Although the state of Mizoram started late on the path of e-governance, it is focused on providing all government services at the doorsteps of the people of the state soon, minister, information and communication technology, Zodintluanga said this while inaugurating the 15th state consultative workshop on e-government in Aizawl on June 18. “Though Mizoram has been behind many states, we have made substantial progress on a number state mission mode projects such as e-district, commercial taxes, CCTNS,” he said.

Talking about Mizoram’s progress in the e-governance field, Zodintluanga said, while the state-wide area network (SWAN) was inaugurated by the chief minister recently, the state data centre (SDC) would be functional by the end of this year. Pointing out the hurdles in state’s roadmap to e-governance, he said that the state only has BSNL as its backbone in terms of its network connectivity and that too is very unreliable. He said the state is doing everything to overcome this problem.

He expressed his happiness over the fact that the government of India has focused its attention on the north-eastern states. “The north-eastern states need all the help they could get,” he said. He expressed hope that the state consultation workshop today would bring together all the stakeholders and help in charting the way forward.

Giving an overview of the National e-Governance Plan (NeGP), Dr Rajendra Kumar, joint secretary, department of electronics and information technology (DeitY) , government of India, said that the NeGP was launched in 2006 to make all government services available to the common man in his locality through common service deliver outlets in order to ensure efficiency, transparency and reliability.

On where NeGP stands today, he said although the core infrastructure is uneven is some states, it should be in place in most states by end of 2012. In terms of human resource, he said, state e-mission teams are in place in all states and union territories.    

Charting the state’s e-governance journey, Dr SS Garbyal, principal secretary, (ICT) government of Mizoram, said the state started its e-governance journey quite late. “We started working in this direction in 2008 by then many other states had gone much ahead,” he said. 

Recalling the first year of state’s journey on the path of e-governance, he said the state started with a vision of providing government services to people at their doorsteps. “As Mizoram is a hilly state, for travelling to state headquarters or even district headquarters for accessing services citizens have to spend lot of their time and money. Therefore, providing these services where they live is our primary objective,” he said.    

Delineating the steps taken to fulfil state’s e-governance objectives, he said the government created an institutional framework wherein State e-Governance Council (SeC) was formed. “Under the chairmanship of the chief minister and with many high ranking officials as its members, the council provides vision and leadership for all the e-governance projects. Apart from the SeC, there is a State e-Governance Apex Committee (SeAC) under the chairmanship of the chief secretary and then there are different state e-mission teams (SeMT) and project e-mission teams (PeMT),” he said.

While the SeAC has to provide strategy to achieve policy direction and oversee the state e-governance programme and ensure inter-departmental co-ordination, the role of SeMT is to resolve any inter- or intra-department conflicts, he said.

He said that the NeGP has three pillar —SWAN, SDC and common service centre (CSCs) — and the state’s progress in strengthening in all these three pillars has been significant. “SWAN will become operational from tomorrow and the SDC will become functional by the year-end. As far as CSCs are concerned, we have set up 136 CSCs in our state, out of which 89 have internet connectivity. We provide10 citizen services through CSCs at present” he said.

Speaking about the way forward, he said in order to get over the issue of connectivity, the PGCIL has proposed to lay overhead optical fibre cables (OFC) from Kumarghat in Tripura to Aizawl and it is expected to be complete by November this year. Besides, RailTel, will be laying OFC up to block level. RailTel has almost completed their survey works and they will complete the project within next two years.

During the daylong workshop, the Mizoram Government showcased IT solutions implemented in police, taxes, planning and coordination departments.