Two-day Regional Conference on 'Bringing Citizens and Government Closer through Administrative Reforms’ held in Arunachal

Tezpur: Arunachal Pradesh Chief Minister Pema Khandu Thursday  said that administrative reforms were a must for bringing change in governance and bringing it closer to the people.

Speaking at the inaugural ceremony of the two-day Regional Conference on 'Bringing Citizens and Government Closer through Administrative Reforms’ organized by the Department of Administrative Reforms & Public Grievances (DARPG), Govt of India in collaboration with the state department of Administrative Reforms (AR) here at State Banquet Hall, he informed that Arunachal Pradesh government is constantly adopting reforms for transparency, accountability and speedy disposal of files.

He said the conference holds much significance as it aims to facilitate and equip govt officers to bridge the gap between the government and the people to all possible extent.  

Terming e-office system as one of the best technological interventions for efficient and transparent governance, Khandu informed that Arunachal Pradesh is committedly onboarding its offices on the digital platform. 

“In fact, we have declared year 2022-23 as Year of e-Governance and have already implemented 100% e-office in the state Civil Secretariat besides adopting e-Assembly and e-Cabinet modules. Till 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,” he informed. 

Khandu further informed that the govt has identified 22 sectors for onboarding on the e-office platform while rest of the offices including those in the districts have been directed to get onboard by October this year.

“Till date we have electronically moved 810350 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,” he said.

Referring to the title of the conference, Khandu said the state government has been striving to bring citizens closer to the government since five years through its much appreciated initiative of ‘Sarkar Aapke Dwar’.

He informed that more than 1000 Sarkar Aapke Dwar camps have been held in the last five years benefitting more than 12 lakh people.

To ensure effective service delivery, Khandu mentioned two crucial measures – one merit based selection and capacity building. 

The Chief Minister said the Arunachal Pradesh Staff Selection Board (APSSB) was created with the objective to achieve merit based selection. 

“How long do we follow the political appeasement policy? Times have changed. We need to empower our people based on merit in a transparent manner. I am happy that recently APSSB got ISO 9001-2015 certification for fairness, transparency, promptness and merit in the recruitment which is historic,” he said.

For capacity building of state civil servants, Khandu informed the state has entered into MoUs with multiple knowledge partners.

“As a first for any state in the country, we recently partnered with Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration (LBSNAA), Mussoorie, and launched the course planner that will create a robust Arunachal Pradesh Civil Service (APCS), which is in sync with the best practices of the world and is equipped with top administrative skills to take the state to next level of growth and overall prosperity,” he said.

Khandu expressed gratitude to DARPG for entering into a MoU with the state government to collaborate on good governance.

Meanwhile, Dr Jitendra Singh, Union Minister of State ( i/c) for Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions, announced that 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 up gradation of e-Office version 5.6 to e-Office version 7.0 in a phased manner. Further, the National Centre for Good Governance (NCGG) under DARPG would organize Mid-Career Building Programs in Governance for 500 officers of Arunachal Pradesh Administrative Services over the next 5 years.  

The Regional Conferences are organized with a view to bring National and State level organizations along with other stakeholders including NGOs, intelligentsia, media etc. on the same platform to share experiences in the formulation and implementation of good governance practices. Senior officers of the Central and State Governments responsible for implementing good governance practices and officials from cutting edge level participated in the Conference. 

This is the first time that the regional conference has been held in Arunachal Pradesh.