The Hindu 17.09.2009
e-mail for all State government employees
Special Correspondent
First step towards e-filing system
To help monitor Plan implementation
THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Chief Minister V.S. Achuthanandan inaugurated a project for providing e-mail facility to all government employees in the State as part of efforts to improve bureaucratic efficiency and speed up service delivery.
Nearly 4,000 employees, including top police officers and all those working in the government secretariat, received official e-mail addresses with the launch of the project. All government employees (numbering nearly 4.75 lakh) will be given the facility in a phased manner, the Chief Minister said.
“The Government of Kerala Web-mail Edition,’ as the facility is called, is a Free and Open Source Software platform developed by the Open Source Technology Team at the Centre for the Development of Imaging Technology (C-DIT), a State government institution. Users can organise messages, both sent and received by them, on two web-mail interfaces and can manage and share calendars, contacts, tasks and notes, according to a note circulated at the function.
Presiding over the function, Chief Secretary Neela Gangadharan said this was the first step to introducing electronic filing system in the government. The Kerala State IT Mission (KSITM) had already shifted to totally electronic filing system. She said the public perception about red tape being an unavoidable part of the functioning of the government would change once the system was fully deployed. She said it would facilitate accurate monitoring of the plan implementation also.
KSITM Director Rathan U. Kelkar welcomed the gathering. C-DIT Director Sheela Thomas, IT Secretary Ajay Kumar, Inspector-General of Police A. Hemachandran and C-DIT Registrar K.T. Balabhaskaran spoke.
