Odisha Budget Session To Go Paperless: Two-Day Workshop For Officials Begins

Bhubaneswar: The Odisha Legislative Assembly is all set to go paperless during the upcoming budget session, beginning on February 18.

Speaker Surjya Narayan Patro inaugurated a two-day orientation workshop to train Assembly officials on the implementation of the National E-Vidhan Application (NeVA), on Monday.

The training would be imparted on February 15 and 16 from 10.30 am at the New Conference Hall in the premises of the Odisha Assembly in Bhubaneswar.

Talking to reporters on the sidelines of the inauguration of the Workshop on ' National E-Vidhan Application (NeVA), Patro said, "All the proceedings of the house, Governor's speech, State budget, CAG Report, Economic Survey will be done through NeVA, which can be accessed by any one easily. Besides, starred/unstarred questions and answers will also be made available in the public domain through the app," the speaker stated.

However, the MLAs will be provided papers during the upcoming budget session as they are yet to be trained on the use of the app.

"The MLAs will be given training on the app by the end of the assembly session. They will have to use computers and iPads from the next session," added Patro.

Two senior IT experts, officials of National Informatics Centre (NIC) and Central representatives have arrived in Bhubaneswar from Delhi to impart training to the officials of the State Assembly on NeVa, which aims at bringing all legislatures of the country together in one platform, thereby creating a massive data depository without having the complexity of multiple applications.

Paperless Assembly or e-Assembly is a concept that involves the use of electronic devices to facilitate proceedings in the House. It enables automation of the entire law-making process, tracking of documents and sharing of information.

NeVA is a device neutral and member centric application created to equip them to handle diverse House Business smartly by putting entire information regarding member contact details, rules of procedure, list of business, notices, bulletins, bills, starred/unstarred questions and answers, papers laid, committee reports etc. in their hand held devices/ tablets and equip all Legislatures/ Departments to handle it efficiently. Citizens would also gain access to this information at their fingertips.

NeVA will completely eliminate the process of sending out a notice/request for collection of data. Through the cloud technology, data deployed can be accessed anywhere at any time.