SRINAGAR: Chief Secretary, Dr Arun Kumar Mehta launched the Public Services Guarantee Act (PSGA) auto-appeal feature of few online services offered by Government Departments on Saturday. The feature is going to auto escalate the appeals in case the services are not provided to the applicant with the time limit set under the Public Services Guarantee Act (PSGA).
Calling the step revolutionary, Dr Mehta applauded the IT department for integrating this feature in the digital services offered by different departments to the citizens.
With this move the UT of Jammu and Kashmir became the first in the country to integrate the auto-appeal feature to Service Plus platform.
Dr Mehta urged the department to work for activating this feature for all the 445 services offered by the government to its citizens at an earliest and told them to prioritize those services that form the bulk of the applications.
He advised for making the auto-appeal feature active for services related to the everyday life of the citizens like seeking of power/water connections, availing of documents like income, domicile, category, birth, death certificates and benefits like old age, widow pensions besides scholarships under various social security schemes etc.
He observed that this feature would act as a turning point in maintaining the transparency and accountability in services to the public. He maintained that this attribute in online services is going to be the landmark in eradicating corruption and malpractices.
Auto appeal is going to bring a greater transparency in these services in future as it would ensure their delivery as per the timeframe set for them under PSGA and fixing of responsibility on part of any officer/official for any undue delay.
It was evident from the reports generated on service portal e-UNNAT (Jan sugam) that more than 90% of services are being delivered to public within stipulated time.
Moreover, the rejection rate of applications is very low at around 5% only with provision of giving feedback by the applicants through Rapid Assessment System (RAS) about their satisfaction level while availing such services.
The data also corroborates this change in the nature of offering and delivering government services to the citizens of the UT. The data shows that some 7,89,008 certificates have been delivered to public in the time frame set under Public Services Guarantee Act (PSGA).
