Kerala to digitise more departments soon

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: With the LDF government reinforcing its support to the e-governance initiatives, the Kerala State IT Mission (KSITM) has geared up to digitise the remaining few departments in the secretariat as well as district collectorates within the next two months to one year.

Already e-office, the digital office management solution, has been implemented in 39 of the 43 departments in the secretariat, six district collectorates, two sub-collectorates and seven directorates. Nearly 2.5 lakh files of these officers were created on e-office platform so far.

The KSITM plans to implement e-office in the remaining departments in the secretariat within the next two months and in all district collectorates, sub-collectorates and 15 directorates this year itself. A recent analysis by the KSITM even found that e-office has reduced the time for file processing by around 50 percent.  

“We did an informal assessment by tracking the movement of a normal file. A normal file that used to take about 15 days for entire processing in the conventional manner, took only seven days in e-office for the entire processing of the same type of files,” said KSITM director Mohammed Safirulla.

The secretariat where e-office was initiated in March, 2014, is said to be the biggest office in the country to have e-office. An online file tracking facility for public has also been provided at http://eoffice.kerala.gov.in.

Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan had said on Wednesday that as part of his government’s objective of corruption-free transparent new Kerala, e-office would be set up in all departments.  Finance Minister T.M. Thomas Isaac had also recently hailed the e-governance implementation.