The Planning Commission will soon become a paperless body, with all official work, right from drafting of proposals to approval of projects and grant of funds, done through computers over an internal network.

This will be the first step in an ambitious plan to coordinate the activities of all central departments and ministries by inter-connecting them through an online system.

The project would be implemented by the National Innovation Council recently set up by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, which would develop the required software for the project. However, technical support would be provided by the National Informatics Centre.

The council, headed by Sam Pitroda, is mandated to energise innovation initiatives so as to make them a part of the national effort aimed at reducing poverty, improving governance and making development more inclusive.

"There is a plan of making all central government departments and ministries paperless and interconnecting those for reducing delays and ensuring total transparency," the source said.

He said, "The process of making everything online has started with making the Planning Commission a paper-less organisation, which would take a few months."

It is expected that by doing all work online, the panel would be able to avoid duplication of fund allocation for same work or projects. This would also help the commission keep a close watch on implementation of important social sector programmes and schemes.

It is envisaged that greater efficiency would be achieved once all ministries and departments are inter-connected during the 12th Five-Year Plan (2012-2017).

During the 12th Plan, the government aims to improve implementation of projects and social sector schemes through better governance. In this regard, inter-connecting various ministries and departments is a step towards this direction.

To attract more private players to invest, particularly in infrastructure, more efficient governance is needed, which is the aim of the programme.

In the current Five-Year Plan (2007-12), the government has envisaged investment to the tune of USD 500 billion in infrastructure, with the private sector contributing over 30 per cent.

But achieving the envisaged investment of USD 1 trillion during the next Five-Year Plan is not easy unless governance is improved. A Plan panel official said, "Making everything online and interconnecting ministries and departments would provide a single window service to the investors."

This would result in investors no longer having to run from pillar to post to get approvals for a project, he added.