The State Government has unveiled array of its activities in order to bring governance in the palms of common man. Under the multi-facet initiatives, Department of Information and Technology is going to organise competitions starting from schoolchildren to college goers, IT savvy commoners or any other curious person.
‘Uddan-2015’ is for schoolkids falling in three categories from Class 7-8, 9-10 and 11-12. “The competition would be organised first at school level, then at district level and finally at State level. Multiple choice questions would be asked from the students on OMR sheets at school level test. Thirty three teams comprising two children in each from all the three categories from a district would make entry at the top level,” said Sunil Barnwal, Secretary of IT Department in a Press conference on Tuesday.
The event would be an equal opportunity for Government as well as aided and private schools of the State. Five teams would be formed of the Government schools while the rest six teams would be selected from three aided and three privately run schools.
“As many as 80,000 students have registered with us for the event from 1,660 schools out of which 1,282 are Government schools. This is the first of its kind talent search competition for schoolchildren which is aimed to promote their curiosity towards IT. All the participants would be given prizes,” added the Secretary. The competition would start on October 15 at school level and on October 31 and November 14 district level and State level, respectively.
Similarly, the Department would conduct two-day ‘mobile app heckathon’ starting on October 31. A team of maximum four persons would do coding for 24-hour duration to develop mobile apps under the categories of healthcare, Government benefits, payments, online-offline, citizen engagement and open.
“Purpose is to promote Aadhaar-based services in delivering healthcare facilities at Government hospitals and community health centres, claims for Government benefits easier, paperless payment system or information sharing from public. Total 150 participants would be engaged out of which 50 would be from Jharkhand,” said Barnwal while emphasizing the ideas generated in such events often become fertile grounds for start-up companies.
A day ahead of the event, mobile app workshop would be organised for any enthusiast who wants to learn coding for mobile apps. “In Jharkhand, we cannot make e-delivery to several services through computers but mobile can be the best penetrative mechanism. There are several persons who have some knowledge about coding and willing to learn more. We would engage resource persons from IT Department and also from outside who would teach any interested person about mobile app building,” said the Secretary.
Another programme ‘m-tide’ meant for college students would also be organised through quiz competition which would be a kind of awareness programme for them in the field of mobile based applications and services.