Arvind Kejriwal inaugurates 180 websites of 50 Delhi government departments

Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Tuesday launched a new integrated portal that will host more than 180 websites of 50 Delhi government departments, and said these are based on cloud storage rather than the server system, which would ensure no crashes, faster load times, and improved user experience. Some of the departments whose websites were inaugurated include the transport and the public works departments.

"The 180 websites of 50 departments have been integrated into one portal of the Delhi government. The old websites were driven by old technology and weren't tab friendly.

"Now, we have moved to cloud storage and removed the server system. Server crashes won't happen. These websites have the latest technology, sufficient bandwidth and space," he said at the inauguration event.

He congratulated the IT department for its efforts and said all these websites have been integrated into a single portal of the Delhi government and which will make it user-friendly.

Explaining the reason for the state government to undertake this task, he said that the portal of these websites was developed in 2008 and was based on the technology available at the time.

"Modern technology has made things more user-friendly and the new portal will reflect it," he added. He also said these changes will remove the dependency of these websites on servers.

He said one of the reasons felt for bringing this initiative was that during the COVID-19 pandemic when the government announced some initiatives for the residents of Delhi, the websites crashed due to the traffic load.

"Such a situation will not arise again as now there will be adequate bandwidth for the sites to run," he said.

Congratulating government departments, he said it is good to see them function taking into account the requirements of the citizens.

He said artificial intelligence is a technology for the future and the Delhi government will always try to see how it can incorporate technology in its functioning to benefit the people of Delhi.

Delhi IT Minister Kailash Gahlot called the portal launch "a commendable step towards ensuring better public service delivery".

He explained that the increasing demand for government services online had made it difficult to maintain the websites due to old technology and obsolete servers, resulting in outages and breakdowns.

He cited an incident when the relevant website crashed after the launch of a Delhi government scheme to provide financial assistance to para-transit vehicle drivers affected by the COVID-19 lockdown.

"The new websites, hosted on a secure cloud data centre, offer faster load times, better performance, and an improved user experience. With the latest load-balancing technology incorporated, the

Delhi Government websites will not crash now even if traffic increases to a couple of lakhs per second, making them highly reliable.

"The websites are now accessible to the public seamlessly across various devices such as mobiles, tablets, and web browsers. This is a significant step towards making government services more user-friendly, and we are committed to delivering the best possible experience to the citizens of Delhi," he said.

The existing websites of GNCTD were launched in 2008 by the Department of Information Technology, GNCTD, using a Content Management System (CMS) by IBM.

"In the new initiative, the IT Department has engaged an agency to design, develop, host, operate and maintain websites by using the latest technology and standards," he said.

"There is also seamless integration with social media accounts of different departments, faster load time, better performance with improved user experience," he said.