Revival of the Goa’s e-governance project at the Margao municipal council (MMC) seems evident. Goa chief minister Digambar Kamat has promised MMC chairperson Savio Coutinho that he would take up the matter with the National Informatics Centre (NIC) and work towards the revival of citizens’ facilitation centre (CFC).
Even Margao civic body on its own has also written to the NIC asking it to work out solutions and forward a detailed proposal on how to get the derailed project back on track.
As it may be recalled, CFC at Margao was proposed to be the state’s pilot project in e-governance, which failed to take off as the software produced by the Kalyan-Dombivli Municipal Corporation (KDMC) did not match MMC’s administrative requirements.
Incidentally, the MMC has already spent a whopping INR 70 lakh on the prestigious project that was commissioned twice, first in August 2005 and then again two years later in August 2007. While INR 25 lakh has already been paid as consultancy fees to the Kalyan-Dombivli Municipal Corporation (KDMC), which was commissioned to set up the project, an additional expenditure of INR 50 lakh was incurred by the MMC towards purchasing hardware and other peripherals which were required for the project.
Revival of the project will ensure the delivery of the entire package of services initially promised at the CFC, such as issuance of birth & death certificates, issuance of tax and trade licences, online tracking of the movement and status of various applications made to the Margao civic body by citizens, online payment of various taxes to the MMC, and a full-fledged online complaints redressal system besides a host of other facilities.
