With the Odisha Government going ahead with its new initiative of grievance redressal through social media, the Departments of the Government are stepping up measures to provide response in a time-bound manner these days.
According to official sources, an information technology (IT) mechanism has been developed and installed to streamline the social media grievance redressal process.
The software will capture all grievances addressed to the Chief Minister’s Office (CMO) and the Chief Minister (CM). And then it will ensure proper monitoring right from the registration of the
complaint to its resolution within a fixed time frame, an official said.
Under the system, the complaint, who is tagged to the CM and the CMO, will be forwarded to the concerned departments, public private agencies, Collectors and SPs for immediate response and resolution of the problem.
It has been designed in such a way that a response will be sent to the complainant by the department authority (Secretary and Nodal Officer).
The departments are nominating nodal officers for such social media grievance redressal process, said an official. On receipt of the complaint tagged to CM or CMO by the concerned department, the nodal officer will immediately post and share the same with the WhatsApp group created solely for this purpose.
Each department is creating WhatsApp group for attending the complaints and once a complaint is received all care will be taken for its redressal, said sources.
Once the nodal officer posts the complaint in the WhatsApp group, the Additional Secretary, Joint Secretary or Deputy Secretary of the department associated with the subject matter of grievance would take cognizance of the grievance and take the required follow-up action for redressal of the grievance immediately.
If required, the nodal officer will coordinate with the heads of department of the concerned department for follow-up action.
A response on the action taken on the grievance is required to be forwarded to the nodal officer by the concerned authority after obtaining approval of the competent authority within 12 hours from the time it is made available in the WhatsApp group of the concerned department.
And after receiving response from the concerned authority, the nodal officer would ensure uploading of the response to the relevant post within the timeline, said sources.
While various departments are taking up the arrangements, this process will certainly be helpful for the hapless people, who are in dire need of help, pointed out a senior official.