Make redundant websites functional

A website should be properly functional and kept updated or else if there was one, it could be called anything but not a website as it is rightly said that a website was the frontal door of an organisation. Websites have assumed their own importance thanks to information technology and what is aspired for is not an ordinary, lethargic, dormant and uninformative website but a ”great” website. Perhaps, most of the Heads of the departments and even Deputy Commissioners do not know that a website reflected the particular department’s all what was that about, its functions, type of services rendered to the public and even its products and utilities. Not only that, a website should also be easily accessible in contact and location and optimised for mobile devices and for search and the social web. There are numerous schemes for the benefit of the people sponsored by the Central Government as also by the UT Government and it is taken for granted that all those who head such departments through which these schemes are launched and implemented should know each and every provision, clause, rule, eligibility criteria, implementation mechanism, feedback, achievements and drawbacks in respect of each and every scheme so that they keep revising their websites frequently to keep them in tune with requirements of the users. In fact, updating websites is not a onetime assignment but is a continuous and recurring task. The era is of competitive landscape that of marketing and salesmanship and in respect of Government departments, it can be implied in describing eloquently all about what a particular scheme or a programme was all about. That could be construed as ”marketing” which was subservient only to a quality website. We have to attract investments and entrepreneurship and when a particular department has a half dead-half alive website, who would like to expend more time and energy in knowing details except cancelling the idea thus not only the particular department suffered, the Government’s planning and projections too could get totally upset. The position on this count in the UT of Jammu and Kashmir is that most of the websites are just for the name sake which has been viewed seriously by the General Administration Department and to redeem the unwarranted situation, it has issued ”fresh instructions” and sought compliance report from all the concerned authorities by February 18, 2021. Shall the requisite compliance take place or frequent instructions and reminders from the controlling department only get totted up in the defaulting departments, remains to be seen as for several years in a row, despite there being websites, people eager to know details about various schemes and programmes have been deprived of the same simply because no one cares about one’s duty seriously. Immediately it plants a bad image about the ”claims” of the Government in the minds of the common people about the efficacy of various schemes and programmes but not pointedly against who in fact abdicated one’s part of duty in updating and feeding latest and correct information to these websites. In fact, we would again reiterate the dire importance of imparting periodic trainings preferably on Sundays so as to save a working day and conduct workshops to train and make acquainted the concerned HoDs and DCs etc about the latest in respect of the websites to result in optimizing contents with intent to earn a good traffic or access by more people because insufficient or no knowledge or dependence on one or two persons in a department or any organisation results in such flip flops. We trust, February 18 shall make it as the day when all departmental websites shall be not only updated but attained the status as ”great” websites in the UT of Jammu and Kashmir