Dr Jitendra Singh launches CPGRAMS Reforms at a National Workshop on e-Office in Delhi

Union Minister of State for Development of North Eastern Region (I/C), Prime Minister’s Office, Personnel, Public Grievances & Pensions, Atomic Energy and Space Dr Jitendra Singh said that there is nearly 10 fold increase in Public Grievance cases since Narendra Modi Government came to power in 2014 and this reflects the trust citizens have posed in the government. Delivering the Key Note address at the National Workshop on e-Office here, the Minister said that public grievances has increased from 2 lakh in 2014 to 19 lakh at present with more than 95 percent disposal of cases. The Government of India in 2019 has received 18.7 lakh public grievances and disposed 18.1 lakh of them.

Launching the CPGRAMS Reforms at the event, he said that Citizen-centric model of governance demands that there is a need to create awareness among the citizens for grievance redressal. He said that the main Mantra of the Modi Government is to reach out to the last man in the last queue with all the benefits of the Welfare Schemes. The CPGRAMS 7.0 version has mapped last mile grievance officers, saving time and improving quality of disposal.

CPGRAMS Reforms were launched in the Ministry of External Affairs, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, the Ministry of Petroleum & Natural Gas, the Department of School Education and the Ministry of Road Transport today. Dr Singh said, the adoption of CPGRAMS reforms in Hospitals and Oil PSU’s would benefit thousands of Indian citizens and urged Other Ministries/ Departments to adopt this significant reform step.

Dr Singh said that e-governance will be the key to India @75, when the country will celebrate 75th Anniversary of Independence in 2022, which he also termed as Vision-2022. The Minister asked the States and UTs to switch over to e-Office in a prompt manner and assured of all assistance in this regard. He said this will not only check pilferage but will also provide benefits to citizens in a cost-effective manner. He said, so far a total of 79 Ministries / Departments have been covered under the e-Office Mission Mode Project (MMP) in current phase-III being implemented. Out of these 79 a total of 57 have achieved the target of 80%.He said, nearly 15 lakh files have been digitalized and nearly 15000 digital files are being created every week.

Dr Singh said, the Modi Government brought a paradigm shift with the “Minimum Government-Maximum Governance” the main aim of which is progressive rise in transparency and added that more that 1400 obsolete laws were done away with since 2014. He informed that the Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances has undertaken a study and has pursued reforms and improvements in citizen’s charters in 20 ministries and departments.

Speaking on the occasion, Dr. Kshtrapati Shivaji, Secretary DARPG & Pensions said that there should be an honest endeavour to serve on-line rather than in-line, so that citizens don’t have to run for redressal of their grievances. He said that IT related costs are actually investments for better governance. The Secretary said that the Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances has tried to adopt innovative approaches to take governance forward, three major initiatives in this direction are a) Publication of the National e-Services Delivery Assessment 2020, b) Publishing the Good Governance Index 2019 and c) replication of best governance practices in Governance in the States.

Shri Sanjay Bhattacharya, Secretary, Ministry of External Affairs, MEA, in his address said that his Ministry is pro-actively following the e-Office concept which is open, interactive and caring. He said that in 2019, 1.22 crore passports were issued both in India and Abroad.

Shri V. Srinivas, Additional Secretary, Ministry of Personnel, PG & Pensions said that the DARPG has endeavoured to take this message forward by pioneering a number of administrative reforms in e-Governance including the historical Shillong Declaration in the National Conference on e-Governance in August 2019 and the Mumbai Resolution adopted in the 23rd National Conference on e-Governance in January 2020 laying down the road map for e-Governance in India.

Dr Singh also gave away awards to top performers in e-office to Ministry of External Affairs, Ministry of Road Transport and Highways, NIC, Ministry of Tourism, Department of Health and Family Welfare, Department of Economic Affairs, Ministry of Fertilizers, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Department of Posts, Ministry of Food Processing Industry, Department of Animal Husbandry, Dairy and Fisheries, DPIIT and Department of Biotechnology.This National Workshop brought together Central Ministries/ States/ Attached/ Subordinate/ Autonomous bodies of Government of India with the objective of creating Digital Secretariats.