Union Minister Jitendra Singh on Tuesday said that technology-driven governance has been the hallmark of the nine years of the Narendra Modi government.
Delivering the keynote address to the participants of a mid-career training programme for IAS officers at Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration (LBSNAA) here, he said that soon after this government assumed office, Prime Minister Narendra Modi gave the mantra of "maximum governance, minimum government" and to make it possible he continuously pushed for increasing use of technology.
Singh, the Minister of State for Personnel, said that in the next 25 years, the challenge will be on how to strike an optimum balance between technology and human interface and between artificial intelligence and human intelligence to get the best results.
He said the academy has an important role to play because it has the mandate to train young civil servants who will be putting in active service for the next 25 years and will have the privilege of celebrating 100 years of the country's independence in 2047 when they are in senior positions in the government of India.
Singh said the Modi government tried to ensure ease of living through ease of governance while introducing self-attestation and abolishing interviews.
"It was also trying to create ease of milieu or ease of work environment for the civil servants," the minister said.
He referred to the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988, which the Modi government amended after 30 years in 2018 to introduce a number of new provisions including criminalising the act of giving bribe in addition to taking bribe, and at the same time putting in place an effective deterrence for such actions by individuals as well as corporate entities.
"Through this, undue harassment of the officers could be avoided," Singh said.
Highlighting further initiatives of technology-driven governance, he said aspirational district was another experiment of similar nature where the government decided the indices on a scientific basis.
"We have a dashboard which is updated real time and there is constant competition happening and it's absolutely objective," the minister said.
Singh said one of the benchmarks of transparency and accountability is the grievance redressal mechanism.
In 2014, there were two lakh grievances filed through the online Centralised Public Grievance Redress and Monitoring System (CPGRAMS) every year, he said, adding that "today we have about 20 lakhs, (which is) 10 times more".
"This is the result of increased trust of people in grievance redressal," the minister added.
