ISO 9001 for all offices of Pune collectorate,a first in state

Dalvi said that it had taken 25 months of hard work for Pune collectorate to finally make it to the zero pendency list. “The chief minister is keen on replicating the programme in other districts after Pune became the first in the state to achieve this certification,’’ said Dalvi.

The certification involves all 106 circle offices,106 mamledar offices,14 tehsildar offices,5 SDO offices,17 land acquisition offices and 20 office branches in the collectorate. ISO certification has been usually awarded to independent offices and this is the first time an entire umbrella of offices under the district collectorate is being cleared for the certification. Dalvi said the achievement of 99.93 per cent of file clearance by various departments under the zero pendency and daily disposal scheme,besides the hassle-free and follow-up free administration,got the certification for the collectorate.

It was started in 2008 when Dalvi took over as Pune collector and saw that there was a huge pendency. He reorganised the working pattern,sorted out records and installed an efficient file clearing system in every office. A six bundle system was adopted for files and unnecessary files were all destroyed in the two-and-a-half-year period. “As many as 12.5 lakh files weighing 88 metric tonnes in 25 truck loads were destroyed,which was an achievement itself. Clearing 11,00 files in 25 months and disposing of another 23 lakh files were all done during this period,’ ‘said Dalvi.

Every officer was accountable for the file disposal system within a specific time frame. “All offices were audited in this period,’’ he added.

With Pune being an e-district,it was necessary to tune the system accordingly and make it effective. All officials from all sections were involved in the drive from 2008. The set of rules of the government requiring files to be cleared in a stipulated time frame had to be implemented. The first year,2008,saw the entire administration sorting out files in the order of importance. Files A were most important,files B were to be preserved for 30 years,files C to be preserved for 10 years and files D for a year. “I had to visit each and every office of all the talukas to mobilise the administration to clear files according to this segregation,” said the former collector.