The Telangana government has initiated an exercise to launch a dedicated State Geographic Information System portal integrating the data of all the departments.
The Telangana State Remote Sensing Applications Centre of the Planning Department would take up the project while the Information Technology Department would play a supportive role. Both the departments would work to put the GIS data related to each department on the common portal for the benefit of all. The TRAC would engage a professional agency to execute the project.
The regional centres of Telangana State Remote Sensing Applications Centre have been involved in gathering data and identifying and tagging the resources of each department in various districts with the help of GIS tool. So far, departments such as irrigation, school education, municipal administration, revenue (land records), mines and geology, town and country planning, R&B, Panchayat Raj, transport were using the GIS technology to map their assets and resources. However, the departments have been doing this independently using different platforms and software. If the Forest Department wanted to know about the mineral resources located near the forests, it would not be able to access the Mining Department data. Thus the common portal would help in migrating the data of the all departments onto a single platform for interoperability, integration and data sharing and analysis, officials said. The Planning and IT Department officials held a preliminary round of meeting with all the departments and explained the vision of the common portal and how the State would benefit from it. A common portal would bring in transparency and accountability, besides helping the departments plan and execute multi-dimensional activities better.
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For instance, the location of water bodies under minor irrigation or local bodies would help the Fisheries Department to assess the water level in them and plan its fish seed distribution. Similarly, the Agriculture Department could use the data to plan its activities. The School Department could use the data of geo-tagging of school buildings in various areas and co-relate it with biometric attendance of students and teachers at the click of a button.
The Medical and Health Department can geo-tag the primary health centres and monitor which PHC was mostly frequented by people and from what distance so that new centres could be planned if required for the convenience of the people.
The geo-tagging became a norm in the departments like irrigation to evaluate the progress of a project/work online and accordingly clear the bills. It would help the Town Planning wing to take a random check whether a property was properly assessed for tax or any encroachments occurred on nalas and lakes. A common portal would bring accountability in the departments while uploading the data would be accessed and shared by all.
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Rajasthan was one State which has already developed a State GIS portal, the Planning Department sources said.