BHUBANESWAR: The Odisha Legislative Assembly went paperless from Wednesday with the launch of ‘Digital House’ under the National e-Vidhan Application (NeVA), a mobile app version that allows members of the House access to legislative information anytime, anywhere.
Inaugurating the Digital House in the presence of Speaker Surama Padhy, ministers and legislators, Chief Minister Mohan Charan Majhi said it is a historic day for the Odisha Assembly which moved a step ahead into the digital era. “It is certainly a matter of pride for me and all the members of the Assembly which became a ‘NeVA Digital House,” he added.
He said this digital initiative will now enable members of the legislative Assembly to access information like Bills, notices, questions, committee reports more directly on their devices, eliminating the need for physical paper documents.
The CM further said that NeVA is one of the 44 mission mode projects under the Digital India and Go Green programme which aim to make the functioning of all the state legislatures paperless and bring them onto a single platform, creating a centralised data repository for easier access and comparison.
Although the digital initiative was launched in the OLA in 2021, it was not fully functional. Meanwhile, the OLA has received the prestigious CSI-SIG e-Governance Award of Excellence (Gold) in 2021 for adopting best IT practices. The award was given at the 19th CSI SIG e-Governance Awards ceremony in Prayagraj.
The main modules of NeVA include online bill management, committee functions, question submission, e-voting, e-attendance, House productivity report, speech time management, dynamic events, sending birthday wishes to members, automatic generation of members’ bio-profiles and digital display systems.
Apart from Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha, 16 state legislatures including OLA have already become fully digital and are live on NeVA platform. Speaker Padhy said apart from making the whole legislative business paperless, the e-governance initiative will streamline all the processes for information exchange and enhance efficiency and transparency in legislative proceedings.