IfG.CC -
Institute for eGovernment

IT-Manager müssen sich gründlich mit Compliance-Fragen auseinandersetzen - dass sie es zunehmend auch tun, beweisen die Marktzahlen. Im Jahr 2004 allein werden beispielsweise Lösungen für Dokumenten- und Content-Management im Wert von 1,3 Milliarden Dollar verkauft. Bis 2005/2006 rechnet die Beraterfirma Hewson Group/ Naujoks & Collegen damit, dass der Markt um 10 bis 12 Prozent wachsen wird.

Die Bundesagentur für Arbeit (BA) führt 2012 in allen 176 Arbeitsagenturen und über 400 weiteren Dienststellen die elektronische Akte ein. Wie die Süddeutsche Zeitung berichtet, handelt es sich um ein einmaliges Großprojekt.

Europas Geschäftsführer werden mit Dokumenten aller Art überflutet. Dies zeigt eine Studie, die vom internationalen Marktforschungsinstiut MORI Telephone Surveys im Auftrag von Xerox durchgeführt wurde. Es wurden mehr als 1000 Top-Manager aus europäischen Industrieunternehmen (Mindestgröße 500 Mitarbeiter) befragt.

That was the resounding message at the United Nations Economic Commission Global Trade Facilitation Conference, which concluded late last year. Speakers from intergovernmental and trade organizations urged for better cooperation between regions to reap the global trade benefits of cross-border, paperless supply chains. But, in reality, much is still needed to tackle the current barriers to digital trade and, for now, a truly global, paperless trade environment remains somewhere in the distant future. By working together, different government and business actors can lift the costly, heavy, and increasingly outdated burden of paper transactions to better facilitate international trade.

Sudjono, head of East Java’s Communications and Information Technology Office, said the provincial government aimed to create a paperless administration starting in 2012 by cutting all budget allocations for paper and only storing and transmitting data and correspondence electronically.

“The hope is that by doing this, performance will become more effective since correspondence will no longer involve paper documents,” he said.

The latest casualty was the Union home ministry, where a fire was reported on Sunday, days after a blaze engulfed Mumbai's Mantralaya, killing people and destroying reams of vital data. Another fire had burnt documents in the finance ministry earlier in June.

Documents and records may continue to vanish for another five years as officials say the country's e-governance plan is crawling, facing fierce resistance from the bureaucracy, which will have to work with more transparency and accountability.

The IWDMS, which was installed in the government for a speedier and easier file movement and clearance, is clearly avoided by the babudom while clearing files.

The CM said that the implementation of this system would ensure tracking of files and petitions online and this would benefit a petitioner who need not come back to the Secretariat to know its status. “Today, it’s virtually impossible to know the status of a file in the Secretariat. My office would upload information about all the petitions we receive and after they forward it to the concerned department, we expect them to update the status and information about the action taken”, he added.

The state IT department, which went paperless on Tuesday, has decided to follow online procedures and not use papers or files for any work. The department, led by IT-savvy chief minister Prithviraj Chavan, is also thinking of using computerised digital signatures of the chief minister and the secretary to make the system foolproof. The department has also made arrangements to maintain archival records of old files in a back-up system, said Nitin Kareer, secretary, IT.

It has started with the chief minister’s office, the IT department and the National Rural Health Mission’s offices in Mumbai and Pune going the way of reducing paper. These places are now implementing what is called e-office, not to be confused with e-governance or Sam Pitroda’s wishlist of ‘second generation’ governance reforms that includes online access to court documents, linking research happening all over the country and connecting village panchayats. These are gigantic initiatives to shovel and pool synergies at all levels and in diverse fields, if they come through. E-office, however, is a relatively modest and doable concept aimed at improving internal efficiencies in an organisation through electronic administration.

After embarking on an ambitious drive to go paperless by shifting to an e-office format in the aftermath of last year’s fire in Mantralaya, the Maharashtra government is planning a separate ‘virtual cadre’ across departments to handle all information technology (IT)-related work. Officials said this would help the spread of e-governance, while making it the first state in the country to have such a cadre.

The records includes 10 crore documents such as CID records, Gazettes, maps, manuscripts, photographs, negatives and records of eminent personalities. It will also include transfer of the digital contents on microfilm for long-term preservation.

The third phase comprises linking of the 72 talathi offices with the digital network, thus completing the e-governance project that is expected to usher in a paperless administration. As all the talathis of the 72 sazas (revenue villages) of the South Goa district administration have been provided with notebook computers, the launching of the "village suite", as the software is labeled, is just a matter of time, sources said.