Tamil Nadu scores in e-governance

 

The Union government’s department of electronics and information technology has started a portal called ‘Electronic Transaction Aggregation and Analysis Layer (E-TAAL)’ last year to integrate various services administered under the state and Centre’s e-governance platform.

 

Since January 1, the country has done more than 149 crore e-transactions of which about 13 crore are from Tamil Nadu. Gujarat, which boasts of leading the country in e-transactions, has made more than 39 crore transactions. In July Tamil Nadu government has issued close to one crore records to its citizens electronically.

 

When one takes the statistics of e-transactions done per 1,000 population, Lakshadweep comes first with 14,153.6, followed by erstwhile Andhra Pradesh 1,841.1 while Tamil Nadu comes third with 1809.9.

 

When asked about the success story in Tamil Nadu, a senior official in the state information technology department pointed out that the state had been a forerunner in the IT sector and Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa had made it clear that all departments should use the electronic mode of transactions to enhance transparency in governance.

 

“We have converted a lot of transactions in government from offline to online mode, like issuing birth and death certificates, driving licence, health management systems in hospitals, all school related data, petitions filed in the state secretariat and several other categories. These type of regular transactions added up to make Tamil Nadu come second in the ranking,” the official said.

 

Pointing out that the state government had started the common service centres (CSCs) across the districts under the Tamil Nadu e-governnace agency, the official said that the increasing number of transactions in these centres too contributed to Tamil Nadu’s success.