It's an exercise in connectivity and dissemination of information.

For, Anganwadis, the only pre-school childcare facilities for children below the age of five, in Orissa will now be available on the Internet soon.

[Anganwadi means 'courtyard.' Under the Integrated Child Development Scheme, one anganwadi worker is allotted to a population of 1,000. Anganwadi workers are trained in various aspects of health, nutrition and child development. The duties of anganwadi worker are regular health check-up, immunization, health education and non-formal pre-school education.]

Just a click of the e-mouse and one can access the details of an Anganwadi worker and the children under her care, even if she is in the remotest corner of the state. However, not all hamlets in Orissa have an Anganwadi.  Orissa has about 41,000 Anganwadis run under the centrally sponsored Integrated Child Development Services.

Called the E-Pragati, the project to connect state's Anganwadis on the Net will supplement the E-Shishu venture which cyber connected about 103-lakh children in 80,000 schools in 30 districts of the state. E-Shishu provides information about children within the age group of 9-14 years.

Apart from information on Anganwadi workers, E-Pragati will also record details of the children under their care, like their height and weight. It also allows registration of pregnant women by the health department and would give information on birth of children.

The unique venture in Orissa is expected to act as a model for other states. E-Pragati, generated by state's IT SMEs, is all about the convergence of the Women and Child Welfare Department and the School and Mass Education Department.

The Orissa Computer Application Centre is also a participant in the endeavour.

Among other things, projects like E-Pragati and E-Shishu ensure data unification for the e-governance road map of the state. If WCWD succeeds, it will encourage other departments to set up their individual database.

E-Pragati is the result of the efforts of 45,000 administrators and grassroot level functionaries.

According to the plan, the first part of the project would focus on collection of data on Anganwadi workers and helpers, codify Anganwadi centres and generate an Anganwadi Management Information System Code. From then on, data collected will be vetted, transferred to the e-platform and consolidated.

For the second part of the project, an E-Pragati website will be created, where data on children in the age group of 0-5 years will be uploaded. Additional task, of tagging the children with their respective Anganwadis and collection of mid-day meal details from the schools would also be undertaken. These details uploaded will complete the Anganwadi profile, thereby becoming a part of the WCWD website.

An Anganwadi code will be of 8 digits. It is with this process that the Anganwadi Management Information System Code would be set up for the identification of Anganwadi children, especially those under the pre-school and out-of-school categories.

Details of children enrolled for mid-day meal programmes would also be available.

The last and the most vital part of the project would be data consolidation. Once collected from the district offices, the data will be filtered, codified and consolidated in the state office.