Legislation for Whistleblowers
The Government is aware that many people are reluctant of becoming whistleblowers as they are susceptible to threats, harassment, victimization or even killed. The Government is ready with the Public Interest Disclosure and Protection to Persons Making the Disclosures Bill, 2010 for introduction in the Parliament. The Bill inter alia provides -
- For bringing within the scope of the Bill, public servants being the employees of the Central Government or the State Government or any corporation established by or under any Central Act or any State Act, Government Companies, Societies or local authorities owned or controlled by the Central Government or the State Government and such other categories of employees as may be notified by the Central Government or, as the case may be, the State Government, from time to time, in the Official Gazette;
- Adequate protection to the persons reporting corruption or willful misuse of power or willful misuse of discretion which causes demonstrable loss to the Government or commission of a criminal offence by a public servant;
- A regular mechanism to encourage such person to disclose the information on corruption or willful misuse of power or willful misuse of discretion by public servants or commission of a criminal offence;
- The procedure to inquire or cause to inquire into such disclosure and to provide adequate safeguards against victimization of the whistle-blower, that is the person making such disclosure;
- Safeguards against victimization of the person reporting matters regarding corruption by a public servant;
- Punishment for revealing the identity of a complainant, negligently or malafidely; and
- Punishment for false or frivolous complaints.
IT Modernization Project of Department of Posts – Phase-II
The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs today approved the IT Modernization Project – Phase-II proposal of the Department of Posts. The decision is to computerize all the Departmental and Grameen Dak Sevak (GDS) posts offices in the country. The approval has also been accorded for creation of IT infrastructure including establishment of Data Centre, Networking of the Departmental post offices, development of scalable, integrated and modular software for all the operations of the Department of Posts. The Project will be implemented over a three year period covering 2010-11, 2011-12 and 2012-13.
The total expenditure involved in this project will be Rs.1877.20 crore and it will cover all the Post Offices throughout the country in all the State and Union Territories. The Department of Posts will be floating tenders for procurement of hardware and development of software. Pilots will be held in rural and urban post offices. The final roll out will be completed by September 2012.
Handheld devices will be provided to all the Grameen Dak Sevak (GDS) Post Offices in the rural areas and necessary software application developed. Banking solution will be implemented for the Post Office Savings Bank (POSB) scheme. Software Integration solutions will be developed for mail operations enabling tracking solutions for all registered and Speed Post articles.
The Postal Life Insurance services will be available in all the Post Offices including rural pot offices in the country through computers and rural ICT devices. Comprehensive training will be given to staff in Customer relations, application, IT management and system training skills.
Background: The Post Office presently handles 654 crore pieces of mail annually. POSB has a corpus fund of Rs.5,63,000 crore. Significant trends like liberalization and globalization; urbanization, increased demand for financial services, increased funding by government for weaker sections and rural sector, make it imperative that India Post develop new processes and supporting technology.
