Northeast states to have e-office
All the eight Northeastern states have been advised to set up e-offices in a stipulated timeframe in an effort to ensure ease of administration, transparency and citizen-centric delivery mechanism, DoNER Minister Jitendra Singh said on Friday.
The Union minister of state (Independent) for development of North Eastern Region (DoNER), Personnel, PG and Pensions, addressing a webinar on the subject attended by chief ministers and IT ministers of the region, said that the e-office project will fulfill the vision of Prime Minister Narendra Modi of “Minimum Government, Maximum Governance”. According to a PIB release, the DONER minister said that e-office project is also a cardinal pillar of Digital India and so far 55 central ministries have implemented the same.
Referring to the Shillong Declaration, Singh said that promotion of e-office and quality of its services were the key takeaways and now the time has come to fulfill this ambitious target. The minister has assured all technical and financial support to achieve the e-office mission to be implemented right from Civil Secretariat to District level in all the states.
Singh also announced a Joint Steering Committee to be chaired by secretary DoNER to take the e-office project forward. Representatives from ARPG, Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, NIC, NEC and all the eight Northeastern states will be part of the committee to suggest measures and implement the e-office project.
Singh said that the progress of e-office in 75 Central ministries/ departments enabled the creation of a digital central secretariat which ensured that work from home was possible in the COVID-19 lockdown period. The implementation of e-Office in State Secretariats of North Eastern States will result in creation of paperless State Secretariats in a time bound manner where officers would be empowered with virtual private networks, digital signature certificates and promote less contact governance.
The workshop on e-Office for Northeast states was attended by chief ministers of Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Sikkim and Meghalaya and the IT Ministers of Assam, Manipur, Mizoram, and Tripura. Chief Secretaries of NE States, Additional Chief Secretaries and Principal Secretaries of Administrative Reforms and Secretaries of IT Departments have also attended the workshop. Altogether 220 people participated in the webinar.
The chief ministers and IT ministers in their presentation pointed out about the infrastructure bottlenecks like network connectivity and lack of funds to implement the e-office project, which the Union Minister said would be looked into seriously.
In his opening remarks, Secretary DARPG, K Shivaji said that the entire Northeastern region has the natural advantage of IT savvy youth power to implement the e-office in an effective manner. Shivaji also conducted a very productive technical session before the webinar was addressed by the Union Minister. In his remarks, Secretary DoNER, Dr Inder Jit Singh said that DoNER is the first Ministry in the government of India to implement 100 per cent e-office in processing of files.
The e-workshop was also attended by V Srinivas Additional Secretary DARPG, Jaya Dubey Joint Secretary DARPG and other officials.
