Introduction and Background:
Modern society and economy is driven by information, knowledge and network based relationships. Information and knowledge is power and this leads to an equitable and transparent societal and good governance administrative system. The power of Information Communication Technology to this effect is tremendous. India is no exception.
There are multifarious ongoing efforts in India to deploy Information Communication Technology for social, economic, administrative and governance regeneration. The public and the private sectors are contributing efforts towards this. At policy level as well, there are various interventions to facilitate this process like the IT Act of 2000, the 2004 National Broad band policy and so on. At institutional level, various programmes have been devised to streamline processes. The MCA 21 initiative (Ministry of Company Affairs) is one such instance. The India national portal is another. More or less these are all at administrative and governance level pertaining administrative processes connecting the people at large. This has left with a major national gap as far as using ICT for the nation building is concerned. ICT usage is largely missing at the elected representative levels at all 3 tiers of political representation.
There is no visible and effective usage of ICT at the level of elected representatives in India despite all major policy decisions and implementations coming through them. This is missing at national, state and Panchayat levels. The strong indicator to this is neither at the Parliamentary level, State Assembly or at the Panchayat level, there is web interface of the constituencies either functional or static with information and content base.
Imagine the power of the Internet that can revolutionize information sharing, good governance, transparency, and development indicators once every constituency start having a web portal to start with each Panchayat. The Panchayat portals having substance and life with full information and content will revolutionize bottom up development. In all we have around 542 parliamentarians or as many constituencies, about 2400 legislatures or as many constituencies, and about 2, 71,000 Panchayats, representing more than 5, 45,000 villages. The already existing e-Panchayat programme exists but the power of content and information with a bottom up mechanism is missing.
With this background the concept of ‘Digital Panchayat’ (DP) has been ideated and rolled forward for implementation. Having a web interface at Panchayat level connected to the grassroots has tremendous relevance and utility in overall governance and development of our grassroots constituencies.
Digital Panchayat programme is a national initiative of Digital Empowerment Foundation and National Internet Exchange of India (Dept of IT, Govt. of India).
About the Project:
Digital Panchayat is a functional and dynamic digital platform and working station designed and created for each and every Panchayat in India, powered by Internet. The objective is to facilitate and improve Panchayat functioning on day-to-day basis, through two way flow of information and content. The goal is to realize various development objectives at grassroots level.
- To empower citizens of every panchayat with bottom up and top down information and content;
- To improve development and governance public service delivery at Panchayat level through information on policy programmes and implementation;
- Create a digital data house at every Panchayat level ;
- To facilitate growth of Panchayat economy through promotion of Panchayat tourism, e-commerce of local produce;
- To put every Panchayat on the global digital map;
- To generate an ICT environment in every panchayat;
- To give fillip to the Right to Information campaign.
- A comprehensive and dynamic local language content online platform
- Integrated digital platform for panchayat demography, society, culture, geography, history & economy
- A bilingual or multilingual information platform
- e-trade and e-commerce platform
- Local e-tourism platform
- Online public grievance redressal forum
- Local online resource center
- Online communication and information networking platform
- An e-Governance platform
- A digital data storehouse
- Develop a comprehensive Panchayat Digital Platform
- To train Panchayat representatives in IT skills & management of Panchayat platform
- Generation of Panchayat content
- Regular updation and maintenance of Panchayat content
Partnership is fundamental and vital to achieve our goal of digital mission and sustainable development. Ours is a huge task and we think that we can achieve it through collective participation of one and all. DEF seeks local partnerships and collaboration with NGOs and institutes at local and regional level who would like to contribute their time and efforts to make Digital Panchayat national programme a success through networking, campaigning and outreach.
For local NGOs and Institution who would like to be associated with DEF through Digital Panchayat can contribute as follows:
- Identifying Panchayats in different villages to be converted on digital platform
- Identify village Panchayats and its information, content and services needs
- Frame parameters to collect the content to be displayed on the portal, Identify the people to collect it, orient them to collect it and assist them in collecting the required information
- Project formulation and Implementation
- Provide technical support and Human resource
- Provide assistance in infrastructure hosting
- Orient and train people including Panchayat staff on importance of web technology, using the technology, updating it and provide initial hand-holding support
- Extend cooperation in regularly monitoring the program and evaluating the outcomes for the same on regular basis
Our previous local, regional partnerships who have been very actively involved with us on Digital Panchayat workshops, trainings and educational seminars.
Digital Panchayat Workshop images. See more:
Click on image to watch Digital Panchayat Film
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For more queries and details please write to defindia@gmail.com or contact us directly.
