Jammu, Aug 22: Most of the government departments have gone offline when it comes to maintenance of websites having the vital information about the government functioning. 
 The official website of the Jammu and Kashmir government, jammukashmir.nic.in is non functional for last four months with a picture showing ‘under construction’, whenever one tries to surf through it.
 The website was launched about seven years back as part of the e-governance project to provide online data about various government departments and the different development schemes launched in the state. It was to act as the data bank for the people proving information about the government’s functioning.
 “While our techno savvy Chief Minister has created waves on twitter replying the queries of his followers and presenting his view point on various issues. The government website is totally shut, without any effort being made to revive it”, said a senior bureaucrat on the condition of anonymity.
 As soon as one goes to this page, a there appears a graphic page with words “under construction”. It’s not about this website only but most of the sites created by the government are either not updated or are non-functional”, said an official.
 The Jammu and Kashmir industries limited website www.jkil.gov.in, still shows the   Union Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad as its chairman, which is supposed to be the Chief Minister of the state, while former minister of state for Industries Ramesh Chander Sharma  is shown as its  vice chairman.
 “It shows that crores spent on using the internet connectivity and e-governance in the state for streamlining the administration functioning is just a wastage of state exchequer and has not served the real purpose for which these were created”, said a RTI activist, Randeep Sharma.
 Important to note here that ten years back the state government had taken a major initiative to implement E-Governance in all the departments, Public Sector Undertakings (PSU)s and other organisations under the centrally sponsored scheme.
 Most of the support is provided by National Informatics Centre (NIC), which is a premier institution of the Government of India, established in 1976. However respective departments had to maintain the infrastructure which includes the software content.
 A senior officer from the company said that lakhs of rupees were invested in introducing Information Technology (IT) and e-Governance in the day to day working of the government but it is not proving useful to anyone.
 The delay in the functioning of the website is creating problems for students as well as people from all walks of life. “We used to take the help of the website to prepare project reports or get any authentic information about the government departments, but we cannot rely on them as they contact wrong information at times,” said Syed Aftaf, a P.hD scholar.

Lastupdate on : Mon, 22 Aug 2011 21:30:00 Makkah time
Lastupdate on : Mon, 22 Aug 2011 18:30:00 GMT
Lastupdate on : Tue, 23 Aug 2011 00:00:00 IST