No particulars, no purpose served, Tamil Nadu Govt website just for namesake

The idea behind designating www.tn.gov.in as the nodal website of the State government was to link all departments and enable the people to access all information about the administration, including details of the Chief Minister and his cabinet, departments, local bodies and their phone numbers, Government Orders (GOs), announcements and press releases, schemes, forms, grievances, etc. However, barring rare exceptions, many departments have failed to update the details, rendering it useless to the public.

One important link that has only old information is the GO section. Except for Information Technology (IT) and a couple of other departments, many have not updated any of the orders. The last GO uploaded by the Public Works Department (PWD) was in 2019. The same is the case with the Planning, Development and Special Initiatives Department, headed by Chief Minister MK Stalin himself, which does not have any GO since 2019.

In the case of the Water Resources Department, there are no details, including even the name of the Secretary.

In the ‘Grievance’ section of the website, many links are either “not found” or worse, gets redirected to other departments. For instance, the link to Civil Supplies Department directs one to the Agriculture Engineering Department.

Even the website address itself of the State Human Rights Commission is wrong: the official website should be www.shrc.tn.gov.in but is given as www.shrc.tn.nic.in, and thus the link returns not found message.

When asked, IT Secretary Neeraj Mittal said the responsibility of updating information was on the concerned department, as they have been provided with the credentials to log in to www.tn.gov.in. “We can help provide technical knowledge to other departments but the IT Department cannot track every GO. It is their duty to update the information,” Mittal, told DT Next.

Admitting that it was their responsibility, other Secretary blamed the failure to update information on workload. “I accept that it is the duty of the Secretaries to ensure that information is updated on the government website. But due to routine work, we could not pay much attention to the updation work,” said the Secretary of a department on condition of anonymity.