Saukaryam onlining Visakhapatnam Municipal Corporation

Author : Sanjay Jaju
Date added : 2003-09-23

Brief Project Background

Oct 18 ‘2000 , Visakhapatnam (India)
It has only been a week that I had taken charge as the Municipal Commissioner and was beginning to take stock of the city and the job that lay ahead. Jostling my way through the town inspection, I reached a ward office and could see large number of people waiting for the bill collector to come and give property tax bill. I was wondering why in this age where we are talking of putting man at mars, a practice as pristine and prosaic as this can not be overhauled with a little dose of technology and imagination. Smarting under the influence of what I saw at the ward office, my worst horrors came true when I found a band of agents delivering certificates, permissions and slew of promises to hapless citizens charging illegally right in front of my office. I thought, being at the helm of affairs, why can’t I act and cut through all this and metamorphose this dead animal called government. I knew this was a big challenge; the chances of success were remote, a huge applecart was bound to get disturbed but I also knew at the back of my mind that only those who ever try have the chances to succeed.

During 2 months there after..
Expressing my anguish about what I felt of what I had been seeing, I told my subordinates in no uncertain terms that I was committed to initiate reforms and elicited their support. It was agreed that a comprehensive system reform was the need of the day and Information and Communications Technology offered the easiest and the most cost-effective solutions and it was then that the idea of a comprehensive facility that allows citizens gain access to the services delivered by the municipal corporation in a user friendly and harassment free environment was mooted.

This was followed by multiple and extensive brain storming sessions with all the stake holders to delve deep into the root of the problem and a core team was put into place for data computerisation and software and hardware support. The work on the project began in right earnest and a deadline of two months was fixed for all the partners.

The broad contours of our plan was now taking shape, it was decided to establish a Metro Area Network encompassing 120 Sq.Kms to reach the nook and corners of the city. A large number of banks for accepting municipal payments and various Municipal Offices had to be put on this Metro Area Network and connected to each other. A local area Network encompassing all wings of the Municipal Corporation had to form the backbone to this Metro Area Network. This Network had then to be in turn web enabled to provide access to citizens through a utility driven web site for multiple services. The project had to cover the whole gamut of civic services ranging from the facility of online payment of dues to allowing lodging of grievances online or filing building plan applications and getting their status without running from pillar to post. There also had to be a facility for the hospitals to send Birth and Death information online helping citizens get their certificates instantly.

Dec 28 ‘2000
Due to the multi pronged effort put in by many, something that was a dream just few months before was now right before us ready to be unveiled. Everything finally converged together on the D day and the project was formally inaugurated by the Chief Minister of the State. We decided to name this project “Saukaryam”. meaning facility in the local language.

Information and Communications technologies are transforming the way life goes about. This firestorm has also got huge potential to transform the paradigms of governance.Information Technology entails connectivity and networking thereby making the delivery of services offered by governments become better and while talking of governments, local self-governments deserve maximum attention as they are at the cutting edge and immensely affect the daily lives of the citizens. It was in this context that a project ‘SAUKARYAM’(meaning facility) was launched in Visakhapatnam Municipal Corporation for delivering all the civic services online. The project has been completed as a public-private partnership initiative with not much additional cost to the corporation.

Under this project, a Metro Area Network encompassing 120 Sq.Kms has been created through broad band/leased circuits. A large number of banks for accepting municipal payments and various Municipal Offices have been put on this Metro Area Network and connected to each other. A local area Network encompassing all wings of the Municipal Corporation forms the backbone to this Metro Area Network. This Network has been in turn web enabled to provide access to citizens through a utility driven web site for multiple services. While the popularity of the website was soaring, there were many who would come and tell us that not everybody in the country like ours had access to internet or much more so had the knowledge of computers. To mitigate this, the project decided to establish many computerized City Civic Centres which acted as an outlet for citizens to have access to the civic services like getting a death/birth certificates, file a water tap/ drainage connection request, apply for building plan approval, and make miscellaneous payments.

