G2C: Following the introduction of the Prime Minister’s eDesk in March, there has been a decline in public services not being delivered on time by government agencies.

The eDesk is an online monitoring tool that tracks how long government agencies take to process online public service applications, which the Prime Minister and his office, personally monitor.

Launched on March 6, with 24 government-to-citizen (G2C) services, the eDesk today includes 47 public services.

In the first phase, the services of five departments: census, forest and park services, protocol of the foreign ministry, trade, and adult and higher education were included.

Between March and April, the eDesk recorded almost 3.23 percent of all applications received by the census department as not having been processed on time, according to statistics provided by the G2C office. The home ministry had included 16 services on the eDesk.

“At that time, the department had some internal human resource constraints and those in the field were involved in the annual census,” the head of the G2C office, Sonam P Thaye said.

The number of applications not processed on time dropped to 1.76 percent between April and May and then to 0.68 percent between May and June, the eDesk showed.

“The exemplary demonstration of public service delivery by the department as captured through the eDesk, and as reviewed for further enhancement is an effort worth noting by instituting such a mechanism in place,” Sonam P Thaye said.

She also pointed out that the performance of other agencies could not be provided, as it is only the census and foreign ministry’s protocol departments that provide services all year round. Services of the forest department and adult and higher educations are provided only seasonally. She added that the services of the trade department have not been used for a certain period of time.

However, it was also pointed out that the general trend being observed is that monitoring through the eDesk has been improving the processing time of applications.

Since its launch, the G2C office has included a further 23 services such as the student loan scholarship scheme of the education ministry, and the security clearance certificate. Services of the labour ministry, audit authority, and Thimphu thromde also were recently integrated into the system.

The eDesk has also been integrated with the government’s performance agreement system.

“The G2C Office has been able to link the PM’s eDesk with the Annual Performance Agreement signed between the Prime Minister and the Ministers, for those services which are currently under the G2C’s purview,” G2C office’s Lungten Zangmo said. “The percentage of services not delivered on time will be calculated from the PM’s eDesk for the entire Annual Performance Agreement year.”

The integration of the public services into the PM’s eDesk has been carried out under the Indian government’s project tied assistance.

Gyalsten K Dorji

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