Subhechcha Ganguly 
Manoj Mishra, IRTS, Secretary (Electronics & IT)
Manoj Mishra is leading a ‘digital revolution’ in citizen-centric governance. As a result of his efforts to use IT for a range of government-to-citizen (G2C) services, Odisha is positioning itself as a leader in digital technologies. His vision aligns with Naveen Patnaik’s 5T governance framework, which aims to leverage technology to deliver transparent services on time.
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 the 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.
Whether it’s the integrated Odisha One Portal offering 250+ seamless services or the omnichannel citizen feedback system like Mo Sarkar, Mr Mishra has an abiding commitment to elevating the quality of public service. He believes that cutting-edge technologies are not just the preserve of the big corporations, rather they can be leveraged to transform the way governments reach out and deliver services and schemes to citizens. 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. The 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.
One of the striking takeaways among the plethora of e-governance applications in Odisha is the Biju Swasthya Kalyan Yojana (BSKY) and the distribution of Smart Health cards to the beneficiaries. Smart Health Cards will be provided to 3.5 crore people in 96 lakh families.
Within the government, Mishra has played the role of ‘digital evangelist’. He has been spearheading ‘the digital transformation of government-to-citizen (G2C) and government-to-business (G2B) services by leveraging the power of groundbreaking technologies.
“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 the efficiency of processes resulting in better service delivery to citizens”, Mishra says.
Under the stewardship of Mishra, the electronics & IT department encourages all state departments to use the cloud-enabled State Data Centre for hosting 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.
Connecting citizens with the government so they can utilize the full suite of government services is what Mishra is working on. He has found a reliable ally in technology.
By Subhechcha Ganguly
