The Union Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Development of North Eastern Region (DoNER), MoS PMO, Personnel, Public Grievances, Pensions, Atomic Energy and Space, Dr Jitendra Singh inaugurated the workshop on e-Office here today. The workshop was organised by the Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances (DARPG), Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions, Government of India. The workshop was organised in the light of the fact that the e-Office is an important tool of e-Governance for bringing efficiency and quality in public service delivery and the DARPG is the nodal Department for implementation of e-Office in Central Ministries/Departments. The National Informatics Centre (NIC) is the partner of this Department in implementation of this project.
During the workshop, the Assistant Secretaries attached with various Ministries of the Central Government shared their experiences about different ministries on how the e-Office is being implemented in these ministries and what needs to be done to improve the system. They also suggested that instant messaging system can also be introduced in the Government for developing quick response system. Speaking on the occasion, Dr Jitendra Singh said that we should switch over to e-office and it should become a part of the culture and get institutionalised. Dr Jitendra Singh said that any effort made by us should be citizen-centric. Being citizen-centric essentially means being youth-centric, he added. He expressed happiness over the enthusiasm and interest shown by the young Assistant Secretaries in implementation of e-Office in the Government functioning. He also listened to the suggestions given by them during their interaction. The Minister said that the experimentation of e-Office and the experiment of attaching Assistant Secretaries to various ministries started at almost same time and both the experiments have been fruitful.
Addressing the workshop, Shri C. Viswanath, Secretary, DARPG said that e-governance needs to be given more importance and the first step towards implementation of e-governance is e-Office. He emphasised upon the importance of the use of technology in all the spheres of governance. He also said that mindset needs to be changed to switch over from old system to the new. He said that e-Office is a safe, secure and easily accessible store system. He said that we need to define cut off date for the implementation of e-Office. While giving presentation on the successful implementation of e-Office in the Ministry of Rural Development, Shri Santosh Mathew, Joint Secretary of the Ministry said that the Secretaries of all the ministries should be enthusiastic about the utility of the implementation of e-Office.