Masala Today

THE EVENT e-Governance presents challenges and opportunities to transform both the mechanics of government, and the nature of governance itself. The big challenges are not technological but cultural. The National Conference on e-Governance has been providing a platform of meaningful interaction to policy makers, practitioners, industry leaders and academicians to deliberate, interact and recommend an actionable strategy for good governance and to improve the standard of services rendered to the common man. At a time when many key technology and management strategies also are transforming the way government gathers, shares and gleans knowledge from the explosion of information available to policy makers and practitioners, the 12th National Conference on e-Governance based on the theme “e-Governance: Breaking Barriers, Building Bridges”, will explore how government departments are working collectively to simplify access to public information, ensure the accuracy and privacy of the inform

'Jankari', a Bihar government project to empower people with information under RTI over telephone, has bagged the National award for e-governance. "The award will be given to the state government's unique project, Jankari Call Centre under Right to Information Act (RTI), on February 12 this year at the national conference on e-governance in Goa," Amir Subhani, Principal Secretary, Personnel, told reporters here. Bihar is the first state to start the Jankari project, a brain child of Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, which enables people living in remote corners of the state to make applications under RTI through a telephone call, Subhani said. The operators receiving the calls in call centres draft the applications under RTI and send it to the public authorities for providing requisite information to applicants. During the two years of its existence, the call centre received 22,600 calls of which 7,070 were to submit applications under RTI, 3016 calls for filing first