Barcoding for files at secretariat soon

JAIPUR: You must be familiar with the sight of bar codes being used in malls to tabulate prices of goods, but soon you will see the system used in the secretariat to trace files as the state government is going tech savvy.
At present, tracing a file in the secretariat is a cumbersome procedure as the usual reply of the babus' to people chasing files is "file nahi mil rahe hai" will be a thing of the past as Rajasthan probably will be the first state in the country all set to implement the bar coding system in all government department in the secretariat.
Principal secretary, finance, C K Matthew said on Wednesday with the introduction of this system helps to trace files and its status. This is now just a click away in a computer as the files assigned with unique numbers were scanned and saved in a computer.
He said at present the bar coding system has been introduced in the secretariat's finance department only and has been found very handy in file handling.
"We are planning to introduce the system in all the government departments in the secretariat gradually. Under the system whichever departments the file goes a unique number on tags were allotted and scanned by a bar code scanner and entries were made in the computer. Thus tracing of files is very easy.
The department of personnel has been asked to prepare a project report and they are working on it, he added. However, he did not set any time limit for the introduction of the system.
Another aspect of this system is it is very economical and cost effective. The recurring cost is only the cost of the tag carrying the number which is very economical at one paise only.
A barcode (also bar code) is an optical machine-readable representation of data. Originally, bar codes represented data in the widths (lines) and the spacings of parallel lines, and may be referred to as linear or 1D (1 dimensional) barcodes or symbologies. They also come in patterns of squares, dots, hexagons and other geometric patterns within images termed 2D (2 dimensional) matrix codes or symbologies. Although 2D systems use symbols other than bars, they are generally referred to as barcodes as well.
The first use of barcodes was to automate supermarket checkout systems, a task in which they have become almost universal.