Mangaluru City Police, CID big votaries of e-office project of government of Karnataka

MANGALURU: Mangaluru City Police and Criminal Investigation Department (CID) of Karnataka State Police are using some serious bandwidth in giving e-office project of the government of Karnataka (GoK) a mega push. Against the 59 policing units in state police, these two units stand first and second respectively with the office of superintendent of Mandya a close third in terms of e-files created, e-files moved as well as e-receipts created and e-receipts moved.
Aimed at fast-tracking e-office project of the government, this initiative that Praveen Sood had launched prior to him taking over as head of state police force has helped speed-up routine police administration in policing units. This project especially has also come as a boon during the global pandemic for it has largely eliminated physical movement of files and thereby reduced chances of the contagion spreading through these inanimate objects.
While state police embraced this project in July last, it is now at the height of the pandemic we are realising its benefits, B Dayananda, additional Director-General of Police (CID), told TOI. “All our correspondence is now that much faster, be it a routine leave application, salary related query, purchase and the lot,” Dayananda said. “With the whole communication digitized, alerts pop up on the dashboard when an e-file is not attended in time,” he said.
For P S Harsha, Mangaluru city police commissioner, the hot seat which demanded more time be devoted to law and order duties meant that e-office was a handy tool for administrative issues. From an average turn around time of 7 working days, routine files are now handled in less than two days and in some cases within the day itself. “This was near impossible in physical format which in some cases took the entire day to be generated,” he said.
While a leave application form now gets approved in less than two-hours, a file pertaining to weapons license is handled in 2-days. This allows us to utilise the manpower that was otherwise used for clerical jobs for real policing, Harsha said. E-office also makes functioning of the police units seamless and the decision making is also that much more transparent, Dayananda said, adding it is only a matter of time before the other policing units picked up.