Coronavirus: Maharashtra government can’t implement work-from-home for its employees as it failed to switch over to e-office mechanism

While Maharashtra chief minister (CM) Uddhav Thackeray has been appealing to private firms to allow its employees to work from home, state government employees are

While Maharashtra chief minister (CM) Uddhav Thackeray has been appealing to private firms to allow its employees to work from home, state government employees are not able to do so. Reason: The e-office regime it launched in 2013 after the massive fire at the state secretariat building is almost defunct and employees cannot access any files outside their offices.

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The state government on Friday as a further measure to avoid the spread of Sars-Cov-2 infection, decided to bring down attendance in government offices to just 25% from Saturday. However, lakhs of employees sitting at home will not be able to work from home in the absence of the online mechanism the government failed to put in place over the past seven years.

According to a deputy secretary from the general administration department (GAD), the system, e-office, launched on January 1, 2013, could not be implemented owing to resistance from the bureaucracy. “Top bosses from key departments were against the generation of files online. They claimed that they were finding it difficult to go through the notings in the online files in PDF format. Had the heads of the finance, general administration departments, which are the key departments as almost every file goes to them, supported the regime, it would have been implemented successfully.”

Another official from the home department said that although the e-office system prevails currently, it’s only being used to duplicate the listing of files created physically. “Had the e-office system been put in place, government officials would have been easily asked to work from home. 75% of employees compelled to sit at home are without any work, so official work is expected to suffer a lot,” said the officer.

The official from GAD said that scanning of files, too, has been stopped after the project. “The agencies appointed to implement the e-office project did not hand over the scanned files to us after they were denied payment over a dispute. Our own system, Document Journey Management System, which would allow us to the track files online, too, has been deactivated after the launch of e-office was announced,” he said.

Milind Sardeshmukh, working president, State Government Employees Central Union, said, “There is a lot of improvement in terms of computerisation of government offices over the past ten years, but yes, a lot more is required to be done. Even today, we move many proposals online using no papers, although work-from-home is not possible for many government employees.”