Kendrapara District Collector Raghuram R Iyer, on Friday, ordered the withholding of November salaries for all employees across 51 government offices for failing to adopt the mandated Odisha Secretariat Workflow Automation System (OSWAS), a digital workflow for paperless operations.
This disciplinary action might affect around 300 employees, many of whom work in panchayat offices.
OSWAS is the Odisha government’s e-governance initiative designed to increase efficiency, transparency, and accountability by automating file management and official communication, replacing the manual, paper-based system to an electronic one, enabling digital processing of files, inter-departmental communication, and real-time tracking of work.
The state government has mandated all offices to operate through the digital workflow system.
Out of 124 government offices in the district, only 73 were found to be implementing the OSWAS system, leaving the remaining 51 offices operating manually.
The District Collector Iyer stated that since the non-implementation infringed upon the government notification, the salary cutoff was issued as a necessary disciplinary measure, noting that employees had been trained multiple times on the use of OSWAS.
He said the government has many times trained employees of all the departments regarding the use of OSWAS.
