Websites of Government Departments need lot of improvement. We are noticing deterioration in them for example, case of website of ITAT.

[CA DEV KUMAR KOTHARI]

Websites of government departments:

Websites of Government Departments are very important in quick information system and these must have full qualitative contents and must be updated on real time basis.

However, many of websites of government departments are not updated and information provided thereon are not user friendly. Even contact details, phone numbers,email addresses provided are not updated in many cases.

We also notice detoriation in websites and they are becoming difficult to use day by day. This is not in consonance with the policy of government.

For an example, the website of ITAT are discussed.

Earlier there was very good contents and search facility was also good. However, now-a-days we have noticed lot of detoriation. Earlier an email sent for suggestion was responded, however, now-a-days response is not sure.

In this article only some aspects from the website are discussed. These are based on visit of website on 04.09.17 and some experience gained on earlier visits.

At home page  http://119.226.207.84/itat/itat on bottom portion we find the following information:

Last reviewed and updated on 26 May, 2017    Website Visitors: 289754 | This Page Visitors: 101723

Site designed, hosted by Income Tax Appellate Tribunal, Dept. of Legal Affairs, Min. of Law & Justice, Government of India.
Content Owned, Updated and Maintained by Income Tax Appellate Tribunal, Dept. of Legal Affairs, Min. of Law & Justice, Government of India.

From this information we find that the website was Last reviewed and updated on 26 May, 2017 that is more than three months ago. On many other pages we find last updated much earlier in some cases author noticed last updated during January 2017.

Screen shot of home page is given below which shows no “Latest Updates”  and  nothing in “what’s new in the Site” being two important  sections shown on right side of page:

ORDER SEARCH – very poor:

Earlier a order search was very good and user friendly. There was facility to search orders in many manners and with many criterion. For example, search was possible with name of assessee, or part of name of assessee, name of members, benches, date of pronouncement and order beside exact details like ITA no. etc. For example by searching with word ‘sugar’, ‘tea’, ‘steel’ one could get result of all assessees in whose name such word is used. For example by searching sugar most of sugar companies cases appeared. Then some companies name which use chini, or sakkar were searched.

However, in present form search of orders is very difficult and has limited options.

Drop list in search page:

We have to first select bench. The drop down list provided is not arranged alphabetically. Fro example , first four items are Mumbai, Nagpur, Panji, Bilaspur,… . Similarly appeal type are also not arranged properly. We find in order like Income Tax, Wealth Tax, IT (SS)a, Interest Tax .. Thus there is haphazard arrangements. Screen shots are  given below

ORDER SEARCH FOR PARTICULAR BENCH AND DATE OF ORDER:

The present facility is search by Bench and date of order or date of pronouncement. There is no facility for search by name or part of name or appeal number, or by name of members etc.

There is message to the effect “For Party Name or Appeal Number based search, please visit Case Status page”.

So if you know about appeal no then  only you can first search status of appeal and therein in details order can be found if it has been uploaded on website.

CASE STATUS

In case status one need to know Bench, ITA No. , year of filing or name of party and year of filing. While working with this page also it is not found user friendly

DATE OF ORDER AND ORDER NOT SHOWN THOUGH ORDER HAS BEEN PASSED ON 18.08.17

In above screen shot result of search is shown. In details order is not found though it has been passed on 18.08.17 see the following screen shot.

Notice Board:

For last many days ( may be few months) the notice board is seen blank. There are no information about constitution of benches and caus lists. See the screen shot of http://119.226.207.84/itat/page/content/Notice-Board  given below:

Therefore, we can clearly find that the content and quality of content are not improving, rather we find detoriation. This is not good. Readers must also be active to bring such matters to concerned authorities for improvement.

We find that now-a-days, even date of webhosting of order is being considered as date of service of order. Therefore, there must be real time up-dating of information on websites. Author is writing to authorities, but now-a-days there is no response. For example some communications send by email are reproduced below:

in:sent [email protected]  

		Aug 24 (11 days ago)
Website -update and make user friendly DEV KUMAR KOTHARI Aug 24 (11 days ago)     to ITAT, ITAT Dear Sirs, On visit of the website few minutes ago I found that the columns latest updates and  What is new  on the site are blank. There are no notices found on notice board  (judicial), case status are not updated, search of orders is difficult (It was much easy and user friendly earlier as I ifnormed you earlier - the search was by number, name of assessee incluidng any partof name, by member, by dates of order , pronouncement, and some more features were there earlier ), selection in drop list is not easy becasue items are placed haphazardly e.g. for Benches  they are not placed in alphabatically order. Please keep website updated and make it userfriendly. Thanking you in anticipation 25.06.13 TAT, Dear sirs, Kindly webhost the full text of the judgment of ITAT Lucknow in case of  OMKAR NAGREEYA SAHKARI BANK LTD V. DYCIT [2013] 34 taxmann.com 283 (Lucknow - Trib.) I could not fid it is search of website. the judgment is a very important judgment and appears to be first of its kind. This need to be read by all practioners hence require wide circulation…. Reply received: From: "आई. टी. सेल, आयकर अपीलीय अधिकरण, मुम्बई" To: [email protected] Sent: Tuesday, June 25, 2013 11:45 AM Subject: Re: Sir, The required tribunal order is already uploaded at http://www.itatonline.in:8080/itat/upload/-648902005272933894613$5%5E1REFNOITA_572_Onkar_Nagareeya.pdf . Regards, By this article author hope that concerned authorities as well as readers will make more efforts to improve websites by sending feed- back, suggestions and content to websites of Government authorities. It may be a slow process but we need to be active. Improved websites will be more useful for all concerned. 25.06.2013 ITAT, Mumbai Thank you sir for the information and related link. In search of ITAT website it was not found at around 11:15 AM today, I also tried google search then wrote to you. I suggest you to provide search by sections/ subject / important words or phrase also. That will be of great help and utility for judges/ members/ practioners. Thank you very much for prompt reply. Regards,

   

Discussions to this article

[Abhishek Panicker]

Sir,

While the article is an eye opener, i feel that the spelling mistake needs to be corrected.

It is not "detoriations" but "deterioration" .

I request the author to get it corrected.

regards

[DEV KUMAR KOTHARI]

Mr. Abhishek Panicker has rightly pointed out mistake in spelling. same need to be corrected.

thanks.