Kamran Sulaimani, Vadodara, March 16, 2009
The Indian Express
The Gujarat government recently grabbed headlines for connecting villages through broadband technology. On the other hand, the Gujarat Informatics Ltd (GIL), the nodal agency for IT development in the state, and the departments of science & technology, and education, are still struggling to put in place the ambitious IT upgradation project in schools.
For the last four months, the state departments are busy changing specifications and putting up corrigenda on their websites. The authorities are also yet to decide on the operating system for the computers. The IT Department wants free and open source software (FOSS), while the Education Department is eager for Microsoft.
A source from an IT company which took part in the pre-bid meetings, said: “GIL has been asking for specifications, which have become obsolete. The government is not clear about what it wants.”
In fact, one of the tenders, which was put up on the website, has now been scrapped.
The GIL official responsible for tenders, said on the condition of anonymity: “The tender for procurement of 90,000 computers for primary schools has been scrapped for unknown administrative reasons.”
He added: “We have, however, awarded NIIT and Educomp with contracts for providing education-based learning solutions and maintenance of PCs for 4,500 secondary schools.”
The Gujarat government had earlier told Newsline that it was going for a massive IT upgradation in schools, which will include procurement of 1,50,000 computers, educational software, and school management software.
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