Thursday, October 16, 2014

Who says that IT is information technology?

Who says that IT is information technology? No, it is 'Initiative Technology' on one hand and 'Internal Transformation' on the other. The more initiatives one takes, more and more success stories are created. In fact, while working on such an eGovernance programme, which can touch upon the lives of thousands-nay-millions, it gives you a chance to discover yourself, thus finally transforming yourself internally, along with the process reforms initiated in the eGovernance Programmes.

I am writing this with a particular purpose.

The status of cooperative societies interacting electronically with government and citizens is still in infancy in India. The reason is simple: most of the members of cooperative societies are unknown to the digital world. But looking at the awakening at grass root level for technologies in general and for Information & Communication technologies in particular, the ePortal of department of Co-operation, Govt. of Madhya Pradesh, namely, 'eCooperatives' (www.mpsc.mp.nic.in/ecooperatives), built by NIC Bhopal supports the societies for presenting the statutory documents to Registrar online without hassle. It is to be understood that in so far as the companies are run by more or less highly educated persons with well equipped support of IT, it is still a dream for cooperative societies to work in such an IT infused environment. The MCA 21 provides a huge support to companies. In the same way the department of Co-operation, Govt. of Madhya Pradesh has initiated a remarkable eVolution for 37000+ cooperative societies of MP for enabling them to interact with the government through the Portal "eCooperatives" where every society has been provided an interface with a login with username and password.

The portal enables the common citizens for:
  1. Applying online for registration of cooperative societies.
  2. Applying online for and retrieval of any information of any society which the society has submitted before the Registrar through the Portal.
For this, the citizen has to register himself on the portal with his mobile number only.

This portal won the CSI Nihilent Award in 'Appreciation' category, last year in Vishakhappatnam. The portal was recently selected for "One of the best projects of India" by Skoch Group.

The latest ICT bonanza in Department of Co-operation is (4522) PACS Computerization for which the EOI is about to be floated.