Life Beyond Metros
Kalyan-Dombivli: In December 1999, the Kalyan Dombivli Municipal Corporation (KDMC), on the outskirts of Mumbai, which serves the citizens of the twin cities of Kalyan and Dombivli, automated access to all functions and services related to more than hundred citizen services, by putting them online. In doing so, the corporation broke free from the archaic manual systems it had used for decades to carry out day-to-day administrative tasks. The corporations previous systems were inefficient, unproductive, time consuming, and hindered citizens from submitting payments for municipal services on time.

For its efforts, KDMC was awarded a certificate of recognition from the Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances, and Pensions, Government of India, for exemplary e-governance initiatives.

Coimbatore: Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, has a population of over 1.2 mn citizens. The Coimbatore Municipal Corporation (CMC) is responsible for various administrative and infrastructural civic duties such as town planning, health, engineering, and tax collection. CMC chose an e-governance approach to markedly improve citizen welfare, operational productivity and efficiency, and revenue collection.

Since launching its e-gov initiative, CMC has seen improvements in several areas. Prior to the launch of the initiative, citizens had to go to specific manual collection centers to pay property taxes, water charges, professional taxes, trade license fees, etc. These centers had restricted hours and were often poorly staffed; this led to long waiting periods for citizens and delays in collecting revenue for CMC.

Now citizens can make speedy payments at six computerized facilitation centers or at fifteen banks conveniently located throughout the city. Citizens applying for specific services can now easily keep track of their application status without having to make frequent trips to CMC offices. All applications are given a unique reference number that can be traced through CMCs website. Certificates for birth, death, tax collection, water charges collection, non-tax items, dangerous and offensive trade fee, prevention of food adulteration fees, etc have also been automated and can be issued at the collection centers or can be requested via the portal with payments made on delivery.

Visakhapatnam: The Visakhapatnam Municipal Corporation is using the telephone to deliver government to citizen (G2C) services. The citizens wanted an effective complaint management system through which they could register their complaints without any hassle, and give effective feedback to municipalities. Earlier, the citizens had to travel a minimum of 3-4 km to reach the nearest municipal corporation center. The municipal corporation of Visakhapatnam also wanted to send timely reminders and notifications, and disperse personal information (about tax dues, etc) pertaining to the citizens and city administration in an effective manner.

A solution called T-governance was developed to address these concerns. Four major components of the T-Governance solution were created: Samacharam (an automated information retrieval process via SMS and IVRS), PrajaNadi, (an automated opinion poll system using SMS and IVRS), Dandora (an information broadcasting and alert system using SMS and IVRS), and Firyadu Kendram (an automated complaint management system using IVRS).

Through Samacharam, citizens can retrieve information such as house tax, water tax, lease tax, advertisement tax, semi-bulk or bulk tax, government welfare schemes, and important telephone numbers by sending an SMS or making a phone call to T-Governance. Similarly, PrajaNadi lets citizens send an SMS or call up the system and vote or give an opinion on any issue.

Dandora uses SMS and voice messages to communicate with citizens when tax payments are due or overdue. It can also send messages regarding meetings, circulars, important notifications, and floods or cyclone alerts. The Firyadu Kendram system walks citizens through a series of voice messages and their complaints are registered. An SMS is automatically sent by the system to the person designated to solve the complaint.

Rajneesh De & Urvashi Kaul
rajneeshd@cybermedia.co.in

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