BHUBANESWAR: The Odisha Assembly is in the process of finalising a detailed project report (DPR) for digitisation of legislative business under National e-Vidhan Application (NeVA) programme. The e-governance programme was reviewed at a meeting of the Assembly Committee on Computerisation chaired by Speaker SN Patro on Thursday. The Speaker asked the Assembly Secretariat to submit the draft project report by June 22 for deciding further course of action.
The DPR is being prepared taking into account the existing manpower and information and communication technology (ICT) available with the Assembly. The report will be first examined by the Information Technology department and then placed before the State level NeVA project monitoring committee headed by the Chief Secretary for technical and financial scrutiny. One of the key components of the strategy devised for implementation of the project is to create Project Monitoring Units (PMU) at State level.
Meanwhile, a State level PMU has been constituted by the Parliamentary Affairs department for implementation of NeVA, said an official. After final approval of the DPR, the same will be send to the Ministry of Parliamentary Affairs (MoPA) for approval. After technical and financial scrutiny by MoPA, funds will be released for project implementation, sources said. Funding of NeVA to the State is on the pattern of Centrally sponsored scheme.
The Central share will be 60 per cent of the total project cost while the State will contribute the rest 40 per cent. Funding for e-Vidhan is provided by the MoPA while technical support is extended by Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology. It has been nearly a year since the Centre asked the Assembly to prepare a DPR for digitisation of legislative business. Sources in the Assembly Secretariat said the project is likely to cost around `20 crore out of which the Centre would provide `12 crore.
The proposed e-Assembly is a concept involving electronic means to facilitate the work of Assembly. It will enable automation of entire law making process, tracking of decisions and documents and sharing of information. Besides, NeVA aims to bring all the legislatures of the country together on one platform, thereby creating a massive data depository without having the complexity of multiple applications.