Chandigarh, April 20:
Punjab is all set to have a unified state-wide single-number call centre to address all citizen-centric grievances by the end of the month, with Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh on Tuesday directing that the process to standardise the redressal mechanism be expedited, with instructions for bringing all the 500 citizen services in the state online, through the Sewa Kendras, within this year. He approved the recruitment of 503 personnel at various levels to give the necessary push for the process.
Chairing a virtual meeting of the Board of Governors of the Punjab State e-Governance Society (PSEGS), the Chief Minister also directed that for the convenience of citizens, Home Delivery of services and Tatkal services should also be launched from Sewa Kendras immediately. He ordered total computerisation and digitisation of the backend of the citizen-centric service mechanism to ensure effective and timely disbursal of services.
Currently, 329 services of various departments are being delivered from these Sewa Kendras to the citizens, with Saanj Kendras (Police) and Fard Kendras (Revenue) recently integrated into the system. These services shall also have computerized backend and digitized legacy records.
To help achieve these targets, the Chief Minister gave the go-ahead to the Department to hire 503 personnel at different levels, including a Chief Technology Officer, Chief Data Officer, and other IT skilled manpower across functions, including System Managers, Business Analysts, Network operators and IT assistant
Taking note of the success of E-office in ensuring smooth functioning of government offices, with reduced physical contact, during the Covid pandemic, the Chief Minister also ordered adoption of the E-office by all offices of the State Government, including all Directorates, District and field offices, Boards, Corporations etc, by May 31. This would enable the state to move toward paperless government functioning with increased efficiency and minimal human intervention, said an official spokesperson after the meeting.
Noting that the current pendency of requests for citizen services is 0.53% and has remained below 1% over the past two years, as a result of the collective effort of all field officials as well as meticulous monitoring, the Chief Minister directed the department to coordinate the re-engineering of government processes in various departments to reduce the burden of compliances in accordance with the Punjab Anti Red Tape Act, 2021. The Punjab Grievance Redressal System (PGRS) was reviewed in detail, and all the Departments were asked to reduce the Grievances pendency level to zero levels.
It was highlighted during the meeting that four districts – Jalandhar, Hoshiarpur, Gurdaspur & Patiala – have pendency less than 0.1%. The role and contribution of the Governance Fellows and the District Development Fellows in providing support to Departments and Districts for improved policy/scheme implementation, policy feedback, and effective monitoring of development schemes and projects was reviewed and appreciated. The Chief Minister observed that innovative programmes and mechanisms of collaboration with academia and global organizations should be strengthened and replicated, wherever possible, in all departments for improved governance benchmark.
