Notwithstanding the telecom minister Kapil Sibal threatening to block Google for permitting objectionable material against Congress leaders, party general secretary and tech-savvy Rahul Gandhi is taking help of Google Apps to keep his ears to the ground.
Indian Youth Congress has tied up with Google to lend its apps services to help Gandhi and other party leaders remain constantly in touch with the foot soldiers.
Managing director of Google APAC Doug Farber here on Tuesday said working with the Youth Congress was a fantastic experience.
Google Apps is independently customisable version of several Google products under a custom domain name, web applications with several functions to remain in touch via Gmail, Google Groups, Google Calender, Talk, Docs and Sites. Explaining how the technology was helping the party cadres, head of Google Enterprise Pradeep Agarwal said it was a low cost solutions to replace communication gadgets like fax, telephone and other parapherenalia.
The party caders, say in a remote Kerala village can remain in touch with Gandhi and other party leaders and send them real-time information regarding party activities and activities in the region.
“Only criterion is that the person should have an access to the internet,” he said.
Though, both the IT company as well as the Congress office-bearers are tight-lipped about the finances involved in the project, they aim at connecting over 28,000 elected officials and volunteers to Google Apps.
Farber said the whole vision was to provide a transparent and democratic participation and empower the Congress members to work for local development in India, using technology.
His colleague Agarwal said Gandhi was personally overlooking the project. He said the implementation had started two-three months back.
“Technology is a great enabler in bringing people together and operating efficiently,” said Rajeev Satav, national president, Youth Congress “We’re excited about being the first organisation in India to adopt the latest cloud technology from Google. With the complete solution we will be better equipped to work with youth and leverage the power of technology to conduct programmes of local relevance.”
The Youth Congress will be using Gmail, Google Docs and Google Sites in particular for reporting and communication.
The organisation also plans to deeply integrate its existing proprietary applications with Google apps as well as move many of their on-premise applications to Google App Engine in the near future.
Comments