J&K Govt. launches key Digital initiatives key for Corruption Free J&K, empowerment of citizens

SRINAGAR : J&K Government has taken many digital initiatives to provide corruption-free governance in J&K and empower citizens to report any wrongdoings in the departments across Jammu and Kashmir.

Ensuring seamless governance, the General Administration Department, through Information Technology Department, has successfully rolled out e-office in all the administrative departments of Civil Secretariat and office of Heads of Departments. This has resulted in speedy disposal of official business, made real-time file tracking possible thereby enhancing accountability for avoiding any undue delay in disposal of cases. The administrative accountability has been established by having access to pendency at any level through the launch of e-office. More so, it has also helped in striping of expenditure incurred on the practice of physical movement of files.

For facilitating human resource management, the Electronic Vigilance Clearance System (VCS) for issuance of e-vigilance clearances through online mode has been implemented. This has simplified the process of seeking NoC and vigilance clearance and has made it time-bound, efficient and transparent. The issuance of vigilance clearance has become time bound with disposal within 7-10 days time. This has not only eased the process/procedure of promotions/deputations but has minimized person to person contact. The system enables real-time checking of pendency and enables employees to track status of their vigilance clearance for any follow-up.

Similarly, online portal for e-filing of property returns (PRS-Portal) mandates filing of property returns by every government employee under Employees Conduct Rules as well as J&K Public Men and Public Servants Declaration of Assets & other Provisions Act, 1983. The portal facilitates access and monitoring of the property details of all the employees, especially while processing vigilance clearance in their favour, besides, assisting the ACB in expeditiously investigating the cases of disproportionate assets.

Likewise, Mobile Application ‘Satark Nagrik’ and Departmental Vigilance Officers Portal of J&K Anti-Corruption Bureau is one of the comprehensive measures of LG administration for ensuring transparent, accountable, and responsive governance.

An official said that this mobile application is facilitating seamless flow of information about corruption and enables citizens to submit their grievances with ease and mobility. Any citizen having an android based device can download the application from play store. A unique ID number is allotted at the time of registration of grievance which later can be used to track the status of grievance.

Similarly, the Departmental Vigilance Officers (DVO) Portal has been designed to enable an online communication channel with the DVOs of various departments. In certain cases, the complaints are related to ongoing works, current recruitments, and payments yet to be made against contracts etc. By referring these matters to DVOs, violations/ shortcomings can immediately be rectified and loss to the state exchequer is prevented.

Government has directed the officers to ensure that offline processing of cases for the services offered online should be dispensed with completely and switchover to online mode for better monitoring and transparency with feedback from citizens be ensured.

In order to further boost transparency in public dealings of the Revenue Department, a mechanism of issuing passbooks to people containing information on all their legal land possessions has been evolved. The UT Administration has set the 15th of August as the deadline for completion of the process.

The administration has successfully implemented innovative initiatives for financial discipline which inter alia include BEAMS, online submission of bills through J&K PaySys, mandatory administrative approvals, technical sanctions and e-tendering, digital payments, GFR, GeM and related measures which have greatly helped the financial systems in J&K to be at par with any other developing financial system in the country.

Publication of pictorial e-compendiums related to projects completed under Back to Village, District Capex, UT Capex and JKIDFC broadly reflects government’s commitment to engage with the citizens.

Centralised Personnel Information System has been designed to capture employee profiles as well as office profiles in the CPIS database of all the departments, spread over in the entire Jammu & Kashmir. It also envisages to keep up-to-date information of employees, when they are promoted, transferred or retired. It also aims to assign a unique Employee Identification Number to all the employees for future references. Further this CPIS database can be used for electronic service book and GPF.

The implementation of CPIS is a flagship e-Governance initiative of the Government of Jammu & Kashmir. It gives a thought provoking ideas to everybody, how to manage personnel information systems in the organization. It also gives clear cut information about an institution or an office, how many posts are created and how much staff is deployed, an official said.

The CPIS can give information about the excess or shortage of manpower in a particular office in a click of the mouse. The system automates the existing system to the best of its utility and reduces time consuming process of compiling information, data etc which are required very often the manual to a maximum degree. It also minimizes the errors out of labour intensive and time-consuming processes.