The State Government of Kerala has taken a policy decision to implement paperless office system in six departments in the Secretariat. Under the policy, six departments are finance, information technology, public works, food and civil supplies, higher education and non-resident Keralites.
To begin with, the process of handling petitions received in these department would be made paperless within a few months. Other files would also be made paperless in a phased manner. An IT cell would be constituted at the Secretariat by drawing officials qualified in IT from various departments in the Secretariat itself in order to monitor e-governance at the Secretariat. Paperless office has already been implemented at the Kerala State IT Mission, all centres of Akshaya, Kerala State IT Infrastructure Limited and Kerala State Urban Development programme. Once the petition process is made paperless, all the petitions received in the respective departments would be scanned and forwarded to the concerned section. An official can access the file and make his remarks and pass it on to the next official in the hierarchy. The remarks made by an official could be tracked later. The main advantage of the system is that anybody could track the status of his petition through the Internet. Similarly, an officer could access the files send to him through the Internet from anywhere in the world.
