Chief Secretary reviews progress of IT initiatives

SRINAGAR: In order to review the status of implementation of various on-going initiatives of the IT Department, Chief Secretary Dr. Arun Kumar Mehta on Thursday chaired a detailed meeting of the IT Department at Civil Secretariat here.

The meeting was attended by Commissioner Secretary, IT Department, Prerna Puri; CEO, JKeGA; State Informatics Officer, NIC besides other senior officers of IT Department.

While charing the meeting, Chief Secretary reiterated the importance of e-services in transforming the life of a common citizen and said that e-servives are a very potent tool in realizing the J&K administration’s aim of “Bhrashtachar Mukt J&K”.

Maintaining that that e-services have brought about efficiency and transparency in the functioning of all the departments, he said that e-initiatives are being appreciated by public at large for their inherent hassle-free, transparent nature.

CS reemphasized the need to achieve the target of 1500 e-services so as to almost eliminate the need of a common citizen to knock on the door of any office for availing any government benefit.

During the review, it was apprised that 1054 e-services are currently available to the citizens with 20 more e-services under-development.

In this regard, the IT department was instructed to hold brainstorming session with departments and Deputy Commissioners for further expansion of e-services portfolio in J&K.

During the review, it was informed that PSGA timelines had been incorporated in the SMS sent to the applicant on submission of application in 07 most commonly used services of Revenue department including Income Certificate, Caste Certificate and 08 services of Housing Department including Birth Certificate, Death Certificate.

Dr. Mehta urged IT Department to continue the efforts and incorporate the PSGA timelines in all the relevant e-services for empowering citizen with knowledge of timeframe within which he/she is expected to be provided a particular service by the concerned department.

Chief Secretary highlighted the importance of citizen feedback of e-services and directed for integration of all the UT e-services with RAS Feedback portal. He also advised IT Department to hold special workshop for all departments whose services have been ranked poor in the quality assessment for improvements immediately.

While elaborating on the concept of “Vyakti Pehchaan”, Dr. Mehta emphasized that the next evolutionary step of e-services is proactive auto identification of prospective beneficiaries based on data available with government for transitioning from a citizen initiated request based service delivery model to pro-active & government initiated service delivery model where department reaches out to eligible citizen for service delivery.

Chief Secretary instructed IT Department to put earnest, dedicated efforts for making the concept of “Vyakti Pehchaan” a reality. The Chief Secretary also instructed for inclusion of the provision of e-mulakat in the virtual tour system being developed by the department to make the citizen meet a government officer through e-mode during the designated public hours thereby saving time of both citizen and officer.

The status of progress with respect to Disaster Recovery Site, Virtual Tours, NeSDA Assessment, Urban Surveillance among other issues were also reviewed and discussed during the meeting and necessary instructions were passed on.

Commissioner Secretary, IT Department apprised that the department was in the process of integrating the Bhashini tool of GoI for voice to text and text to voice conversion with e-office instance of J&K on a pilot basis to raise the efficiency of officials. It was apprised that progress under the Jeevan Pramaan, for issuance of digital life certificates, has almost doubled as compared to last year.