HYDERABAD: Union Minister for Information Technology Ravi Shankar Prasad said several initiatives have been lined up towards digitalising a few government services, including issuing of pensions and sanctioning of revenue documents.
The minister, who was in Hyderabad to inaugurate an event at the National Institute of Tourism and Hospitality Management on Saturday, said the IT department has already started developing few e-portals for select government services. It is part of the Prime Minister’s initiative to connect the nation with the government in using information technology, he said.
The minister explained the functions of several of the upcoming portals. One of them is ‘Lost and Found’, an e-portal which will help find out the missing persons and will be accessible to all. It enables all the users to upload photos and details of missing people and will be connected to all State government portals, so that the missing persons can be found from any part of the country.
Another e-portal can translate around 26 regional languages and it will help the Union government to pass the information of welfare schemes across the country. Saying the government departments are yet to seize the advantages of IT technology, he made some proposals to a few of the departments towards exploiting the technology. To grab the opportunities in the fast growing e-commerce industry, the minister advised the postal department to expand their services and link up with the e-commerce services to sell goods and boost the government’s revenues.
Referring to the recently approved electronic development fund (EDF) to boost the manufacturing of electronic goods, he said the government is ready to encourage the industry if they come up with the good projects.
He also invited the corporates and NGOs to work with the government towards making the effective e-governance policies.