Here in also lies the much under-rated story of a ‘digital revolution’ in central government offices in the last few years, which were otherwise known for overflowing paper files often burgeoning on their seams. The big picture first — e-file adoption at the Centre has hit the magic figure of 90 per cent. There are as many as 34.5 lakh e-files in the central government secretariat now. The figure is almost a two-and-a-half-times jump from the start of 2020 when there were just about 14 lakh e-files in the government.
But the bigger story is that government ministries and departments are now ‘talking to each other’ when it comes to e-files. Simply put, till last year, a government department was dealing in e-files only within the department. There was no capability to send an e-file to another department — and paper files were relied upon. Enter e-Office 7.0 version which brought the true ‘digital revolution’ in. Now, files can be submitted electronically for clearances to the Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Law and the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT).
This means no carrying of paper files between government buildings anymore and the ‘breaking of silos’ in the real sense. References to external government offices is now possible. All 75 ministries and departments in the central government have now migrated to e-Office 7.0. The result is that 60,000 e-files were moved between various ministries in the last 10 months. The total number of e-files moved between various ministries cumulatively since 2020 till date stands at 1.26 lakh, a big increase from March 2020 till when only 15,345 e-files had moved between ministries.
Senior government officials say e-file movement between ministries has meant quicker decisions and far-better visibility on pendency of a file. “There is no escaping the online dashboard that is visible to many, a far cry from earlier when one could argue that the physical file could not be found and efforts are on to trace it,” a senior secretary quipped.
Budget clearances are faster, so are legal approvals. This has also become possible with deputy secretaries, joint secretaries, additional secretaries, and secretaries having access to a virtual private network for clearing the e-files quickly.
The adoption of e-files has been matched with a fast reduction in the number of physical files. Just in January, as many as 1.63 lakh physical files were weeded out. The Central Bureau of Direct Taxes (CBDT) alone weeded out 77,670 physical files in January. News18 has learnt that all ministries have been instructed that no physical papers or receipts should be generated for inter or intra ministerial circulation anymore. E-Office analytics should be developed to measure the performance of the ministries as well.
The ministries have also been told to ensure that a file should not move through more than four officers in the same ministry. Is this changing the fundamental way in which the government functions to much like a corporate office? India’s famous ‘babudom’ thinks so.
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