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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.

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-à-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

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