Open Governance Open Government Platform (OGPL) is a joint product from India and United States to promote transparency

and greater citizen engagement by making more government data, documents, tools and processes publicly available. OGPL will be available, as an open source platform. By making this available in useful machine-readable formats it allows developers, analysts, media & academia to develop new applications and insights that will help give citizens more info rmation for better decisions. In using an open source method of development, the OGPL community will provide f uture technology enhancements, open government solutions, and community-based te chnical support. OGPL has become an example of a new era of diplomatic collabora tions that benefit the global community that promote government transparency, ci tizen-focused applications, and enrich humanity. The open data capability, using open source methodologies, affords the global de veloper community to expand and evolve the initial release to bring in improveme nts and new functionality. Initially, OGPL will provide governments the ability to: 1. Publish government data, documents, apps, tools & services from multipl e departments within a government 2. Build on Web 2.0 open-source technologies with low-cost scalable infrast ructure 3. Engage Citizens in their open data initiatives for better understanding of their needs 4. Provide publicly available application programming interfaces (APIs) and other tools to add external software modules for data visualization, wizards, a nd other purposes 5. Create data-rich community spaces around topics of national priorities a nd international interest 6. Empower end-users to share datasets via social media platforms such as F acebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter

Thrust to e-Governance at Gram Panchayats : National Optical Fibre Network (NOFN ) The Government has decided to set up a National Optical Fibre Network (NOFN) to provide broadband connectivity to 2,50,000 Gram Panchayats. The total investment on this is about Rs. 20,000 crores. The NOFN is being rolled out by Bharat Broadband Network Ltd. (BBNL), which has been specifically created for the implementation of this project and rolling out the network. This will involve laying about 5 lakh kilometers of optical fibre. A Co-ordination Committee has been set up to give a push to this effort. The Com mittee consists ofSecretary, Department of Telecommunications as Chairman and th e Secretaries of Information Technology, Health & Family Welfare, School Educati on & Literacy, Higher Education, Food & Public Distribution, Panchayati Raj, Rur al Development and the CMDs of BBNL, and BSNL as Members. The Administrator, Unit ed States Obligation Fund will be the Convenor. Investment Tracking System for Speedy Implementati The Government of India has decided to establish an Investment Tracking System t o ensure speedy implementation of major investment projects in the country. Proj ects in the private sector are to be monitored and followed up by the Department of Financial Services, Ministry of Finance. As part of this initiative, a format for monitoring such projects in private sec tor and under Public Private Partnership (PPP) has been developed. Promoters of projects in the private sector and under Public Private Partnership (PPP), where the proposed investment is Rs. 1000 crore and above, are requested to provide d etails of their projects along with reasons behind delay.