— By FPJ Bureau, October 16, 2014 03:12 a
New Delhi: An internet portal started by the Narendra Modi government in September, which held the promise of transparency as the public could keep tabs on what time the government employees come to office and went home, did not remain accessible even for a fortnight.
The portal, , which was hailed as PM Modi’s personal initiative, is practically shut to the public and has been made password-protected. Now, only the senior bureaucrats having the password can check on attendance of the employees.
An amusing explanation came from an official of the National Informatics Centre that manages this and other government portals. He said, “Members of our technology team felt there was no need for the general public to know when an official had clocked in or out, and how many days of leave he had taken in a month. Nor is it necessary for people to know which government department an official is visiting on a given day.”
However, insiders say it was the pressure exerted on the Information Technology Ministry by senior officials, who were uncomfortable with their movements being put under public scrutiny, that the portal’s access to the public was quietly withdrawn.
Bureaucrats, who fall over each other to do the PM’s bidding, dared to say “No, Mr. Prime Minister,” when his new initiative starting hurting them.
The decision to restrict tracking of each employee’s details was taken even without consulting Modi and the alibi is that he was busy with the poll campaign in Maharashtra and Haryana and moreover the portal had not been officially launched to require his permission for any changes.
It is now to be seen if he takes the final call and restores the transparency.
The portal covered 50,000 odd employees across 149 offices in Delhi and was to be gradually extended to the rest of the country. Till Sunday, the portal was showing all the attendance details of every registered official. However, a quick check of the website on Monday showed only the collective attendance figure in all these offices and it asked for a password for furnishing more details, a password that will be given to only top-end bureaucrats.
While the Centre’s transparency portal is now on a shaky ground, the credit goes to the Jharkhand government for running its attendance portal — — without hiccups since January.
The Jharkhand model was replicated for the central staff by none other than Union Communication and IT Secretary Ramsewak Sharma, who was the Jharkhand chief secretary until early this year.
Sharma, an IAS officer, has many achievements, including the role he played in conceptualising the Aadhaar card as the then director-general of the Unique Identification Authority of India.