No Work, No Salary: Odisha Collector Freezes Pay of Officials Defying Digital Workflow Order
The directive mandates that salaries will be released only after the defaulting departments begin and complete their assigned tasks through OSWAS.
Bhubaneswar: In a sharp crackdown on administrative non-compliance, Kendrapara Collector Raghuram R. Iyer has frozen the salaries of employees in 42 government departments for failing to switch to the mandatory Odisha Secretariat Workflow Automation System (OSWAS).
The move followed a district-level review on Friday, which found that despite repeated reminders and a state government directive issued three months ago, the departments continued to process files manually. Of the 122 offices in the district, only 80 had adopted OSWAS, leaving 42 still operating outside the digital governance framework.
Officials said the Collector’s order—“no work on OSWAS, no salary”—aims to enforce accountability and speed up the transition to a fully digital workflow. The administration maintains that the shift is essential to streamline file movement, ensure transparency, and improve service delivery.
The directive mandates that salaries will be released only after the defaulting departments begin and complete their assigned tasks through OSWAS.
However, some departments have attributed the delay to inadequate training. The District Agriculture Officer (DAO) said many staff members had not received the necessary hands-on training to operate the platform, making the transition difficult. He added that without proper capacity building, effective use of the digital system remained a challenge.
Despite such concerns, the district administration has made it clear that compliance with the state’s digital governance mandate is non-negotiable.