The state’s e-Governance initiatives have been recognized once again. Orissa is the 3rd Prize winner for use of IT in e-Governance among states in India in the awards instituted by the India-Telecom Foundation,Mumbai.  This award was given by the Chief Justice of India to Orissa’s IT Secretary Shri S.N. Tripathy.

The Award was judged on the innovativeness of IT usage for improvement in service, impact on quality and productivity, impact on society and innovation in terms of reach and replicability, tangible impact on efficiency, operational costs & decision making and demonstrating functionality of providing various information relating to e-governance.

Orissa presented Project e-Shishu as a case study to demonstrate the use of ICT and involvement of the state and district administration in delivering governance. The project has been conceived by Orissa Primary Education Program Authority (OPEPA) to track each & every child in the age group of 0 -14 years soas to ensure his/her fundamental right to free & compulsory elementary education. It also tracks the infrastructure in schools & teachers engaged with their personnel and pay details. It provides a technology framework in e-governance where by it will be possible to prioritize in resource allocation; track progress & achievement of each child; and make the teacher‘s accountable while empowering the community to ensure all the above.

The project started in September 2005 with a vision to have a database of all children by name with 26 parameters. The perseverance & persistence of the OPEPA in auditing, correcting the and cleaning this massive data base using quality IT infrastructure & training has now become example to other state Governments. The plan of scaling up has already started with Women & Child Welfare department who is going to use the database of this child from 0-6 & 6-11 for their Supplementary Nutrition Program & Mid day meal schemes. Similarly other Department will start adding more parameters to the same database for there monitoring purpose.

The Award is a morale boost for the state & its officers who have made this innovative project a success.