Minister K. Raju on Saturday launched the upgraded bilingual website of the district administration, www.kollam.gov.in , the first-of-its-kind in the State.
Designed under the Central government’s SWaaS (Secure, Scalable and Sugamaya website as a Service) framework and developed under the guidance of the National Informatics Centre district team, the website makes possible browsing in both English and Malayalam.
It could be easily switched to either of the languages to explore a variety of contents covering various aspects of the district. “It’s a fresh framework with very user-friendly templates,” says Satheesh, District Informatics Officer. Till now the website supported only one language, keeping away the population who prefer local language.
The home page of the website features historic and geographic details of the district, directory, departments, tourism, documents, forms, notices and photo gallery. It also connects the user to all the emergency police and helpline numbers along with various services. Another highlight of the portal is that it takes care of all accessibility criteria, making it possible for visually challenged and colour blind persons to use it. “They could browse the website with the help of screen reader software,” he says.
Details of various schemes, projects and information on citizen-centric services offered by the government will be available on the website. Since it supports local language, it will be more user-friendly enabling a lot more people to access it. The portal will also function as a point for dissemination of information, ensuring better governance. “All the core departments will have login ids on the website. They can publish notices or information directly on the site,” he says.
The district NIC team will regularly update the website keeping the content uptodate. “All the users with administrative privilege will be able to modify the content and publish or unpublish information,” he says. After Kollam, all district administration websites will switch to this new bilingual framework starting with Thrissur.
