Gujarat CMO’s system is ISO certified too

The success of SWAGAT is inherently linked to the internal seamless functioning of the chief minister's office. It is perhaps not so surprising then that in January 2009, the Gujarat CMO was the first in the country to acquire the ISO 9001: 2000 certificate for its processes.

But the notable aspect here is that the certificate was not attained as a piece of paper to flaunt, but the processes in the CMO have actually undergone a distinct change. Officials in the CMO claim six main sections of the CMO have undergone remarkable reforms - the secretariat functions; public relations office; general administration of the CMO like human resource management, training of CMO's 60 employees etc; Jan Sampark - the CM's points of contact with general public - and last but not least, the usage of information technology (IT) for all internal processes.

"A gap analysis was conducted before applying for the certification and according to the ISO standards processes were reworked. Majority of CMO is online. 80% of CMO is paperless," says a senior officer on special duty perched behind a compact laptop on a spotless desk.

As for IT, an internal system for the CMO called IWDMS (integrated workflow and document management system) is being used since the last five years.

67 new processes have been developed. A lot of impetus is being put on recording every interaction of the CM with visitors, state bureaucrats, ministerial cabinet, politically and even with general public at mass gatherings. A new application called 'ideas to execution' has been developed where the status progression of every idea and activity can be seen.

"Any communication with the CM is online. Anyone wants to seek his appointment; any application etc is all done online. CM receives over 500 mails everyday, but after screening and filtering, synopsis of around 150-200 mails is sent to him everyday. He comments and reverts back on every mail daily. He forwards it to respective departments and follows up on a monthly basis. Every mail he receives is archived and docketed properly,' the official says.

Elaborating on one of the 67 processes, the official gives the example of campaign monitoring of each department through CMO. "Campaigns like Krishi Mahotsav, Kanya Kelavni etc are monitored from here,' he says.