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TAMIL NADU: IT In Focus

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DQI Bureau
New Update

With

a mission to make interface with the registration department a pleasant

experience, the Government of Tamil Nadu has commenced the simplified and

transparent administration of registration (STAR) project across the state. This

project comprises of a comprehensive IT package for all needs of the

registrants. The first phase of the project has been in operation in 16

sub-registrar offices and nine district registrar offices for services like

document archival, issue of certified copy, encumbrance certificate, property

valuation, guideline value, and birth and death extract. As a result, benefits

that have reached the common man are quick and transparent service, simplified

processes, elimination of middlemen and a pleasant experience with the user. The

measure of the success of the project is witnessed when compared to the time

saved with the new system. The encumbrance certificate, for instance, which used

to take eight days earlier in the manual system has been reduced to 15 minutes,

while that of property valuation has gone down from 60 minutes to 10 minutes.

The certified copy, registration and marriage extract has been reduced to half

an hour each, as opposed to the minimum one day time period earlier. The second

phase of the project which is currently being implemented will be extended to

the 284 sub registrar offices and 41 district registrar offices in the state by

2001. Tamil Nadu is the second largest revenue earner from the Registration

Department, fetching in Rs1000 crore, only next to the government of Maharashtra.

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School project

During the period

1999-2000, the Tamil Nadu Budget proposed to take computer literacy to all the

1,300 higher secondary schools in the state. It was announced by the Chief

Minister. This was begun with not only the idea of taking computers to the grass

root level for the student community, but also making computers available at the

village level. The objective behind this was that, for e-governance to be

effective, people should be IT-savvy. Based on this, the government decided to

launch the School project floated by private participation to bear the initial

high cost of investment of hardware and training in all the higher secondary

schools. The state-owned Electronics Corporation of Tamil Nadu (Elcot) was

chosen as the implementing agent for the project to select suitable contracts

for the regions of Chennai, Coimbatore, Madurai and Trichy into which the state

is divided.

Forty three contracts to impart

computer education in 666 government higher secondary schools was taken up in

the first phase and the remaining 516 schools will be covered in the second

phase. The first phase that introduced the course curriculum has been

periodically reviewed by the Committee for Advanced System. The committe has

revised the second year syllabus in keeping with the latest in internet and

emerging technologies. Under the first year, the project has trained over

250,000 students and provided employment opportunities for 1,332 computer

instructors. The government has ensured penetration of computers in all the

villages through this program by allowing the private participants who run the

computer centers in the school to leave it open for the public to learn courses

or use computers for browsing and internet purposes. And for those who have no

use for computers or browsing, off-line browsing of sample sites contained in

CDs is used for practice to save valuable time and bandwidth.

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The government has kept its

initial investment costs low by contracting it to private training institutes

like NIIT and Aptech, who take up the responsibility of installing the hardware,

software, maintaining computer centers and also training the students and staff

on computers on a quarterly payment mode. In addition to extending the school

project to the remaining higher secondary schools and high schools in the state

in the next two years, the government is already proposing to introduce similar

computer centers in the 60 government colleges in the medicine and law streams.

Further, the government is

contemplating the scheme to be taken up to general graduate courses for a

minimum period of one year. "Once all the students of schools and colleges

in the state become IT-savvy, the direct social impact of e-governance will

already have begun to be felt," explains RT Arasan, GM, Marketing, Elcot.

Telemedicine project

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With a

primary focus on health care, the Government of Tamil Nadu has tried to leverage

IT as a strategic tool to help hospitals in remote areas to be connected to

major city hospitals for telemedicine and consulting. The first pilot project is

being carried out between Walajah Government Hospital and Chennai General

Hospital. A technology-oriented project, it helps health and family welfare

initiatives by allowing the doctors in remote areas to consult experts in

special cases or for referral purposes through a direct ISDN link between the

two hospitals. These hospitals will also be provided with digital cameras, video

conferencing, telemedicine facilities, scanning, x-ray and small video clipping

transmission capabilities. These would allow exchange of views on live surgeries

or tackle complicated cases in a short period of time without actually

transferring the patient physically to the Chennai hospital. This is also

launched under the build-and-operate model where equipment providers maintain

and post
persons in these centers for annual maintenance and training.

Based on the success of this project, the government plans to extend the same

facility to other rural hospitals with ISDN connectivity.

