General Administration Department (GAD) has ordered digitization of all official records by all 22 departments which are stationed in Jammu, in a time bound manner. To expedite the process of digitisation of records and files of various departments in civil secretariat, Jammu, the government has issued a four-phase schedule.
The records of Animal and Sheep Husbandry, ARI and Training, Food, Civil Supplies and Consumer Affairs (CAPD), Forest, Ecology and Environment, Health and Medical Education and Home Departments will be digitized from October 23.
Similarly, the records of six other departments like Housing and Urban Department, Jal Shakti, Planning, Development and Monitoring, Power Development Department, Revenue and Rural Development and Panchayati Raj Department will be digitised from October 31.
Meanwhile, the records of Transport, Science and Technology, Tribal Affairs, Cooperative and Information departments will be digitised from November 8 while the process to digitize the records of Higher Education, General Administration, Finance, School Education, Agriculture Production and Farmer’s Welfare will be digitized from November 16.
The GAD has ordered to the departments to ensure daily supply of at least 800 files to the digitisation centre, Jammu, prepare files for scanning by marking page number of NF and CF with proper indexing, depute at least two officers of at least Under Secretary level for doing daily quality check of scanned files and metadata at digitization centre.
“Ensure that the scanned files are taken back on the same day and depute resources even on holidays in order to achieve the targets,” reads the order.
Similarly digitisation exercise will also be conducted in Srinagar once all the records are digitized at Jammu. As per the GAD order, the departments stationed at Srinagar will make all the files ready for scanning as soon as Darbar opens in Jammu so as to ensure that they are taken up immediately once the scanning of records/files of the departments based in Jammu was completed. Every year, the government departments have to shift files/ records, and computers during Darbar Move to Jammu and Srinagar which is considered a costly exercise.
The 2014-floods in Kashmir had damaged official records following which several directions were issued for digitisation of the records. The civil secretariat Jammu has already established an office at Legislative Council complex for digitisation of the records.