Government launches 'Go-Live' to digitised urban local body

FROM OUR CORRESPONDENT

Itagar, Sept 21: Aruchal Pradesh Chief Minister Pema Khandu today launched the ‘Go Live’ e-governce project of Itagar Municipal Council (IMC) making the urban local body digitalized and to offer its services online.

Sanctioned in the year 2012 under the erstwhile Jawaharlal Nehru Urban Renewal Mission (JnNURM), ‘Go Live’ is an e-governce project for IMC being implemented by the department of Urban Development and executed by Hyderabad based IT company M/s vayuga Infotech Ltd in consortium with Telearc Technologies Pvt Ltd.

“It is a dream come true for me,” Khandu said after launch of the project.

The project was initiated by Khandu during his stint as the then Minister of Urban Development.

Congratulating the IMC for being the first local body to go digital, the chief minister reiterated his commitment to implement e-governce in every level of government machinery that will boost transparency and check corruption.

“Gone are the days of hard files, which can be easily tampered and altered while processing. Digital files will revolutionize governce once we have paperless offices,” Khandu said.

Khandu had signed the first paperless file of the IT department on August 16 last setting off the digitalization process of governce in the state.

The chief minister recollected his last meeting of at least 40 minutes with Prime Minister rendra Modi at New Delhi, wherein, he said, digitalization of governce was a major component of discussion.

Minister for Urban Development bam Rebia drew attention of the chief minister on the gap-funding required for fully commissioning the ‘Go Live’ e-governce project under Mission City Itagar programme for IMC.

He said the state government needs to put in its own resources to complete the project so that all the benefits as envisaged could be made available to the citizens.

Under JnNURM introduction of e-Governce in Municipalities was envisaged to facilitate enhanced service delivery mechanism, achieve better transparency and accountability among involved stakeholders and drive better service levels to the end beneficiaries.

However, JnNURM was discontinued in August, 2015 due to which installment of central funds was stopped and the Mission City Itagar project could not be completed.

Rebia further opined that all state-centric projects being implemented by UD (besides e-governce) like the inter-state bus termil, parking lot, convention hall, MLA apartments, etc, which remain incomplete due to delinking of several central schemes, need to be completed from the state’s own resources.

In response, the chief minister informed that he has already chalked out a meeting of the cabinet sub-committee during which these issues will discussed and assured that all unfinished projects under UD will be completed by the state government including the gap-funding of Mission City Itagar.

Once the e-governce system of IMC is fully commissioned, citizens could avail services of all the modules that include filing of on-line application for key services (Issuance of Birth/ Death Certificates or Trade Licenses, etc.).

Further, IMC would benefit in maintence of digitized records and tracking of defaulters for Property Tax, promotion of online transactions to generate more revenue and a sound and comprehensive maintence of information of the beneficiaries to avoid duplicity.

At the moment, the launched ‘Go Live’ project would offer two modules through which citizens can avail e-services for online registration of birth as well as death.