Aizawl: The 5th e-North East Summit was held yesterday in Aizawl. The event was jointly
organised by Information Communication Technology (ICT), Department of
Mizoram Government, and the North East Development Foundation (NEDF).
The one-day programme was held
Aijal Club in which C. Lalhmachhuana, ITS, Secretary ICT Department, delivered
welcome address while Dr. Syed S. Kazi, Lead Partner, NEDF delivered
key-note address.
The success stories of 51 IT
projects by the state governments, organizations, business entities of NE were
highlighted and discussed. The Workshop I was guided by C.
Lalhmachhuana, Secretary, ICT Department and was moderated by Amitabh Singhal,
Board Director, PIR, while Sanjeev Sharma, Jt. Secretary, NETIA and Prof.
Basav Roychoudhury, IIM Shillong were Juror Invitees. The Workshop I theme
was ‘Digital Innovations For Citizen Services Delivery in North East India’. 21
new IT developments for enhancement for service to the people and for
improvement of government administration were shown and discussed during the
Workshop.
Workshop II with the theme
‘Digital Innovation in Education, Learning & Healthcare’ was held under the
guidance of R. Lalvena, Secretary, School Education Department and was
moderated by Shri Rajen Varada, CEO, Open Knowledge Community (OKC), while
Debabrata Bhadury, Chief Coordinator, East & North East, NIELIT and
Biswajit Hazarika, Chairman, IT, FINER were Juror Invitees. 11 new IT new
developments for improvement of education and health were discussed.
Workshop III with its theme
‘Digital Innovations in Livelihood & Enterprise, Commerce & Business,
Culture & Heritage, Environment & Tourism, Inclusion, News and
Media’ was held under the leadership of Madan Mohan Rao, Board Advisor, DEF,
while Mrs. Smita Sahay, Partner, NEDF was Expert Invitee and Mrs. Gayatri
Buragohian, Director, FST was Juror Invitee. 17 new IT developments for the
subjects mentioned in the theme were demonstrated and discussed in the
Workshop.
The 51 IT devices demonstrated
during the workshops were all tested, and then divided into different
categories. The best in each category were awarded in the programme of
‘5th e-North East Award 2014’ held afternoon at Legislative Assembly,
Conference Hall. Mizoram ICT Minister Lal Thanzara, the Chief Guest of the
programme, handed over the awards.
AWARDS
FOR MIZORAM
There were 8 Nominations from
Mizoram, of which the joint project of Regional Transport Office, Mizoram and
NIC Mizoram State Unit – ‘Real Time Courtesy & Information SMS Without
Using SMS Gateway received the Award in Services Delivery category.
Computerization of Taxes project
under Taxation Department; East Lungdar RD Block website; and Mizoweb
Livelihood Centre were also awarded under Special Mention category.
Mizoram received the Emerging IT
State of the Year Award and also Special Recognition of the Year Award for the
Facebook group Special Report.
There were 97 nominations for
the Award from which were selected 33 finalists; each of the best project in 8
different categories received the 5th e-North East Award 2014.
Lal Thanzara expressed gratitude
to the organisers and remarked that the 5th e-North East Summit 2014 held
in Aizawl is a big move for IT and related sectors in Mizoram. He expressed
hope the Summit would bring forth a good result in the world of IT and related
sectors. He said that Mizoram Government
gives importance to IT, adding, the state government is trying to create as
many conveniences to the people through the use of IT.
He mentioned that various
Mission Mode Project under National e-Governance project like – State Wide Area
Network (SWAN), State Data Centre (SDC) ; Common Service Centre (CSC);
e-District pilot project in Aizawl; VAT collection system and VAHAN and Sarathi
are successfully carried out by the state government.
State Delivery Gateway (SSDG)
and State Portal (SP) are also expected to be completed during the present
year, ICT Minister mentioned. Mizoram government will do its
best for the success of the new central government flagship programme Digital
India, the minister said.
Further, he added that the state
government acknowledged the importance of ‘digital connectivity’ for IT and
related fields, and accordingly State Level Committee on
Telecommunications has been set up to supervise, vigilate and review the works
of the Central government projects in Mizoram like Intra-SDHQ-DGQ OFC
project, National Optic Fibre Network (NOFN) and other connectivity projects.
Lal Thanzara also mentioned that
Mizoram government and Ministry of DoNER in recently collaborated with
National Association of Software and Service Companies (NASSCOM), for setting
up of Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) and Business Process Management (BPM)
in Mizoram. If successful, the same is expected to open up good avenues of
economic sources for the youth in the state, the minister said.
The e-North East Summit had been
hosted earlier by Assam, Nagaland, Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh.