NEW SOFTWARE TO DEMYSTIFY PLANNING PROCESS

New Delhi: A new software has been developed to "demystify and strengthen" the planning process at the panchayat level.

The Panchayati Raj ministry Tuesday said the software has been developed in collaboration with the National Informatics Centre (NIC).

In a statement here, the ministry said the software known as 'Plan Plus' is generic and open to customisation by states, line department and local governance agencies.

"It is a decentralised planning tool, which aids the various participants through the planning process, so that informed decisions can be taken by the participants in preparing, vetting and approving the plan," it said.

The software will be employed to make the planning processes interactive from "need assessment, identification of project, work, preparation of draft annual plans, approval by technical appraisal committee and final approval by district planning committee".

According to the ministry, the software will also provide "a holistic view of how funds from different central and state-sponsored schemes could be converged to carry out works approved in a plan."

"The software is a web-based software and captures the entire planning work flow...it is highly generic and can be extended to capture the plans prepared by line departments at the state and central level to generate the national plan," the statement said.

"The software brings about total transparency in the plan approval process and provides role-based authentication and authorisation," the statement said.

However, school and college students are the largest group of web users, young males too have a sizable chunk. Whereas women have a tiny presence. Cyber cafes are the favorite place to log in from, with free office internet coming a close second. While a quarter of all users log in from home, about two million Indians surf the web on their phones.

Checking e-mail is India's favourite web activity. Downloading and social networking comes a close second. Finally, just 16 percent of users get the news updates from the web.

"Factors like an increased popularity of smart phones and the imminent arrival of 3G networks means more people will access the web on their mobiles. By next year we expect the figures to double, "said Ray.