GOVERNMENT OF HARYANA POLICY FOR WEBSITE DEVELOPMENT, HOSTING AND MAINTENANCE [A] BACKGROUND The IT Policy 2000 of the State emphasizes the use of Web Technology to disseminate the information across the world and to enhance the citizen-it interface. Also, the Policy recognizes the need of using Web Potential in bridging the gap between the Government and the Citizen. Therefore, it has been highlighted that wherever citizen interface is involved, Web enabled applications will be developed. All public domain information like official gazette notifications, acts, rules, regulations, circulars, policies and programme documents would be digitized and made available for electronic access on Web. The NIC has developed, hosted and maintaining the official website of the State at URL http://haryana.nic.in. The websites of other departments are also connected to this website. This site is updated, based on the information made available by DPR Haryana. All Government tenders, employment news, public domain information and notices issued by Government for general public shall be published on this website. Hartron has also set up a Portal at URL http://haryanaonline.com for commercial marketing and advertising. The process of developing organization specific websites has also started and a number Departments, Boards and Corporation and district authorities have made their web presence. But, this entire effort needs to streamlined and integrated into a well knit web for the State Government. That gives impetus to the preparation of a policy for the Website Development, Hosting and Maintenance for various State Government Departments, Boards and Corporations. The Websites have been acknowledged as a medium of information dissemination, marketing, image building and to act as single window for myriad needs of global community about various products and services being offered by various organizations. Horizontal and vertical Portals have become answers to these requirements and are becoming popular day by day across the globe. But to make effective use of the Web potential, a number of issues need to be addressed properly: [B] ISSUES AND CONCERNS RELATING TO WEBSITES AND PORTALS 1. Domain Name Conventions; 2. Ownership, Rights and Control; 3. Content Development; 4. Layout Planning and Designing; 5. Hosting on efficient servers; 6. Proper Updation and Maintenance; 7. Website Promotion and Marketing; 8. Legal framework. All these issues needs to be properly addressed to make the best use of the net potential and to attain a competitive advantage for the State of Haryana. [C] General Guidelines on publishing Government Information 1. Why to publish your data on the web With the growing popularity and reach of the Internet to more and more people day by day, it has become an easy, fast and effective way of reaching out to the people. Every government organization or department which has to deal with lot of people or which has to disseminate information to masses should opt for putting all the relevant information on the web. Few basic advantages of putting the information on web are as follows:
Easy and fast access to the information. Global reaches. Increase in popularity. Less rush in the offices. Increased efficiency in replying to the public queries. Cost efficiency. More attractive way to advertise itself. Increased public awareness A few of the categories of the web sites are as follows Government department/ Ministry. Educational and research institutes. Boards and Corporations. Events e.g. festivals and Melas etc. Autonomous bodies. Magazines and news papers. Entertainment sites. Commercial Portals (Horizontal/Vertical) 2. What to publish First point to note here is that only the information which is not confidential or which will not cause any harm to the organization if made public should be published. Few basic things which every department can put on the web are: First point to note here is that only the information which is not confidential or which will not cause any harm to the organization if made public should be published. Few basic things which every department can put on the web are: About Us - General information about the organization, its brief history, area of operation, few general photographs of the organization, Its addresses and location etc. Organization Structure If any organization/dept., which does not have a highly confidential structure, wishes, it can put its organization structure with the names and designations of all its officers and their responsibilities in a hierarchical manner. Main objectives and responsibilities Under this topic the objective of the organization, working of the organization, their activities in detail, Experience in the field and major achievements can be put. The services that a organization provides Basic Statistics Basic statistics of the organization, showing its previous years records can be put in a tabular or graphical form. Rules & Regulations/Acts/ Policies The organization s rules, acts and its policies, which it wants to make public, can be published. Forms, Terms and Conditions, Procedures etc. All the procedures to follow in order to get some work done through the department and related documents, the forms which people need to fill in order to interact with the department/ organization can be put on the web. This makes it convenient for the public to download all the forms and procedures/ Terms and conditions sitting at home and avoiding visits to the office. This information should be put in a read only format so that the users can not edit the documents after downloading. Tenders The organisation/department can release all its tender notices on the Internet using its own website. These notices should also be put in read only format to avoid misuse. News Latest news/circulars or press clippings released by the organization, can be put under this topic. This part has to be updated on a regular basis to keep the latest information on the web. What s New The latest happenings in the organization can be put on a regular basis. This can involve announcement of a new scheme or a plan etc.
