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March - April 1999
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data@public-domain.com
Let's review some of the trends :
- Election Commission plans to put all the election rolls on the net before the next elections in November this year.
- Environment ministry is putting the status of various projects submitted to it for clearance on its website.
- The Delhi government plans to have all the basic governmental information, forms for applications for various government services, available on the web.
- You can access yellow pages of Ghaziabad, Faridabad, Mumbai and many other cities on-line. Even MTNL directory is available on the net.
- Nearly every ministry of the Central Government has acquired a web site address. Many state governments (like Andhra Pradesh, Delhi) and some municipal authorities too (like Almora, Pimpri Chichwad) have also joined
the bandwagon.
- Southern Railway has started a reservation facility on the web in Chennai. What the Internet explosion has given to citizens of the country in the last six months, is that which was not available to the masses for ages. Accessibility to information about your neighbourhood, city,district, state or the nation.
Although, most of the government sites are all about a PR exercise, i.e., delivering basic information about the organisation in the first stage. But this is not going to remain the same forever. In the second stage, all these sites are expected to get upgraded to provide some kind of service, like payment of bills, applying for telephone on the web.
What does this mean for the GIS community of the country ?
The web sites on India are filling a void — that of social data infrastructure of the country. It is not an exaggeration to state that the amount of metadata made available to citizens through the web,through a low cost and egalitarian tool like the Internet, immense. And the next stage, after metadata will be the availability of data itself. On the Net. And GIS in India must go gung-ho about it. Isn’t it?
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