Bangalore One portal offers one-stop integrated city services and 24X7 access to citizens. The integrated platform provides both business to citizen (B2C) and government to citizen (G2C) services. Given the Manthan Award in 2012, the project was launched in 2005 and has been implemented as a BOOT project (Build, Own, Operate and Transfer). Integrated Citizen Service centers (ISCs) opened at different localities of the city support individuals who may not have ready access to broadband connectivity.
Citizen feedback on Bangalore One is a mixed bag. Most complaints on e-gov city portals and city services have a degree of commonality: the site being slow; individual services and applications requiring separate usernames and passwords; online payments often not completing the full workflow and receipts against payments not generated; and lack of an electronic mechanism to claim refunds or adjust duplicate payments against future needs.
Perhaps the biggest challenge faced by citizens is that electronic payment records. Departmental officials still rely on paper records and notices on non-payments are routinely issued even to citizens who have cleared their dues electronically. The purpose of providing e-services from the comfort of the citizen’s office, home or neighborhood citizen service center is thus defeated.
The solution to improving the e-gov services in cities lies in adopting an integrated IT management approach that encompasses the three pillars of transformation: People, processes and technology.
People: While the government workforce is usually composed of all ages, there is a preponderance of older age groups. More often than not, this workforce is IT illiterate and is also resistant to change.
While the technology induction program is being conceptualized, a determined effort to train the internal departmental workforce is critical to the success and efficient working of citizen e-services. Computer literacy training has to be supported by not just application-specific training but also change management courses that include mindset, stress management and psychological counseling.
Process re-engineering: Departmental processes have been created, amended and have become robust over decades. The processes have multiple checks and balances critical to managing a complex government system. While these processes help mitigate risk, they invariably lead to delayed decision making.
In order to induct less cumbersome processes and faster outcomes, the existing processes require to be re-engineered. Often, this requires change in the existing laid down rules. Internal memos and instructions may have to be withdrawn or amended.
As a short cut, automation (sans process re-engineering) has become the norm in most projects. This has led to work duplication for staff that is now required to maintain manual registers in addition to working on the applications. Mandatory re-engineering of department processes prior to automation is the urgent need of the hour.
Technology: Multiple departments offer fundamentally different city services. Vendors must strive to meet additional tech challenges such as need-based sizing of server and network loads; keeping citizen access to a service simple and common across multiple applications; building in adequate security and fraud prevention systems to maintain privacy; and integrate multiple applications built over different times and by different vendors.
The integration of people, processes and technology lies at the heart of efficient IT-supported urban management.
Sudhir Ahluwalia is a business expansion consultant.