BWSSB to be paperless in eight months

BANGALORE: Files, files and more files. Paperwork and red tapism. Sarkari babus from whose hands files don''t budge. The Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board (BWSSB) will do away with all this, when it goes completely paperless within another eight months.
The organisation, known for its e-initiatives, is gung-ho about transforming the very way it functions, bringing about more transparency and accountability in the system, and leaving no room for any humbug.
"We have initiated the process with an MNC hardware company to make the Cauvery Bhavan a paperless office. Then we will globalise it to all our 70 offices," BWSSB chairman M N Vidyashankar told The Times of India. "By mid-February we will know the roll-out and schedule of the project. And from then it will be another six to eight months to completely execute the project."
The MNC has been briefed about the BWSSB''s work profile, paper work process, file movement and work delegation process so that it can piece together a custom-made software system. Three meetings have already been held to discuss the process. Terms and conditions for implementation are being worked out.
``All approvals and movement of files will be elctronic through a LAN/WAN system. The file''s incoming time, outgoing time, and time of approval will be registered. Reaction time from the time of presentation of file too will be recorded," he says.
Some documents like revenue collection of the BWSSB, for example, will be globally accessible by all officers. But some documents will be strictly confidential with restricted access to the officer in-charge. ``The entire system will be secured, encrypted and authenticated," says Vidyashankar.
Any incoming paperwork, for example a proposal from the urban development department, will be scanned and e-filed. ``There will be no hard copy backup.''
It is going to be quite a process for every single existing file and every single paper in it to be scanned, encrypted and stored. ``Ours is not like any other organisation where we have mounds of files. I get around 30 files in a day," he says.
Vidyashankar is also confident that their office is e-ready. ``We are already on LAN/WAN and have an ISDN connection. We are soon going in for V-SAT facility too. So it makes BWSSB the right organisation to go paperless." Staff too is computer literate.