Jammu and Kashmir crossed a historic milestone earlier this month when it became the first union territory in the country to shift all the governmental and administrative services to the online mode. The change in the mode of governance is an appropriate illustration of the momentous shift that has taken place in Jammu and Kashmir following the abrogation of Article 370 and division of the erstwhile state into two union territories on August 5, 2019. Under the new system, an applicant doesn’t need to visit a government office in person in order to avail more than 400 services offered by various departments. Making the announcement, Chief Secretary Dr Arun Kumar Mehta said that some of these services have been integrated with quality checks and a mechanism to elicit feedback from the public to improve the quality of service delivery. However, given the traditional laid-back approach of the government employees in the union territory, it is feared that the new system may run into trouble and ultimately die a quiet death if a mechanism is not put in place to ensure accountability. In the past too, successive governments used to make similar rules and regulations by making tall announcements about streamlining this and that system. But due to the absence of inherent mechanisms to ensure that these announcements are taken to their logical conclusion, these initiatives often used to fade into oblivion. In this regard, the setting up of a Coordination Cell to monitor the progress on implementation of online services in Jammu and Kashmir is a welcome move. The cell, which will work out of the General Administration Department under the supervision of an Additional Secretary officer, will monitor the daily progress of online services in various districts of the union territory. The cell will collect data on all online services being provided in all the districts and submit it to the office of Chief Secretary on a daily basis which will then assess the performance of the unique initiative that has put Jammu and Kashmir ahead of even the national capital. It has often been seen that the government employees demand bribes from people seeking to avail these services. With one step, another window of corruption has been shut and the administration led by Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha and especially the office of CS Arun Mehta, who has been spearheading the implementation of this major policy initiative, should be commended for achieving yet another feat in Jammu and Kashmir.