In an effort towards conservation, the Hyderabad police will avoid using paper across its police stations and replace it with an e-software. This “paperless” initiative will begin from May 1, Hyderabad Police Commissioner Anjani Kumar told TNM.
“It is an international practice to avoid the usage of paper. Even we want to emulate the same and do our bit to save trees,” the Commissioner said.
This came a day after all Inspectors, Station House Officers (SHOs), some Sub-Inspectors along with all senior officials of the Hyderabad police attended a workshop on ‘E-office’, a computer software application.
“All the files of the department will move through e-mail and other digital formats. The main objective is that there should not be any paper, it should be a paperless office. By avoiding paper and using computers for transferring files, Hyderabad city police will potentially save more than 1 lakh trees, besides ensuring better transparency, as pending files can be seen through dashboards,” the police said in a press release.
“It will also help to access a file on a non-working day. In case of an emergency, officers will be given an electronic digital dongle and a separate digital signature,” the release added.
The city police also said that this kind of an initiative was being implemented for the first time in a city with a population of 87 lakh and 12,000 police personnel under the Commissionerate.
Speaking to TNM, the Commissioner said, “Any complaint raised would be registered on the website. The complainant will receive the complaint number which they can use as acknowledgement and evidence in the police station.”
He added, “We hope that the initiative will also make the department work efficiently with real-time updates. The initiative is an effort to move towards e-governance,” he said.
While the initiative is being planned only under the jurisdiction of the Hyderabad police, the Commissioner hoped that the Commissionerates of Rachakonda and Cyberabad would soon follow suit.
This paperless initiative is among the several others adopted by the Hyderabad police, such as designing the Hawk-eye mobile application where citizens can raise a complaint using their smart phone.
Recently, the Punjagutta police station in the city was ranked the second best police station in the country for maintenance and administration.