Maharashtra government using technology to track project implementation

Tasked with overseeing a number of projects and assignments, Maharashtra Finance Minister Sudhir Mungantiwar is using modern technology to live to track their implementation and ensure timely completion. He is using a combination of multiple software to keep himself abreast of ongoing projects and tasks assigned to officials in his departments. Mungantiwar said there are a lot of tasks and projects under multiple domains in departments headed by him and it is practically impossible to hold review meetings every day.

Besides finance and planning, the minister also heads the forests department. "Technology could solve this problem and we had to find the right tools that would be helpful to us," he said. Mungantiwar said as a minister he has to oversee over a 100 projects and more than 1,000 individual tasks regularly. To manage all these tasks and projects, the minister said he wanted to set up a software system.

"I also wanted to view the current status of the projects on the go, like while travelling or while waiting at airports. "To accomplish this, I sought a combination of multiple software - a task tracker, a project tracker, a document management system and a visitor management system," he said.

Mungantiwar said this software is capable of live tracking and sending automatic reminders. All tasks and project updates - department-wise, project-wise and person- wise - can be viewed from his cell phone through a mobile application. "A task tracker was implemented to track the progress of tasks assigned to all officers and PAs. This software ensures that the tasks assigned to different officers and departments are tracked and the timelines followed," he said.

The minister said the project tracker ensures that the projects are assigned to different officers and departments, plans are updated and individual steps are tracked and updated according to the timelines. Another module, document management system, is a repository of all the documents related to projects.

Also, a system has been set up to track all the visitors coming to his office in Mantralaya (state secretariat), he said. Mungantiwar has set up a project management office to plan and track all ventures. The project office is also responsible for maintaining this software.

The project management office is conceptualised by R P Singh, ex-project director, Microsoft India, and currently headed by Dhairya Roy, Mungantiwar's aide. Singh said the task tracker has added a layer of transparency and accountability and that it currently tracks over 1,000 tasks.

"Inspired by the minister's vision, I conceptualised the project office and created software for task tracking, project tracking, visitor management and document management system.  This has added a layer of transparency and accountability," he said.

Singh, who is also a senior adviser to the minister, said the task tracker is currently tracking 1000-plus tasks, the project tracker is monitoring 25 key projects while the document management system is a repository of 500-plus important presentations and documents.

"These tools serve as a one-stop live tracking mechanism on the click of a button for the minister," Singh said. "Our project management team utilises three main aspects of project management - people, process and technology to ensure timely delivery of projects," Roy said.

Roy said the minister also takes a weekly review of all projects and tasks which helps in enhancing their completion rate.

(With inputs from agencies.)