Democracy, they say, is the Government 'of' the people, 'by' the people and 'for' the people. And a vital life-line of a democratic society is the Citizen-Government interface. Like all citizen conscious countries, the central theme of governance in India too revolves around its citizens and their quality of life. Hence, the citizen-government interface assumes a very important position with respect to entire delivery mechanism of Indian administrative set-up. Keeping this in view, the Directorate of Public Grievances (DPG) Cabinet Secretariat, Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances (DAR & PG), the nodal agencies of Government of India in the given context, are continuously engaged in policy formulations, evolving new guidelines, initiating the reforms for effective redressal and monitoring of public grievances. Along similar lines, DAR&PG, DPG and NIC jointly undertook the endeavour to set up a Uniform and Online Public Grievance Redress and Monitoring System for Ministries and departments of Government of India. The underlying objective of the package was to be able to expand the domain of public access and speedy redressal of grievances. In the first phase of this programme, launched in July 1997, most of the ministries and departments were equipped with the Public Grievance Monitoring System (PGMS), designed and developed by NIC as per the DAR & PG's guidelines, which extends the facility of periodic transmission of data over the NICNET. The primary aim of second and current phase of the programme is to introduce a Uniform and Systematic approach towards monitoring of procedures by adopting a comprehensive classification and standardization of grievances and redress actions practised within government’s domain. Further, the objective is also to employ state-of-the-art IT-advances to modernize the entire existing system. PGRAMS is an Integrated application system, based on web technology which primarily aims at capturing the real time work flow and interaction among all the participant users. The central idea of application architecture is to introduce a standard and uniform approach to various functions in user departments, at the same time to enable them to carry out the business as per their local business needs. Briefly stating, the entire life cycle of an operation consists of 1. Lodging of the grievance by a citizen or Netizen. 2. Receipts or acknowledgement of acceptance of grievance by organization. 3. Assessment of matter regarding follow up action. 4. Forwarding and transfer; Reminders and clarification 5. Monitoring of redress procedures and actions 6. Closure of the case. In addition to the aforesaid functionality, each organization may receive the cases from following sources: a). Directly from aggrieved party on paper or via network b). Forwarded cases from PMO; Cabinet Secretariat; Department of Administrative Reforms and higher formations. Keeping this in view, lodging of the grievances over Internet may be facilitated using one of the modules named "Public Site" which could be hosted along with the organizational web site. This module extends the facility to lodge grievances using a standard redress form and issues the reference number. Further, the concerned citizens can use this number to monitor the action status or send more details to dealing organization using the same reference number. This same is presently operational for Directorate for Public Grievance (DPG) and may be seen at http:// www.dpg.bharatsarkar.nic.in. The grievances which are received on paper can also be entered by the departmental staff by using the similar facility meant for another module "Official site". The Public Site as well as Official site both have been designed using web technology and are sharing the same database for storing and transacting the records. Another salient feature of the application design is an attempt to use auto mailing based updating and transaction of records. For this purpose, the back end database is connected to another utility software which takes care of forwarding and transfer of records to target destination sites. The official site offers a digital desk for public grievance officials who can carry out assessment of new grievances, update action of running cases or forward or transfer the case as per the requirements. Digital desk of PG officers includes the facility for generating reports or viewing the proceeding of a particular case. In an ideal scenario, a citizen can lodge a grievance over web which would appear on PG officer's digital desk. The concerned official can initiate the necessary action and forward the case to any subordinate organization and update the proceeding on day to day basis until the case is closed. Meanwhile, concerned citizen can monitor the progress of redress proceeding over internet using the reference number issued to him. The monitoring authorities may use the PGRAMS (Integrated Application System) for desired purposes. In order to facilitate the user departments to interact with nodal agencies, PGRAMS envisages to extend the workflow connectivity via specified modules with DPG or DARPG or with higher formation at the time of site configuration. a. The Citizens: PGRAMS software or site may be used by any citizen for lodging the grievaces, sending the reminders or clarifications as well as for checking the status of their grievances. This facility or feature is only available with "Public-Module" of the PGRAMS system. b. Secretarial staff and officials: The Official staff that would like to record the grievances received from public in their departments; print acknowledgements and forward letters as well as other desired correspondances can also make the best use of the software. In addition to this they can use it for generating various periodic reports. c. Public Grievance Officials: The PG officials who would like to carry out the assessment of received grievances; update actions and forward it to concerned dpartments along with monitoring functionalities etc. d. Chief Executive Officers: The CEOs who may like to have an overview of redress operations as well as performance of various PG officials. Easy to customize as per specific requirements of domain. Data transmission between any two sites is based upon electronic mail which requires low bandwidth connection. The entire system could be made compatible for State Govt., Corporate establishments and undertakings. Several official sites could share one common public site. Scalable architecture. Web enabled application may be implemented in LAN/WAN environment. At client end, only a browser is required to connect with the application site. PGRAMS is an Integrated Application System consisting of following domain specific modules designed as per functionality, that may be integrated with each other as per requirement: Software for DAR & PG as nodal agency for cases received at DAR & PG and forwarded to other departments. Software for DAR & PG as monitoring agency for receiving the data (statistical reports) from all the departments. Software for DPG for the cases received at DPG. Software for Departments which are not connected to DPG and only respond to DAR & PG about the cases received at local site as well as from DAR & PG. Software for Departments which are connected with DPG and DAR & PG and receives the cases locally as well as from their higher formations. Hence, In order to implement the PGRAMS software, it is essential to know which module of the system is desired, such as the Ministry Module or the organisation module. This software can be obtained from NIC at the contact email address given at the end For implementing the system, Windows NT 4.0 with option pack 4.0 alongwith SQL server 7.0 database are needed. On the hardware side it is expected that the department or organisation would have a High End Server (with min.256 MB RAM and 8 GB HDD) for optimum performance. This server may be configured as WEB server in proxy or direct IP environments. Any authorised users can access it from their client system if they are having a browser to explore the site. With the completion of the first phase, more than fifty Departments have already acquired the PGRAMS software or its earlier version from NIC and it is expected to have a far reaching impact on the work culture, ensuring a paradigm shift.