Technology Sabha, an event organised by the business publications division of The Express Group for bringing together IT satraps in charge of India?s e-governance, was held in Goa on Thursday.
Speaking on the occasion, Goa chief minister Digambar Kamat said, ?the common man needs to be empowered so that he could get his work done without leaving home. When that happened, India would be an IT superpower.? In his opinion, corruption could be eliminated only after e-governance reached the common man.
R. Chandrashekhar, IT secretary, ministry of communication and IT, delivered the keynote address, wherein he touched upon the progress of various e-governance projects including SWAN where 19 states already have a WAN in place and four more will complete their roll outs this month. Another five will be in place by September.
He also talked about the CSC project where 78,600 centres are in place. By September, there will be 90,000 of these centres. The CSC project has been expanded to cover all 240,000 gram panchayats in the country. By the end of 2010, a large part of the platforms would be in place and state data centres would be on stream by 2011. He also revealed that the first UIDs would be issued by March 2011.
West Bengal IT minister Debesh Das talked about the importance of IT for sustainable development. He cited the example of videoconferencing over the state WAN and pilot projects enabling the payment of electricity bills and said that there is a need to develop indigenous software to bolster the nation?s security.