GOA LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY TO PROVIDE ONLINE SYSTEM TO MLAS AND STAFF

Panaji, July 19, 2014 … Speaker  Shri Rajendra Arlekar has  relied his vision to make the Goa  Legislative Assembly the first in India to provide a fully online system to its MLAs  and staff. More than 50 percent of the MLA questions are now being submitted to the  Assembly completely  online, and that percentage is rising every day. The aim is to achieve 100 percent paperless operation as soon as possible.

The project  consists of four modules. The first module allows MLAs to submit questions online using a two step authentication process to ensure  security. The second manages the workflow of the Legislative Assembly so the staff can efficiently  process the questions. The third is an answer module where Government  Departments can upload the answers, while the fourth is a Public module that can be used by the  press and  any web user to quickly search  the  Assembly  Question Archive.

Speaker had mandated that the system should be extremely  user friendly so that even first  time computer users would feel comfortable with it. So far the response  from the MLAs and staff using the application has been very positive.

The project was developed in-house by the Department of Information Technology, Goa, using state of the art Open Source tools. Open Source  Technologies provide a secure, vendor, neutral and completely transparent  development environment that is strongly recommended for Government use.

The  system has been designed  to run on a cloud platform that can save crores of rupees in  hardware and software costs. The DOIT team consisting  of Manager (Technical) Shri Amit Tamba and Software Engineers, Shri Rahul Prabhu, Ms. Anuradha Kamat and Shri Deepak  Raikar have developed  the application following the latest Agile development  methodology.

The Goa Legislature Secretariat team consisted comprising Engineers  Shri Dilip  Shivrekar, Ms. Tahseena Inamdar, Ms. Poonam Kanekar and Shri Sarthak Naik.

To ensure  a flawless transition from paper to digital, the monsoon session of  the Assembly will continue to use paper as a backup to the  e-Assembly  workflow, however the same will soon be phased out. The Speaker personally  supervised the implementation of the paperless system and encouraged the GLA staff  to adopt the same. Several additional modules, including one for Ministers are being  planned for the next Session, alongwith user interface and security enhancements.