WFH guidelines should be expeditiously firmed up by DARPG: Dr Jitendra Singh

Dr Jitendra Singh will address the e-Office workshop for North East States on June 12, 2020, with the objective to create digital State Secretariats in North Eastern States of India.

Union Minister of State for Personnel, PG and Pensions Dr Jitendra Singh has reviewed the on-going activities of DARPG and advised that the work from home policy guidelines should be expeditiously firmed up by the Department. He advised that necessary consultations with Line Ministries/ Departments in this regard may be completed on a priority basis. Dr Jitendra Singh said that timely issue of the WFH guidelines would benefit employees of the Central Secretariat in adhering to the Prime Minister's call for "Do Gaz Doori" and social distancing.

Dr Jitendra Singh will address the e-Office workshop for North East States on June 12, 2020, with the objective to create digital State Secretariats in North Eastern States of India. Today, Dr Jitendra Singh held a preparatory meeting in the run-up to the workshop which will be conducted as a webinar. The progress of e-Office in 75 Central Ministries/ Departments enabled the creation of a digital central secretariat which ensured that work from home as possible in the COVID-19 lockdown period. The implementation of e-Office in State Secretariats of North Eastern States will result in the creation of paperless State Secretariats in a time-bound manner where officers would be empowered with virtual private networks, digital signature certificates and promote less contact governance. The workshop on e-Office for the North East States would be attended by Chief Ministers of Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Sikkim, and the IT Ministers of Assam, Manipur, Mizoram, Meghalaya and Tripura. Chief Secretaries of the NE States, Additional Chief Secretaries and Principal Secretaries of Administrative Reforms and Secretaries of IT Departments have been invited to attend the workshop.

DARPG said that 1 lac public grievances pertaining to COVID-19 PG cases were redressed in the period March 30, 2020, to June 9, 2020. To ensure the quality of grievance redressal, the DARPG would launch the Feedback Call Centres in 11 languages covering all the States of the Union from June 15, 2020, operationalized by BSNL. The Feedback Call Centres would conduct a quality check on every public grievance that has been shown as redressed on COVID-19 National Monitoring Dashboard over the period of one month. On June 15, 2020, when the Feed Back Call Centres would be launched, Dr Jitendra Singh, Minister of State for Personnel, PG and Pensions would interact live with citizens of various states across the country to take first-hand feedback on the quality of grievance redressal.

The preparatory meeting was attended by Dr K. Shivaji, Secretary DARPG, V.Srinivas Additional Secretary DARPG, Smt. Jaya Dubey Joint Secretary DARPG and Chairman and Managing Director BSNL Shri P.K.Purwar.

(With Inputs from PIB)