UP govt. to recruit only computer literate clerks

LUCKNOW: In a landmark decision which will have positive widespread

ramifications, the state government of Uttar Pradesh (UP) has decided to

introduce compulsory computer education for its entire clerical staff.

That's not all. It is going a step further. From now on, for all new

recruitments to this cadre, preference will be given to those who are computer

literate. But this situation will last only till 2002. After that the

recruitment will be open to only those people who have undergone some formal

computer education.

In fact, the government has decided that all the 3,500 employees of the state

secretariat located at Lucknow will be trained in computer usage by private

institutes. According to a highly placed source in the state government, this is

being done to ensure that the administration becomes more market-oriented, in

tune with the changing times.

As a step further, a decision has been taken that the annual reports of all

the government departments will have to contain one separate chapter on how they

are utilizing IT in their respective departments. And to ensure this, the IT

budgets of the different departments have been doubled. Till last year, the

departments could spend one per cent of their annual budget on IT. This has been

enhanced to two per cent from this year.

To take the state on a high growth path, especially in IT, a high-level IT

Steering Committee has been constituted with the state Chief Secretary at its

helm. Other members include all Secretaries and Principal Secretaries of the

state. The committee is empowered to take all major decisions which will bring

in an IT revolution in the state.

Accordingly, it has been decided to dispose off all proposals within a

maximum period of three weeks. It recently gave the go-ahead to UP Networks Ltd.–a

Reliance Group company–to set up a fiber cable network in the state. Three to

four similar proposals are pending with the committee.

In addition to the existing one in Allahabad, the state government has

decided to set up another IIIT (Indian Institute of Information Technology) in

Kanpur. Not only that, it proposes to set up a Cyber City also in Kanpur where

the major focus will be on projects for IT-enabled services. In addition, an

infotech park is also coming up at Agra.

In another first for any state government, it has been decided to establish a

venture capital fund exclusively for IT, which will be managed privately. This

fund will have a corpus of Rs 20 crore which will be contributed equally by

SIDBI and the state government.

To give a fillip to the spread of IT amongst the rural areas, a special

scheme has been formulated. Called the PMRY Scheme, it will offer finance to

rural youth to set up information kiosks. In the first stage, the target is to

have 1,000 such kiosks, which will offer services like Net browsing and e-mail

and stock various state government forms etc.

Interestingly, tenders forms of all the state government floated tenders are

already available online for download. This has been done because, according to

a senior government official, the Mafia used to corner all the tender forms

depriving deserving contractors from bidding in the process. In the second

stage, filled tender forms will be accepted online.