Chief Secretary aims for better public service delivery

Chandigarh, April 6, 2015: Chief Secretary Sarvesh Kaushal today held a video conferencing session with all the Deputy Commissioners to review the progress of the implementation of various e-governance projects. Directions were issued to complete all the pending e-governance projects in time bound manner so that the essential public services could be delivered to the citizens at their door steps in hassle free manner.

The various projects which were discussed during the video conferencing included State Data Center (SDC), e-District roll out Project, State Service Delivery Gateway (SSDG), e-Office, Sewa Kendras. At the onset, a detailed presentation was given by officials of Department of Governance Reforms highlighting the current status of the projects being implemented by the Department.

It was informed that the construction of State Data Center shall be completed by Punjab Small Industries & Export Corporation limited (PSIEC) by September 30 this year. State Data Centre would provide many functionalities like Central Data Repository of the State, Secure Data Storage, facilitation of Online Delivery of Services, Citizen Information/Services Portal, State Intranet Portal, Disaster Recovery, Remote Management and Service Integration etc. Emphasizing the importance of this project Chief Secretary directed the concerned authorities to complete the construction and other activities of State Data Center project by March 2016. In the meanwhile, to meet the immediate data center needs of the various departments of the State, the agreement shall be signed with BSNL which provides state of the art Data Center services to its customers. The Chief Secretary further directed the Department of Governance Reforms to set up meeting with Secretary Telecom, Govt of India to expedite the signing of agreement with BSNL.

While reviewing the progress of Sewa Kendras projects, the Deputy Commissioners apprised the Chief Secretary about the number of completed structures and the Sewa Kendras for which the construction is still underway. It was informed that all the 147 Sewa Kendras in District Jalandhar, 144 in District Ludhiana, 144 in District Patiala, 70 in District Kapurthala are mostly at finishing level. Similarly the construction of Sewa Kendras in the remaining districts has also reached at an advanced stage. The CS has directed the DCs to expedite the construction work and ensure that the SEWA Kendras become functional in stipulated time period. The Chief Secretary informed all the Deputy Commissioners that two International companies with proven experience have participated in the tendering process for selection of services operator of Sewa Kendras. He said that the MoU with the selected company is expected to be signed within next week. Further the remaining activities of the project like Internet Connectivity, Electricity connections, Air Conditioners, Furniture, DG Sets etc are also on the final stages of completion. Chief Secretary also inducted 3 Deputy Commissioners into the committee formed for the finalisation of specification for the furniture to be used in Sewa Kendras. Under the Sewa Kendras project, 2174 Sewa Kendras would be set up in the State of Punjab. Under the project, apart from setting up Sewa Kendras, the services of every department would be digitized and will be made available to the citizens in a hassle-free manner, within a minimum time period from these centres.

In urban areas, one such centre would be planned within a radius of 1.5 to 2.5 square kilometres, based upon the population density. In rural areas, one service delivery centre would be planned for every cluster of villages having a population between 8,000 and 10,000.

The Chief Secretary was informed that eDistrict State Wide rollout project is also at an advanced stage of implementation. It was informed that the eDistrict project has been conceptualised under National e-Governance Plan for backend computerisation to improve this experience and enhance the efficiencies of the various Departments at the district-level to enable seamless service delivery to the citizen. Field offices’ Hardware delivery, Site preparation, Local area networking and other hardware installation activities have been completed at 99% of the sites across the State of Punjab. The soft launch of 6 services has already been done in 10 Districts. Chief Secretary directed the Deputy Commissioners and Secretary Governance Reforms to complete the training of field officials and data digitization of historic records in next 2 months to make all the 51 services operational by June 30. Chief Secretary also directed Secretary Governance Reforms to form technical committees to assess the implementation of eDistrict and Sewa Kendra project in field offices. Chief Secretary informed that he will soon have review meetings with the top management of the companies which are implementing critical e-Governance projects in the State to give impetus to these projects.

NIC Punjab also presented the details of eOffice project to automate the internal functioning of various branches of Deputy Commissioner Offices’ of the State. The project aims to improve productivity, quality, resource management, turnaround time and increase transparency by replacing the old manual process with an electronic file system. During the meeting, it was highlighted that NIC Punjab has already completed the field hardware assessment of all the Districts of Punjab. All the DCs were asked to make arrangement of finances for implementation of this project. NIC Punjab and Deputy Commissioners were asked to jointly finalise the computer hardware requirement after assessment of the current computing infrastructure available in various field offices of the Districts.

Deputy Commissioner were advised to look into the financial and administrative aspects concerning all projects of Sukhmani societies in such a manner that the operations become cost effective and the surpluses so generated should be used to further strengthen the e-Governance rollout in the districts. During the Video Conferencing, besides Deputy Commissioners of all districts, R K Verma, Secretary Governance Reforms and officers of Department of Governance Reforms were also present.