A daylong conference on ‘Digital India – Social and Financial Inclusion, Best Practices & E-Start-ups ’was held here today.Minister for Information Technology, Technical Education and Youth Services & Sports, Molvi Imran Raza Ansari was the Chief Guest on the occasion.Minister of State for Information Technology and Finance, Mr. Pawan Kumar Gupta was the Guest of Honour.The conference was organized by RHD Chamber of Commerce and Industry in collaboration with Department of Information Technology and JK Bank.Speaking on the occasion, Molvi Imran Raza Ansari said that coalition Government is committed to provide good governance to citizens of the state. He said e-governance is an effective tool which is improving delivery of services and also helps in curbing menace of corruption and procedural delay from day today administrative working.“The people of the State now want a Digital J&K. Mobile have already made place in rural, pahari and backward areas of the state.”, the Minister said ,adding that the objective of Digital India is to take Government from Government offices right into the palms of people.Molvi Ansari said Government is ensuring that in coming years many more services from the Government shall be available to the people through e-governance. He said, “We are also working to create a transparent, accountable, efficient and effective IT enabled service delivery system for our citizens”.
Referring to the initiatives and achievements of IT Department, the Minister said that the department has established the servers and secure environment for hosting of Government websites, e-services and data of various government departments. “The Data Centre is operational since March 2013 and as of today, over 30 websites of various departments and web applications have been hosted in J&K State Data Centre (SDC)”, he said and added that seven e-services for three Departments Health, Social Welfare and Employment Exchange of Labour & Employment Department have been developed in Mission Mode Project of State Services Delivery Gateway (SSDG),besides, identifying 50 more services of various departments which would be rolled out in a phased manner in near future.
Mr. Ansari said Information Technology Department has created a State Portal (jk.gov.in) which is providing the front end interface to all the existing services and the upcoming services in future of various departments of J&K. He also said that setting up of 1109 common service Centre, locally known as Khidmat Centres are helping in bringing government services to the grass root level. These centres have also been instrumental in taking Government services to the remotest part of J&K and are acting as the e-hands of the government departments.Referring to the rigorous work of IT on AADHAR project, the Minister said J & K is among the few states which are following National Population Register (NPR) for enrolment of citizens. He said out of total population of 1.25 crore, 1.09 crore have been digitized by the Census department till date. He informed that 80.67 lakh people have been enrolled at NPR/AADHAR Camps across the state out of which 64.40 lakh have been issued Aadhar Cards.
“We are in process of establishing IT parks in our State at Ompora, Budgam”, the Minister asserted, adding that Chief Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed is personally taking interest in development of IT parks. This, he said would not only give major boost to IT industry but also create jobs for hundreds of uneducated unemployed youth.Minister of State for IT and Finance, Mr. Pawan Gupta said that the vision of Digital India programme is to transform India into a digitally empowered society and knowledge economy. He said the aim of the Digital India is to ensure that the Government Services are made available to citizens electronically. He said Government emphasises on providing high speed internet connectivity across the length and breadth of the country by deploying information and communication technologies infrastructure, optical fiber and last-mile connectivity offered by the wireless technologies in a manner that is affordable, reliable and competitive.Both the Minister’s complimented the PHD Chamber of Commerce for holding such a conference in the State.Earlier, Chairman Jammu and Kashmir Committee, PHD Chamber, Vikram Kuthiala presented the welcome address while as Co-Chairman ICT Committee, PHD Chamber, Mr. Atul Anand delivered the speech on theme of the Digital India.They informed that Digital India is an ambitious programme of Government of India with projected value of Rs 1, 13,000 crore. The vision for Digital India programme is to transform India into a digitally empowered society and knowledge economy.