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Babus in Himachal Pradesh may carry two latest cellular mobiles to offices exhibiting their fad for latest technology, but they seem reluctant to adopt new technologies when it comes to government offices. Biometric Attendance Introducing biometric attendance to Babus in Himachal Pradesh has not been an easy task for the state government. The state government had installed biometric attendance machines in the state secretariat last year, much to the dismay of employees. Himachal Pradesh Secretariat Employees strongly resisted the government's move, as they felt the government had raised a finger on their efficiency. Irked over the new system of attendance, the employees held numerous gate meetings to mount pressure on the government to do away with the machines. The employees' body stressed that biometric attendance should also be introduced for officers in the secretariat. The then chief secretary Asha Swaroop was quick to pass the orders, leaving officers with little choice. Nearly 16 biometric machines have been installed on the entry and the exit gates of the secretariat. When biometrics attendance was introduced for officers, the employees union quickly relented to the new decision. However, the authorities again face an uphill task in installing biometric attendance in government offices, where the number of employees is high. Government's efforts to persuade the Himachal Pradesh Board of School Education, Dharamsala, and Himachal Pradesh State Electricity Board are the two departments resisting the government's move, while of the total 12, only four district collectorate have installed machines for biometric attendance. The government is keen to install biometric machines in two of its premier medical institutes Co. Dr Rajendra Prasad Medical College and Dr Rajendra Prasad Medical College, Tanda. But employees in the state are not yet ready to adopt the new system. As there were problems in acquainting employees to new technologies in government offices, information and technology has emerged as one of the major driving force in the state's growing economy. It has gradually transformed governance in the state. The state government has launched the Himachal State Wide Area Network project to improve governance. Under the project, the government intends to modernise the communication system in the state, besides its main objective is to add pace to the governance. A local area network has been established in the state secretariat with provision of 600 nodes with an ultimate target criterion of at least one computer for three officials. For this, a LAN with provision for 620 nodes has been established. The network has success fully started functioning and reference-monitoring system has been implemented on this network. The network has also been connected to Internet. This will help saw energy and resource. This state-of-the-art network in Himachal Pradesh secretariat will benefit officials to share resources and data. This would not only improve efficiency in the state departments, but would also provide various public services at the click of a mouse. Earlier, they had to gather latest information on agriculture from various sources, but now, the process has been made easy. In order to provide specialised information on crop management to farmers, AGRISNET portal has been developed which provides online expert advisories in the field of agriculture, horticulture, animal husbandry and fisheries. The portal provides end users with the ability to access services through an online platform at their doorstep. AGRIS NET project would bring farmers, researchers, scientists and administrators together by establishing online information for agriculture, animal husbandry, horticulture and fisheries department. People can put their quarries online along with the scanned photographs on the web and get advice from the experts of departments concerned. The main objective of AGRISNET project is to create a sustainable data bank of all agriculture inputs in the state, containing entries for all relevant information pertaining to agriculture and its related activities and to access the same through a secured network. Improved information access and effective delivery of services to the farming community would also ensure efficient redressal of farmers grievances, thereby ensuring transparency and accountability of the departments and better monitoring of government schemes, which directly impact farmers. COMPUTERISATION OF LAND RECORDS Himachal Pradesh is predominately an agrarian state and land is the largest natural resource available to people. Though efforts to bring about improvements in the existing manual system of maintenance of land records is in place, with the passage of time and present day technology, the system is not in a position to deliver services to people with considerable speed. This novel initiative of the state government will go a long way in improving the present process of acquiring, storing, processing and retrieving such information. The government has also developed 'Himbhoomi' software for computerisation of revenue records. The existing manual system of land records has been computerised in view of the present-day requirements. This will also include land reforms detail, assignment of unique code to each individual appearing in any capacity in land records facilitating them to know the extent of land possessed and facility of online mutation entry generation of 'nakal' and 'jamabandi' of land. Furthermore, 'gram nideshika' will help in entering all revenue administration-related location codes likes patwar circles, Kanungo circles into Census information. Out of the total 118 tehsils and sub-tehsils in the state, land records of 109 tehsils and sub-tehsils have already been computerised, 95 tehsils and sub-tehsils have been made online where computerised copies of jamabandi are being made available to people. The data entry work of 20,087 villages out of 21,119 villages has been completed and settlement work of remaining 1,011 villages is in progress. --------- Punjab News quality and exclusive reporting to the Punjabis settled worldwide. Our success in bringing the Punjabis at home in the world has enabled us to launch this unique news based website. Latest Punjab News from leading news publications from all over India.
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latest technology, biometric attendance, Himachal Pradesh State Electricity Board, AGRISNET project, Dr Rajendra Prasad Medical College,
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