LAHORE: The Punjab government has announced that all government offices across the province will transition to a fully paperless system from July 1 as part of a major push towards digital governance.
The decision has been made in a high-level meeting held at the Civil Secretariat in Lahore presided over by the Chief Secretary of Punjab.
According to sources, all departments and field offices would be connected with the “e-File and Office Automation System” e-FOAS”, where the use of electronic files would become compulsory for all correspondence.
The Chief Secretary has asked all the provincial secretaries to see that the digital system starts functioning in all departments and field offices without any further delay. He has made it clear that there will be no use of traditional files after this point.
Sources say that the new system of governance was decided upon in a meeting and it has been decided that starting the new financial year from July 1 all government departments would have to follow the new system of governance.
It has also been decided that only correspondence would be done through this system and traditional files would not be used again.
It is believed that the switch from the traditional to the paperless system will result not only in saving money on paper, stationery, and printing but will also speed up the process.
The departments have been told to arrange for training the employees and prepare the digital infrastructure to ensure a smooth switchover.
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