5 days on, software ‘glitch’ disrupts work at Jammu secretariat

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”

In a “digitised” 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.

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

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.