Abstract

During the 1980s and early 1990s, initial attempts towards eGovernance were made with a focus on networking government departments and developing in-house government applications in the areas of defence, economic monitoring, planning and the deployment of IT to manage data-intensive functions related to elections, census, tax administration etc. These applications focused on automation of internal government functions rather than on improving service delivery to citizens. The Ministry of Panchayat Raj has formulated a project namely e-Panchayat Mission Mode Project (MMP), under the National e-Governance Plan (NeGP), for e-enablement of all the Panchayats which will make their functioning more efficient and transparent. Under the e-Panchayat Mission Mode Project (MMP), 11 Core Common Software applications are envisaged. These applications collectively constitute the Panchayat Enterprise Suite (PES). Four of these applications namely PRIASoft, PlanPlus, National Panchayat Portal and Local Governance Directory have been rolled out and are in public domain.