iPad in hand, Chandrababu Naidu and his ministers conduct paperless 'eCabinet'

Taking a step further in eGovernance, the Andhra Pradesh state Cabinet has now gone paperless. Wielding iPads in their hands, Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu and his Council of Ministers today conducted a meeting of what is being called "eCabinet", a first-of-its-kind initiative in the country.

It was a regular meeting of the state Cabinet, but the uniqueness this time was that it is paperless, with the government switching over to the electronic format in conducting the proceedings. The agenda and the minutes of the meeting were all electronically recorded while power-point presentation was made on important subjects for elaborate discussion, sources in the Chief Minister's Office said.

Andhra Pradesh government, during Chandrababu's previous stint as Chief Minister between 1995 and 2004, had been a pioneer in launching various eGovernance initiatives. Now, during his current tenure, the Chief Minister is making use of the advances in technology like Cloud to further eGovernance and the eCabinet is a "momentous" initiative, the CMO sources pointed out. For the eCabinet, a new file-sharing system has been put in place using the FileCloud tool for ministers and top bureaucrats. After a recent trial run, the new system has been used for the first time today and is expected to become a permanent feature of the Cabinet meetings from now on.