‘No Records Found’ In Odisha E-despatch Portal A Tight Slap On Transparency & Accountability Claims

Bhubaneswar: Boasting excessive of accountability, transparency and advance expertise in public administration, the Naveen Patnaik-led BJD shaped the federal government in Odisha for the fifth consecutive time period in 2019. However, it appears the governing our bodies within the State have shift-deleted these agency phrases from their dictionary.
A living proof is the e-despatch (digital switch of letters) system launched in Odisha months in the past to be used by the federal government departments. The system was to be adopted by many of the departments for the transaction of all letters and purposes after they’re uploaded on the e-platforms for public view.
However, the best way the e-despatch portals are being dealt with by the departments offers an impression that the implementation of the identical is way from assumptions.
Digest this now. Forget accessibility to e-despatch system, the worrying reality is the final letter uploaded in e-despatch (edodisha.gov.in) by the State Agriculture division was on May 27, 2020. The General Administration & PG division entrusted with the duty of guaranteeing environment friendly efficiency of all departments hasn’t uploaded any letter on the platform for greater than 5 months now.
Similarly, Sports & Youth Services Department, Literature & Culture division, ST & SC division, and Forest Environment division don’t present a single file as but. The notification field reads – No Records Found!!!
The state of affairs of the portal has nothing however inspired allegations towards the federal government that it’s deliberately not updating something on the portals to cover info, thereby denying the general public entry to all of the departments’ data.
“Odisha introduced e-despatch system so that citizens can access all the government notifications, circulars, and guidelines. Crores of rupees were spent for the purpose. However, when the process began, and all the decisions of the government were made available in the public domain, the real face of the government came to the picture. People have all rights to know how the government is executing various works. When slowly everything came to the fore and media started highlighting, the government very strategically stopped functioning of e-despatch, ” stated Pradip Pradhan, RTI activist.
With the launch of e-despatch system as an efficient method of official letter communication, residents have been in a position to entry authorities data and inter and intradepartmental order-exchange. However, individuals trying to find any vital data are actually disadvantaged of it, courtesy non-updation by numerous departments.
Due to Covid restrictions, journalists within the state haven’t been given permission to enter the Lok Seva Bhawan, and the non-updation on e-despatch has made it all of the harder for a lot of to entry orders.
Senior Journalist Rabi Dash stated, “Lok Seva Bhawan is a no-entry zone for journalists now, nobody is allowed. And what I see is not a single department is uploading any letter on the e-platforms. No action is being taken. However, the government boasts of 5T in all its operations, we (govt) have brought transparency, new technology, but to no avail.”
Former Chief Secretary Sahadev Sahu stated, “Who updates the portals? It’s being done by data operators. Most of the senior-level officials, the Secretaries and Deputy Secretaries and others, are not tech-savvy. How will people access letters when they are not being uploaded?”
Questions are additionally being raised why the federal government has not taken any motion if the departments have failed in discharging their obligations.
The State authorities is but to reply to the allegations of ‘intentional non-updation’.