Vijayawada: In the near future, citizens will no longer need to physically carry any documents related to them. Instead, all their documents will be digitally available on their mobile phones. The government is working towards this goal, according to Bhaskar Katamaneni, the secretary of the state’s ITE&C and RTG departments.

A review meeting was conducted on Friday at the Secretariat regarding the data integration process across various government departments. The meeting was chaired by Bhaskar, where he stated that, at present, there is no centralised data system within the government.

Despite numerous departments having data, it is not yet integrated, which is creating technical barriers that hinder the efficient delivery of government services to citizens, with seamless integration of data.

He said Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu envisions that citizens should no longer need to visit government offices; instead, they should be able to access all the services they need via their mobile phones.

In alignment with this vision, the Real-Time Governance Society (RTGS) is establishing a large data lake to integrate data from all departments of the state government. This initiative will help provide more efficient digital services to citizens.

The government’s goal is for citizens to be able to easily access the certificates they need without visiting any office, simply by using their mobile phones. As part of this initiative, the government recently launched WhatsApp Governance.

Bhaskar Katamaneni informed that the government has signed an MoU with Meta, the parent company of WhatsApp for this purpose. Currently, 163 services are available via WhatsApp Governance, and in future, all services and various certificates required by citizens will be accessible through WhatsApp.

Citizens will be able to download all their certificates like educational qualifications, caste, income, birth, and death certificates, through WhatsApp without any need to visit offices. Additionally, citizens will be able to file complaints and raise their grievances through WhatsApp.

Citizens will not need to carry physical documents, such as a driving licence. Instead, showing them on their mobile phone via WhatsApp will be sufficient. The government is working to make WhatsApp Governance fully operational to support this.

People can store certificates in Digi lockers, which will allow them to securely download and access their certificates as needed. Bhaskar also mentioned that citizens would be able to make payments through WhatsApp as well.

At present, the WhatsApp Governance is being provided to citizens in both Telugu and English. “In near future, we will expand this service to include regional languages such as Kannada, Oriya, and Tamil to make it more accessible to a broader group of citizens across districts,” he said.