E-pass, stopcorona top list of most-visited govt portals

E-pass, stopcorona top list of most-visited govt portals

Yogesh.Kabirdoss@timesgroup.com

Chennai: 21.07.2020

E-pass and an exclusive website on coronavirus topped the list of most sought-after state government portals during the lockdown as desperate people wanted to travel to their hometowns besides seeking official updates on the pandemic.

The e-Sevai website that facilitates accessing various documents at a click of a button came a distant third as public did not want to visit common service centre due to the pandemic. Tangedco and Greater Chennai Corporation are other portals that made to the list of top five official websites accessed by the public in the past three months amid the lockdown.

This also helped in promoting contactless public services particularly accessing revenue department certificates avoiding the hassles of going to government offices or the common service centre for the purpose.

Data sourced by TOI states that 70,000 applications were received to avail e-passes a day. The pass is mandatory for commuting within the state. While about 55 lakh e-pass applications were filed by the public in a span of 80 days since May, one-third of the requests were accepted and the rest rejected.

The 'stopcorna' website of the state government that offers all information pertaining to coronavirus including daily bulletin, hospital contacts and health advisory recorded an average of 45,000 hits a day.

Both the portals were launched in May in view of the pandemic. Similarly, the 'e-Sevai' website is witnessing 16,000 hits daily. “A chunk of applications was pertaining to nativity, community and first-generation graduate certificates as it is admission season. In fact, this year, the portal went completely online allowing people to receive all the documents online without coming to the common service centre for the purpose,” an official said.

Portals of Tangedco for paying power bills and Greater Chennai Corporation also had a good number of hits. state commissioner of e-Governance Santosh K Misra said videos explaining the process of online applications were created and posted on YouTube for convenience of the public. “Steps would be taken to make government websites mobile userfriendly,” he added.