Software ‘glitch’ disrupts work at Jammu secretariat

In a ”digitized” Jammu and Kashmir, the “e-office system” of the civil secretariat in Jammu crashed on Friday due to a technical glitch and remains disrupted since. The files that need to be processed online have come to an abrupt halt.

The e-office system supports governance through effective and transparent file processing.

“The e-office system in civil secretariat of Jammu has not been functional due to a technical glitch since Friday. It is a major issue and the commissioner secretary of the information technology department chaired a meeting on Tuesday evening. We are trying to resolve it,” said a senior official of the information technology department.

An official in the civil secretariat said, “Five days on, the disruption in e-office system has not been resolved and as a result, the movement of digital files has come to a standstill.”

Jammu and Kashmir had partially switched to online mode of work after 2019, and eventually e-office system was introduced in 2021.

Out of 137 departments, 45 departments had to switch to e-office from May 2021 and remaining 92 had to shift to this mode from June 15 in the same year.

The official informed that Rail Tel, a public sector undertaking, had been given the tender to install, operate and then hand over the e-office system to Jammu and Kashmir administration.

“They installed the e-office system and had set up a help desk to train the IT staff,” he said.

Repeated calls and messages to IT commissioner secretary Prerna Puri went unanswered till the time of filing of this report.