Digital Family Issue 89 November 2013 November 2013

89
1 to 30 November 2013
th

Crores of rupees going down the drains

Goa Govt Websites- A mockery!

By Sangeeta Naik

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Panaji, Nov 2013- Basic
building blocks of E-governance infrastructure – the
Websites -- of most Goa govt
departments are in absolute
shambles despite Goa being
the highest per capita spender in the country on IT infrastructure.

There is not a single centralized
source of information for the public
in the state. Missing information,
non working links, old un-updated
data, misleading and sometimes
misguiding information are but a
norm here. When rest of the world
is talking about updated (upto a
second) dynamic content many Goa
Government websites are still in
the old era with static ,fixed information displayed years after years.
Haphazard user interfaces, incomplete data, absolutely no regards
to users browsing convenience,
absence of search mechanisms, uploading of easily classifiable data as
PDF files (making searching and
using of such data cumbersome) ,
total disregard towards correcting
simple and easily rectifiable errors
– all this makes looking for information on these sites nothing short
of a nightmare. When other state
government websites give contact
details of highest to lowest in cadre
government servants it’s an ordeal
to find a working contact number
which is actually picked up by the
concerned person in Goa.
Crores of rupees are spent year
after year by the Goa Government
on the pretext of enhancing the In-

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formation technology Infrastructure
in the state to provide state-of-theart G2C(Government to Citizen),
G2B(Government to Business) and
G2G (Government to Government)
services. In fact we “get” awards
after awards for the same. But on
ground zero the situation is nothing
less than pathetic!
Goa is the highest per capita
spender in the country with 644 rupees spent per person over provid-

time in the right amount to the citizenry, industry and across departments. We in Goa are absolutely on
the back foot on this front.
Our Government has grossly
failed to provide basic information
to the Goan masses through the
most obvious means of mass information dissemination – the websites
of various departments of the state
Government. When websites of other states like Maharashtra are in-

BIGGEST EXPOSE ON GOA’S E-GOVERNANCE FARCE (Part I)
ing IT infrastructure . A whooping
93.5 crore rupees has been spent
on public IT infrastructure in Goa
in the last two financial years ending 31st March 2013 (Source- Data
Quest Survey Report 2013).Despite
all this the state has miserably failed
in the its first basic step of E-governance – dissemination of information through its websites!
The most important aspect of
deployment of Information Technology in Governance is dissemination of right information at the right

formation packed including contact
numbers of highest to lowest level
Government servants we in Goa
have to grapple around for small
tit bits of information. Citizens in
Goa almost struggle with missing
information on our government
websites (some of which really look
as though they belong to the ‘stone
age’. When dynamic contents are
but a norm in cyberspace most of
our websites are static with hardly
few offering effective search facilities. Whatever is there is in a pretty

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State portal mockery
of Goan Public
No central source of
information
Many websites are
static with age old
data
Searching for relevant information a
herculean task
Go to Kala Academy
Website listed on the
main page of state
portal for a shock of
your life
Centralised RTI website has no/very old
data
No websites for IT
Department & Information & Publicity
Department
Most websites designed by Infotech
Corporation are very
immature with hardly any data

Detailed
Inside

Postmortem