eGov Foundation Launches COVID e-Pass Platform to make transportation of essential goods easier

To simplify the process of issuing e-passes for essential goods and service providers during lockdown, eGov foundation has launched COVID e-Pass system. The platform is expected to reduce the operational burden of government officials and help in ensuring a seamless supply of essential goods and services during the lockdown.

The COVID e-Pass system is an application where the state nodal officers will approve one-time registration requests from the companies along with setting the daily quota of passes for each company. The designated authority from the company will then be allowed to generate bulk passes for company employees/partners, within the set quota. The companies will be able to do thison their own, without having to reach out to the district administration for inter-city movement. The pass will be delivered to the applicant in a PDF format and an SMS. Carrying a photo identification card will be compulsory for all the applicants.

State Nodal Officers will work with police authorities for verification and validation of the e-Pass during the commute.

This easy-to-use and intelligent system has already been up and running in Delhi, Haryana, Telangana, Odisha, Punjab, Puducherry and Karnataka.

State nodal officer for Karnataka, Shri Kapil Mohan (IAS), Principal Secretary Infrastructure Development, said he is very much satisfied with this system as it provides relief to companies for inter-district and inter-state movement of personnel while managing nationwide supply chains.

The e-Pass platform has also been integrated with Aarogya Setu, government's COVID-19 contact tracing app. The first phase of this integration will allow the e-Pass system to poll Aarogya Setu to check the health indicator of the individuals before generating the ePass. The copy of the ePass is also deposited in the individual's Aarogya Setu app for easy access and verification.

"The creation of the National e-Pass platform in less than a week is a beautiful moment. Firstly, it manifests how digital infra like eGov's DIGIT platform can be leveraged to create highly contextual solutions at scale and speed. It also brings out the power of co-creation that foundations like ours are uniquely placed to catalyze - we collaborated with volunteers from iSpirit, Aragoya Setu team at MeitY, State Governments, AWS and Consumer products companies to build this solution. And finally, this is a testament of the team that worked on this initiative - the team got together in an instant to respond to a real problem India faced. The team put the mission ahead of themselves and put in an extreme amount of hard work, while going through the same stresses of managing groceries, worrying about their loved ones," saidViraj Tyagi, CEO, eGov Foundation.

Hiren Doshi, VP, eGov Foundation stated "Ensuring the availability and seamless supply of essential items across the nation, we are working with States and have developed a simple mechanism for them to issue the permits digitally with ease. Noting that the availability of essential goods take place through consumer product companies, organized retail stores and e-commerce companies, this platform will allow companies to generate digital passes for their employees and ensure smooth supply of daily use essentials, amidst this lockdown."