The web page of the e-despatch system is at http://www.edespatch.com/. Following is an excerpt from an article by Debabrata Mohanty in Indian Express about this system.

The system, started by Orissa’s panchayati raj department in 2007 and which has now been adopted by 17 of the 35 State departments, won the Nasscom award for social innovation in February this year.

Through the e-despatch scheme, Das and his team linked all the 30 districts collectors, 30 project directors of DRDAs and 314 blocks development officers in the State.

How it works

Every letter sent by the department from its head office in Bhubaneswar to all the block offices and the gram panchayats is scanned, saved in PDF format and sent through the server to a dedicated mailbox called e-space that’s assigned to every official in the department.

The system generates an auto letter number and assigns the address and mode of despatch for each letter. A computer operator in the department sends every letter to the respective e-space. The moment a letter lands in the mailboxes of the respective BDO or Collector, they get an SMS. The same letters are also sent by fax and post to the collectors and BDOs.

…

After the success of the e-despatch scheme, 17 state departments, including the housing and urban development department and health and family welfare department, are using the system to send letters.

e-desptach is a product developed by OCAC. I am getting more and more impressed with OCAC and its partnership with Odisha government in developing e-governance products and systems that are customized for the environment in Orissa. One of its other impressive system is the:

  • e-Sishu (Child Tracking System)