I-T department bags Skoch Gold Award

RANCHI: The state's information technology department bagged the Skoch Gold Award for the second year in a row.
The award was received by NN Sinha, principal secretary of IT, at a function in New Delhi on Saturday from Delhi MP Meenakshi Lekhi and former CAG Vinod Rai. Selected in the category of financial inclusion and deepening, the department was lauded for its excellence in banking, financial services and insurance.
Sinha told TOI that last year the department was selected in the category of emerging IT state.
"This year an almost centralized banking System (CBS) was launched in association with India Post and Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) for automating the manual process of payment at their sub and branch post offices," he said. Explaining the technology adopted Sinha said that MGNREGA wages, old age pension and scholarship payment was linked to the Aadhaar-enabled system along with backup of One Time PIN (OTP) technology through mobile for authentication purposes."
The beauty of the system is that it can be deployed on all type of hardware viz. tablet, point of service and desktop devices," he said.
Expressing happiness over receiving this award Sinha thanked, the then Chief Secretary, RS Sharma who is now Secretary, IT, Govt. of India and chief post master general A S Prasad and his team along with UIDAI Team at Regional office for effective implementation of the technology. He informed that the procurement of devices for use at remaining location is on and further improvement of software and MIS is also being taken up for ease of transaction and maximum transparency.