Jammu: Details of over 3.65 lakh J&K employees have been made available on a single window i.e., Jammu & Kashmir Human Resource Management System (JK-HRMS) portal, which has effectively replaced previous policy to address (employees’) issues in piece-meals.
“The government launched JK-HRMS in order to provide an integrated platform for various employee related services like maintenance of service book vis-à-vis service record of the employees in digital format, postings and promotions,” GAD Secretary Piyush Singla shared, in an exclusive interaction with Greater Kashmir over slew of IT-initiatives taken by the government in the recent past.
Besides the information related to service, the portal would be a unified platform for access to salary slip, GP fund, Income tax statement, SLI subscription etc, he stated.
“JKHRMS, a web-based solution, would also provide an easy access to other employee related services like Employees Performance Monitoring (EPM) System and Property Returns System (PRS) on a single platform. The service-related information i.e., basic information, initial appointment, joining, qualification, contact, posting, promotion details etc. of all the employees working in UT of J&K, already captured under Centralized Personnel Information System (CPIS), has been integrated with the JKHRMS,” he specifies.
“All government policies approved by cabinet, Human Resource (HR) policies in particular, or say vigilance policies are routed through the General Administration Department (GAD). Hence any initiative in the GAD has a far-reaching impact on the overall government functioning. Not just during my tenure but it has been happening for a few years that a number of steps have been taken for more transparency, accountability, streamlining the system and actually touching upon the missing areas or links in the larger interests of our employees,” he points out.
Giving an overview of HRMS, which has been introduced by the GAD in the very recent past, Singla maintains, “So far in J&K, all HR issues used to be addressed in piece-meals - whether it related to employees’ transfers, postings, (convening of) Departmental Promotion Committees (DPCs) or their appointment orders. There was not a single window or platform with all these things onboarded there so that the employees or departments could get a benefit out of it, thus to address this issue, HRMS was launched on October 17.”
“Besides, the government bears the responsibility of its employees’ welfare, their cadre management, and streamlined hierarchical moves. Good part is that this system is monitored by the concerned DDOs (Drawing and Disbursing Officers) as they are the best persons to supervise personal details. I’m happy with the cooperation of the employees. We could see all the employees registered on HRMS. As on date, more than 3.65 lakh employees have registered on this portal. DDOs have already verified over 3.25 lakh employees. Its significance also lies in the other aspect,” GAD Secretary states.
Earlier whenever there would be DPC (convened), the employees would be asked to bring varied orders and documents. That would result in the duplication of processes besides resulting in an unnecessary burden on the employees. Simultaneously, there would be several cases where there were no appointment orders which would be ab initio invalid, he said.
“We presume that through HRMS, this number has come down though this is premature to comment on it. Nevertheless, our objective is to streamline the entire HR management exercise through it (HRMS). We are in the transition. In the next few months, there will be one platform which will be one single window for all employees of the J&K, catering to their various HR issues,” he adds.
When asked about certain grey areas vis-à-vis JK-HRMS with particular reference to the mode of recruitment which was not defined there on the portal and the mechanism to check the veracity of documents or degrees uploaded, GAD Secretary stated that those were crucial areas upon which they were working.
“Employees have been asked to upload original orders. We are improvising the software (being used for the purpose) day by day so that everything is factored on it (software). Initial appointment order is very important. Whatever is being uploaded, its authenticity or veracity is being checked at the backend. The process is ongoing,” GAD Secretary explains.
E-FILING OF ANNUAL PROPERTY RETURNS ON PRS-PORTAL
With regard to another important initiative related to employees, he refers to the launch of the PRS portal.
“Property Return System (PRS) portal has been developed for online filing of Annual Property Returns (APRs) by every government employee working under J&K government as mandated under the J&K Employees Conduct Rules and J&K Public Men and Public Servants Declaration of Assets and Other Liabilities Act, 1983 and rules made there under. The portal facilitates access and monitoring of the property details of all the employees especially while processing vigilance clearance in their favour, besides, assisting the ACB in investigating the cases of disproportionate assets expeditiously,” he explains.
“The database of the PRS portal has been integrated with the E-Vigilance Clearance System, so that the employees who have not submitted their property statement shall not be given mandatory vigilance clearance. As a step towards transparent governance, approximately 3.38 lakh employees have submitted their property returns on the PRS Portal this year. This is being done consecutively for the last one year now. January 31 was the last date for filing these details. This is in consonance with the deadline of DoPT (Department of Personnel and Training). For IAS and KAS officers, a similar portal is already existing. Now this is there for all government employees. This is one of the major initiatives to ensure transparency and accountability,” Singla adds.
