THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: A team of officials from Prime Minister Narendra Modi's home state Gujarat is on a visit to Kerala to explore the scope of replicating some of the e-governance and IT infrastructure projects of the state in Gujarat. Akshaya centres, FRIENDS Janaseva Kendra, SAND - online sand allotment system, digital file movement and cyber security initiatives like Computer Emergency Response Team - Kerala and various IT-based applications being used by the state police are among the projects being looked into by the team.
Gujarat science and technology deputy secretary Hemang Purohit, executive (e-governance) of Gujarat Informatics Limited, Vipul Patel and executive (hardware procurement service) Dilip Khant are members of the team having a firsthand feel of the e-governance and IT infrastructure projects of the state. Kerala State IT Mission sources said that the team seemed to be impressed by various projects in the state like the online sand allocation system and was exploring the option of replicating some of the projects in Gujarat. They were also looking into the popularisation of Free and Open Source Software in the state.
"There are about 70 e-governance applications currently live in the state, which were developed by the IT Mission as well as the National Informatics Centre. Many of these could be easily replicated in Gujarat," said a senior official of the IT Mission. Gujarat's science and technology secretary Dhananjay Dwivedi had initiated the officials study tour to Kerala in coordination with IT secretary M Sivasankar. The team that reached here on Wednesday will be in the state till December 10. They are visiting the Indian Institute of Information Technology and Management - Kerala and International Centre for Free and Open Source Software at Technopark also.
