Interviewtimes 
Manoj Mishra
Manoj Mishra, one of the most bankable officers in Odisha bureaucracy showed yet again why he is the first choice of the high command in any responsible role. In the latest rejig, Mishra has been assigned the additional responsibility of the science & technology department. Mishra replaces Santosh Sarangi, a senior IAS officer who has got the go-ahead of the Odisha government for central deputation He will take up this portfolio in addition to his incumbent positions of the Secretary (Electronics & IT) and Officer on Special Duty (OSD) to the Chief Minister.
Within the government, Mishra has played the role of ‘digital evangelist’. He has been spearheading ‘digital transformation’ of government to citizen (G2C) and government to business (G2B) services by leveraging the power of ground breaking technologies.
Today, more than 250 services (of various departments) under 5T framework have been made online and work is in progress to bring 150+ more services online. The State has also announced a project for bringing all public services under a common unified portal (“Odisha One”) for the convenience of its citizens.
“Odisha has consistently pioneered the use of technology as an enabler for achieving good governance. The state has recently rolled out multiple digital initiatives for augmenting efficiency of processes resulting in better service delivery to citizens”, Mishra said.
The 5T framework has got a thumbs up with the roll-out of some monumental, IT driven reforms. To illustrate, the department of agriculture & farmers’ empowerment has a string of initiatives like State Farmers’ Database (76 lakh farmers) for easy identification, e-licensing for agri-input dealers, online certification for agriculture university students, registration of fishing boats & licences, registration of brackish water farms and subsidy for setting up of new livestock and fishery units. In the realm of education, Odisha now boasts of an integrated scholarship portal streamlining the management of 21 scholarship schemes of 6 major departments on a single portal – minimizes duplication and ensures leakage free scholarship disbursal to 11 lakh+ beneficiaries. All courses of government schools have been brought online. Hybrid model of learning has been adopted to ensure that teachers, students and guardians can gradually adapt to virtual learning. Hence, school teachers have been deputed to go from village to village to deliver instructions to students. Almost 5 lakh SC/ST students studying in government schools are expected to be benefited under this program. With respect to mining, IoT based stockyard management system for faster ore evacuation & enhanced productivity of mines (managed by state PSU) and use of advanced analytics for monitoring customer registrations, sales contracts & ore accounting has redefined customer management and productivity growth.
Under the stewardship of Mishra, the electronics & IT department encourages all state departments to use the cloud enabled State Data Centre for hosting of applications. In cases of unprecedented footfalls on applications, the auto scaling process in cloud based data centres ensures that applications run smoothly without compromising service standards. The department has also designed, deployed, integrated and configured and implemented the Government of Odisha private cloud (GO Cloud). This comprises software defined infrastructure services for computing, networking, storage, tenancy security & service management using cloud computing technologies. The infrastructure is designed to be easily and quickly provisioned with minimal effort and cost.
