New App for all govt services soon: KTR

Hyderabad: Listing out various e-governance initiatives of the State government like M-wallet of RTA, Minister for Municipal Administration and Information Technology K T Rama Rao on Monday said the government should not be visible but should be felt by the citizens. He said the government would bundle all Apps onto a single platform, App T-App Folio with 180 services.

The Minister was speaking at the 21st National Conference on e-Governance, ‘Technology for accelerating development,’ held at HICC here on Monday. He said when he was in America, he had to visit a government office only once during eight years’ stay. “In my view e-governance means easy, efficient and effective governance. The government should be felt, it should not be seen by the citizens,” said KT Rama Rao.

He said that the State economy was not affected by demonetisation. The government brought T-wallet for digital payments, which was downloaded for 2.50 lakh times, M-wallet for the RTA related documents, for which there were 1.3 million downloads. The government would soon bring T-App Folio where all the Apps of the government would be included, and it would offer 180 services, he said. The Minister further said the government had brought the system of giving clearance to the industries within 15 days in the TS-Ipass. 

“If the officials fail give permission, it is deemed to be approved. With this the state government received investments of Rs 1.20 lakh crore with 6,000 units,” he said, adding that the State was number one in terms of ease of doing business. With e-governance the governments should ensure the common man is benefitted. Union Minister of State of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution C R Chaudhary called upon different States to learn from each other to serve the citizens better. “We have to move ahead with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s idea of minimum government and maximum governance. 

The government which works with transparency is a good government and it is the responsibility of the officials to ensure schemes are reaching people,” said Chaudhary. The Union Minister said there were 23.2 crore ration cards in the country and 19 crore cards were seeded with Aadhaar. He disclosed that because of seeding government could weed out 2.95 crore fictitious ration cards. Now right people were getting the benefits, he added. 

CEO of UIDAI Ajay Bhushan Pandey said the Aadhaar had empowered one billion people. He said that 57 crore Aadhaar cards are linked with bank accounts and it had helped in curbing frauds, money laundering and also getting help in IT, Aadhaar is helping in uniting the missing children. “Come what may… no one can steal the identity. With Aadhaar 3 crore LPG connections were found to be ghost or fictitious. It saved Rs 57,000 crore during the last two years to the government exchequer. According to a report, government would save $11 billion if Aadhaar is used in all the schemes,” said Pandey.

Union Electronic and Information Technology Secretary Ajay Prakash Sawhney, Secretary Department of Administrative Reforms K V Eapen, Telangana Chief Secretary S K Joshi and others also addressed.