While Maharashtra government has started an ambitious project to implement e-governance scheme in all its office, it is experiencing a manpower crunch. As the government is finding it difficult to offer competitive remuneration to IT professionals, it has devised a novel way to find the candidates: hire them from other offices.

State department of Information and Technology has sent a letter to various departments 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.

According to Waman Kale, who is in charge of the process of Department of Information and technology, Maharashtra, told Pune Mirror from Mumbai, "IT professionals come to us and once they get the experience, they leave the department for greener pastures in private companies. It has seriously hampered our number of projects. As this plan is a very new one, we want to work on it without interruption. So we have devised this way of to incorporate other government servants with It skills to implement our projects."

Kale said, "There are lot of e-governance projects going on in the state and Pune also. Our aim is to work paperless but it is a distant dream as of now. This is a part of the national e-governance project."

While expressing inability to say exactly how much shortage of men the department is facing, Kale said that we have just invited the applications and we will depute the employees depending on the response we get." Under the national e-governance scheme, state government is required to create Maharashtra State Wide Area Network (MSWAN), Common Service Centre (CSC) and Data Centres.
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Departments to be covered
under State E-governance projects
· Agriculture
· Commercial Taxes
· e-District
· Employment Exchange
· Land Records
· Municipalities
· Panchayats
· Police
· Property Registration
· Road Transport
· Treasuries

(Published in Pune Mirror on 23 April)