Rampant corruption and a race among top mandarins to grant benefits to their relatives or persons otherwise related to them by dumping the 5T and Mo Sarkar initiatives of the Chief Minister in the ‘recycle bin,’ has made the Odisha Computer Application Centre (OCAC) stray from its original goals.This has led to apprehensions that the e-governance initiative of the State Government might soon derail if remedial measures are not taken immediately.
The OCAC e-governance mission team was supposed to support to the State Government and various department for implementation of various e-governance projects. This team also provides various inputs on implementation of e-Governance projects and other policies and standards.
Besides, the team provides support to the various State Departments and other bodies on technical implementation of various e-governance projects or initiatives. But unfortunately team’s head in nexus with some civil servant is allegedly promoting a few selected firms (solution integrators) like CSM and Print Link at a huge cost to State exchequer. The CSM, whose owner is the brother-in law of a former IT Department Secretary, has managed to use his clout to get the contract from OCAC for design and maintenance of websites of more than 40 Government departments.
He has even managed to shunt high officials not favouring him and appoint officers of his choice to renew his firm’s contact year after year and siphon off crores of rupees.
But to utter dismay many of the Government portals are not functional or neither their information updated even after months. A consultant named ‘Bharat Net’ has been appointed with Rs 1 lakh per month. It is owned by 65-year-old former BSNL CGM BB Mishra.
A project ‘Orissa 1’ which was supposed to conclude in three months is still being extended after one and half years and more than Rs 7 crore has been spent on it till now. These are few examples out of scores of such irregularities.
So it is no surprise than the unscrupulous officials in nexus with the consultants managed to pocket crores of rupees though the resources and technical strength of OCAC have not increased.
The intelligentsia has demanded that a high-level probe should be conducted into the irregularities, corrupt team which has turned OCAC into a sinking ship should be identified and axed to bring it on track.