ICTpost Governance Bureau
Sustainable development, access to services, equal opportunities, safety, governance and citizen participation are some of the key issues administrators of the modern cities face today. The urban population in India is set to grow to 40% as per publicly available estimates. This is going to put a considerable pressure on the infrastructure.
Basic services delivered by local authorities include education, health, public transport, water supply, sanitation, and environmental issues can benefit tremendously by the use of Information Technology (IT). IT has the potential to improve service delivery to the citizens at the local level and thus improving the relationship between governments and citizens.
Municipal operations, from an IT perspective, can be divided into three categories:
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External (Government to Citizen, Government to Business)
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Internal (Government to Employee)
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Intra-governmental (Government to Government)
Citizen Data Integration
For a government, it is important to know who the citizen is, what are the key attributes that define him and how various benefits and welfare schemes can be delivered to him. Having an IT framework that enables Citizen Data Integration can help the government know the citizens better.
For example, initiatives such as Multi-purpose Household Surveys help in collecting information about a citizen from the housing perspective. The data collected includes basic biographical information and detailed information like property owned, employment status, details of land holdings, educational qualifications and more. Such information can also be used to determine the eligibility of citizens for various welfare schemes being planned by the government. This is what Citizen Data Integration can enable. By drawing together a complete set of citizen data, Citizen Data Integration enables increased efficiency, reduced error rates, lower level of fraud and faster, higher quality decisions leading to better outcomes and a superior customer experience.
Municipal Operations
The core operations of the municipal corporations are to deliver key citizen centric services such as grievance redressal, issuing of certificates, tax collection and providing vital civic services. All these services are primarily focused on improving the quality of life of the citizen in the urban local body.
One of the important component of a complete e-Governance solution is the Geographic Information System (GIS). The objective is to develop a system to assist in strategic planning and resource mobilisation and utilisation, streamlining municipal taxation and management functions and planning and management of day-to-day operations in all areas
