Iranian President Syed Mohammad Khatami on Tuesday visited HITEC City, a sprawling park housing internationally renowned information technology companies on the outskirts of the city.
Khatami, accompanied by senior members of his official delegation, spent about 40 minutes in the multi-storied Cyber Towers building and was apparently impressed by the progress made by Andhra Pradesh in the field of information technology and e- governance.
Officials of Andhra Pradesh government briefed Khatami about the series of initiatives taken by the state for promoting e-governance through the application of IT tools.
Khatami witnessed the multi-media presentation and made some queries from the officials with the help of an interpreter. However, he did not make any comments to the media.
In his presentation before the visiting dignitary, IT special secretary, Ajay P Sawhney, said the state was trying to change the entire approach towards governance.
"So far the focus was on the project. But now our approach is service-oriented. We are looking at the government from the viewpoint of the citizens and accordingly providing the services, he said.
Sawhney said that as many as 60 e-governance initiatives have been launched by the government in recent years and the ultimate aim was to provide all government services through the Internet.
He said that state government was now providing 34 government services under one roof at the electronic service or e-Seva centres in the state capital. Within four months, the number of such centres would go up to 250 in 116 towns of the state, he told the Iranian President.
Later Khatami and his entourage also visited an eSeva centre and saw how various government services were being rendered to the people at a single-point thanks to the networking of several departments.
Sawhney recalled how the IT industry in the state grew by leaps and bounds with a compound growth rate of 100 per cent for several years. "The software and ITES exports this year are expected to reach $ 800 million and next year's projected figure is $ 1,150 million," he said.
HITEC City, a private sector and public sector joint venture, has come up on a six-acre site and attracted several top names in the IT and related fields, including Microsoft, Oracle, Nokia, GE-Capital and Satyam in the first phase itself.
After Hitec City, the Iranian President visited the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, a premier scientific research centre in biosciences.
Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu later called on Khatami at Taj Krishna hotel. At the half-an-hour meeting, he discussed issues of mutual interest. Naidu explained various initiatives of his government for faster economic growth and social development in the state.
Later, Khatami attended a lunch hosted in his honour by the state Governor Surjit Singh Barnala.
