Monday, July 1, 2002		Feature

IT vision for agro sector
V.P. Prabhakar

IN pursuance of the decision of the Union Government to boost information technology, the Department of Agriculture and Cooperation, Union Ministry of Agriculture, has formulated Information Technology (IT) Vision 2020.

The salient features of the IT Vision are:

(i) All information related to agriculture sector would be available to the farmers, for optimising productivity and income.

(ii) The extension and advisory services making use of Information Technology would be available to the farmers on a round-the-clock basis.

(iii) The tools of information technology will provide networking of agriculture sector not only in the country but also globally and the Centre and the state government department will have reservoirs of database.

(iv) The long term vision on 'Information Technology in Agriculture Sector' is to bring farmers, researchers, scientists and administrators together by establishing "Agriculture- online" through exchange of ideas and information.

An outlay of Rs 18 lakh has been provided under the Ninth plan for strengthening and promoting the use of informatics in agriculture. The two schemes undertaken are:

a. Operationalising e-governance: The Website can be visited at http://agricoop.nic.in. The site contains information related to the policies and programmes of the department. The site is regularly updated with the assistance of National Informatics Centre (NIC).

b. Scheme for field officers units of the department: A Central sector scheme for strengthening the use of IT tools and networking of the field offices and directorates is being implemented from the Ninth plan period. Under this scheme the main field offices are to be linked with the headquarters of the department in New Delhi through NICNET.