Meghalaya wins Best Project Award for promoting ICTs for development

The Meghalaya government's primary e-proposal system, which is part of the Meghalaya Enterprise Architect, won a prestigious UN Award-World Summit on the Information Society Forum (WSIS) prize on Tuesday in Geneva, Switzerland.

According to a report from the agency, the state won the best project award in the category of governments' role in promoting ICTs for development. Houlin Zhao, Secretary General of the International Telecommunication Union, presented Chief Minister Conrad K Sangma with the winner award during the WSIS Forum Prizes 2022 in Geneva, Switzerland.

According to the study, a total of 360 projects from various countries passed the UN jury's test. Following that, voters chose the top 90 projects, who were then invited to the final award ceremony in Geneva, Switzerland.

Projects from Australia, China, Argentina, and Tanzania competed against Meghalaya's. According to the report, Meghalaya was named the finest project in the category, and MeghEA was the only initiative from India to earn the Winner Award this year.

The Planning Department of the Government of Meghalaya is in charge of implementing the MeghEA project. The initiative contains various components, including services from the government to citizens or businesses, services from the government to employees, and services from the government to the government. The E-Proposal system, which is part of the Government-to-Government component, allows projects to be processed and tracked more quickly.

"The system transforms the entire administrative approvals and sanctions of citizen’s schemes. Through the use of modern technology, the system integrates multiple departments, directorates and other Government agencies. In merely two months, close to 1600 proposals have been submitted through this e-Proposal system and an amount of Rs.790 crores have been sanctioned. The transformation has led to processing in days which used to take months in the previous process," a Planning department official said.

He added that the Meghalaya government is working on providing Government to Citizen and Employee Services, which will allow citizens to view their benefits and apply for them at any time, from anywhere, and through many channels. MeghEA represents a shift in service delivery from a departmental to a citizen-centered approach.

Chief Minister Sangma complimented the people of Meghalaya on receiving a major prize at the WSIS summit and making the nation proud of Meghalaya while speaking at the award ceremony in Geneva, Switzerland. He also expressed gratitude to Prime Minister Narendra Modi for trusting Meghalaya to lead India's first Enterprise Architecture programme.

Sangma went on to say that MeghEA is all about providing citizen-centric services and reforming internal scheme processing to be as efficient as possible. He stated that the government is working to deliver digital services to inhabitants in even the most remote villages.