Guwahati, Aug. 10: The National Informatics Centre (NIC) which is providing technical support to implement the e-office project of the Centre across the country, said Assam was the first to introduce the file-tracking system in offices.

E-office is a mission mode project under the National e-Governance Programme of the government of India.

"Assam is the first to introduce the file-tracking system. But the bigger question is sustainability of the scheme as computer literacy rate among government employees is very low. We will know about the sustainability of the project only after two to three years," a senior official of the NIC told this correspondent.

The file-tracking system helps an official to monitor movement of files in government offices. Under the system, a government official needs to enter the date and time of sending and receiving a file to other officials in a computerised system. This helps one know which file is lying with which person and for how many days.

It has also the provision of sending SMS/e-mail-based acknowledgements to citizens from each receiving department with their unique receipt numbers for further correspondence.

An official of Janata Bhawan in Guwahati said though the file-tracking system has been implemented, it is not going towards an expected direction because of non-cooperation and low computer literacy of many senior officials.

"These officials hardly care about using the file-tracking system. Many of them do not know how to use the system. In such circumstances, the person who sends a file has to use the 'pull back' option which means erasing the record of file movement," the official said.

Assam chief minister Sarbananda Sonowal had earlier asked government employees not to hold any file more than three days.

"The directive was a great relief to those who have been facing the harrowing experience of losing years in red tape to get a job done. It was hoped that the file-tracking system will help monitor the system, but in reality its implementation is poor," said an official.

During the Congress rule, the Assam government had taken up another project to make government offices paperless. The scheme was implemented by the state information and technology department along with Assam Electronics Development Corporation Ltd.

Sources in the department said the project was stopped after some initial work because of non- cooperation of government officials.