Computerization of land

records

A central

government funded project, computerization of land records in Tamil Nadu has

completed the first phase of data entry of existing record of rights and started

using extracts of it as computer print outs. The objective of implementing the

project has been to eliminate corruption in the department and for customer

proof of ownership. To start with, the department has created a master register

of all Indian land records with entries of ‘Chitta’–record of rights and

‘Patta’–details of holding, with basic updating features for dynamic

updates of buy, sell and partition details. After an initial pilot project in

Salem district in 1991-92, all the districts and the 206 ‘Taluk’ offices in

the state have been computerized during 1997-98. A detailed transaction history

of all the records, with security features like user name and password for all

the transactions, has been implemented to preserve the sanctity and accuracy of

land records. And with the repository of information which has been

computerized, cit
izens can walk up to any of the ‘Taluk’ offices and

get a print out of the record of the document required at the click of a button.

Digitization of the field map for the corresponding land records is also being

undertaken. A field measurement book for the village is being registered for the

same purpose using digital scan and ladder data entry methods. And with the

completion of the project, the land RDBMS will be linked to the map front-end on

Windows NT operating systems. Simultaneously, computerization of other details

like money order for pensions, PDS systems and grievance day petitions have also

been taken up in the ‘Taluk’ offices.

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Local language computing

project

The

TamilNet ’99, an international conference on Tamil language held last year,

was the stepping stone for the focus on developing computing in Tamil. Some of

the key initiatives undertaken during the conference were
to standardize

the Tamil key board and fonts, according to Unicode guidelines. A ‘KaniTamil

Changam’ association was formulated for this purpose to certify that the new

fonts developed by independent vendors conform to the standards set by Unicode,

according to the Tamil ’99 standards. In the first phase, 10 software and four

printers in the Tamil language were certified to conform to the Tamil ’99

standards, incorporating features set by the association. This ensures

compatibility of fonts in encoding mechanisms, email and communication. As part

of the same conference, a Tamil Virtual University has been registered as a

society to start operations to encourage NRI Tamils and non-Tamils interested in

learning the language. In addition, a Tamil Software Development Fund has been

constituted by the government which writes proposals from educational

institutions and experts in the usage of Tamil in computing and internet. Four

such projects have already been identified and funded for this purpose in the

areas of voice recognition, mapping of Windows system booting in Tamil, Unix

platform, advanced Tamil interface with Windows, optical character recognition

for printed Tamil and Linux in Tamil.

E-governance

Projects

  • STAR:

    Simplified and transparent administration of registration across Tamil

    Nadu, a comprehensive IT package for all needs of the registrants.
  • SCHOOL PROJECT:

    To take computer literacy to 1,300 higher secondary schools in the

    state
  • TELE-MEDICINE

    PROJECT
    :

    Allows doctors in remote areas to consult experts on special cases or

    for referral purposes through a direct ISDN link.
  • COMPUTERIZATION

    OF LAND RECORDS
    :

    To eliminate corruption in the department and for customers’ proof

    of ownership.
  • LOCAL LANGUAGE

    COMPUTING
    :

    Standardized keyboard and fonts, Tamil virtual library, Tamil Software

    Development Fund, Tamil Internet Research Center.
  • COMPUTERIZATION

    OF TRANSPORT DEPARTMENT
    :

    Data-entered and updated the historical data of one crore records of

    vehicles and drivers in the state from 1984 onwards.
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A Tamil Internet Research Center

has also been set up for funding projects for the use of Tamil on the net.

"The objective is that, finally, language will not be a barrier for

Tamilians to catch up with the internet and computing in this state,"

explains Lakshmi Narayanan, GM, Elcot, who is in charge of some of these

initiatives.

Computerization of transport

department

The Government of Tamil

Nadu has been one of the fore-runners in introducing computing technologies to

issue driving licenses, registration certificates, permits and taxation. The

first phase of implementation for issuing computerized documents in all the

areas has been achieved, thereby making the process easy, convenient and

fool-proof. For instance, the issuance of driving licenses which was prone to

corruption and even duplicate licenses, has now been checked with each driving

license holder having to go up to the RTO to get the license laminated driving

licenses. The hologram on the driving license with the state emblem has been yet

another major initiative in curbing fake licenses issued anywhere in the state.

All the 17 transport offices across the state, including the seven zones, have

implemented computerization
for issuing driving licenses, registration

certificates, permits and taxation across the state. The department has

data-entered and up-dated the historical data of one crore records of vehicles

and drivers in the state. The project is being extended to prepare better

infrastructure and ISDN connectivity with all the offices in the state for

speedy transactions.  

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