Special software for e-governance in rural Bihar

Patna, Sep 10 (UNI) The Bihar government today launched special software for providing information and maintaining transparency in developmental activities through e-governance in rural Bihar.

Laucnhing the software in a training programme on National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS), Principal Secretary of the State Rural Department Anup Mukherjee told newspersons here that the software had been developed by the National Informatics Centre (NIC) for Block Informatics Centre(BIC).

Mr Mukherjee said the BIC would help speed up activities relating to e-governence in the rural areas, monitoring physical and financial progress besides planning and implementation of rural development schemes up to the panchayat level.

He described the BIC as an extraordinary achievement and maintained that it would lead to qualitative improvement in the functioning of the government at grassroot level.

The BIC would definitely ensure efficiency, transparency and reliability of such services at an affordable cost, Mr Mukherjee said adding to be aware of the basic needs of the people was the basic idea behind establishing BIC across the state.

He said the BIC would extend citizen-centric services and also provide certificates related to caste, income, domicile and others to the people.

It would be the ''rural hub'' for most of the government services, he added.

On this occasion, state informatics officer Saurabh Gupta emphasised on establishing high speed network and large capacity data storage capability for the project. Mr Gupta said the NIC was making all efforts to make an integrated application for automation of Block Development Offices (BDO) across the state.

The NIC would also host the entire final BPL data of the state and provide web interface for the NREGS project.

Mr S M Raju, state co-ordinator for NREGS, informed the gathering that it would not be a mere scheme, rather an Act providing legal guarantee to work.

He said Panchayati Raj Institutions will have principal role in planning and implementation to bring transparency and accountability in such services. People's participation will be ensured through institutional mechanism, he added.

Initially, BICs were being set up in 534 blocks and 38 DRDAs of the state, he informed.

UNI