Neeraj Rohmetra
Jammu, Apr 27: Despite repeated directions from Chief Minister, Omar Abdullah for its early implementation, the proposal for digitisation for Cabinet records hasn’t made much headway.
Reliable sources said, “the proposal of Information Technology Department, which is aimed to store the Cabinet records in electronic format was still in its nascent stage and only recently tenders for allocating the job were made public”.
“Though the prestigious project also finds mention in the Result Framework Document (RFD) 2013-14 of General Administration Department (GAD), it has failed to meet the prescribed deadlines for its implementation”, sources said .
Sources elaborated, “the RFD of GAD while referring to point number 7 States that the digitisation of Cabinet records was aimed at preservation of important Government records through electronic storage and retrieval methods”, adding “as per the RFD the digitisation process bids should have been invited by October, 2013 and the project should have culminated by this financial year (March,2014). However, on ground there is little movement on the prestigious projects that has the blessing of IT savvy Chief Minister, Omar Abdullah”.
Elaborating over the scope of the project, sources said, “the original proposal was to digitise nearly 3.77 lakh records of the Cabinet and it was part of the larger e-governance project, which was aimed reinforcing transparency in Government functioning and catapulting responsiveness of the administration”. On November, 2013 Chief Minister had sanctioned Rs 40 lakh for this purpose in a high level review meeting of Information Technology (IT) and Science and Technology (ST) Department. But, the result aren’t visible on ground.
Another important proposal, sources said, “was to make the IT and ST Departments accountable for initiating measures for implementing e-governance within different tiers of administration. It was mutually decided to explore the possibility of direct placement of 1.5 per cent budgetary grants earmarked in each department for e-governance to the IT Department”.
“While in several other States, about 3 per cent of their grant is being used for such initiatives, it was mooted that the allocation be increased in a phased manner. The IT Department was made the nodal agency for implementation of the proposal as several Government Departments had failed to implement the e-governance measures for the past several years”, sources said. But, even this proposal had failed to make much headway.
Commissioner/ Secretary Information Technology, Mr Bipul Pathak when contacted said, “the Department had recently floated tenders for preservation of Government Records. But, the process got stuck up due to on-going Parliamentary elections in the State and we shall take it up further after the conclusion of polls”.
The seriousness of e-governance initiative can be gauged from the fact that even in March 2011, the Government has issued directions to the Administrative Departments to strictly comply with the directions regarding allocation of some portion of total budget for Information Technology related activities.
“The departments were required to earmark 1.5 per cent of the outlay for Information Technology, related activities, which include upkeep of record and computerization etc. But, in several departments these directions were not being complied with strictly”, sources asserted.
The issue of digitisation of records had also gained prominence in July, last year after records of nearly a dozen departments were gutted in the devastating fire in the Civil Secretariat at Srinagar.
In order to protect the official record from being damaged in any incident like the one that took place on July 11, last year the Chief Minister had issued directions for digitisation of entire record of the several key departments in the Civil Secretariat.
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