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Orissa sends senior bureaucrats back to school

Beginning October 12, OSEDC will conduct a two-month crash course for secretaries of all state government departments and chief executives of all

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state-owned public sector undertakings - comprising mostly of senior IAS and IPS officers.

These officials will undertake the ACE Power-User course offered by the Orissa Centre for IBM Software, a high-end software-training centre that has been set up here by OSEDC in collaboration with IBM.

The curriculum has been specially designed for those who are keen to acquire skills that enhance their productivity in a computerised environment.

The course will make the officials conversant with common PC applications, computer concepts and technology trends.

The curriculum offers five courses - computer fundamentals, office automation suites, databases, the Internet and intranets and business applications.

According to G S Mishra, managing director of OSEDC, the idea of a familiarisation course in IT for senior government officials followed the state government's recently announced IT policy.

The policy, the objectives of which have been stated in detail, has a separate section on accelerating the "use of IT at the government level with a view to providing better and expeditious services to the citizens of the state.''

The state's IT policy was announced in mid-August. It lays emphasis on the use of IT to increase the productivity and efficiency of government services, improve revenue and tax collection, hasten the process of decision-making at various levels and provide an efficient and transparent tool to monitor implementation of government-supported programmes.

Mishra has been quoted as saying that the government's endeavour was to put in place training programmes in the next five years to enable its employees to use IT to enhance productivity.

These programmes would be repeated at periodic intervals to enable employees to keep pace with advancements in technology.

The idea also was to computerise collection of government revenue in the next five years.

"Since the focus of the government is on faster penetration of IT in the state sector, it is only appropriate that the drive begins with officers / CEOs heading departments and PSUs. Once they become IT-savvy, a percolating effect down the line will happen easily,'' Mishra said.

He said that a computerisation drive had been launched at the state secretariat here. Work has begun on a Rs 50-million project to link district headquarters with the state secretariat at Bhubaneswar.

Every department has been directed to set aside 2 per cent of its budget for different IT related activity.

- Compiled from the Indian media

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