Ambitious e-district project of Punjab state had entered into the second phase as it has been implemented across the state to provide varied numbers of services that had already been made live at all districts and sub divisional headquarters.Disclosing this, an official spokesman said after successful operation of pilot project under first phase in Kapurthala and Shaheed Bhagat Singh Nagar districts, this project had helped the officials enormously through standardization of service workflow and enabled them to monitor service requests at highest level.Under phase-II of e-district project, the required IT infrastructure of more than 2000 desktops, 1200 network printers, 1400 scanners and other basic infrastructure have been provided across 959 locations covering 1500 offices at district, tehsil and sub-tehsil level across 20 non pilot districts. All these offices have been provided internet connectivity and more than 9000 officials have been trained as part of capacity building to enable them delivery of efficient services under this project.
He added that till date, out of the total 42 planned services in the disposal of official work, varied numbers of services have already been made live across the state and are running successfully. The governance reforms department has planned a comprehensive target to achieve 100 percent roll out of all G2C (Government to Citizens) and G2G (Government to Government) services by end of January this.The spokesman said more than 1.3 lakh service requests have been received up to last month through e-district application in 20 non-pilot districts which are at various stages of processing. "Currently these services are delivered through 'Suwidha Centres' and same shall be provided across all the counters at 'Sewa Kendras' being established in the state by April this.He added that this project has substantially helped in bringing down the timelines for delivery of various services and also acting as a vital tool for facilitating the implementation of Punjab Right to Service Act.
"The use of various technological innovations such as use of digital signatures, SMS notifications to citizens, use of electronic workflow for processing of service requests and provisioning of online authentication of services issued through e-district application had not only reaffirmed the faith of citizens in the government service delivery but also helped in curbing various malpractices.It is pertinent to mention here that Punjab Government’s endeavor to bring administrative reforms in the state achieved another milestone as Union Government had ranked e-governance project of Punjab as number one in the country. Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DEIT), GOI, in its quarterly ranking released on in October 2015 had rated the project as the best in the country."This project had been adjudged the best for its effective pilot project implementation, backend computerization of maximum number of services among all states, on-time selection of system integrator, delivery of hardware and connectivity in more than 1,000 field offices, robust governance structure in the form of district e-governance society and other best features, he added.