The project covers the whole gamut of civic services ranging from the facility of online payment of dues to allowing lodging of grievances online or filing building plan applications and getting their status without running from pillar to post. There also is a facility for the hospitals to send Birth and Death information online helping citizens get their certificates instantly. As the Municipal Corporation enters into the daily lives of the citizens in many ways, all such multifarious areas have been covered. Now at the click of a button, citizens can see the garbage movement performance, water supply plan of their street and also the updated infrastructure works being executed in their city. It also provides the contractors online Tender notices and the entrepreneurs and philanthropists business opportunities and social possibilities the town entails. It has also provided an online forum to the citizens to ventilate their grievances, air their opinions and cause necessary social change. In short, every service extended by City Corporation is being extended online under this project.

The prime motto of the project has been to improve the interface of the citizens with other government departments, as well as, to give them an integrated payment gateway. Simplifying the whole process, the project conceptualized an innovative approach. It opened a multi utility center on the metro area network. Calling it Bill Junction has been self explanatory to the citizens. The process creates an online window to the citizens to pay all their utility bills under one roof. This offers a multi pronged advantage of being the ultimate payment solution.
By roping in many stakeholders, the project could be completed at least in its initial phase in three months time flat from conception to commissioning without putting any additional burden on already stretched financial resources of the corporation.

Results

This has been one of those moments in my life when things moved at a very hectic pace. I just couldn’t believe how things were changing and project was reshaping every going day. What started with one bank on the metro area network was now 22 banks strong. The entire property tax database got purified during this period and was now hosted on the municipal server allowing citizens access to the information they desired through the metro area network or through the website.
Our website instead of being information driven had developed as a utility driven web site and acted as a window to the outsiders to gain access to the Corporation intranet. The website with few features in the beginning was beginning to look much stronger in content. Regular feedback from the citizens had also started flowing in helping us to add or revise the utilities. We had also enabled citizens to pay directly through the website through their credit cards. The Citizens were also able to look at the infrastructural works being taken up in the Corporation while contractors were able to access the various tender notices alive at that moment. The entire process of scrutinizing, processing and sanctioning of Building Plan approvals had been computerized allowing online tracking and monitoring. At the click of a button, Citizens could now see the sanitation plan of their street or the water supply plan of their ward.
Personal hearing sometime matters, it is for this that the corporation office is full of visitors seeking personal attention. The website now provided an opportunity to the citizens to have an on line chat with the Mayor and the Commissioner to tell them about their problems, for punching in their suggestions and ideas, giving them feedback about their works and chasing them for the work not done.
The city civic centers could bring into the project’s fold those sections of the communities which were highly marginalized and in essence required our support the most.

The results have been stupendous. Ever since the project has been commissioned, the work has become a talk of the town. The citizens are surprised and enthused by the ease with which their needs are getting attended to without running from pillar to post as before. For a thing as basic as paying their dues, the kind of harassment they used to face at the hands of insensitive and corrupt bureaucracy has all been eliminated after the advent of this project. This is clearly established by the jump which corporation revenue collection has shown after the current system was put into place. An organization that was running a negative balance of Rs 350 million is now Rs 1000 million surplus. A small complaint like abrupt drinking water supply or non-functional streetlight that used to take months to float into the system gets attended in no time. An eternal wait that characterized the citizens’ complaints had started to take some value in its ‘time’ column.
The system was also helping the corporation to get the real time Demand Collection Statement ward wise. This helped in clear monitoring of the cases preventing delinquents escape the tax net thereby eliminating the discretion of the tax collectors. This had also helped Corporation in listing the top tax defaulters on its website and with concerted pressure on them brought them to book for clearance of dues. The system led to improvement in tax collection efficiency. If citizens having derived the ease of payments and transparency in knowing their dues were happy we were also not complaining with old pendencies getting sorted out

The citizen forum has become a virtual meeting place for the citizens who are freely airing their views for the city development, an opportunity which was a prerogative earlier only of few leaders in a representative democracy. The city civic center acting as one stop civic shop is a living example of ‘Digital Unite’ as the citizens coming from diverse social and economic background take advantage of it for getting their civic needs attended to. The attitudes of the Municipal employees towards citizens that previously conveyed a relationship of Benefactor-Beneficiary has changed to that of Principal-Client. The citizens now feel truly empowered and corruption and nepotism has reduced greatly.

