Orissa's first digital Panchayat launched

Orissa's first digital Panchayat launched at Konark . It was launched by Young India & Digital Empowerment Foundation aims to host independent web-portal of all the 29 GPs of Gop Block , Puri Dist for promotion of ICT based governance system. Its first such type initiative in Odisha state. Its a joint initiative of Young India & DEF.

In this inaugural ceremony among others Surendra Nath Nayak, Vice-Chairperson, State Planning Board, Sankarshan Parida, President-Zilla Parishad ,Puri, Prof M.G. Bage,Sociology Dept,Utkal University, Srimant Mishra ,BDO-Gop were present. On behalf of the organisers N.A.Shah Ansari ,President,Young India & Osama Manzar, Director,DEF facilitated the event. The digital panchayat was inaugurated by women representatives of different Gram Panchayats.

Digital Panchayat is a flagship project of DEF and it is being implemented in 15 states in India with at least 50 Panchayat in each state to see how ICT and Internet could empower the functioning of the Panchayats and Panchayat functionaries. In Odisha, Puri District has been identified to do the pilot and there will be a Digital Panchayat center that will be opened in Gop Block the serve and facilitate all the Panchayats in this block. Young India is the local facilitation partner for this Digital Panchayat project.

Objective of the project is to create ICT and Internet awareness among Panchayat, have each Panchayat a unique website with unique identity and provide Digital Panchayat Center as resource center for the functionaries and other people associated with Panchayat for various work like learning computers, connecting to Internet, updating their own website, updating the Panchayati Raj's applications online.

Each Digital Panchayat Center is supported by a volunteer provided by the local facilitation partner like Young India. DEF would like that each and every Panchayat in India should have a Digital Panchayat Center to facilitate connectivity to the Panchayat functionaries and create an atmosphere of transparency, bottom up content generation and wide spread digital literacy and achieve good governance for the country.