DIGITAL UTTARANCHAL FOR E-GOVERNANCE

Abstract

Decision making is the most important activity that effects the development of an area. To make effective decisions, one needs to have a sound knowledge of the geographic, socio-economic and demographic features of the area, besides the practical knowledge of the field conditions. But, often required information on various aspects of regional development is not so easily obtained, especially in developing countries. There is a need to develop a centralized database that could serve information to multiple users across different geographical locations at a low cost without data redundancy.' With e-governance in place, governments have the opportunity to develop and strengthen the infrastructural database that will help in better and faster decision making. The use of proper database helps government agencies to identify the need of every region in micro as well as macro levels. For instance, at the click of a mouse, GIS system displays specific details of any village, town or city in a State. The relative low cost of data layer combination in GIS environment allows the decision maker to test multiple scenarios, or the researcher to investigate data relationships using an iterative approach to refine their methods which would otherwise be prohibitively expensive. Uttaranchal state was carved out of Uttar Pradesh on 9th November 2000 as the 27th State of the Indian Union. The State is very rich in natural resources, which makes great potential for the rapid development of the region. With this background, a digital database for the State of Uttaranchal is developed, that can help the planners, decision makers and others in introducing the e-governance concept, and to gain insights into regional development problems. This project is basically aimed at providing basic knowledge about the State of Uttaranchal, and hence ofter enlargement, it is expected to be used for the purpose of decision making, which will pave the way for e-governance related applications. The development and maintenance of a comprehensive digital database is a continuous process. The present database needs to be updated continuously, and expanded at village level to make it more versatile.