Ensure hassle-free timely delivery of services: Chief secy

Bhubaneswar: Chief Secretary A P Padhi has directed Principal Secretaries and Secretaries of all departments to ensure hassle-free and timely delivery of various public services.

At a recently held all Secretaries meeting, Padhi said the essence of good governance lies in qualitative delivery of services. Timely and appropriate services as per their entitlement without many hurdlers help to build confidence of people in the system, he added.

The Secretaries were advised to sample check the actual service delivery at filed level.

The Chief Secretary said education, caste, birth, death and nativity certificates should be issued only once physically and then stored in open public database under digital locker, allowing authority or individuals to download it as and when necessary.

Development Commissioner R Balakrishnan suggested regular interface among training institutes of different departments so that the available infrastructure can be put to maximum use. The meeting decided to constitute a committee, which would prepare a detailed plan for achieving better synergy among the institutes in terms of infrastructure and resources.

Special Secretary, General Administration, Ashok Kumar Meena presented updates on progress in implementation of Odisha Right to Public Services Act. Fourteen departments have disposed 33.65 of 44.12 lakh applications under this Act, he said. The Chief Secretary directed for disposal of the remaining applications within a prescribed time limit.

Padhi further directed Principal Secretaries and Secretaries to review the manual of the services of their departments and finalize those for publication. CMGI is developing the Common Application Portal for all online G2C services in various departments.

The Chief Secretary also reviewed fiscal performance of the departments during the financial year 2016-2017.  The total state plan expenditure in 2016-17 was around Rs 43,896 cr against the expenditure of Rs.40, 572 cr during the FY 2015-16, which is an increase of 8.19%.