Chief Secretary, Atal Dulloo today chaired a meeting of different stakeholders to have a first hand appraisal of different IT interventions contemplated by the departments delivering some essential services to public including Health, Jal Shakti, PDD and others by virtue oftechnical assistance extended by Bhaskaracharya National Institute for Space Applications and Geo-informatics (BISAG-N) here.

Besides the ACS, Jal Shakti Department the meeting was attended by Principal Secretary, Finance & IT Departments; Principal Secretary, PDD; Commissioner Secretary, I&C; MD, KPDCL; Director Handicrafts Kashmir; Director Health, Kashmir; Representatives from BISAG-N and other concerned officers.

Outstation officers participated in the meeting through video conferencing.

During this meeting the Chief Secretary highlighted the significance ofmodern technology that could bring efficiency in the service delivery mechanism besides ensuring their quality and transparency in terms of their outcomes for the general public.

The discussions focused on the concept of developing IoT/SCADA based Smart Water Measurement & Monitoring system here. This system besides ensuring the quality water supply would help in managing timely redressal of public grievances and addressing operational snags in a time-bound manner.

The ACS, Jal Shakti Department, Shaleen Kabra apprised the meeting that this arrangement should address the concerns of people along with help the administration in making right decisions.

He revealed that this IT initiative is aimed at ensuring timely and adequate water supply to consumers along with addressing the disruptions and maintenance of water supply schemes in an automated fashion.

As far as the upgradation of G2C services are concerned, the Principal Secretary, IT, Santosh D.Vaidya informed the meeting that the Department had identified the most sought out services by the public to create end-to-end digitized solution for these in collaboration with BISAG-N.

The services of Health Department which are being developed to be more responsive and efficient includes medical services for both patients and medical professionals through IT-based SEHAT application.

It was given out that this application aims at extending every kind of support to the patients in making registrations, taking appointments, finding diagnostic facilities along with access to tele-medicine, Information about surgical procedures, specialities, blood banks, De-addiction facilities drug stores,  providing health alerts and other dozens of facilities and information databases relevant to the Department.

The meeting also took appraisal of the working of Samadhan portal developed for effective public grievances management and redressal and the status of grievance redressal through this application.

The progress about all such initiatives was thoroughly discussed. Suggestions were sought from the concerned to make them more accessible and user-friendly and the BISAG-N was asked for accommodating these changes in the development of these apps so that people had best experience while using the same to avail these essential services across the length and breadth of J&K.