NEWS

J&K Government adopted e-Governance tools in a big way, opportunities lying ahead

By VARINDIA - 2021-12-15

So far as reforms and other activities be it related to IT infrastructure, industrial development or exploiting or exploring of tourism of the Paradise – Jammu and Kashmir (J&K), there is no better time than time which is at present and we all know that we must utilize this to the hinge so that we take not only Jammu Kashmir to next level but even the development and technology to the next level which actually J&K deserves since last so many decades.

So, I personally believe that a lot of initiatives which are coming up in the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir and opportunities are lying in front of you.

So, a few of the initiatives which have been taken in the last couple of years, which would actually give you a very good picture of the way Jammu and Kashmir is moving at this point of time, and the pace at which it is going on. A very good initiative is implementation of paperless offices in the civil administration of J&K, which was a cherished dream since the time we joined the services about two decades ago.

We always wanted to implement some e-Governance tools and have e-offices functional one way or the other. But unfortunately, it could not happen and as it is said that adversity brings the best out of all situations, so did Corona. During that time we were actually able to implement full-fledged paperless e-office in both the civil secretariats, which was not happening for one or the other reason over the last so many years. This has come as a big boon because what earlier there was so much wastage of things in terms of transportation of physical files, I believe, we all are aware that J&K used to operate from two capitals, the winter capital used to be Jammu and summer capital used to be Srinagar. It was going on since maharaja times those days when it was the royalty which was ruling J&K and it kept carrying on with the logic that basically to give conducive atmospheric conditions to get optimal utilization of human resources and all the other reasons and it kept happening. But the fallout of the same was that it used to leave a burden of a humongous amount of Rs 200 crores on struggling, the State Exchequer and afterwards the UT Exchequer and apart from that a lot of environmental degradation and so many things happening.

e-Office implementation in J&K was very special. Now, both the places simultaneously, 12 months in the year, 24*7, all the days secretariats are functional and both sides in Jammu as well as Srinagar and people are getting results.

So the magic lies in what actually happened, it was a transformational step using Information Technology and we have a full-fledged movement of files through e-mode now, even through VPN, we have given access to all the officers so even they are operating late at night sitting at their home. So there are so many usages of technology which we actually utilize to the hinge.

Then coming up next is now we are doing big reforms like a major upgradation of the state data center also. As data centers are coming up in a big way. It is more than Rs 100 crore projects which are going on and totally revamping the way we used to store our data. Again, we have gone for automation of land records like we have scanned all the land related data and made it transparent, very few states or UTs in the nation have actually done it. So we have done 100% digitization of processes scanning of data and it is uploaded for our usage or visibility of the public. Even the police data has been brought online. The CCTNS data of J&K is also public. In the public domain. People are very comfortably accessing the data from anywhere of the world.