Contact us Any contact address of the organization including its postal address, E-mail address and telephone numbers can be given. Or alternatively an organization can put a predefined form on the web which people who browse the site would fill and the information filled there will automatically come to a predefined E-mail address which can be replied back. This makes a good interface between the public and the department/organization. Where to publish This is a very important decision to make while creating a web site for the organization. A few points, which should be considered, are: Security consideration is a very important issue as a less secure server can be hacked from outside and the websites hosted on the server can be disfigured or the contents can be changed by some mischievous elements causing harm to the organization. It must be made sure that the server administrators have taken necessary steps to restrict unauthorized access to the webserver. Link Speed and server speed The server should be connected to the internet through a high bandwidth link. At least 128 Kbps link is recommended. The server in itself should also be a high performance server as per the international standards. Updation time and updation limits Minimum time should be required to make any updations in the website. And unlimited updations should be allowed as the contents of the pages can be changed any time and any number of times. Server capacity Server should be able to host enormous amount of information without affecting its own performance. Server Reliability Server should be operational 24 hours a day always. As frequent breakdowns on the server end makes the websites unavailable. Facilities available on the server. Server should provide facilities to host vast variety of web applications e.g static pages, interactive pages, hit counters, feed back forms, streaming audio, streaming video, Java technology, ASP, JSP etc. Whether all the requirements of the organization are fulfilled or not. The organization should check whether the pages are hosted as per organization s own specifications and all the requirements are fulfilled to their full satisfaction.
Cost The cost of hosting and regular updations should be considered and compared. Support. Whether the web hosting agency can provide some local support or not is a very important issue as it is not possible for all the Govt. departments and organizations to employ trained manpower and update and change their WebPages on a regular basis. 4. Responsibilities of the Department/Organization Concerned The organization who has taken a decision to host a Website for itself is responsible for a number of aspects of the WebPages development and hosting process: i. Providing timely and relevant information to the website developer. ii. Be sure first hand regarding what in all it wants to publish iii.regular interaction with the website developers regarding the requirements of the department. iv.sorting and changing the presentation format of the data as per the guidelines given by the website developers. v. Assisting the website developers in entering and editing the data. [D] Policy Guidelines 1. Domain Name Conventions and Registration Authority The domain names are the addresses on the web and certain set of naming conventions have been evolved to identify the web site. The naming conventions include.com for commercial web sites,.edu for educational web sites,.org for organizations, NET for net web sites, NIC.IN for government websites,.in for Indian web sites. Further, a web site can be hosted at an independent URL (Unique Resource Locator) or as a part of another domain name giving a slash (/) in between. For example a site for agriculture department can be hosted atwww.haryanaagriculture.org or at www.haryanaonline.com/agriculture. The Departments and District Authorities will get a web site address at the Official Web Site maintained by NIC having the URL http://haryana.nic.in by suffixing a slash at the end and giving the department name. Director, Public Relations (DPR) shall maintain a directory of all the approved names for various websites of State Government Departments. All the Independent Domain Names of the commercial portals of the Boards, Corporations shall be got registered through Hartron. Hartron shall suggest alternative names for getting them registered through the portal/web site Registrars, keeping the naming conventions in view and after checking the availability of the domain names. 2. Ownership Rights and Technical Control The domain names are registered with an Administrative, Billing and Technical Contact. The ownership remains with the organization/person having the Administrative and Billing rights. However, the Technical Contact remains with the organization maintaining the Web Server on which the Web site is hosted. It has generally been noticed that organizations getting their domain name registered through third party service provider do no know this aspect and the ownership remains with the third party service provider. It is the privilege of the Administrative/Billing rights holder to keep/maintain any content on the web site and the other organization getting it registered through some other service provider organization will have no control and ownership right on the web site. It is therefore essential that the ownership of the Web site should remain with the Government rather than any third party through which the site has been registered. Since, adequate technical manpower is not available in the State Government Departments, Boards and Corporations, it is difficult to address this issue independently by the State Government Organizations. Accordingly, in order to address this issue properly, it is essential to keep track of the Ownership Rights and Technical Control issue. Therefore, the ownership of the official websites domain names shall remain with the SIT/NIC and the ownership of commercial portal sites having independent domain names shall remain with Hartron.
