Chief Minister Shri Arvind Kejriwal launched 180 new government websites as part of the government’s efforts to provide seamless and hassle-free access to government services, on Tuesday. With the introduction of these new websites, Delhiites will now be able to access government services in just one click. The new cloud-based website of the Delhi Government eliminate the risk of a server crash, making it faster, more reliable, and easily accessible. The government has used modern technology in the new website and there is sufficient bandwidth, when the website traffic increases, these sites will not crash.
In a decision that will transform the interaction of citizens with the official portal of the Delhi Government, the state government on Tuesday launched a new portal that will have over 180 websites of 50 different departments of the state government.
Officially launching the portal for the citizens of Delhi, Chief Minister Shri Arvind Kejriwal congratulated the IT department for its efforts and said that all these websites will be integrated into a single portal of the Delhi Government and this will make it a user friendly experience for the citizens.
Explaining the reason for the state government to undertake this task, he said that the earlier portal of these websites was developed in 2008 and was based on the technology available at the time. He added that modern technology has made things more user friendly and the new portal will reflect it. He also said these changes will remove the dependency of these websites on the server.
The existing websites of GNCTD were launched in 2008 by the Department of Information Technology, GNCTD using a Content Management System (CMS) by IBM. Technology used in existing CMS portals was old and servers are obsolete. It was also challenging to maintain existing CMS due to old technology and it led to frequent outages and breakdowns.
In the new initiative, the IT Department has engaged an agency to design, develop, host, operate & maintain websites of GNCTD by using the latest technology and standards. There is also seamless integration with social media accounts of different departments, faster load time, better performance with improved user experience. It is based on the latest technology – Drupal, an Open Source CMS Framework and has easier data handling with an auto archival process for protecting data and content. It works seamlessly across devices such as Mobile, Tablets, Web Browsers. It also has enhanced accessibility with GIGW/ W3C compliance and Bilingual / Multilingual support.
The Delhi CM said that one of the reasons felt for bringing this initiative was that during the Covid-19 pandemic when the state government announced some initiatives for the residents of Delhi, then the websites crashed due to the traffic load. He informed the citizens that such a situation will not arise again as now there will be adequate bandwidth for the sites to run.
Congratulating the government department he said that it is good to see them function taking into account the requirements of the citizens. Stating that artificial intelligence is the future technology, Shri Arvind Kejriwal said that the Delhi Government will always try to see how it can incorporate the technology to benefit the citizens of Delhi.
Speaking at the ocassion, Delhi IT Minister Shri Kailash Gahlot congratulated the department on the success of its initiative to revamp and maintain the Delhi Government websites using the latest technology and standards, calling it “a commendable step towards ensuring better public service delivery.”
He explained that the increasing demand for government services online had made it difficult to maintain the websites due to old technology and obsolete servers, resulting in outages and breakdowns. He cited an incident when the relevant website crashed after the launch of the Delhi government’s scheme to provide financial assistance to paratransit vehicle drivers affected by the COVID lockdown.
“The new websites, hosted on a secure cloud data centre, offer faster load times, better performance, and an improved user experience. With the latest load-balancing technology incorporated, the Delhi Government websites will now not crash even if the traffic increases to a couple of lakhs per second, making them highly reliable. The websites are now accessible to the public seamlessly across various devices such as mobiles, tablets, and web browsers. This is a significant step towards making government services more user-friendly, and we are committed to delivering the best possible experience to the citizens of Delhi,” he said.
