Odisha bags two Tech Sabha Awards, earns praise for leveraging tech to fight COVID

Samikhsya Bureau

Bhubaneswar: Government of Odisha, now driven by the talisman of 5Ts of Teamwork, Technology, Transparency, & Timely delivery for Transformation, made its mark at the recently concluded Tech Sabha Awards by securing two wins for its technology applications – ILMS and State COVID Dashboard.

Awarded in the category of enterprise applications, Odisha Government’s Integrated Legal Monitoring System has been rolled out in 12 different departments to take on the critical challenge of case pendency.

The School and Mass Education Department was the first to be covered under ILMS by the Electronics & Information Technology (E&IT) Department. The Departmenthad faced the challenge of pendency with 10 cases daily on an average; thus more than 3000 cases each year that was around 80,000 in number till 2017.

Within two years of implementation, the pendency has been reduced to 24,000 this year.

ILMS has been instrumental in keeping track of the cases filed against the Government, bringing in accountability in case processing, transparency in disposal, timely decision-making to avoid contempt cases and inter-departmental coordination.

It has also helped the departments scale up to a proactive, instead of reactive, approach in disposing off litigations that also take up a lot of resources and time.

Apart from the time-bound management, ILMS has also introduced space for increased oversight and accountability in monitoring of the cases, thereby inspiring more confidence amongst all stakeholder involved.

Engineered with precision and now recognized globally, Odisha Government’s State COVID Dashboard won the award for excellence in analytics and big data applications category.

Combining a state-of-the-art data analytics engine with administrative acumen, the Government deployed the dashboard with an objective of identifying and tracking suspect virus carriers, monitoring the health of critical and high priority virus affected cases, contact tracing the vulnerable and high risk population and enforcing strict social distancing or isolation.

The application has also facilitated optimized utilization of healthcare resources in arresting infection and mortality, planning of infrastructure augmentation for handling upsurge in incidence, guaranteeing essential supplies or any emergency needs for citizens and assistance to vulnerable population.

The dashboard has also served as a knowledge hub for researchers from across the globe, quite recently by teams from Stanford University who referred to it for a Medrxiv preprint.

Electronics & Information Technology Department has always brought laurels to the State through pioneering applications of technology to augment public service delivery. Rising to the challenge in form a global pandemic, the Department has reiterated its commitment to the state – of leveraging technology in every aspect of governance to make services more efficient, more transparent and easier to access.

The State Government has been continuously introducing new practices in governance amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, many of which are driven by technology and also focusing on bridging the digital divide through digital literacy missions at the grassroots.

Technology today has the potential of being one of the major drivers in bringing transforming in lives of the people of the state. Embedded into every level of governance, it will empower citizenry as well as the administrative machinery.