The Tribune

HUDA gets silver medal in e-governance
Geetanjali Gayatri
Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, January 28
Recognition for Haryana’s potential and standing in e-governance has come by way of a silver medal for the initiatives of Haryana Urban Development Authority (HUDA) in connecting to the people.

The award has been conferred on HUDA by the Ministry of Information Technology and Administrative Reforms. The silver will be given away at the 12th national conference on E-governance slated for February 12 in Goa by its Governor. On behalf of HUDA, the award will be received by the Chief Administrator, HUDA, TC Gupta (presently on leave), Administrator Ashok Yadav and senior manager IT, Sanjay Sharma.

Though HUDA has taken a number of initiatives in the past to connect to the people and its allottees since Gupta took over as the CA, this award has particularly been given for the plot and property management system which was introduced online. This facilitates an allottee, given a specific code, to access any information regarding his plot at the click of a button.

While no gold medal has been awarded in the category of “Exemplary Usage of Information and Communication Technology by the Public Sector Undertakings” this year, HUDA has bagged the silver medal, while Karnataka has earned the bronze medal.

In an exhaustive exercise to shortlist the winners from among the 350-odd applications received, a team of the ministry not only screened the applications received but carried out on-site inspections and interacted with all stakeholders. Finally, a presentation was made in Delhi on January 19, after which the awards were finalised and announced today.

HUDA is also working on making a dynamic portal, where there would be three lakh allottees online. We are in the process of finalising a payment gateway and will introduce complaint registration though SMSes for the convenience of the public, said an official.

Only recently, the HUDA site had recorded one million hits in less than a year, indicative of the popularity of the site among users and its allottees. In addition to putting a plot and property management programme in place, HUDA had also introduced a public-assessment of sorts to improve its performance for the welfare of the people.

HUDA started this one-of-its-kind public-assessment and grievance-redress programme through its Estate Officers (EO) in collaboration with the Residents Welfare Associations (RWA).

This forced HUDA’s estate officers out of their air-conditioned rooms and into sectors to know the problems ailing its sectors and initiated action on the complaints received.

The assessment, on a set proforma, carried marks allotted by the RWA for basic facilities like roads, sewerage, street lighting, storm water, signposts in sectors and the like.