The statistics reveal that over 3,000 people make use of this facility every day either through the banking net work or through the City Civic Centres or the Internet. There are over 25,000 Registered Users for the Web Site while the civic centre receives over 400 citizens every day reflecting its popularity across the whole range of communities. Over 53000 transactions have till now been performed through the civic centres. Over 4, 28,560 transactions amounting to Rs 880 millions have been completed so far through the banks while 5, 71,128 transactions amounting to Rs.954 millions have been completed through the Bill Junction. Ever since this system was put into place, over 18000 complaints were received, out of which over 17000 were redressed to the satisfaction of the complainants. The last two years saw over 37,000 birth and death certificates delivered instantly to the citizens.

The internal computerisation has helped in improvement of internal efficiency and the coordination between various wings of the corporation has improved due to system networking. The works management system has brought in transparency in execution of infrastructure works and is enabling optimum allocation of resources amongst various areas.

The project was the only project in 2001 from India to have been nominated for the Stockholm Challenge Award for the best IT Usage in Public Service and Democracy category. Our Web site (www.saukaryam.org) has been awarded the best Web site for the Municipal Corporations in India because of its utilities, by the National Institute of Urban Affairs. The project also won the National IT Award instituted by the Computer Society of India for the best IT usage for the year 2001.

The project also won the UNDP’s prestigious cyber city award as part of their urban governance initiative entitling the project a grant of $20000 US for expanding the initiative into other cities. This Corporation has been recently adjudged the best e- governed corporation in the country by the credit rating agency ‘CRISIL’.
My visit to the ward office couldn’t have been more momentous.

Lessons

The Visakhapatnam Municipal Corporation and this Project have now become inseparable. On the one hand, the Corporation Management has internalized the Project while the citizens of Visakhapatnam have embraced it on the other hand. There would be no going back to old ways, as citizens once used to a better delivery of services would settle for nothing less. The Project also has huge political acceptability because of its citizen’s centred focus. Although the levels of computer literacy and penetration are still not very high, the presence of the civic centre and collection centres alleviate this need to a large extent.

Visakhapatnam Municipal Corporation has also applied for its patenting and has entered into a Memorandum of Understanding with a Private Company for the International marketing of this product thereby fetching royalty to the Corporation and keeping the product updated and state of art all the time in future as well.

There is a big learning lesson in this; it means anything is possible provided there is will and the persuasion to tag along partners by giving them stakes in a seemingly public non commercial activity. The paucity of funds and limited understanding of IT solutions are a major constraint in implementing projects of this nature. This was resolved by involving multiple stakeholders and explaining to them the monetary and other benefits accruing to them out of the project. The project is an example of how big tasks are easily done if broken down into small doable tasks and assigning them to various stakeholders at the right time.


There were times during the data building and computerization phase when the project met with hostile and lukewarm response from our internal bureaucracy. The bureaucracy feared that the project would reduce the power they wielded due to the information they controlled by bringing it into public domain through net. Besides this, the openness and transparency in administration which the project attempted to achieve was also feared by those sections of employees who did not want to get exposed for their inefficiency. It was only after sustained pressure and coercion that the desired information was taken out from them. But when the leader of the pack had acquiesced to doing the same, the followers didn’t have much of a choice. However deep inside, I was beginning to get convinced that I had laid my hand on something much bigger than I had originally envisaged and this made my resolve much more strident and I was ready to pursue it, come what may.

The process of empowering the citizens by using information technology involves many areas ranging from creating conducive environment within the organisation to stimulating positive responses outside. The challenge was to develop public awareness about IT and making the citizens use the medium created by the project for accessing civic services. The political acceptability to the project was another challenge that had to be met in a democracy. A session to sensitise the political leadership exposing them to the benefits that the citizens would derive from this project proved very helpful and ensured their involvement right from the beginning. Willing or not, no politician worth his salt can afford a situation that pits him in a non populist disposition.

Development Impacts

Municipal corporations are cutting edge organizations that have a huge bearing on the lives of the citizens for many of its acts and non acts. It has now becoming increasingly clear that the size, complexity of information and multiplicity of departments, functions made such organizations a fit case for technology solutions. The objective has to be to improve the delivery of services by using the computers to store the huge amount of data and connecting and networking them for sorting, querying and manipulating this data. This can form the backdrop against which projects of this nature can be conceived and started.

