Essential services soon a click away

From procuring driving licences to ration cards,people of the city can soon avail of these services at the click of a mouse.

From procuring driving licences to ration cards,people of the city can soon avail of these services at the click of a mouse. In an attempt to put an end to long unending queues outside public offices in the city,the UT Administration will soon launch a State Services Delivery Gateway.

The new system,when put in place,will enable all electronic filling of forms and other documents for essential services such as procuring a driving licence,ration card,domicile/ caste certificates,police verification certificates and filing tax returns.

The mode of payment will be through either a credit or debit card. After the processing,residents will receive their documents through courier services.

Modelled on the lines of the Right to Service Act implemented in other states,the only difference here is that there has been no stipulated time fixed for rendering these services.

The Right to Services Act ensures time-bound delivery.

UT Finance Secretary V K Singh told Chandigarh Newsline: Around 25 high frequency usage services will be identified. The formalities required for these in terms of filling up forms could be done on a common portal. After one has filled in the required information,there would be no need for personally visiting the offices to check the status of any application. Everyday there would be updates on the common portal on each application and the residents need not to come to offices to check the statuses.

Earlier,the UT Administration had sent a proposal to the Centre on some of the essential services about a year ago.

We have the draft ready of the earlier proposal but we will revisit the same to see if there are any services which are to be added or deleted in the plan, said Singh.

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Ernst and Young will be the consultant for preparing the State Specific DPR for short-listing the system integrator and implementation of the gateway,essentially a part of the national e-governance project,according to Singh.

The UT Administration,however,already provides most of these services at its e-sampark centres,present in most of the sectors.

The e-sampark centre was a unique step for the UT Administration. The proposed system is an initiative of the Union government. We will continue providing services through the e-sampark centres as well. But not everyone has access to the Internet,so this will in a way share the burden of services and help prevent queues outside offices, said Singh.

The project is likely to be completed within 8-12 months and the National informatics Centre (NIC) has been made the nodal agency.

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