Department websites not being updated

Chandigarh Tribune: Shimla: Monday, 15 December 2014.

While Himachal has made rapid strides in e-governance and won several prizes, most government departments are adopting a casual approach in making use of IT applications and not updating their websites regularly.

The departments have abided by the directions of the government to launch their websites but the information in most of the websites relate to broad structure of the departments and activities undertaken by them and some websites are more like “archives” rather than sources of instant information.

Not only that the websites are not updated, even the dates of the latest updates are not mentioned in the websites and the desired information is not extracted even after searching the websites.

The websites of major departments such as Education, Agriculture, Irrigation and Public Health, Public Works Department, Finance, Transport and Home contain information about the projects and activities but the latest position (status report) of implementation of development schemes, money spent and target achieved are missing.

Most departments have loaded the data of 2012-13 or 2013-14 but even the budget allocations for the current financial year, physical targets and achievements on monthly or quarterly basis are not mentioned and people are forced to file applications under the Right to Information (RTI).

The latest data about the collection of taxes, revenue earned by different departments, plan and non-plan expenditure incurred by departments and shortfalls and achievements for the current year are also not posted on the websites.

The functioning of hospitals has not been made online and in spite of computerisation on a large scale, the use of stationery items has not been reduced.

“I wanted to get data about average monthly spending of the government with department-wise breakup but no website had up-to-date data” said Anil Goswami, pursuing his post doctorate research on “Financial dependence of hilly states”.

The data about the sale of liquor and unconsumed stocks are available with dealers and stockists and also the department but not posted on websites.

The implementation of government scheme to provide free uniform to students of government schools had been tardy and students in many schools did not get uniforms till the end of the session but the website has no data about the school where the uniforms did not reach or made available at the end of session.