The Directorate of Food and Drugs Administration (DFDA) of Goa is all set to go the e-governance route by adopting the Xtended Licensing and Laboratory Note (XLN) software developed and adopted by the Gujarat Food & Drugs Control Administration, (FDCA) for efficient delivery of services. The e-governance initiative in the state will be done in a phased manner with the on-line registration process going on floors first followed by the rest of the services later.

They began the operation to computerise the existing data in the mid of June and hopes to complete their work on it by end of this month. Once the pharma companies complete the procedure of filing the exiting and past data as required, by end of this week, the state drug regulators after compiling and authenticating the facts will go ahead with the next phase.

It is understood that the state regulatory agency is in the last leg of completing all the technical formalities that relate to entering the existing data before starting its operations, which is expected to be done by end of next month. With this software the Goa DFDA will now be able to regulate the sales and manufacturing aspects related to drugs, food and cosmetics; issuance of licenses in a far more transparent manner.

Salim Veljee, director, Goa, DFDA informed, “We are very exited about going ahead with this project as it will open far more avenues in ensuring effective governance in the state's drug regulatory system. Most importantly it will help us in addressing the quality issues and removing the bottlenecks affecting timely delivery of work for both for the regulatory agency as well as the stakeholders. One of the highlights of this initiative is that it will help us make our job less cumbersome by going paper-less, making it highly reliable.”

Interestingly, with a view to get the stakeholders involved in this exercise the state regulators are working along side the pharma companies to help them understand the software and its operations properly. Veljee informed that they had a meeting with all the stakeholders in the state and the National Informatics Centre (NIC) last month to explain them about the modalities and the functionalities of the online applications.

The state DFDA is at present collating all the data from 88 pharma manufacturers and 200 loan licencee from the state.