Bhubaneswar, Jan. 5: The Bhubaneswar One portal that chief minister Naveen Patnaik launched on August 1 last year to provide information to residents and tourists on amenities available in the city and, at the same time, seek their feedback has found few takers.

According to a report from the Bhubaneswar Development Authority (BDA), only 0.1 per cent of the city's population have accessed the website, www.bhubaneswarone.in, till date. Moreover, the report said it had maximum number of hits from IP addresses located in countries such as the US. It adds that the queries received on the website are mostly from Odias living abroad.

But here, while some people said they were not aware of it, others, who had accessed the site, said it was not user friendly.

Chandrasekharpur resident Narendra Mohapatra said he was not aware that such a website existed at all. "So far, I was unaware of the existence of such a website," he said.

On the other hand, Saheed Nagar resident Manish Kumar said: "I was told that the website had information on the city. But, I discovered that there was a map that users need to access information on the city."

Manish said that instead of the map, information on the scroll menu would have helped the users.

Sources said the portal integrated geo-spatial data of all the government and private agencies, which might be useful to residents and tourists. On its homepage, people can click on the map and locate a place of their choice.

Rasulgarh resident Sanjit Patra, however, said: "The site should have been popularised through television, newspapers and so on." He said it should also contain information on the smart city projects. "People are enthusiastic about the Smart City Project and want information on the progress made," he said.

A first of its kind in the country, the portal has GIS-based information about the city and enables citizens to find the location of hotels, health care centres, government offices and status of various online services, to name a few.

The authority's move is inspired by Singapore, which has a similar portal for its citizens. The development authority and the National Informatics Centre Services Inc had jointly developed Bhubaneswar One.

Town planner and architect Sanjay Suar said there were several websites managed by private firms that disseminated information on the city. "The website needs publicity," he said.

A BDA official admitted that the usage of the website was not up to expectations. "We will shortly start a publicity campaign for the website, through which residents would be asked to share their feedback on ways to improve it and also how to make Bhubaneswar a better city," he said.