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.