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.
Those selected will be based in their parent departments but will handle various IT-related functions — uploading documents, handling e-office and e-governance projects, and using IT applications in present work processes.
They will also work on the Centre’s mission mode projects which focus on electronic governance and various infrastructure projects and may get monetary incentives, such as a hike in their basic pay.
“The state government has many employees with an IT background and academic qualifications, namely BCA, MCA and BE. We are trying to involve these people,” said an IT department official, adding that a screening process will be followed to select these people.
State IT secretary Rajesh Aggarwal said, “They will be our IT champions in the departments.” He added that these employees, who will be trained in IT concepts, will perform their core duties in addition to IT- and computerisation-related functions.
“Moreover, they will have domain knowledge in addition to IT knowledge,” he said.
Aggarwal added that the “report of the expert committee on the HR policy for e-governance”, chaired by Nandan Nilekani, had suggested this.
This will help embed IT in each government department without having to expand the IT department or hire consultants from the private sector, which will help the government cut costs. A proposal in this regard will be tabled before the state high power committee soon.
After-effect
The Mantralaya building at Nariman Point was gutted in a fire on June 21, 2012, nearly a year ago.
The raging blaze which destroyed the building’s fourth, fifth and sixth floors also damaged a lot of important files and other papers, which then led to subsequent problems.
To avoid such a situation in the future, the state government floated a plan to shift to an e-office format. This is being presently implemented.
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Dhaval Kulkarni
Quelle/Source: Daily News & Analysis, 19.06.2013
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