CS assesses preparedness for implementation of e-Office at Tehsil level

Srinagar: Chief Secretary, Atal Dulloo, on Saturday reviewed implementation of e-Office 2.0 at the Tehsil level, aimed at establishing a seamless and paperless governance model across all basic administrative units of Jammu & Kashmir.
The initiative seeks to extend the digital governance to 207 tehsils in the UT.
Present in the meeting were Secretary, IT; CEO, JaKeGA; SIO, NIC and other concerned officers while the Deputy Commissioners participated virtually.
During the meeting, the Chief Secretary underscored the importance of the legacy data in these offices. He said that this data stored in paper files is of paramount importance hence deserves to be protected for the posterity for smooth functioning of these government offices.
He directed the Deputy Commissioners to work out a plan for time bound scanning of all the files relevant to the public matters so that there erupts no incoherence while disbursing the official functioning in future after switching over to e-Office completely.
He also impressed upon the IT Department to complete the onboarding of remaining users on the e-Office for its rolling out without further delay. He stressed on the capacity building and training of such users for effective and efficient delivery in the offices directly involved with significant public affairs.
Secretary, IT, Dr Piyush Singla, while speaking in the meeting, highlighted numerous benefits being offered by this system. He said that it will ensure faster delivery of services and quicker decision-making thus enhancing the accountability and transparency in the system.
About the rollout process, the Secretary informed the meeting the same is being done in four phases. It began with the collection of Employee Master Data (EMD) for enabling email and VPN facilities, a task that has already been completed. This was followed by the creation of official email IDs and mapping of users in the system, alongside establishment of NICNET/VPN access to ensure remote connectivity.
During the review, it was also revealed that the initiative has achieved remarkable progress as 20,517 users have been onboarded, covering 95.28% of the target and 3,804 offices have been brought on board achieving 95.94% of the goal. A total of 20,580 government email IDs have been created and 11,375 VPN connections have been set up.
Moreover, it was divulged that the help desks are now functional in all 20 districts as well as in the Civil Secretariat and over 220 training sessions have been held for Heads of Departments, Deputy Commissioners and departmental staff to enhance their capacity and its smooth rollout in these grassroots administrative offices.
It was informed that a multi-tiered implementation team has been established at the UT, Divisional and District level to oversee the roll out. These teams have defined responsibilities to ensure coordination, technical assistance and user onboarding with administrative oversight provided by the Secretary IT at the UT level and by the District Commissioners at the district level, the meeting was apprised.
The way forward, as discussed, focuses on achieving 100% coverage through accelerated user mapping, extending VPN facilities to offices without NICNET access and instituting district-specific escalation protocols for uninterrupted e-Office functioning across J&K.