Digital services eliminate error, corruption: Chief Secretary

Jammu, Mar 3: Chief Secretary, Dr Arun Kumar Mehta, inaugurated a one day workshop on Digilocker and UMANG at the Convention Center here Thursday.
Principal Secretary General Administration Department, Manoj Kumar Dwivedi, accompanied the Chief Secretary.
Director Digi Locker and UMANG, Debabrata Nayak, was also present at the occasion.
The workshop, organized by the Jammu and Kashmir e-Governance Agency (JaKeGA), Department of Information Technology, in collaboration with National e-Governance Division (NeGD), was aimed at to educate functionaries of the UT about the flagship digital services of India- Digilocker and UMANG.
Chief Secretary said that J&K has already taken lead in introduction of e-services in its functioning and now ranks second countrywide in implementation of e-Office. Due to its endeavors and other strategic policies, the government has been successful in delivering quality digital services besides continuing addition of more services to facilitate the population, he added. He said that the government is capable of efficient data handling and that the system must strive towards improving digital services.
Highlighting the benefits of digital services, Chief Secretary said that this vital utility eliminate the scope of error and corruption in delivery of public services. These would automate a lot of mundane procedures and would eventually require less manual intervention, he added.
Chief Secretary informed that at present 173 online services are being provided to citizens of the region and directed the IT department and officers from JaKeGA to identify more services to be rolled out in the UT subsequently.
Chief Secretary encouraged the possibility of seamless integration of PARICHAY authentication service of Government of India with online services of J&K. He also called for incorporation of a payment gateway for facilitating easy submission of fees etc.
Chief Secretary asked the JaKeGA to map out all public services and prepare detailed project reports for incorporating them on the ‘universal set of citizen services’. He also asked for launching 50 critical services in mobile format within three months. He exhorted upon the respective officers to gather people’s feedback on their services through online as well offline mode.
‘We hope to eliminate all scope of corruption with the introduction of digital services. The society is passing through an era of rapid transformation and therefore need to make the best use of latest technologies to provide hassle-free, corruption free services to the public’, maintained the Chief Secretary.
Meanwhile, Chief Secretary discussed in detail various aspects of digital services, their streamlining and on boarding of J&K specific services on the UMANG and Digilocker platforms with Director Digi Locker and UMANG.
Those present at the event included Secretary IT Department, Prerna Puri; CEO JaKeGA, Amit Sharma; officers from NeGD among other officers from J&K.
All the sessions throughout the Workshop were open to interaction in which officers of various departments deliberated upon respective challenges faced by them and discovered solutions for same through NeGD experts’ contributions.
The workshop culminated in the evening with the distribution of participation certificates amongst all the participants and organising team members who resolved to become master trainers for their respective departments after attending this reformative IT conference organised by JaKeGA in J&K.