There was a compelling situation to transform all Government functions into e-office one during the COVID-19 pandemic. Offices were to be run in digital mode which is an transformation from the previous bulky paper works with sticky, torn apart dusty files etc. without any tracking on e-governance practices.
Jagatsinghpur district is perhaps the only one in the country to get the benefits of e-office to help the district administration in time of COVID-19 pandemic. The newly introduced e-office in Jagtsinghpur has proved to be a boon especially when the lockdown due to COVID-19 has put restrictions on movement of people, except emergency departments.
However, the model e-office practice introduced and executed by the district administration has proved to be a boon for people, staff and for safety reasons. Daily on an average 40-50 files are approved by the District Magistrate without any hindrance and so far more than 3,000 files have been disposed.
Jagatsinghpur district administration on April 15 became the district with 100 per cent e-office with fully paperless one starting from the top to the bottom. On this day, the district achieved absolutely 100 per cent e-office from top to the village level. It is a model of good governance, near paperless office and model of digital India and transformation under 5T using technology.
The e-office system in entire Collectorate and district level offices along with subdivision and block/tehsil level offices and further down the line upto RI etc has been fully functional. As a result, there is no physical movement of files now. The staff can process and approve the files with the help of desktop, home computer or mobile phones within no time.
Therefore, the files move from lower levels to the Collector instantly and get approved. Now people are getting the benefits even in COVID19 situations. So, all the offices such as DRDA, Municipality, NAC, ADM, Subcollector, Block, Tehsil, RWSS, RTO, all district level offices, CDVO, CDMPH, district agriculture, labour, employment exchange, Paradeep Development Authority, Subregistrar etc are run under one system. As a case in point, the Jagatsinghpur Municipality sent bills to the Collector with photos of work, signage and estimate in e-office and the Collector referring all these approved it. What can be more transparent than this? The administration always focuses on ensuring disposal of files at a quicker pace.
From February 1 the entire District Collectorate became paperless with e-office practices successfully. From February 26 all education offices in the district and from March 5 DRDA, all blocks, tehsils, agriculture, fisheries, labour and all other departments functioned as e-office system. It is a model of good governance. On April 15, the entire district became paperless which is a milestone for the State and the country. The laggards in file disposal are taken to task too.
The entire district administration toiled hard for past six months or so since I joined in office as District Magistrate in Jagatsinghpur to fulfill the goals set under 5T by the visionary Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik. Mapping was done throughout the district from the office of the clerk to the Collector. Accordingly, computer systems and other gadgets of ICT were provided, training labs constituted, several rounds of handholding support and weekly follow up and review was conducted. Accordingly, the entire LAN switching was done with the help of NIC New Delhi and Bhubaneswar with regular touch and atlast we became successful.
The names of all the sanctioning officers are on display along with files attached to each of them like the note--sheet. On the right side of the file, corresponding documents can be seen to view it and pass orders. We are committed to ensure the entire district and Jagatsinghpur to have e-office with least time of disposal of files in the entire district. This is a real transformation using technology.
This will also completely prevent delay, red-tapism, gathering of dusts over files, administrative harassment to common man, corruption and venal practices in the governance. Several social security pensions such as old age and widow pensions along with stipend for divyang have been hailed all through the district. This will ensure a feeling of having people’s administration among citizens fearlessly and the later are coming forward with grievances in more numbers for redressal which was not so earlier as people had apathy and fear to approach Government agencies.
Out of each 100 workers in the district about 55% are engaged in agricultural sector. It is the second densely populated district in Odisha, despite having a smaller area. It has an international gateway as the Paradip Port with a large hinterland catering to transportation of large quantity of minerals leading to national income. Paradip, a modern deep water port has now become a hot business destination due to the large foreign direct investment. The port town of the district has already emerged as one of the country’s major investment hot spots by attracting investment in excess of the tune of Rs 3.5 lakh crores.
Several large scale industries/ public sector undertakings such as Paradeep Phosphates Limited, Paradip Plastic Park Limited, IFFCO- Fertiliser Plant, Essar Steel's Pellet plant, Indian Oil marketing terminal, Indian Oil Corporation Limited (IOCL) Refinery, Goa carbon, Skol Breweries Ltd. ( Unit-East Coast Brewery), HPCL terminal and Bharat Petroleum Corp etc are located here. There are many medium scale industries with exportable items in Paradip regions which attracts thousands of workers and entrepreneurs. Many global players such as JSW Utkalare in the offing of unfolding their highest investment, have rekindled hopes. On the other, the district has witnessed infamous worst natural disasters in human history and is experiencing in recent years too. So, all these put pressure on Government to adopt a model system of administration as envisaged in 5T and Good Governance.
(The writer is the District Magistrate and Collector, Jagatsinghpur)