Use of technology has turned the operations at India’s public broadcaster Prasar Bharati around, the government said yesterday.

It’s no more business as usual. In less than two years, 577 centers and 22,348 employees of Doordarshan (DD) and All India Radio (AIR) have embraced e-office operations.

Well established IT-enabled working structure through e-office at Prasar Bharati came in handy during the pandemic when employees across the country had to work within several limitations during the lockdown and after, a government statement said.

With the vision to make Prasar Bharati operations more efficient and paperless, e-office was introduced in August 2019. Of 577 Prasar Bharati centers across the country, 10 percent adopted e-office in 2019 (Aug – Dec), 74 percent in 2020 and the remaining 16 percent have joined by June 18, 2021.

In what has brought speed and transparency in the working of the organisation, more than 50,000 e-files have been created so far, with the status of every file available online. Internally, departments concerned can trace their files, whether it is in movement or parked or closed.

On an average, complete process of clearing one physical file used to take almost a week, the statement explained, adding that through e-office, this time period has been drastically reduced to 24 hours on an average, sometimes even a couple of hours.

As a result, the figures on total volume of cleared files over almost the last two years and average number of files cleared every month during the same period have jumped significantly.

This initiative has also made Prasar Bharati operations paperless, saving the organisation’s expenditure on paper by 45 percent between August 2019 and June 2021. Apart from reducing carbon footprint, paperless work also enhanced the COVID safety during the pandemic through remote working, Prasar Bharat claimed.