Advertisment

The Semi-Finalists: Planning Deptt, Govt of UP's Online SPIDER Project

author-image
PCQ Bureau
New Update


Advertisment

An Internet based data entry and retrieval system that facilitates decentralized, online data entry/updation from all districts of 4000 parameters, thereby providing the local level information in digital form for decision making and planning



Advertisment

The report of Indian Planning Commission working group highlighted the need to identify the minimum information and data required for planning and decision-making at the district level and also provided an illustrative list of data/information useful for district planning. The commission issued a format “Database on Village Level Indicators” and requested State Governments to collect data at the village, block and district levels in prescribed, pre-coded schedule covering a very wide range of items. This data was to be fed into the District Information System of National Informatics Centre (DISNIC) for storage and retrieval on a regular basis.

In 1993, according to the guidelines provided by Indian Planning Commission, Govt. of Uttar Pradesh started the implementation and database was created and data recorded in the same. But the whole system was manual leading to redundancy, inconsistency, and inaccuracy in data & formats. There was about 5 years time lag in information availability to the users. SP was analyzed and it was found that the total data available in the state was approximately 9.30 lakhs, out of which 3.20 lakhs obtained by calculation, 1.35 lakhs needed entry & checking only once (related to censuses) while 4.75 lakhs to be entered every year.

To overcome this problem, SPIDER (Sankhyikiya Patrika : Internet based Data Entry and Retrieval) System Ver-1.0 was developed in 1993-94. After continued updation, several versions of SPIDER were modified and SPIDER Ver-4.0 was developed and adapted during the year 2003-04. It is an integrated application for data entry and updation, in which Unicode compliant web based retrieval was made possible using ASP at the front-end and SQL Server at the back-end. The core objective of this application was to facilitate decentralized online data entry/updation from all districts directly to a centralized server located at the state NIC data centre, Lucknow.

Advertisment

THE RESULT

This project is meant for identifying the inter-village panchayat, inter-block, inter-district, inter-regional and inter-state disparities so that gaps can be found aps in developed and under developed areas/societies. Now, The SP formats have been standardized. An integrated, local level database based on 4000 parameters has been created for the years 1995-2010 & the one for 2011 is in progress. Data compilation, validation, entry & updation etc. are being done at the local levels, hence, there is no need of these operations at higher levels. Consistent, accurate, current and up-to-date information is being disseminated through an Online Bilingual Unicode compliant SPIDER Portal to planners, policy makers, administrators, government departments, international agencies, NGOs, etc.

After the implementation of SPIDER System, State Government is saving about `1.5 crore per year by reduction in paper, manpower, publications, data entry/typing work, tabulation, travelling and meeting costs as well as dropping stencil cuttings, etc. Productivity gain is more than 75%.

Advertisment