Kapil Sibal Inaugurates Electronics & Information Technology Exposition “E-Governance:

Information Communication Technology can play big role in effective governance and impressive delivery of public services. A number of initiatives in this regard have been taken by the Government. National e- Governance Plan (NeGP) and UID Project (Adhar) have the potential to change the way we feel and interact with the government. This was stated by Shri Kapil Sibal, the Minister of Communications & Information Technology, here today while inaugurating the two day Electronics & Information Technology Exposition (ELITEX-2011).The Minister said that 90,000 Common Service Centers (CSCs) in 31 states have already been established under NeGP and another 150,000 Common Service Centers are planned to be set up in next 3 years. With this every Village Panchayat will have a Common Service Center to provide a host of services through internet, on other hand, Adhar will help Government in identifying the correct beneficiary of government’s developmental and social security schemes, he added.

The theme of the discussion sessions at ELITEX-2011 is “e-Governance: Public Services Closer Home”.This exposition includes sessions on Empowerment through M-Governance, Cyber Security – Evolving Threats and Counter Measures, Challenges of Multilingual Web Services, Convergence Communications & Broadband Technologies, Shared Platforms for e-Governance, Government Service Delivery using ICT, Indigenous Initiatives – A Glimpse, Nano-electronics Infrastructure, Capacity Building & Technology Development, ICT for Common Man and Technologies in e-Governance.

Exposition will among other things deliberate on leveraging of emerging technologies – M-Governance and Shared Platforms for enabling public services. Mobile platform can be used for delivery of a wide variety of electronic services such as filing/receipt of applications for government services, identification and authentication of applicants, payment of fees for government services, tracking of status of applications, etc. Rapidly expanding user base of mobile phones in India can also be exploited for fostering financial inclusion using mobile banking technologies, especially in rural areas. The session would focus on these and other relevant areas.

Shri Sachin Pilot, Minister of State for Communications & Information Technology, Shri R Chandrashekhar, Secretary, Department of Information Technology, Shri Shankar Aggarwal, Additional Secretary, Department of Information Technology, Dr. B K Gairola, DG , National Informatics Center and other senior officers from DIT were also present.