The Keonjhar district administration, Odisha, has initiated a unique process-flow based software application called e-Collectorate which was inaugurated on 5th April 2012 by the Collector and District Magistrate Shri D .V Swamy, IAS, in presence of about 200 officials including all senior officers of district, block and tehasil level.

Addressing on the occasion Shri A. K. Hota, TD and District Coordinator informed that the project initiation happened towards the end of Feb 2012 when Shri Swamy took the initiation and invited National Informatics Centre (NIC) for an overall demonstration of the software. Accordingly the DC Suite model of NIC Kerala was explored and customized as e-Collectorate to suite the requirement.

Discussing on the process-flow Shri Ajit Kumar Pattnayak, Scientist-D and DIO, highlighted that ‘e-Collectorate’ takes care of the scanning of all communications received by the District Collectorate and then through the inbuilt work-flow mechanism it traverse to various sections till the file is disposed of.

On the Citizen Interface Shri Nihar Ranjan Biswal, Scientist-D, NIC Odisha State Centre, demonstrated the use of the mobile phone to send the SMS to e-Collectorate portal and obtain the status of a particular letter.

Shri Ashish Singh, IPS, Superintendent of Police, Keonjhar emphasized the need of such a Process flow automation which would immensely help a common man to track the progress and explained how the plan of extending the service to Block and Panchayat can be envisioned.

Inaugurating e-Collectorate and releasing the brochure on ‘e-Collectorate’, Shri Swamy, the District Collector, Keonjhar accessed the site on line, corrected the draft note already forwarded to him and approved online.

The District Collector further spoke to the media representatives that with the ever increasing service delivery expectations of a Common Citizen, efforts are being taken with active support of Jindal Steel and Power Ltd. (JSPL), Odisha, the member of District e-Governance Society (DeGS), to renovate office of Collectorate Keonjhar with necessary structural and functional changes.  He appreciated the effort of NIC Odisha, NIC Kerala, and JSPL terming that the coordinated team effort could turn his dream into reality within only one month of record time.

Shri S. K. Panda, SIO and Sr. T.D, participating over VC informed that services provided by the Collectorate like issue of various certificates, public grievances, arms licenses, court cases monitoring, pensions etc. would be processed online through e-Collectorate in phased manner. 

The effort put in by the team comprising Shri D. Madan Prabhu, Shri Siddhartha Mandal, Shri Ajay Kumar Mohapatra, DIA Keonjhar etc. with the able guidance of Shri A. K. Hota, TD, NIC, OSU and Sri A. K. Pattanayak, DIO Keonjhar for customizing the module was appreciated. Various new features like NIC SMS-Gateway integration for both push and pull purposes, SMS alert to seats on each letter / file movement, dual pane for preparation of notes looking at the received letter simultaneously, pop up alerts as soon as user logs in, regional language (Odia) integration etc. have been added in to the system.

The programme concluded with inauguration of the renovated Citizen Facilitation Centre by the District Collector.