Meet B.K. Aggrawal, resident commissioner of Himachal Pradesh in New Delhi and the brain behind many e-Governance initiative launched by the state in the recent times.

As principal secretary (information technology) from June 2008 to January this year, Aggrawal oversaw the introduction of m-Governance in the state in October last year. “We are the second state after Kerala to have introduced m-governance providing a number of government services through mobile phone,” he told Governance Now in the national capital.

At the initial stage, information on services like driving license, vehicle registration, arms license and birth certificate is being sent through mobile phone.

It was also during his tenure as IT secretary that computerisation and linking of all the college libraries at all the district was initiated. The idea was to enable students to get access to the libraries from anywhere in the state, he said.

Training of the government staff in computers was another area where Aggrawal emphasised as a IT head of the government. “Along with computerisation, it was important to train the staff to handle the changes that IT brought about in the government functioning,” he said. For this he set up Karamchari Computer Prashikshan Yojna to educate and train the government staff. “We empaneled private computer centres for this purpose,” he said.

After coming to New Delhi as resident commissioner, Aggrawal has not jettisoned his interest in IT. “In this position I make sure to encourage more and more private participation and investment in the IT sector in my state,”he said.