Today, winter session started in the Indian Parliament and for the first time, the corridors of the institution will not be filled with bundles of papers as the it is going completely paperless. From this session onwards, all annual reports from various ministries, committee and panel reports, private member’s bills, unstarred questions and bulleting –1 will be uploaded on the Parliament website.
The Government is also carrying out a comprehensive training program for all the MPs on how to use Digital documents going forward. Once the training is over, all the ministers and MPs and expected to use the digital version.
The new move will not only cut down on the usage of paper significantly but also will usher a new age into the parliament, where all MPs will able to access any and every document at a touch or a click of a button making Parliament sessions more productive.
While initially, those MPs without much tech know-how may face some teething problems, proper training should help them get upto speed within no time.
In February of this month, it was also announced that Union Cabinet meetings will use Kindle and will go completely paperless. All notes of the meeting will be put up on Kindle devices for ministers reference. The ministers will be able to access those notes from their eBook readers at meetings and then return these devices to the Cabinet Secretariat immediately after.
While such plans and proposals have been around for quite a few years, it is heartening to see Modi led government’s intent in bringing about these changes. Sources have mentioned that personnel from National Informatics Centre (NIC) have been working overtime to make this digitization possible.
What is also good to see is that Government’s Digital India initiative has an holistic approach, where every Government function and activity is being digitized rather than being done in bits and pieces manner.
We are sure that this initiative may have met with a lot of opposition as most of our ministers (who are on the wrong side of seventies) are zero tech-savvy and they resist change. Even after all this, the Parliament has boldly gone paperless!