I welcome everybody to the launch of the Estate Office Website and Online Services. Today’s launch encapsulates the vision of transparency, efficiency and citizen-centric services. This was the vision I had laid out before the officers of the UT Administration immediately on joining here. All the officers were told to make processes simple, to remove all ambiguities or anomalies, to ensure proper use of technology so that citizens could avail of services seamlessly. They were also told to crack down heavily on any malpractices and bring about reforms to end any harassment of citizens. I have always believed that systemic change is a must to bring about everlasting and sustainable changes. I am happy that today’s programme is one such example where process reengineering is taking place in a public office to provide various services to the citizens in a transparent and efficient manner.
The Estate Office is one of the most important offices in Chandigarh, which is providing a plethora of services to the citizens. It was established in 1952 to provide various property-related services such as allotment, auction, maintenance of the record of ownership of various types of properties. However, most of these services were being provided through offline mode which has several inherent limitations. It is difficult to track files. The absence of digitization had led to a non-transparent system where the applications of citizens were delayed for months together. The citizen had no feedback system and a very weak redressal system. Due to this lack of transparency, there were also allegations of corruption and various malpractices. In this day and age when a citizen can do most of the things sitting at home, it is surprising how only a manual system of payments was prevailing. The result of all these inefficiencies was delays, red-tapism and harassment of applicants.
To overcome these problems, the Estate Office undertook this project in August 2020 with the help of NIC. Forty teams consisting of 125 employees were deputed to digitize all property records. A Master Form was designed containing all the essential fields. Each property file has about 200 essential fields, which are needed for any transaction. All these fields were first uploaded by computer operators. This meant roughly 80 lakh entries. All these entries were then verified by the clerks with digital signatures. This 100% verification was done again at the senior assistant level and a sample verification of 10% done at the Superintendent level, again all with digital signatures. This has led to the building of a reliable digital database.
Applications have been developed for all services provided by the Estate Office and internal workflow has been changed in such a way that all the applications received will be processed online from end to end. The citizen would be informed about the progress of his application by SMS on his phone and can also track the status by logging online. Since all the property files are being scanned, there will be no physical movement of files. All the officials in the estate office will now deal with the files on the online application only, with their digital signatures. Dashboards have been developed to monitor not just the movement of files but also the performance of different officials. In case of delays, SMS alerts will be sent to the officials also and will be reflected in red on the monitoring dashboard available with senior officers. Besides, this application has also been linked with applications of other services such as Sub Registrar Office and State Bank of India. I am happy to note that the State Bank of India has agreed to provide all financial transactions with NIL charges to the estate office as well as consumers.
