Maharashtra government has finally woken up. It has updated its website and has brought the new chief minister Ashok Chavan in his rightful place. Media reports had earliers pointed out how the official portal of government of Maharashtra was still showing Vilasrao Deshmukh as the chief minister of Maharahstra even five days after the swearing in of Chavan alongwith Chhagan Bhujbal as deputy Chief Minister.  

Websites of state government of Maharashtra are notorious for being obsolete and slow. And that is when they say that the state is ahead in Information and Technology initiatives. I had done a story regarding the manpower crunch in Maharashtra’s IT de-partment. At that time, it was seen 

then that being unable to offer competitive remuneration to IT professionals, it has devised a novel way to find the candidates, that is to hire them from other offices.

State department of Information and Technology had sent a letter to various de-partments to send applications for an appointment on deputation to work on state e-governance project, called as SETU. The applications have been invited from state government and semi-government employees and even from local bodies.   

Even as it is embarked on implementing the State Wide Area Network (SWAN) scheme, which officials have claimed to complete upto January 09, the government is still unable to get enough manpower. That is why it has now invited tenders for procuring the manpower. 

And we are still talking about e-governance!

---------------------------------------------

Meanwhile, Ashok Chavan has given his private email id (ashokchavanmind@rediffmail.com) for the public to contact him with their grievences. This is a first in India. But the question is, and it has been rightly raised by many in the media, why should a office bearer give his personal email id when he should be supposed to be available on his official id?(chiefminister@maharashtra.gov.in) We are still waiting to get that answer.