Uttara.in is a website
which provided lot of useful information on Uttrakand Government
activities. It appears that the site was maintained under a public-private
partnership where the Government was funding the expenses of maintaining
the website.
An announcement a the
website indicates that due to the lack of continuance of funding the
website is being closed from October 1st, 2009.
For a website which was
very useful and had a good viewer ship to close down for lack of
maintenance support indicates that an appropriate revenue model had not
been built into the system when it was planned.
Obviously the Government
would have barred advertisements on the site and the beneficiaries of the
site have not been asked to pay service fees. While Government spends
money to advertise tender information on the print publication, most of the
time they donot pay for similar information to be advertised on websites.
These are some of the
reasons why such PPP projects do not become sustainable. Unless the
Governments of the day understand the short, medium and long term funding
requirements of such projects and accordingly plan its implementation, such
projects are bound to collapse once the initial enthusiasm of the creators
fade. If PPP has to succeed, then there has to be a fundamental change in
the thinking of Governments of how they can work in partnership without
falling into a trap of corruption and without the opposition political
parties wrongly tainting the projects for their own political gains.
A larger debate is
required in this regard.