Further, the Technical Control shall remain with SIT/Hartron/NIC, as the case may be for hosting and maintaining the portal/web site. 3. Content Development The web content is entirely different from that of the print and audio-visual media and needs special care for drafting. The web content can serve multiple purposes and can be both brief as well as detailed. The Website content should be develop to unable maximum public interface and it should facilitate the citizen of the state in getting information about various scheme, procedure, policies and rules & regulation of the Government. For the content development, the site maps for navigation of the site is the first and foremost requirement and should be prepared in the first place. The Head of the Organization shall approve the site map before drafting the entire content of the Website. The concerned officer of the Department as per the approved site map should prepare the content pertaining to the links. The contents for the Departments should be got approved from the concerned Secretary/ Head of the Organization before handing it over to the Website designing agency for designing the website. DPR Haryana shall approve the contents of the Official Website of the State and a communication will be sent to CIT Haryana, before hosting it on the Official Website of the State. Any change, whatsoever, to be made in the Official Website of the State shall be first reported to DPR and after obtaining his approval, the necessary changes should be made in the website. 4. Layout Planning and Designing The Designing agency shall prepare the Layout of the site and shall design the entire web site as per site map duly approved by the Head of the Organization. Secretariat for Information Technology shall ensure the uniformity and standardization in the layout and shall maintain a Library of Websites designed by various Departments, Boards and Corporations. A uniform pattern will be maintained so as to give an integrated look about State of Haryana. A suggestive- The Design shall be approved by concerned HOD/Administrative Secretary and the site shall be uploaded on the net after final approval from SIT. 5. Website Hosting on efficient servers The Websites of all the Departments of the State Government shall be hosted on the servers maintained by SIT/NIC, as the case may be. However, the portal sites of the Boards and Corporations having the contents of commercial nature shall be hosted on server facilitated by Hartron. The following shall be ensured while hosting: Proper use of Meta Tags to attract a number of search engines, which searches for the Meta Tags; Search engine Submissions for the Websites with major search engines; Link Exchange with related sites; Automatic Responder to the queries sending their mails to a particular POP to avoid delays in responding to the queries; 5.1. Updation and Maintenance The responsibility in regard to the contents of the Website shall be that of the Head of the Organisation and he will ensure timely/periodic updation of the Website. The updation of the official websites shall be done through the DPR/Web Group at SIT/NIC and those for commercial portals through Hartron as the case may be, by the concerned Department. The departments shall identify one nodal officer who will be responsible for authentication and updating of the contents in respect of their organization 5.2. Website Promotion and Marketing
Since, Web is a medium for promotion and marketing of various products and services as well as for dissemination of the information, proper marketing and promotion of these websites become extremely important so as to reach the target audience. The responsibility of marketing and promotion of these Websites shall be the responsibility of the concerned department/organization. The organisations, concerned, shall promote the site through paper advertisements and the address of the website/portals shall be provided on the letterhead of concerned Organization. 5.3.Legal Framework Suitable legal framework for e-commerce, secure transactions, digital signatures etc, as per the prevailing Cyber Laws of the Centre Government from time to time shall be adhered to by the State Government Departments, Boards and Corporations. It will be the sole responsibility of the Organisation concerned to ensure adherence to the legal aspects. The Designing/Hosting Agency shall not be responsible for any legal issues arising out of the violation of any of the Cyber Laws or unauthorized use of the Web content or by way of putting up any undesirable information not permitted under law. SIT shall, from time to time, apprise the State Government Departments, Boards and Corporations about the latest legal framework adopted by the Centre/State Government.