Bhubaneswar, Nov. 26: The higher education department has asked authorities of its constituent institutions to strictly adopt the e-despatch system by January 1 for faster communication with the state government.

“The government will not entertain manual receipt of letters from your office/institution from 1st January, 2014, except service book,” additional secretary of the department Durga Prasad Behera has written in his letter to universities, colleges, the Council of Higher Secondary Education, state and regional directorates of higher education among others.

A scanner and computer system will be provided to the colleges for the purpose. Internet connection will also be provided to those colleges that do not have the facility.

Officials said the e-despatch system, which is in practice only at the state secretariat, would help in faster dissemination of information apart from ensuring greater accountability between the government and the institutions.

“Besides issuing documents on time, the system would also work with an archiving facility so that the letters are stored in a database and can be accessed whenever required,” said a senior officer of the department.

He said that there had been instances of important documents and files getting lost in transit or a work being affected due to delay in delivery.

“Such problems will become a thing of the past once e-despatch is adopted. It will make the process transparent and minimise the time loss in the usual file movement process,” the officer said.

Last week, the Odisha Computer Application Centre here conducted an e-despatch training programme for officials of nearly 2,000 junior and degree colleges in both government and private sectors. The directorate and university staff members were also covered under the programme.

The participants will, in turn, train other officials in the colleges in their respective districts.