Maran releases e-gov roadmaps for 15 states

The National Advisory Group on e-governance held its first meeting at the
Centre for e Governance here, under the Chairmanship of Dayanidhi Maran,
Minister of Communications and Information Technology.

The meeting was attended by various representatives from the government,
academia and industry, including Nandan Nilekani, Infosys; Kiran Karnik, Nasscom;
Prof Subhash Bhatnagar, IIM (Ahmedabad); Secretary DOT and DIT and IT
secretaries of various state governments.

The advisory group has been set up as apart of the recently approved National
e-Governance Plan (NeGP).Among the issues discussed were need for departments to
assume ownership of the projects, interoperability between diverse government
systems, and the need for localization of e-governance applications.

The group also advocated focus on capacity building, need for flexibility at
local level for innovation and the involvement of civil society organizations
and small and medium enterprises to ensure the percolation of the plan. On this
occasion, Maran also released a CD containing the e-governance roadmaps of 15
states.