EVENT DIARY
National Summit on e-Forms
Courtesy NIC, e-Governance standards to take shape M
N. Vijayaditya, Director General (NIC) welcoming D S Mathur, Secretary (IT), Govt. of India
Participants attending the summit
N. Vijayaditya, Director General (NIC), D. S. Mathur, Secretray (IT), Mr. Moni, Deputy Director General (e-Governance Standards), Govt. of India
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any developments initiated by various government agencies are seemingly done in isolation. Different development platforms are used and the applications under different platforms are seldom interoperable with the result that it is difficult to integrate them even though many have similar features and functionalities. Added to this, is the fact that there is no single agency responsible for framing enforceable e-Governance standards and processes that must be adhered to by all developers. There is a perceptible need to institutionalize the task of codifying e-governance standards and processes for the sake of ensuring interoperability of applications and solutions. Evolving standards and adoption of these for various components of e-governance is indeed a high priority activity and is critical to the success of NeGP. Further, the Dept. of Information Technology (DIT) is encouraging multiple agencies to get involved in e-Governance initiatives and therefore, setting standards in e-governance applications and maintaining them have become a matter of great concern and importance. Keeping in view of the strategic and contemporary importance of standards for e-Governance, DIT has instituted an apex body to oversee the process of bringing out e-Governance standards. The following five areas have been identified to begin with: 1. Network and Information Security 2. Metadata and Data Standards for Application Domains 3. Quality and Documentation
4.
Localization and Language Technology Standards 5. Technical Standards and eGovernance Architecture As regards the Institutional mechanism and processes are concerned, an Apex body has been constituted under the chairmanship of Secretary, DIT with senior representatives from Government, NASSCOM, Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS), etc. with a mandate to approve, notify and enforce the Standards formulated by various Working Groups and to oversee that they are in accordance with international practices in this regard. National Informatics Centre (NIC) is the DIT arm with a presence in all the States and Districts in the country. NIC provides a range of services to all the government departments at the Center, States and Districts. National Informatics Centre (NIC) has been entrusted with the task of originating white papers on all the desired standards. A separate “eGovernance Standards Division� has been created by NIC to steer the process of evolving the Standards. These white papers would serve as discussion papers for working groups to develop the Standards. Working Groups have been constituted in all the areas mentioned above with members from DIT, Associations, Industry, Academia, representatives from Central and State Government etc. Once the Apex Body approves the standards developed by Working Groups, STQC will be responsible for release of these approved Standards on the web and make them available to all www.egovonline.net |