ISLAMABAD, Nov 10: The federal government has allocated Rs 37 million for Citizen Online Project under which websites for 35 Divisions and 3 special sites besides a website portal for the government would be established, Ministry of Science and Technology officials said here on Saturday.

The new websites would be ready for hosting by May/June, 2002 whereas, the government portal will be ready in March 2002.

Discribing the objective of the project, the officials said it would improve delivery of information and services to general public within the country and abroad, increase efficiency of government departments, minimise cost of functioning and increase level of transparency in official transactions.

Mentioning the salient features of the sites, they said, these sites would contain useful information for all potential users that would cover organisational details, rules and procedures, contact persons and their e-mails, down-loadable forms and data of interest to the general public.

By using the government portal, one would be able to access information about ministries, educational institutional and different proformas of Government of Pakistan. Approximately 3500 forms would be posted on the database.

A team of resource persons has been formed by each division of federal government to firm up material for these websites, they said. Three to four persons from each Division have been nominated as resource persons for supplying input.

Regular meetings of the officials concerned are being held for collection of necessary material. Tariq Aqil of the E- government Project Directorate (EGPD) is in-charge of this project.

In due course of time the internet users will be requested to give their input regarding expected contents of these of websites that they would like to get from there. The input being collected from different agencies will be structured in the light of suggestions to be received from internet users. These inputs would be solicited through an advertisement in the print media.

The EGPD will manage implementation of this project, however, actual implementation will be done by private sector firms. A total of 9 tenders will be floated in the newspapers under the Citizen Online Project for hardware, networking, websites hosting. Websites development would be outsourced to 5 different companies. In order to ensure participation of more than one IT firm it has been decided to split the work into five segments, to be awarded to different firms.

For this purpose all the divisions have been grouped into 5 groups. For achieving smooth implementation of the project, the resource persons nominated by various ministries and divisions will be the focal point of contact.

These resource persons will be responsible for providing the information required to be posted in a standard format. —Zahra Syed