KENDRAPARA: The Kendrapara collector on Friday stopped salaries of employees in 51 government offices across the district for failing to implement the Odisha Secretariat Workflow Automation System (OSWAS) despite repeated instructions.
The action was taken by collector Raghuram R Iyer after a review of OSWAS usage in government offices across the district. Three months back, the state government had issued an instruction mandating all offices to operate through the digital workflow system.
“During a review of OSWAS usage, I came to know that out of 124 offices in the district, only 73 were working on the digital workflow system while the remaining 51 continued to function manually in violation of the government order. Hence, salaries of employees in these 51 offices were stopped,” said Iyer.
The collector further said recently, he visited many government offices in the district and found the employees not adhering to OSWAS, which aims to promote a paperless environment across the administration.
OSWAS is an e-governance initiative by the government of Odisha to digitise and automate file management and official workflow within departments.
The system aims to increase efficiency, transparency and accountability by moving from a manual, paper-based system to an electronic one, enabling digital processing of files, inter-departmental communication, and real-time tracking of work. “Employees of all government departments have already been trained on the use of OSWAS,” Iyer added.