Rajkot Gets Online Savvy

The Rajkot Municipal Corporation (RMC), Gujarat has created history by becoming the first municipal corporation of the country to incorporate mobile and Interactive Voice Response (IVR) payment platform for the citizens to pay property, housing, and water tax. For this, RMC has partnered with Atom Technologies, a financial technology company, to implement its integrated m-commerce payment solution enabling the citizens of Rajkot to pay their property tax via their
mobile phones, which comprises of 14 different taxes through netbanking, mobile, and IVR payment
option with a click of a button.

Whats remarkable about this introduction of the multi-payment platforms is the size of the in-house IT team at RMC comprising of just
4 members responsible right from the vendor selection to the implementation of the mobile and IVR solution. The mobile solution has been based on cloud and Java to Enterprise Edition (J2EE) and has been integrated with RMCs internal system by the in-house team.

Based on the pay-per-use model, Atom Technologies will be paid `5 for every mobile and IVRS transaction apart from the cost of each server for IVRS which is `1.5 lakh.

Talking about the challenges, Mahesh Gohel, electronic data processing manager at RMC says, We always try to find the best solution as per the need after analyzing the problem properly. Way back in 2008, when our call center was launched, the acceptance of use of the software by the employees was an issue, but now 90% of the staff is computer literate. Therefore training and awareness initiatives are ongoing activities since then.

In addition, RMC has installed 2 kiosks (sourced from Forces Technology for `1.98 lakh for each kiosk) while 2 more will be installed soon for anytime payment. RMC pays Rs 5 per transaction to the house tax department and `12 per transaction to the postal department (15 out of 23 post offices of the city) for using their facility, manpower, and equipment for facilitating the online payment service.

RMC proactively has not only implemented this solution to collect its property tax (which incidentally comprises of the largest chunk of the citys total daily collections) but also issued a circular to the effect that no manual finance or audit bill will be accepted by the corporation from November 10, 2011.

Since RMC was clear about its requirement and with its forward thinking in adopting IT, we managed to complete the job of providing the solution in just 3-4 weeks time, says Dewang Neralla, director, Atom Technologies. This IT savvy municipal corporation bought all its 44 departments on this platform within 3 months time after introducing the solution on August 26, 2011. To further promote its online initiatives like Citizen Forum (launched in 2009) RMC, on the eve of its 38th Anniversary of the establishment, ie, November 19, 2011, announced the launch of RITEresponsive, intelligent, transparent, and effective.

RMC has been very careful and prompt in marrying technology to add convenience for the citizens and bringing increased transparency in the system. It expects 10% of its population to start using this new platform by 2012 so as to bring down the cost per transaction atleast by 5-6%.