Hyderabad, July 7 (IANS) The Telangana government will constitute an official committee to make recommendations to strengthen digital governance in the state, Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy announced on Tuesday.

Revanth Reddy directed officials to take steps towards implementing digital governance to ensure greater transparency in administration.

During a meeting with top officials, he sought the details of the implementation of digital governance and instructed the officials to formulate plans for digital governance and draft the necessary legislation.

A directive was issued to form a committee comprising officials from various departments to oversee this task. The committee will be asked to submit a report in 100 days.

According to the Chief Minister’s Office (CMO), the Chief Minister emphasised that the administrative system should move forward through full-scale digitisation. The main objective of the state government is to provide better services to the public and ensure welfare schemes reach beneficiaries directly through digital governance.

To streamline the prompt payment of salaries of contract and outsourcing employees, he instructed the authorities to take action against the agencies which are not functioning in tune with the government’s goals.

The CM held a review of the problems facing the contract and outsourcing employees. During the review, he directed that strict action must be taken against the agencies which are not paying salaries promptly to these employees even after the release of funds by the government.

Revanth Reddy also enquired about the digitalisation of the data regarding contract and outsourcing employees along with regular government staff and ordered officials to digitise the entire data and ensure the salaries are paid on the first day of every month.

Officials informed the Chief Minister that while there are approximately 4,800 contract and outsourcing agencies in the state, 4,300 of them are failing to remit ESI and PF contributions for their employees. They reported that even though the government makes payments to these agencies, the employees do not receive their salaries on time.

The details of the contract and outsourcing employees in all departments, including their salaries and bank account information, should be digitised, the Chief Minister said.

It was also mandated that the details of government employees be digitised to facilitate the implementation of health cards and other benefits. A suggestion was made to establish a dedicated system under the Finance Department for continuous monitoring.

The review meeting was attended by MP Vem Narendar Reddy, Advisor Ramakrishna Rao, Chief Secretary Sanjay Jaju, Special Chief Secretary, MA&UD, Jayesh Ranjan, Principal Secretary to the CM V. Seshadri, MCRHRD Vice Chairperson Santhi Kumari, Pay Revision Commissioner N. Siva Shankar, Principal Secretary, Finance, Sandeep Kumar Sultania, Secretary, Planning, Gaurav Uppal, and other senior officials.

–IANS

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