INDUSTRY
Public Services
Forward-thinking government for citizen-first services
Highlights
- The Government of Rajasthan, a state in western India, wanted to smoothen its Immovable Property Return (IPR) submission process.
- TCS implemented its DigiGOV™ Personnel suite to streamline the IPR workflow, simplifying the exercise for state government employees.
- The end-to-end online platform brought transparency into the workings of the government and drastically improved the stakeholder experience.
On this page
Overview
Technology is changing the way governments operate all over the world.
From automating processes to improving communication and collaboration, technology is bringing an overhaul of governance, organizational architecture, culture, and mindset.
With the vision of digitally transforming its internal processes for impeccable end-user experience, the Government of Rajasthan envisaged the RajKaj project. The platform would enable a firm foundation for organizational structure, employee information system (EIS), immovable property return (IPR), and more.
Challenge
Filing IPR is integral to bringing transparency in the workings of the state government.
The Government of Rajasthan has, therefore, provisioned all gazetted and non-gazetted employees to declare all purchased, inherited, or gifted immovable properties in the name of self or their dependents.
The process of IPR submission, however, was cumbersome for the department as they had to collate, validate, and track data from multiple sources of submission (in person, emails, and posts, to name a few).
The state government required all its employees to submit their IPRs along with their performance appraisal reports. However, manual submission was complicated and fraught with risks. Physically visiting office premises to submit the IPR along with the appraisal report was a time-consuming and effort-intensive process. Manual submission of sensitive information also posed the risk of information leakage, which often affected the increment and promotion of employees.
Moreover, the lack of information security would sometimes lead to physical damage and misplacement of IPR documents. Also, insufficient room to store and maintain the paperwork made data management rather tricky. Further, there was no mechanism to trace the employees who had not filled out the IPR. The state government was, therefore, looking to implement a digital platform that could simplify and speed up the process of IPR submissions for its employees.
Solution
TCS built an online platform using its DigiGOV™ Personnel suite.
TCS DigiGOV Personnel covers the entire hire-to-retire lifecycle of an employee’s association with the organization.
The suite provided a simplified IPR submission solution that allowed employees to submit IPR without any hassle, eliminating basic errors and saving time. The new system streamlined the IPR submission process, making it faster, more accurate, and convenient for employees.
The lives of over nine lakh Rajasthan government employees have been transformed with this digitalized IPR submission process.
Key features of the solution are:
- Provision to configure submission timelines
- Dual authentication through single sign-on (SSO), Aadhaar (individual identification number to every citizen of India)-based authentication, and real-time reflection of submission status
- Multi-channel submissions for gazetted and non-gazetted employees (employees can also make submissions through kiosks and mobile applications)
- An option to view previously submitted IPRs as well as revise or update IPR submissions
- Provision to view department-wise submission status on an hourly, daily, and weekly basis to track defaulters
Outcome
With the entire IPR process moving online, employees are able to ensure timely compliance.
The transformation program has yielded numerous benefits for the state government. Since people do not need to physically visit the department to submit the IPR, a considerable amount of time and effort gets saved at multiple levels. With the elimination of manual form-filling, the chances of erroneous employee information have nearly reduced to zero. Employees now enjoy the convenience of submitting the form at any time and from any place.
The system maintains a digital record of all submitted IPRs, which can be accessed and audited by the concerned authorities at any time, thereby improving overall process transparency. The workload of the department staff has notably reduced as it is relatively easy and less time-consuming to process digital IPRs than the paper-based ones.
Online IPR was a successful stepping stone in digitalizing the processes of the Rajasthan government.
