`Satark Nagrik’:  A game-changing initiative to combat corruption, empower citizens

SRINAGAR, AUGUST 11: J&K government has launched many digital initiatives to provide corruption-free governance and empower citizens to report graft and wrongdoings.

Ensuring seamless governance, the General Administration Department, through Information Technology Department, has successfully rolled out an e-office in all the administrative departments of the Civil Secretariat and the office of Heads of Departments.

This has resulted in speedy disposal of official business, making real-time file tracking possible thereby enhancing accountability for avoiding any undue delay in the disposal of cases. Administrative accountability has been established by having access to pendency at any level through the launch of the e-office. 

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 the status of their vigilance clearance for any follow-up.

Similarly, the online portal for e-filing of property returns (PRS-Portal) mandates the 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 favor, besides, assisting the ACB in expeditiously investigating the cases of disproportionate assets.

Likewise, the 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 a 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 the 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 the 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, 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.

The government has directed the officers to ensure that offline processing of cases for the services offered online should be dispensed completely and the 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 evolved. The UT Administration has set the 15th of August as the deadline for the 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 the government’s commitment to engage with the citizens.

A centralized 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 the entire Jammu & Kashmir. It also envisages keeping 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 reference. Further, this CPIS database can be used for electronic service books and GPF.

The implementation of CPIS is a flagship e-Governance initiative of the Government of Jammu & Kashmir. It gives thought-provoking ideas to everybody, on 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 with a click of the mouse. The system automates the existing system to the best of its utility and reduces the time-consuming process of compiling information, data, etc which are required very often by the manual to a maximum degree. It also minimizes the errors in labor-intensive and time-consuming processes.