Departments of administrative reforms and public grievances and information technology, government of India have recently announced the national e­governance awards 2012, in seven categories. The shortlisted projects and respective departments will be conferred during the annual two day national conference on e-governance, being jointly organised by the two departments on February 9-10 in Bhubaneswar. 

Project ‘e-Checkpost’ of the commercial tax department of government of Karnataka and national informatics centre (NIC) has won the gold award under the excellence in government process re-engineering category. In citizen-centric service delivery category, while Sugarcane Information System (SIS) of government of Uttar Pradesh has been conferred with a gold award, the Pregnancy, Child Tracking & Health Services System (PCTS) of government of Rajasthan and NIC settled with silver.

The mid-day meal authority in the basic education department of UP has qualified for the most innovative use of technology in e-governance award category. The other categories include, ‘innovative use of ICT by PSUs for customer’s benefits’, ‘exemplary re-use of ICT based solutions’, ‘innovative use of ICT by PSUs for customer benefits’, ‘best government portal’ and ‘specific sectoral award: focus sector for 2011-12: local government’.

The conference is 15th in the series. Last year, it was last held in Aurangabad, Maharashtra. This year the meet would explore how government departments could work collectively to simplify access to public information and ensure anywhere and anytime accessibility for all, accuracy and privacy of the information and analyse large data repositories to support actionable decision-making especially at the lowest level of governance, i.e., in gram panchayats and municipalities.

The two-day meet will have deliberations on key issues related to e-governance such as democratisation of information, social audit and local government.