Pay Property Tax Online
The national capital territory of Delhi which has taken a number of pioneering
initiatives in e-Governance, launched the property tax website on April 9, 2007:
http://www.mcdpropertytax.in/.
The website enables citizens of Delhi to pay their taxes online.
It is a very good beginning, but the site urgently requires to be made
attractive. Moreover, the disclaimer: "This is a Provisional Tax for the
year 2007-08. You have to file the revised tax after the recommendations of the
Municipal Valuation Committee - II (MVC-II)" is a big put-off. Why can't
we have any finality in tax payment? The present dispensation amounts to paying
taxes twice in a year-one right now and the other after revision of rates on
the recommendations of the MVC—II. Why can't the recommendations of the
committee be implemented in the next financial year 2008-09? Otherwise, a
citizen will be fully justified in waiting till the end of the year for paying
his dues, defeating the very purpose of making this facility available in the
beginning of the financial year 2007-08.
There is yet another good news for e-Gov evangelists. According
to a news report, MCD is planning to make compulsory its online property tax
payment scheme from June 1. This will indeed promote e-Governance.
Welcome the Government IT Wiki
In my key note address in the 4th International Conference on e-Governance on
December 15, 2006, at the Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi on Ten
Emerging e-Government Challenges Today: The Future May be Sober and Not Hype, I
had mentioned one of the challenges as how to make use of wiki technology in
e-Government if the public sector is constrained by resources (as it is). This
challenge was formulated in the light of two developments: First, explosion of
information on US top level domain-some mind-boggling 368 mn pages. Second, a
suggestion of Wagner et al (2006) (Building Semantic Webs for e-Gov with Wiki
technology, Electronic Government, 3 (1) 36-55) to have a two-layer Web-first
layer the traditional Web and the second a wiki.
Little did I realize that what I recognized as a challenge only
three months back will materialize, and that too so soon. It was, therefore, a
very pleasant surprise to find that a Government Wiki has, in fact, been
launched in March 2007, though focusing on the US. Formally named as GovIT wiki,
(check it at http://www.govitwiki.com/w/index.php?title=Main_Page).
Let us congratulate the sponsor (s) of this project. As the US continues to be
the e-Gov bellwether (e-Government was born there in 1993), it will be very
instructive to see how this wiki shapes up as it may have important lessons for
cash-strapped developing countries in making e-Gov citizen-centric.
Property Database According to a report, Delhi will prepare a database of all properties in the city at a cost of Rs 200 crore in a 10-year period. This followed after a presentation before Delhi government officials made by Urban Institute, supported by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). With time and cost overruns being a common feature of public sector projects, a 10-year period looks like ages in our e-age. A five-year period should be more than adequate as the MCD already has a database of properties in Delhi. Who says e-Gov has been put on the back burner? |
Some comments are in order. First, the very fact that GovIT Wiki
has come into being will show that there was need for it (mainly because of
increasing information overload). Secondly, wiki is about collaborative creation
of information, which in the instant case will include drawing a guide map for
getting information from a government website. Much will depend upon the way the
wiki is used or developed in the context of e-Gov. After some time things will
settle down in GovIT Wiki too. Experience shows that government rules and
regulations vis-Ã -vis a citizen require interpretation, sorting out, and
simplicity. Ideally, an e-citizen should be able to deal with his relationship
with the state all by himself on an e-Gov website. However, at this stage of
e-Gov, this is not possible. In future artificial intelligence agents may learn
about the individual requirements of an e-citizen and deliver a tailor-made
public service, GovIT Wiki might help here.
No e-Gov in DDA Website
The revamped website of the DDA (http://www.about_dda.htm) was launched on April
10, 2007. Among nine prominent columns of the website-Hindi, home, procedures,
notices, RTI Act, vigilance, FAQs, site plan and feedback, the RTI finds an
important place but e-Government, defined here as citizen-centric government
online, is missing. For example, there is no provision of sending an email to
any officer and, equally importantly, an assurance that the email will be
acknowledged and query replied in any reasonable time. Likewise, there is no
facility of online payment or of filling forms online or even filing a complaint
online (unless you use the feedback column without any expectation of result).
e-democracy is also missing. For example, there is no discussion group on the
website for citizens to share their views and openly comment upon the services
provided by the DDA for the mutual benefits of citizens.
When I randomly clicked "Change of Address" to see if
I could at least change the address online not only was I disappointed but also
faced the surfer's nightmare: page under construction. And when I checked
"Vigilance" to check whether a citizen could file a complaint I was
confronted with a document Conduct, Disciplinary and Appeal Regulation 1999 (http://www.dda.org.in/conduct_disciplinaryandappeal.doc) which I could not
open. Apparently, it is meant for DDA's own employees in which case a
sub-portal could be set up for them. The site also provides a link to the Delhi
government website (http://www.delhigovt.nic.in/index.asp) but the Delhi
government website does not provide a link to it. Interestingly, the Delhi
government website provides a link to a site, http://www.ddadelhi.com/,
which appears to be a private site as it is full of ads-but this is not
mentioned in the Delhi government website. A newspaper report tells me that the
DDA will spend Rs 5.5 crore on what the correspondent calls, "online
computerization of DDA" and that 2,000 new computers will be bought for
introducing the system. When so much of the tax payer's money is being spent,
is it too much to ask the DDA to make the site citizen-centric?
Compiled by Dr DC Misra
The author was former Chairman, Task
Force for IT Policy for Delhi