Using the best of his persuasive skills cyber-CM N Chandrababu Naidu hasmanaged to rope in the three to form an IT Steering Committee for AP(ITSAP), a six-member think tank for IT policy and e-governance in thestate. The other three members will be the Nasscom president Dewang Mehta,former VSNL MD and now the AP CM's IT advisor TH Choudhary apart from Naiduhimself.

In fact IT'sAP, as some of the senior government officials would like tohave the steering committee known, is just the first of the fourhigh-powered committees set in motion by Naidu.

The other three are the High-level IT Executives' Committee (HITEC), a bodyof senior bureaucrats led by the chief secretary, the Technology AdvisoryBoard (TAB), comprising global experts and the Committee on IT (C-IT), whichis to be department level forum including principal secretaries and CIOs inthe government.

The main brief for the IT'sAP will be to look at garnering infotechinvestments in the state and driving it towards total e-governance withintwo years, which the chief minister has set himself to achieve. In fact, ifNaidu is to be believed, administration within the geographical area ofcapital city Hyderabad, which includes Secundrabad, would be totally digitalwithin the next six months.

The first step towards this was the launch of the Twin Cities IntegratedNetwork Services (TWINS), a week-back providing access to 18 governmentservices at a single point or cyber-kiosk through a network.

Altogether 44 applications from 12 departments like power, commercial andproperty taxes, permits and licences among others, have been identifiedimplementation through TWINS. "The objective is to ultimately provide accessto these services through wireless devices like cell phones and palm-topsusing wireless application protocols", says Naidu's principal secretaryRandeep Sudan, who is also the brain behind most of the CM's IT ideas.

Cellular operator for AP JT Mobiles is already working on such technologiesfor the state while ways to make available cheaper smart devices to thepeople are being explored, he informs.

While this is just the beginning, the IT'sAP is expected to provide thepolicy impetus for the HITEC to implement e-governance in the state with theTAB keeping a watch on the technology choice while the C-IT takes it furtherdown to the departmental level. The constitution of the IT'sAP is to benotified later on Saturday with a meeting to consider a draft IT policyexpected towards the end of this month.