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All families in Kerala to be made computer-literate within a year

T. Ramavarman

Plan to make the State fully e-governed within five years

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: After achieving total literacy more than a decade ago, Kerala is all set to make at least one member each of all families in the State computer-literate.

The Information Technology Department has worked out a draft roadmap for the programme involving local bodies, which aims at realising the target within a year.

The department has a much more ambitious agenda — making Kerala a fully e-governed State within five years. The family-level computer-literacy project has been designed towards that end.

IT Special Secretary K.R. Jyothilal told The Hindu on Sunday that total computer literacy at the family level would be achieved through the IT@School project and by extending the Akshaya computer literacy project to all districts.

The Akshaya project was extended to Kasaragod, Kannur, Kozhikode, Thrissur, Ernakulam, Pathanamthitta and Kollam districts after its success in Malappuram in 2004. It would be extended to Palakkad, Wayanad, Idukki, Alappuzha, Kottayam and Thiruvananthapuram by April.

When extended to the remaining six districts, the project will have three facets: spreading e-literacy, generating locally relevant content in local languages to be made available on computers at the Akshaya centres and utilising these centres for providing services.

In this phase, efforts are on to integrate the Akshaya project with the common service centre scheme of the Union Government. The service centres will provide Government-to-citizens services and business-to-citizens services. The Akshaya centres are also expected to do so.

The Union Government's proposal was to start one centre for six villages. In the early phase, the Akshaya project was focussing on spreading e-literacy.Now, efforts to provide the computer-literates an opportunity to use their newly acquired knowledge are being launched, Mr. Jyothilal said. Altogether 1,500 Akshaya main centres and another 1,000 sub-centres are working in the districts where the project has been launched. An equal number of centres will be started in the next phase.

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