November 1 this year will be a red-letter day for Andhra Pradesh. The state government plans to switch over to complete online monitoring of files in all departments on this day. Aimed at cutting paper work in government offices so that more time can be spent on solving the common man's problems, the decision has been a long time coming.
At a high-level meeting held here last fortnight, chief minister N Chandrababi Naidu unveiled a plan to quickly dispose of files. The plan involves computerisation, an analysis of the number of files pending, redeployment of employees in accordance with the workload and finding common solutions for groups of files.
The plan envisages all departments in the secretariat switching over to online reporting and monitoring of files by August 1, and by the heads of departments and collectorates by September 1.
Naidu firmly believes that expediting file disposal and reducing file work are crucial for achieving his goal of SMART -- simple, moral, accountable, responsive and transparent -- governance. In fact, he had been closely monitoring the disposal of files for the past two-and-a-half years. As a result, the number of files pending in the state has come down from 1.244 million in December, 1999 to 1.087 million on June 16 this year.
An analysis indicated that on June 16, 101,000 files were pending in the secretariat, 288,000 with the heads of departments and the remaining 689,000 lakh files in the districts, with most of them pending in the collectorates.
A closer look disclosed that 33.2 per cent of the total pending files related to issues that could be categorised as of public importance, 14.2 per cent related to matters that were pending in courts, 14.3 per cent to service matters and 34.4 per cent related to various other issues.
To clear the backlog and speed up the disposal of files, Naidu has directed that every Saturday be observed as
