In the parched lands of Bundelkhand,
Central government officials have found a success story in e-governance,
which they now want to replicate across the country to strengthen
flagship scheme of UPA Government i.e. MNREGS (Mahatma Gandhi National
Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme).
National Informatics
Centre, Jhansi, along with the district administration, has devised a
public grievance redressal system where complainants can register their
grievances through mobile or landline phones from anywhere in the
district 24x7 and get a quick response and disposal of the complaint
within the set deadline.
Not only this, the
complainant is regularly informed about the progress of his complaint
redressal each day through SMS (wherever applicable), thereby also
making the concerned government officials accountable.
Central government
officials came across this system during the meeting of the
inter-sectoral convergence with MNREGS called in Jhansi recently.
Impressed, B K Sinha, Secretary, Union
Rural Development Ministry, personally tested the system by lodging a
complaint and was surprised to get a response within minutes through SMS
giving him details about his complaint number and also the officer to
whom the complaint has been forwarded.
"In coming future,
mobiles will virtually replace computers and we found that Jhansi
administration has made very effective use of it in redressing public
grievances. Even if a district collector is very efficient, each and
every man cannot reach him personally but through this system, their
complaints can reach him as well as the concerning officer very
quickly,” Sinha said.
"The system appealed
to us very much and we want to adopt it as a national model for MNREGA.
We have asked the district team to develop another prototype for us and
have also invited them to Delhi to make a presentation,” he added.
Jhansi DM Raj Shekhar said, "We wanted
to have a public redressal system which is easy to use, is quick and
sets accountability. We launched this system in June 2009 and to date,
we have been successful in redressing around 8,000 complaints of the
total 9,000 received. We have made our presentation before state
authorities for use of the system in various departments and now Central
government officials have called us.”
Shekhar said the
system has not only eliminated the role of middlemen but has also made
the officers concerned accountable as each call is recorded, the
complaint is put online, an automatic SMS is generated with a unique
complaint number, which is not only sent to the complainant but also to
the officer to whom the complaint is forwarded. The officer concerned is
given the mobile or landline number of the complainant so that he can
directly get in touch with him.
While the follow-up of the complaint
is done each day, once every Thursday, a review meeting is called at the
district administration to discuss the list of pending complaints for
the week.
This system of
public redressal has been recently awarded NASSCOM Social Innovation
Honour 2010 for Information and Communication Technology- led
innovations in e-governance in Mumbai on February 10.
The UP government
plans to introduce the system across the state while Uttar Pradesh
Housing and Development Board and the state’s Urban Development
Department have expressed their willingness to adopt this system.
How the system
works
* Step 1: Any citizen can call on a toll-free number to
register his or her complaint. Each call is recorded
* Step 2: The
officer in the control room talks to the officer concerned and the
complaint is given a unique number.
* Step 3: Each complaint is
divided in three categories i.e. A for urgent, to be disposed of within
24 hours, B complaints, to be disposed within 72 hrs, and C complaints
to be disposed within 7 days.
* Step 4: The information is fed in the
computer and the automatic SMS is generated through with both the
complainant and the concerning officers are informed about each other as
well as the complaint number.
*4 Step 5: While the data about the
pending complaint with the individual officer, department is made online
each day, on every Thursday review meeting of all the officers with
pending complaints is called at the Collectorate.
Data available with Jhansi District
administration as on February 22, 2010
* The Jan Suvidha Kendra in
Jhansi has so far received 9346 complaints (since June 2009)
* The
number of complaints disposed of: 8746
* Of the 600 pending
complaints, while 4 are of type B, 591 are of type C (remaining were
found fake).
