object Code-wise Expenditure, Receipt and New Demands Booklet as well as Summary Reports. ?? Election The Election software assisted the officers in Daily Monitoring of Arms Deposition during election period, Poll-Person deployment, Route charting, Counting, Transmission of results, Capturing and Disseminating poll related information through a comprehensive website. ??Community Needs Assessment Approach (CNAA) It keeps track of Monthly progress of health indicators as given by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India at district level which is transmitted directly through dial-up lines to Delhi. ?| Web Applications ?? E-payroll of State Government http://gov.ua.nic.in/payroll Pay bills of 1,10,000 government employees are prepared by treasuries so that they can see their salary details on the web, which is delivered directly to the banks. Other major features of this software are scheme-wise pay bill, employee pay slip, pay schedules, advances and recovery reports, income tax module, arrears, GPF module, bonus module and Web enabled MIS reports. ?? Seventh All India School Education Survey http://gov.ua.nic.in/aises This was a joint project of NCERT, State Education Department and NIC. A dynamic website was developed by NIC for the same. Data inputs of schooling facilities from village, habitation, town, ward and school level data is collected through six forms viz. VIF, UIF, SIF1, SIF2, CIF, SSIF designed by NCERT. The web site is designed in such a way that one can navigate information from top to grass root level just by clicking on respective links provided in the site. Students checking out results online at NIC Almora centre ??Uttaranchal Government Orders http://gov.ua.nic.in/adhisoochna This is an attempt towards achieving objective of good governance. NIC provides more than 1500 Uttaranchal Government Orders to the citizens through a website known as ADHISOOCHNA (A Database HIghtech Search Of Orders through CHannelised Navigator). With the help of this website, electronically scanned Government Orders are date-wise, department-wise and category-wise searchable. The site also provides department and category-wise summary of entered number of Government Orders. ??Twenty Point Programme Twenty Point Programme is a web-enabled software for monthly monitoring of physical achievements. Data is entered at district level. Inputs captured are Item/Scheme Name, Unit, Target and Monthly achievements. Major outputs are district / level monthly and cumulative reports, Ranking and Item-wise reports. ?? Board Results On Website http://uaresults.nic.in This is an attempt to provide fast access of examination results of High School and Intermediate, to the students affiliated to newly formed Uttaranchal Education and Examination Board. ??Computerisation Of Check Posts NIC has computerized “Transport Check posts” to meet various objectives, such as Revenue generation, Analysis of vehicular traffic, Detection of tax evasion by non-commercial vehicles, Retrieval of possible information for law-and-order enforcing agencies and Generation of a database for future events. The data is collected at check posts and transmitted to a central server. Outputs are web-enabled in order to be used by senior officials. Hon’ble Transport Minister inaugurating the computerised RTO ?? Ruralsoft 2000 http://gov.ua.nic.in/ruralsoft A web-enabled software has been loaded in the server of NIC Uttaranchal State Unit. All DRDAs in turn make remote data entries of various progresses of R & D Schemes such as SGRY and SGSY. It provides various user levels for data input and output. ?? Mandis of Uttaranchal Under Agricultural Marketing Information System Network (AGMARKNET), in Uttaranchal, 15 Mandi Samitis and Directorate Office have been covered so far under Phase-I and Phase-II of this project. Remaining Units will be taken up during the current year under 10th Plan for speedy collection and dissemination of market information for its efficient and timely utilization. Information is captured for cereals, pulses, spices, fruits, vegetables, fibres and oilseeds. Implementation was done after a comprehensive training of the users. ??Computerization of Sub Registrar Sub registrar office at Dehradun is fully computerized. Now, all the registrations done at this office are computerized. After successful implementation of computerization in two Sub Registrar Offices, five more sites have been proposed for replication. ??Computerisation of Transport Department: At Regional Transport Office, Dehradun, VAHAN software customised as per the need of state government has been implemented. It consists of Online Vehicle Registration, Fee, Fitness, Tax Calculation and Collection, Permit and Enforcement modules. At State Transport Authority, a software for National Permits has been implemented. Also collection of revenue from Central Pool, which is for vehicles of other states entering in Uttaranchal, has been computerized for Transport Commissioner office. Hon’ble Chief Minister inaugurating the Computerized Employment Exchange ?| Infrastructure & Services ??Networking Government of Uttaranchal with the help of NIC set up a Local Area Network of more than 600 nodes in the apex offices of the state. These are namely Raj Bhawan, Vidhan Sabha Bhawan, Chief Minister’s Residence, Secretariat and Police Headquarters. NIC maintains the entire network. As per the requirements, new connections are configured and all periodical problems related to networking are resolved at once. ??Internet Internet Services through LAN and dialup to all officers and staff of Uttaranchal Secretariat and Ministries. ??Videoconferencing Presently set up at 23 locations of Uttaranchal, Videoconferencing has become an important mode of communication among various levels of Government in Uttaranchal. NIC has already conducted more than 100 conferences by August 2004 as against 48 in the year 2003. It is being used for monitoring, discussions, press briefings and medical education. Hon’ble Chief Secretary briefing the Press through Videoconferencing ??Benchmarking NIC has extended the service of Benchmarking of newly purchased Computers in Uttaranchal. ?? E-mail NIC Uttaranchal State Unit has set up an email server (ua.nic.in). Email accounts of all ministers, secretaries and section level officers have been provided. ?| Trainings NIC Uttaranchal State Unit training hall is equipped with 30 computers connected to Internet on each desk. Training programmes for State government officers/staff is a regular exercise and every month on an average, two one-week Computer Awareness training programs are organized by NIC Uttaranchal. In last two years, more than 60 trainings have been conducted for state government officials. ?| Website (http://ua.nic.in) A web server has been configured at NIC Uttaranchal. More than thirty websites have been published on it. Sites developed by NIC Uttaranchal for user departments are districts of Uttaranchal, Department of Finance, Chief Electoral Officer, Department of Transport, Arhkumbh, Chief Minister of Uttaranchal, Rajbhawan, Lokayukta, Uttaranchal High Court, Registrar of Firms Societies and Chits, Tenders, Finance Commission and Planning.