Prime Minister’s special advisor on Public Information Infrastructure and Innovations, Sam Pitroda on Monday said government websites like National Informatics Centre (NIC) should be designed to enable frequent updating of most information that is otherwise outdated for a user.

“Engineers who have no user experience design NIC websites. We are trying to address that I personally asked NIC to talk to National Institute of Design (NID) to get few designers for better technology,” Pitroda told reporters here on the sidelines of launching Urban G2C (Government to City) Awards progamme for e-Governance.

He said India would continue to be an open democratic society and in the long term we will see more and more open information available to large number of people. “It is not simple and easy to do with 1.2 billion people with diversity and so many languages. We have to change mindsets. We have 19th century mindsets, 20th century processes and 21st century needs. I do not know how to do it but it needs to be done,” he said.

Meanwhile, Bangalore based NGO Janaagraha Centre for Citizenship and Democracy launched Urban G2C (Government to City) Awards progamme to benchmark citizen centric e-Governance of city governments in India.

Pitroda is chairperson of the jury that includes former urban development secretary M Ramachandran, member of Planning Commission Arun Maira and founder and executive VC, Info Edge (naukri.com) Sanjeev Bikhchandani. The G2C awards jury would evaluate & rank websites of top 28 cities like Mumbai, New Delhi, Bangalore, Chennai and Hyderabad among others with a population of minimum five lakh people. It would also include seven international cities including Sydney, New York, London and Singapore.

The programme has been designed to measure and benchmark quality and extent of urban e-Governance in India. By giving awards, it would envisage transparent and participative e-Governance culture in urban India. The awards and a report on this would be out by March this year.

ronendrasingh@mydigitalfc.com