No More Queues in Mumbai?

In the race by all governments to ‘e-enable’ government offices in big
cities, talukas and villages, the government of Maharashtra has also left no
stone unturned in integrating IT into its day-to-day functioning. After getting
the green signal from the government, municipal corporations across the state
are geared up to computerize their departments. The Kalyan Dombivli Municipal
Corporation (KDMC) and the Bombay Municipal Corporation (BMC) have set the ball
rolling. These will soon be followed by others like the Thane and Pune municipal
corporations, have jointly taken the initiative.

KDMC would be the first IT enabled municipal corporation to have fully
computerized operations providing all services at a single touch-point. KDMC,
with the assistance of ABM Knowledgeware, an e-governance solution provider, has
computerized all its operations and installed various citizen facilitation
centers (CFC) across the suburbs of Kalyan and Dombivli to enable the citizens
avail various services at a single location and the whole project costs around
4-5 crore.

With a citizen centric approach for e-governance, KDMC, has identified a
range of 80+ services which will be delivered at the CFC in a time bound manner,
with hassle free interactions and promising value for money. The CFC at
front-end is a result of extensive back-end computerization of all the
departments like property tax, water supply, market and trade licenses, town
planning etc. The municipal commissioner of KDMC, S. K. Singh, deserves
acknowledgement for his vision on e-governance in the State.

One of the unique features of this computerization is the facility to access
information in ‘real-time’. KDMC has a host-centric set-up with central
database servers connected to all locations through leased lines. The whole
system is empowered by an Enterprise Information Portal (EIP), a database driven
web site with a real-time status updating. KDMC has an in-house web server
connected to the ISP through a leased line enabling it to offer a number of
Internet services like on-line registrations, application downloads, complaints
lodging and status inquiry on a real-time basis while maintaining an on-date
status.

Online access to departments like property taxation, water supply, birth and
death registrations is already operational. KDMC is now able to deliver birth
and death certificates on the same day. KDMC also forecasts an increase in
revenues by transparently processing property taxation The process enables
citizens to know the calculations of ratable values specific to their property.

Singh claims that their upcoming e-enabled KDMC would be at par with the
municipal corporations of London and Seattle in terms of efficiency,
effectiveness and transparency of e-services. " This would also lead in
staff-cut in the near future but right now, extensive IT training is being given
to all the officers to facilitate the proceedings." Singh says. The fully
computerized KDMC is expected to be operational by May 15. KDMC also intends to
network ward offices, division offices and head quarters.

At Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), its not an easy task as it
entails computerizing and networking government offices at the city, district,
taluka and village levels. Extending government services, information and
utilities online will enable the common man in urban areas as well as remote
villages to pay utility bills online, register grievances and obtain documents
with minimum hassles. BMC has adopted e-governance to manage its ever-increasing
workload and provide hassle-free civic administration.

The 100-year-old BMC has carried out IT implementation in controlled phases
over the last five years. In the first phase, it computerized its backed
operation in all 24 wards. In the next phase these applications were taken to
the front end when citizens began experiencing the effectiveness of civic
services and getting all the information under one roof.

BMC also introduced products like MailNet for easy accessibility of
information and transparency like birth and death registration, water billing,
accounting, shops and establishments, MOIS 2000 for handling and tracking
letters, files, SWS (a Single Window Collection System) and the CFC- Citizen
Facilitation Center.

The CFC will help citizens to get birth and death certificates across the
counter. There will be common cash counters and a single window for
applications, complaints, documents to be submitted to the ward office etc.
Making governance and administration interactive, each ward will also have
kiosks, which citizens can use to lodge complaints. The computerization has made
it possible for the people to lodge complaints at the ward office on the
telephone. ABM is now conceptualizing CFCs for the R-North municipal ward (that
covers the suburb of Dahisar in North Mumbai) and also for the other 23 wards of
BMC.

BMC has also introduced a new ward wise process to trim down the process of
billing payments, saving valuable time and effort for both the municipal
officials as well as the citizens of the K-West ward in Andheri.

Rahul Gupta

CNS