With the objective to introduce transparency and to improve the system of allotment of G.A. Pool Quarters, based on eligibility and choices exercised by the applicants, an Automated e-Quarters System has been introduced. NIC: We congratulate for launch and successful implementation of online quarter allotment system known as “e-Quarters” system since November 2013. Sir, we would like to hear more from you on the subject. CS: Thank you. As you have mentioned, it is a G2E (Government to Employee) web enabled platform facilitating the very basic need of an individual employee that is his space of living. NIC: Sir, we recognize your patronage for this project, what was the underlying idea for prioritization for this G2E project? CS: Allotment of quarters is a continuous and extensive process, which runs throughout the year. Its direct beneficiaries are the employees of State Govt. So it is certainly imperative that an allotment mechanism should blend simplicity, speed as well as transparency. The transparency dimension of the allotment process has a significant bearing on the employees satisfaction index and consequently on their productivity. Uncertainty and delay in allotment faced by the Govt. employees are detrimental while efficiency issue has been adequately addressed in the system. NIC: Whether the legacy system in the subject was a cause of such change? CS: Employees seeking change of occupied quarter or employees eligible for quarters in twin city of Bhubaneswar and Cuttack, where large number of Govt. quarters is available, were facing problem in allotment and were running from pillar to post because of lack of automation. Hence there was the pressing need to bring change in the manual process. Initial thought was to develop a web enabled system- facilitating registration of a State Govt. employee seeking this service, online viewing the vacant quarters and then applying with the choices of individual quarters. Institutionalization of a rule based non-discretionary process has substantially eliminated employees’ grievances. NIC: Having frozen the objective what you feel were the pre-requisites, bottlenecks, anomalies and the challenges? CS: It was essential to bring a new system in place and then go for robust applications, both of which have been done successfully overcoming the obvious bottlenecks. The hard task was to gather updated occupant details of about 12000 residential facilities for which officials had a special drive to gather the data from the field in record time. Employee codification for indexing was on high priority which was accomplished from HRMS data. The standardized treasury DDO code was strictly followed for all subsequent verifications and integrations. JEs were instructed to update the vacant quarters information online immediately as and when happens. NIC: Sir, for this cause and the solution, what are the process changes observed and the change management followed? CS: In order to bring about this change, capacity building was undertaken with training of nearly 600 DDOs along with the DEOs to counsel and assist the employees. Extensive awareness program was carried out by GA (Estate) and GA (Rent) department apart from setting up a “Facilitation Centre” in close proximity of Odisha Secretariat with necessary H/W and net connectivity. We received overwhelming response from the internal stakeholders as this process was instrumental for easy access to information like availability of vacant quarters, locality wise and eligibility wise, in a more transparent way with click of mouse. NIC: Would like to hear more detail about the process and the system. CS: The portal has a registration module to be first used by the employees followed by his online entry of twenty preference based on the predefined allotment logic. The system has been scheduled to processes and allot on 10th of the each month of all the request entries mandated to be made between 1st and 9th of the same month for all the vacancies entered by JEs till last day of the previous month. The final allotment is subject to verification of documents like Pay slip, service book documents etc. in support of Grade Pay, Date of Joining, Date of Birth etc. which are to be uploaded by the employees. NIC: What are other tangible and intangible benefits that has been accrued because of the introduction of this new system? CS: I am happy with the way this new system has been instrumental in minimizing vacancy of quarters. This has also augmented accrual of rent while reducing the occupants’ complaints. The graph indicates about the reduction in the number of vacant quarters over the months. The habitable position of the quarters can be posted and viewed online which can be credited to intangible achievements in terms of employees’ satisfaction etc. The SMS facility of the system during events like registration, activation, rejection, allotment and occupation binds the employees with the system. Certainly this is a well-developed system eliminating many ambiguities of the old process. The system thus is serving about 10,000 choices being submitted by more than 1000 applicants every month which is a reasonable sum now. It is hard to imagine the allotment in absence of such an automated system. NIC: With such input to the domain how were the technical arrangements, future insights and your message through this project. CS: We would like to commend the NIC team and express our thanks to NIC for designing and developing such a system with very short span of time with the appreciative budget. Also the application has been hosted at NIC Data Centre at Bhubaneswar and is managed successfully. With NIC’s support we are looking for integration with treasury portal for online rent payments, accounting module and complete online DDO, GA dept. verifications and approval etc. Thanks to the team Shri S. K. Panda, SIO & DDG, Dr. A. K. Hota, Sr. Technical Director, and Smt. Sujata Das, PSA, for their deep involvement and our Special Secretary to Govt. Shri Niten Chandra, I.A.S, Dy. Director (Estates) Shri Sudarsan Panda, O.A.S, and Rent Officer Shri B. S. Chayani, O.A.S.