Centre to collaborate with Arunachal govt to develop 'district good governance portal'

New Delhi [India], August 19 : The Central government has planned to collaborate with the Arunachal Pradesh government to develop a "district good governance portal" for monitoring the performance of each district of the state on a monthly basis and help in benchmarking performance.
Apart from this, the plan is to help the state in upgrading the e-office version 5.6 to e-office version 7.0 in a phased manner.
Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances (DARPG) under the Ministry of Personnel will develop the "district good governance portal" in collaboration with the Arunachal Pradesh government.
Union Minister Jitendra Singh made the announcement during the two-day Regional Conference on "Bringing Citizens and Government Closer through Administrative Reforms" at Itanagar.
"The DARPG, as per the MoU, will collaborate with the state government to develop a 'district good governance portal' for monitoring the performance of each district on a monthly basis and help in benchmarking performance, besides helping the state in upgrading the e-office Version 5.6 to e-office Version 7.0 in a phased manner," The Minister announced.
The conference, which started on Thursday and concluded on Friday, discussed five technical sessions with reforms in governance; public grievances redressal and e-Office in the North East states; good governance practices in the North Eastern states; district good governance index and good governance practices.
Inaugurating the regional conference along with Arunachal Pradesh Chief Minister Pema Khandu, Jitendra Singh said prior to 2014, the North Eastern region suffered economically due to the myopic policies of the successive Central governments, but soon after Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led government took over in 2014, PM Modi had stated that every effort would be made to bring the region at par with the more developed areas of the country.
Under PM Modi, the work culture of the Northeast has got revolutionary transformed in the last eight years, Singh said.
As a result, now the projects in the Northeast are getting completed within a fixed timeline and the utilisation of Central funds is almost 100 per cent, he said.
Further highlighting the development in the state, the Union Minister said every Northeast state is connected to the union capital by railway and each of the eight states is coming up with its airport whereas Guwahati has turned into an important international airport.
It is only after PM Modi came to power, such conferences are being held in the farthest North Eastern states like Arunachal Pradesh as well as other hilly and backward areas to empower them in every walk of life.
The Conference organised by the DARPG comes after the National Conference on e-Governance held in Meghalaya in August 2019, when the "Shillong Declaration" on e-Governance was adopted to share best practices, latest technology developments and leveraging them for achieving effective governance and public service delivery, the minister said.
He further informed that the DARPG in collaboration with the Arunachal Pradesh government and the Centre for good governance, Hyderabad has developed a district good governance Index, a first for the North Eastern states, along the lines of the national good governance index for improving the efficiency of governance across districts.
The Minister said DARPG also plans to collaborate with the government of Arunachal Pradesh to develop a District Good Governance portal for monitoring the rankings of each district of Arunachal Pradesh on a monthly basis and help in benchmarking performance within Arunachal Pradesh.
It is pertinent to mention that it is desirable to build an online good governance index for the North East Region that tracks annual improvements on the lines of the District Good Governance Index of Arunachal Pradesh, which is then monitored through a digital portal.
On the occasion, Singh said, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is working to make Arunachal a major gateway to East Asia.
"Modern infrastructure is set up, seeing Arunachal's role regarding national security. Nature has endowed Arunachal with a lot of its treasures and the Centre is also trying to take the tourism potential of Arunachal to the whole world."
Further, the National Centre for Good Governance under the DARPG will organise mid-career building programmes in governance for 500 officers of the Arunachal Pradesh Administrative Services over the next five years.
Speaking at the inaugural ceremony, Arunachal Chief Minister Pema Khandu said, "We have declared 2022-23 as the year of e-governance and have already implemented 100 per cent e-office in the state civil secretariat, besides adopting e-assembly and e-cabinet modules".
"To date, we have conducted 17 e-Pragati review meetings, in which we have reviewed and fast-tracked more than 200 projects and schemes with deputy commissioners and line departments," Khandu informed.
He said that the government has identified 22 sectors for on-boarding on the e-office platform while the rest of the offices, including those in the districts, have been directed to get on board by October this year.
"To date, we have electronically moved 8,10,350 files through e-offices and I must say file movement has become transparent as well as fast. It has also pushed in accountability as it is now easy to locate in which department or on whose table a particular file is pending," CM Khandu said.
He later expressed gratitude to the DARPG for entering into an MoU with the state government to collaborate on good governance.