The vast apparatus of governance that we’ve got is now slowly coming to a state where it has stopped moving without getting a push and the unfortunate thing is that not many of us have the capacity and the wherewithal to do so. This notwithstanding, What is without doubt is that the systems of governance lying in the hands of powerful and influential need to be transformed for catering to the requirements of all, whatever their face may be, the project Saukaryam has surely proved that.



Every govt department has two lives, one that it lives internally while the other that it lives with its clients, the citizens as we call them. Internally the organizations suffer from problems of mal functioning due to lack of proper and smooth systems while externally it makes its clients suffer. There are many in the govt. who are frighteningly overworked while there are many more who are woefully under worked or do not want to work. Due to this it is very difficult to distinguish where the disease is and who the diseased is.

A thorough system analysis would however confirm that nine out of ten times, both the prevention and cure of this disease is possible only if we allow technology to take precedence over the norm. Internally Technology solutions would ensure that the non-performers can’t hide themselves and the decision support systems are on a stronger wicket with properly processed information base. Externally Technology would ensure that the discretionary advantages and favors possible in the tech-less system are eliminated allowing level playing field to everybody, which in the essence, is the purpose of governments.

The project does recognize that informatics by itself cannot surpass social, political and economic barriers to development and good governance but plans to use it as a sina qua non condition, as an indispensable step for any social project that attempts to do so. The widening knowledge and information gap has a potential to widen the already existing class gap in this country. It is desired that the project could play a major role in reducing that through unhindered access and thus can really become a harbinger for uniting the communities and making them feel better.

The project recognizes that information is government’s biggest equity and it’s important that it uses it for greater public good. The project has helped the civic body throw open the information relevant but currently shrouded into the public domain. Keeping citizens as the central focus has been the guiding principle in this project. Computerisation may improve the internal efficiency of an organisation but it holds no meaning unless there is utility to public out of the improved efficiency. The success and wide acceptability of the project is a result of this focus.
Unfortunately Information technology in the administrative parlance has been simply equated to computerization resulting in myriads of computers with absolutely no accent on the Information part of IT. Anybody who understands Information technology would agree that IT is almost 80% in the Information part and only rest in the latter. The wrong understanding of this definition in the governments has however resulted in needless addition of computers leading to a system which neither has citizen focus and nor has evolved out of the real understanding of the maladies the particular system is afflicted with. Most of the computers lying with various organizations are relegated to being used as typewriters; more than 90% of their processing and storing capacities are unutilized. This project due to its citizen centered focus has proved that most complex problems have simple solutions and you only require an eye to find them.

The Project has already become a pilot project for Municipal governments and is being replicated elsewhere. Many other Municipal Corporations have been visiting us to learn about the project and we have ourselves gone a bit ahead and have implemented the similar project in adjoining urban local bodies.

The project documentation and paper has been presented in many national and international forums and seminars. It figures in the list of papers published in UNHCS and their best practice database. The National Open University and the National Academy of Administration have also accepted the project as a training module under e-governance.

To say the least, if we fail to act now, the Information Gap risks may widen into an unbridgeable gulf that may increase global inequality and leave the poor further behind. But if we approach the matter with the same kind of urgency and application as the commercial "dot-com" sector, then we have every chance of building a strong, new wired future that not only includes the world's poor but gives them an unprecedented opportunity to lift themselves out of poverty.

Project Information

Organisation : Indian Administrative Service
URL : http://www.saukaryam.org
Total budget in US$ : 1 million
Country of activity: India [IN]

Are there any partners involved : M/s Net Savant
M/s Pyxis Technologies
M/s Excel Media and Starnet ISP
Many commercial banks
What is partners role?: Huge financial and material resources required were tapped through public-private initiative getting entrepreneurs to invest in the project. The Corporation invested the major bulk of the resources. The website was also developed as a joint venture with M/s Net Savant for sharing the cost and accrued revenues. The software development was taken up as joint exercise between the in house software wing and private site developer M/s Pyxis Technologies. The networking was done by a private band width supplier (M/s Excel Media and Starnet ISP) in lieu of which they were offered rights for other commercial applications. The call centers were opened in the local bank branches that invested in the provision of necessary hardware for which they were allowed to retain collected funds as liquidity.

Contact Information

Sanjay Jaju
sjaju1@rediffmail.com
Collector's Bungalow, 534006, Eluru (AP), + 91-8812 -231844

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