First of its kind e-Governance conference in northern India at Katra on Nov 26-27

Dr Jitendra to inaugurate, Sinha to head valedictory session

Nishikant Khajuria

JAMMU, Nov 21: Amid J&K administration’s thrust on effective service delivery system, a national conference on e-Governance – first of its kind in northern India, is going to be held here on November 26-27.
The highly significant two-day national conference at Shri Mata Vaishno Devi University Katra is all set to provide a platform for discussion on some of the digital innovations and technologies that will play an important part in the next decade for governance to transform India into a digitally empowered society and knowledge economy.
Union Minister Dr Jitendra Singh will inaugurate the conference on November 26 whereas Lt Governor Manoj Sinha will preside over the valedictory session on November 27.
Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar will also be attending the valedictory session which will witness the significant launch of Jammu and Kashmir Cyber Security Policy and signing of various MoUs.
The Department of Administrative Reforms & Public Grievances (DARPG) and Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology (MeitY) in association with the Jammu and Kashmir Government is organizing this 25th National Conference on e-Governance (NCeG), which is first of its kind in entire northern India.
Theme of this conference is “Bringing Citizens, Industry and Government Closer” and the discussions will be held on ten sub themes in the Plenary Sessions. These sub-themes include `Digital Governance across the Whole-of-the-Government’; `Digital economy, strengthening start-up ecosystem and employment generation’; ‘Modern laws to promote national growth and to secure citizen’s rights’; `Transparent and Real-time Grievance Management System’; ’21st Century Digital Infrastructure for next-generation services and security in cyberspace’; `Shifting the gear on emerging technologies from exploration to population scale solutions’; ‘The role of e-Governance in bridging the digital divide’; `Digital Governance for Enhancing Ease of Doing Business and Ease of Living’; `J&K State: Digital Transformation in Jammu & Kashmir’ and `e-Governance Initiatives in J&K’.
The conference would provide considerable momentum to the e-Governance initiatives in Jammu and Kashmir along with other parts of the country besides making available opportunities for civil servants and industry captains to showcase their successful interventions in e-Governance in improving end-to-end service delivery.
Pertinent to mention that under the stewardship of Lt Governor Manoj Sinha, Jammu Kashmir tops among all the Union Territories of India in e-Governance service delivery. A number of major IT initiatives have been taken in recent times by the UT Government which has brought a paradigm shift in the structure of governance.
J&K Government has made more than 200 services online for prompt service delivery for its citizens with effective feedback mechanism system. The Rapid Assessment System (RAS) has been integrated with all the services for eliciting the response and feedback of the citizens regarding the ease of availing, usage and quality of the service while about 30 of these services have been brought on-board the UMANG platform thus moving towards the Goal of “AapKa Mobile, Humara Daftar”. A few services like Birth certificate, Death Certificate etc have been integrated with Digi-Locker and more are in the process of integration, thus paving the way for a citizen to obtain their digital documents while sitting in the comfort of their homes or offices.
According to an official spokesperson, the J&K Government is aiming to bring about transformation by means of a single National Single Sign-On (NSSO) called “MeriPehchan”. In coming days, all the remaining G2C services would be digitally enabled and brought on-board a single platform.
During the conference, national awards for e-Governance (NAeG) will be presented under five categories to 18 e-Governance initiatives at Central, State and district levels, academic and research institutions as well as public sector undertaking. This includes nine Gold and nine Silver awards.
Over 1,000 delegates are expected to attend this conference. An exhibition will also be organised during the event to showcase India’s achievements in the field of e-Governance, along with a wall of fame/photo exhibition on the award winners.
Senior Secretaries from the Government of India including V Srinivas, Secretary, Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances; Alkesh Kumar Sharma, Secretary, Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology and Arun Kumar Mehta, Chief Secretary, Government of Jammu and Kashmir would also address the conference.