Kerala Special: Speeding Ahead with FAST

A cursory glance of any government department will reveal reams
and reams of files across shelves and the transport departments are no
exception. The Kerala State Motor Vehicles Department wanted to break this
typical image of government departments. So it took on the mammoth exercise of
automating its processes. The department has 60 offices spread across the state,
with multiple numbers of staff and transactional volumes. A pilot
computerization was carried out at RTO Ernakulam with the assistance of
Department of IT, Government of India. Wipro was appointed for the program
management of the replication of the pilot project to all the other offices of
the department.

Dr Anurag Srivastava, VP, consulting division-Wipro Infotech
say: "Citizens are increasingly holding governments accountable by seeking
responsiveness, transparency and accountability. Governments too, are meeting
the needs by making structural and process changes in departments to enable
officials to develop informed policies and implement them." But to shift to
IT enabled environment from a traditional set up was indeed a challenging task.
Key challenges the department faced on the road to automation were:

• High transactional volumes:
  Due to the high transactional volumes, it was difficult to identify few
  sites in the office where the new system could be implemented. The system
  needed to be foolproof as a single flaw could lead to multiple complexities.

• Large number of client
  sites: The department has 60 RTOs through out the state and the
  entire state divided into Trivandrum, Ernakulam, Trichur and Kozhikode
  zones. The management and coordination of the project was a major challenge.

• The lack of expertise in
  the department: Expertise with regard to civil works,
  computerization and software was absent in the department.

• Change Management:
  High level of inertia among government employees towards shifting from the
  manual environment to automated processes.

• Data Digitization:
  Voluminous amount of data needed to be digitized for use in the computerized
  environment. The complete digitization, accuracy of the data and the limited
  time frame posed a major challenge.

The Solution

The project was planned in two phases: a pilot and a subsequent roll out at
all the offices across the state. RTO Ernakulam was taken as the pilot site, as
it was one of the sites that handles the largest number of transactions. Issues
associated with the automated operations, and the conversion from manual to
automated environment were closely studied for about a year and ensured that all
the desired advantages and milestones were met by the automation. The learning
from the pilot site was used for the roll out throughout the state, thus
preventing the repetition of mistakes at other sites.

Key Benefits

Some of the key benefits accrued:

• The department has risen from the standard of an ordinary
  government office to the status of a fully computerized office with enhanced
  office ambience and facilities

• The department is on track towards the goal of a paperless
  organization

• Time bound services are available from the department.

• Bulky license and registration books have been replaced by
  compact laminated license and registration certificates

• The citizens can check the status of their application from
  the information kiosks

• The dates for the driving test can be modified in the
  information kiosks

Reflecting on the project, Dr Anurag Srivastava says:
"Projects such as FAST has enabled the Kerala State Motor Vehicle
Department in bringing better citizen centric services. We are happy to have
carried out the complete consultancy and program management for the state wide
roll-out of this initiative."

Shrikanth G

shrikanthg@cybermedia.co.in