Three more mission mode projects (MMPs) in the area of education, health and public distribution system (PDS) will be included in the national e-governance plan (NeGP) as per Shankar Aggarwal, Additional Secretary in the department of information technology (DIT).

"It has been decided that we will expand this basket of 27 MMPs and the cabinet secretary has given a direction to include education, health and PDS", Aggarwal mentioned in an exclusive interview to Governance Now on April 25.

The current e-health scenario in India is limited to medical transcription, hospital management system, customer facilitation through call centre /internet and telemedicine. There had been very limited telemedicine pilots across the country like the CICs in the north east undertaken by department of information technology.

With regards to education again only a limited development in form of computer based training, ICT training, smart classes exists. The development of a comprehensive mission mode project is also the need of the hour.

Chattisgarh has done remarkable progress in area of computerization of the PDS system and the government can replicate this success story by designing a comprehensive MMP in other states.

Therefore there is a need for development of comprehensive projects in the above area.

The interview will be published in the May,15 issue of Governance Now.