At a state-level conference presided over by the state chief minister Mr M Karunanidhi in Chennai on Thursday, the top-level officials of the state administration reviewed the progress so far made and explored the prospects of setting a time-frame for achieving computerisation targets in all respects. State chief secretary Mr A P Muthusamy said departments like revenue, rural development, urban development, transport, registration, sales tax and metrowater have computerised their operations.

Inaugurating the conference, Mr Karunanidhi said the government was aiming at total computerisation of administration. He asked the officials to chalk out an action plan and identify works that could be completed in fixed time frames of three months to one year. He said they should meet again after two months to review the progress made and take corrective steps.

He said it was imperative that the database has to be in Tamil to be useful to the people. Mr Karunanidhi declared that the proposed TamilNet University would be launched in next January on the Pongal festival day.

State ministers, secretaries to the government, district collectors, corporation commissioners of Chennai, Coimbatore, Madurai, Salem, Trichy and Tirunelveli and heads of departments participated in the one-day conference.

Mr G Ananthakrishnan, former vice-chancellor of Anna University and advisor to the chief minister said that Tamil Nadu's focus of computerisation should be on internal management functions and on public utility services. A citizen should be able to get a community or income certificate fast and easily. Only this would make e-governance a reality, he added.

Tamil Nadu has significant achievements in the computerisation of land records. Of the total 17.246 villages in the state, data entry work of 16,967 rural villages has been completed. Work on the urban villages are going on and is to be completed very soon, Mr Debendranath Sarangi, revenue secretary said in his presentation.