CONNECTING THE UNCONNECTED | Chief Secretary pushes for speedy rollout of digital services

Jammu, Dec 26: Chief Secretary Atal Dulloo Tuesday called for a speedy rollout of digital services in Jammu and Kashmir.

An official spokesman in a statement issued here said that in a meeting to review the uptake and availability of digital services in J&K, the chief secretary said that in-house capacity building should be undertaken by the IT Department to offer genuine solutions to the users across the cross-section of our society.

He said that technology was a panacea for most of today’s issues faced by the human population.

Dulloo said that a multipurpose digital platform offering genuine solutions to the issues faced by people across the cross-section of society should be the priority for the department.

He said that after providing all the services to the public through online mode it was necessary to make their availability easier and faster for all the intending users of J&K.

The chief secretary said that the information and assistance needed by people regarding agriculture, horticulture, skill development, entrepreneurship, credit, and grievance resolution should be some of the focal points of this platform.

He stressed on devising an interactive mechanism for grievance redressal where the complainants are periodically apprised about the status of their grievances.

Dulloo also asked for increasing and distributing the number of VLEs to ensure that far-flung areas of J&K too had these in enough numbers to deliver services at the doorsteps of people.

To ensure the timely delivery of e-services to the applicants without visiting offices physically, he advised the concerned authorities to make stringent guidelines for compliance with timelines set under the Public Service Guarantee Act (PSGA).

The chief secretary encouraged them to frame a list of the erring officials habitual of breaching these timelines so that action warranted under the law is taken against them.

Regarding the ease and accessibility of these services, he directed simplifying the formats for all the applications to make them user-friendly for all surfers.

Dulloo asked to run sustained IEC campaigns to generate awareness in the public regarding the benefits and availability of online services.

He even called for carrying out a study of all the services to check their penetration in all the districts along with uptake by users.

The chief secretary even asked for a robust cyber security and data recovery plan for the e-office.

He told them to ensure that the backup of data was done on real real-time basis only.

In her presentation, Commissioner Secretary of Information Technology, Prerna Puri informed the meeting that the department had made a significant contribution by increasing the number of online services from 35 in 2019 to 1102 at present offered by 72 departments, PSUs, universities, and colleges of J&K.