Jammu: The Administrative Council in Jammu and Kashmir has approved the adoption of e-Office system in all departments of the Civil Secretariat, an official spokesman said on Thursday.
The time-bound roll out of e-Office in government departments at an estimated cost of Rs 67.62 crore will be a step towards the introduction of paperless office, besides, saving on the cost of shifting official records twice a year between both the secretariats at Jammu and Srinagar, and avoiding wear and tear as well as the loss of official records during transportation.
Further, the establishment of DR site outside J&K will ensure safe custody and retrieval of data in the events of unforeseen disasters, he said.
The shift to e-office will bring a considerable improvement in the pace of disposal of official business and establish accountability through monitorable statistics of file movement, thereby improving public service delivery, the spokesman said.
The project entails setting up of wired LAN for Civil Secretariat, Jammu and Srinagar for providing high speed and uninterrupted connectivity, setting up of dedicated 2 Gbps internet lease line for both secretariats, setting up of MPLS network for e-Office to create a secure Wide Area Network (WAN), providing gap infrastructure, setting up of dedicated near data centre in Srinagar to provide zero downtime experience to e-office users in Srinagar in the rare event of loss of connectivity, and handholding and training officials, he said.
The Civil Secretariat, the seat of Jammu and Kashmir government, functions six months each in Jammu and Srinagar as part of the nearly 150-year-old practice known in the state as ‘Darbar Move’.
The practice involves moving voluminous files between Jammu and Srinagar, and thousands of employees between the two cities in hundreds of buses and trucks by spending crores of rupees in this bi-annual practice.
Officials said about Rs 150 crore is being spent annually on transporting thousands of official documents, furniture, equipment, etc. in trucks and buses from one city to the other every six months.
The government also pays dearness allowance to the employees for the ‘Darbar Move’.
The ‘Darbar Move’ was started by Maharaja Gulab Singh in 1872 to escape extreme weather conditions in the two regions of the state.
