Soon in India, the Gram Panchayat President or Sarpanch will be able to monitor panchayat centric schemes, do financial accounting and reporting, keep records of gram sabha and panchayat meetings' on the computer in the panchayat office through the induction of ICTs.
The Expert Committee on Information Technology for Panchayati Raj submitted its recommendations to the Minister of Panchayati Raj, Shri Mani Shankar Aiyar in this regard. The report states that the use of ICT is an integral part of multi-mode training and capacity-building. The Committee has recommended the use of hardware and system, application software, open standards, connectivity, domain specific data and Meta Data Standards, capacity-building, adoption of National Panchayati Portals (NPP), and facility management. With the use of e-Governance, the grassroot organisations will be benefited in many ways, which would lead to decentralised planning, effective monitoring of Centrally Sponsored Schemes (CSSs), transparency of accountability, enhance their ability to generate, manage and collect local revenue, ability to automate their own functioning. The computerisation of 2,50,000 Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRIs) will cost around INR 5,400 crore over the next three years. Computerisation of Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRI) is a Mission Mode Project (MMP) under the ambitious National e-Governance Plan (NeGP) of Government of India.
