Efficient governance with Online Mandatory Returns Management System

The department saved in terms of time, effort and cost with the online returns management system. In addition there was 80% reduction in the overall paper usage

- Preeti Gaur

Department of Cooperation, Marketing and Textiles manages cooperatives, Sugar and Agriculture Marketing domain in Maharashtra. Department of Cooperation Marketing and Textile, Government of Maharashtra.

The project Mandatory Returns Management was conceptualized to provide an electronic platform to make the key processes of cooperative societies simpler, manageable and transparent. The objective of the module was to reduce the human touch points and eliminate the paper usage in submission of mandatory returns. The returns would further be accessible and available online to reduce the RTI flow.

Project Head

S.K. Sharma

Hon’ble Principal Secretary (Co-operation),
Cooperation Marketing & Textile Department, Government of Maharashtra

Challenges

In order to redesign the processes to effectively reach out to all the stakeholders and to eliminate redundancy in the system, there was a need to migrate from reactive decision making to proactive decision making.

The traditional Co-operative Sector was unorganized and fragmented. There were large number of stakeholders with 2.23 lakhs Cooperative Societies, auditors and office administration and lot of man-month efforts were wasted in coordination. There was no effective Content Management System (CMS) to provide real–time data access.

Paper-based manual consolidation and aggregation of reports at infrequent intervals was time consuming and inefficient. The percentage of defaulters was high as there was no audit trail of the transactions and interactions between the key stakeholders.

Too many human touch points in Transaction Management and File Processing led to improper and inadequate information for general citizens.

The Implementation

The electronic platform - eSahakar program has automated the submission of Mandatory returns. A total of 4 online services were implemented, namely Society Mandatory returns upload, Society Mandatory returns validation, Tracking of Mandatory Returns submission status, Information repository for Society Mandatory Returns. It involved:

• Process re–engineering to allow submission of all mandatory returns online with real-time feedback
• Crowd-Sourcing of Mandatory Return upload to the respective societies thus reducing the burden on Department officials
• Creation of an online repository that can retrieve the uploaded copies of Mandatory returns for reference and scrutiny

The Result

The Online Mandatory Returns Management System has led to reduction in time and effort spent on collecting, aggregating and validating annual audits, mandatory returns etc. The overall paper usage has reduced by 80% freeing up of space at all offices.

The Department has positioned itself as a better governing body by leveraging the concept of ‘Crowd Sourcing’ and transferring some responsibilities to the stakeholders. The online repository with documental evidence for society registration, annual audit reports, mandatory returns filing and the general financial health of the society provides real time information and acts as a quick reference. The number of human touch points has reduced in the entire process. The department is also able to save on expenses and efforts involved in multiple stakeholder visits to department offices for document submission year–on–year basis. Society process handling has become faster.

Online system availability 365x24x7 for all the stakeholders frees up the stakeholder activity from the restrictions of Department working hours. Transparency in all processes has increased with time–stamped workflows that have documented evidence in case of undue delays.