Pune Zilla Parishad prepares encyclopedic manual listing services, sharing information on more than 1,000 works

“We have also become the first organisation to notify all services under the Right to Services Act,” said Prasad and added that for more than six months, the ZP staff worked 2-3 hours every week to do this work.

The initiative has not gone unnoticed as former state chief commissioner of Right to Services and former state chief secretary Swadheen Kshatriya, who visited Pune ZP recently, was impressed with the way steps were taken to improve delivery of services. “This is a pathbreaking and comprehensive effort to improve delivery of services from stage one on how applications are processed to taking decisions and eventually monitoring the systems to ensure better implementation,” Kshatriya told The Indian Express.

“Citizens should have access to public services in an efficient and time-bound manner and this initiative is a major step in that direction and will serve as a reference to other organisations as well,” Kshatriya added.

Rahul Kalbhor, the principal of Gram Sevak training institute at Manjari, said that this was an ambitious project of the Pune ZP which aims to serve as a model for all 34 Zilla Parishads across the state. “We have tried to give a unified direction to all services rendered,” Kalbhor said.

“A file tracking system was set up and a committee constituted to monitor its implementation. Standing order files are completed and as part of the process, we were able to identify mistakes in how we were working previously and have also identified redundancies. The quality of note sheets has improved and erroneous files do not move around,” Prasad said.

Officials involved in the process said that the encyclopaedic manual of all ZP works helped us transfer and execute transfer orders as part of table rotation for 83 per cent of our clerks – many of whom had been serving the same desks for many years – to break monopolies. “We have logically delegated 128 powers of the CEO – the ones without discretion and within the financial limit for subordinate officers,” Prasad added.