Chief Minister M.K. Stalin launched web portals developed by the Information Technology Department for reviewing the progress of all major infrastructure projects in the State, as well as to enable all IT/ITES companies in Tamil Nadu to interact with the State government and contribute to policy making.
The Tamil Nadu e-Governance Agency (TNeGA) has developed a portal, ‘e-munnetram’, which contains key details of projects such as agreement dates, start dates, cost estimates, project progress on both financial and physical parameters on a monthly basis, location data & GIS layers and photographs of the site on a periodic basis.
The portal also allows the head of departments to update the progress periodically and flag critical issues that cause delays, if any. However, a senior official said that a high-level committee chaired by the Chief Secretary periodically monitors the progress of about 200 major infrastructure projects, together costing more than about ₹1 lakh crore. “e-munnetram is a private portal for now,” he clarified.
The TNeGA has also conceptualised an interacting platform called ‘IT Nanban’, to engage with the IT industry and enable all IT/ITES companies in Tamil Nadu to interact with the State government over policy making. “Companies can access all the IT policies, GOs and tenders issued by the IT department. They will also be able to give feedback about the latest policies, or flag issues which they are facing and need to be addressed. The department shall then address these feedbacks/concerns and help resolve them,” an official release said.
The exports from IT/ITES sector in Tamil Nadu has been growing at 10% year-on-year, and there is great potential to improve on this further.
Tamil computing
Mr. Stalin also released two Tamil computing software with advanced features, which had already been developed by the Tamil Virtual Academy.
The Keezhadi - Tamizhinaiya keyboard will function with three types of keyboards: Tamil’99 keyboard, Phonetic keyboard and Old Typewriter keyboard. The Tamizhi - Tamizhinaiya Unicode Converter will convert the text, file, and folder which are typed in Vanavil and other fonts into doc, docx, rtf, xls, xlsx, ods ppt, and pptx formats. These can be downloaded from www.tamilvu.org free of cost.
Information Technology Minister T. Mano Thangaraj, Chief Secretary V. Irai Anbu, Planning Secretary Vikram Kapoor, IT Secretary Neeraj Mittal, Director of e-Governance and Chief Executive Officer of TNeGA K. Vijayendra Pandian, Tamil Virtual Academy Director V.P. Jeyaseelan, Joint CEO of TNeGA A.K. Kamal Kishore and Advisor to TNeGA and retired IAS officer P.W.C Davidar were present.
