The Gujarat government recently nominated the self-licensing software called the Xtended Licensing and Laboratory Note (XLN), developed and adopted by the Gujarat Food & Drugs Control Administration, (FDCA) for the Prime Minster's Award for Excellence in Public Administration.

Recognising the efforts taken by the Gujarat FDCA in adopting an industry friendly initiative, the chief secretary of Gujarat after rigorous scrutiny and deliberation approved and nominated this programme for this prestigious award in early August.

This award is given by the Government of India (GoI) as a recognition to the initiatives and efforts that are aimed at improving the socio-economic and administrative set up of the country. For this purpose, GoI invites proposal from all the state governments to nominate their representatives for the awards in different categorise for the event that takes place in Delhi in April every year.

This year the state government, along with other entries, nominated the XLN software which is a well accepted initiative developed by the state regulatory officials to help the regulators perform their duties more effectively by enabling speedy disposal of various applications while bringing in transparency to the system. The beauty of this system is that it is tailor made to address not only the needs of the regulatory officials but also to address the needs of the industry and the general public as well.

Dr H G Koshia, commissioner, FDCA who had pioneered the e-governance programme in the state, informed,“We are very much thrilled by this nomination as it recognises our efforts at a national level and reinstates our belief in continuing the good work further. Most importantly it helps us in performing our duties systematically in a time bound manner without any unreasonable delay which is not only well accepted by the industry but also is easily accessible for any interested parties bringing in transparency to the whole system.”

Through this software the FDCA regulates the sales and manufacturing aspects related to drugs, food and cosmetics; issuance of licenses, etc. The best feature of this software is that it enables the registration of all the pharmacists and chemists which prevents multiple illegal enrolment of pharmacists. Dr Koshia further informed that this software was mainly developed with an aim to control and to put a check on the activities of the stakeholders in the state to ensure public safety and their welfare.

This is the first ever initiative taken by any drug controller in the country for regulating the drug distribution system so aptly by bringing in place a system that will ensure effective recall of not of standard drugs instantly.

Commending the efforts of the Gujarat FDCA for initiating steps for modelling its administrative functions in the line of corporate culture, Chirag Doshi, chairman of the Indian Drugs Manufacturer's Association, Gujarat State Board said, “The industry is very happy with the changes that the Gujarat FDCA has made in its administrative functioning, as it has reduced lot of paper work and travelling of our representatives to the head office. We are proud that the entire online system has been initiated in Gujarat and had been done in the interest of the industry at large.”