Excelsior CorrespondentKATRA, Aug 25: Shri Mata Vaishno Devi Shrine Board (SMVDSB) has been conferred with prestigious National e-governance Gold Award by the Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances (DARPG) in recognition of the significant strides made by the Board in the category “Application of Emerging Technologies for providing Citizen Centric Services” at National Awards for e-Governance-2023.Union Minister of State for Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions, Dr Jitendra Singh presented the award to Anshul Garg, Chief Executive Officer, SMVDSB in a two-day conference organized at Indore by DARPG and Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MEITY) in association with the Government of Madhya Pradesh on the theme ‘Developed India; Empowering Citizens’. The Award carries a cash prize of Rs 10 lakh besides a Trophy and a Citation.Anshul Garg, who received the Gold Award, thanked the Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances for recognising the technology driven initiatives of the Shrine Board and added that this honour will encourage the Board’s team to work more zealously to deliver high quality services in easily accessible, efficient and user friendly manner to the pilgrims.Noteworthy that the Shrine Board has made concerted efforts for adoption of a number of emerging technologies and robust response mechanisms for state-of-the-art facilities. These include the issuing of RFID yatra access cards to pilgrims and their real time tracking with the dedicated RF Network and over 700 CCTV cameras. This helps in tracking of lost pilgrims and also restricting the Yatra flow as per the holding capacity of defined zones thus greatly enhancing crowd control through the use of modern technology.On similar lines Shrine Board has integrated digital payments by installation of Self- Serve Kiosk machines, QR codes, EDC machines, UPI payments and also on-boarding to popular digital platforms for donations and sale of Prasad. The digitalization of the front-end services of Helicopter, Battery Car bookings by Shrine Board has facilitated the pilgrims and also improved administrative efficiencies.In addition, the installation of hi-tech multipurpose video walls at various locations on the track enabled dissemination of real-time information to the visiting pilgrims with regard to the Yatra, Live Darshans /Atka Arti, advisory/display features (24X7) regarding Disaster Prone Locations on the track, besides, early warnings of weather forecast.Future digital transformation in Shrine Board will be fuelled by ERP modules, Next Gen Website and upgraded Call Centre for its various operations.
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