defining pace of urban development: e-governance (international journal of applied engineering...

International Journal of Applied Engineering Research. ISSN 0973-4562, Volume 9, Number 1 (2014) pp. 71-80 © Research India Publications http://www.ripublication.com/ijaer.htm

Defining Pace of Urban Development: E-Governance in

Local Bodies and Public Works Departments (Emphasis on Indian Scenario*)

Omkar Parishwad and Vijay Gupta

SoftTech Engineers Pvt. Ltd., Pune, INDIA.

Abstract The rapid development of cities has been concerned with the delivery of services in an organized, planned manner. The urban sector in India, is struggling to make effective use of Information and Communication Technology to further deployment of resources for information retrieval, decision making, ongoing management, service delivery and outreach. All evidence points to the obvious benefits of the use of ICT; environmental and economic sustainability and general livability. This vision of e-governance involves ICT applications to mitigate the impacts of rapid urbanization. With E-Government systems revolutions befalling urban India due to various policy level interventions by the government; swiftness in development has been ascertained. The present paper investigates Urban Development that has brought e-Governance applications catering to the Government relating to Infrastructure Sector, amongst others; thus affecting environmental, social and economic structure significantly. The study further finds the scope of progress and affected areas for development, encouraged by certain e-Government solutions. The research helps us arrive at a line of action and necessary initiatives for successful implementation of ICT based solutions in Infrastructure industry. It also allows a peek into future scenario of improvements and deliberations in India in consideration with the scenario of developing countries.

*SoftTech Engineers Pvt. Ltd. Mr. Vijay Gupta (CEO), his Product Development, Implementation team and Omkar Parishwad (Business Analyst) have cited the efforts of the company in implementation of E-Governance solutions to Urban Local Bodies and PWD throughout India. AutoDCR® and PWIMS™ are registered trademark products of SoftTech Engineers Pvt. Ltd.

Omkar Parishwad & Vijay Gupta

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Keywords: Energy savings due to ICT applications, Infrastructure Works Procurement cycle, Building Plan Permit Automation-Scrutiny, Electronic Government, Urban Development and Sustainability.

1. Introduction Urban Development in developed countries is a complex natured algorithm and it requires a lot of efforts investigating the policies to be most fruitfully pursued. On one hand, the pressures to move economy again, to confront the problems of sluggish exports, and to lower high unemployment rates, together with the lack of government resources, for state and local investments, make it worst of times. On the other hand, it is generally in periods of strain or crisis that the significance of the urban sector for the national economy is truly appreciated. This may be the best of times to review policy priorities and to look for robust solutions to urban problems such as rapid urbanization.

Electronic government (e-Govt.) is an enhanced digital interactive system for co-ordination between government and its citizens, business entities and other government agencies through a web-based technology, harnessing the power of Information and Communication Technology (ICT). To support these information-age systems, the government requires a formalization of control over existing and newly generated e-records in departments and agencies by electronic service delivery systems.

As part of this shift towards e-Government, there has been an increasing recognition that efforts towards a holistic approach to governance for sustainable development required strategic national planning to ensure efficacy, transparency, responsiveness, participation and inclusion in the delivery of public services. In accordance to the guidelines set by USA in its e-Government Act (Public law, 2002), many countries are progressing towards online service delivery. The most popular citizen services that an e-Government system provides include the transactions of money, documents, information, and opinion polls pertaining to the ministries of health, education, labour, social welfare, and finance. Such systems are expected to lower the cost of the citizen services and improve their efficiency and quality.

Fig. 1: Objectives and Methodology for Research.

Defining Pace of Urban Development: E-Governance in Local Bodies 73

The concept of e-Gov is not just a vision of modern policy that recognizes the growing importance of ICT in driving the economic competitiveness, environmental sustainability, etc. but proceeded beyond the pure technological aspects of urban development. We are referring to ‘digital’ or ‘intelligent’ cities, terms that encompass social and environmental dynamics.Irrespectively, austerity is forcing change in fundamental issues of urban development in developing countries. Therefore it is a prerequisite to understanding this anomaly of advanced economies regarding sustainability and costly ICT applications while inferring the current urban development scenario.

2. Urban Development and E-government in India Current population of India is nearly 1.21 billion (Census 2011) i.e. about 17.31% of world population resides in India in comparison to 2.21% of total world land area. The Urban Rural statistics in India too are disturbing. The urban land area of India is only about 4% of total area of India (Census data, Town and Country Planning survey) supporting more than 31.16% (Census 2011) of country’s population. We can thus fathom the huge Infrastructure requirement for sustaining growth of such a large population.

Governments have understood the need to boost urban economies in a sustainable way and to foster more favorable economic and technological environments in rural areas. They have reacted by launching a set of broadband stimulus incentives intended to spur innovative projects such as intelligent transport, e-education, safety capabilities, smart infrastructure, etc. In today’s world, sustainability increasingly means reducing carbon emissions as well as achieving durable economic growth. Although some may be tempted to portray economy and environment as mutually exclusive tradeoffs, they can be seen as a single imperative. Growth that is noxious to the environment would be clearly unsustainable, as would environmental initiatives that fail to make economic sense. More than any other industrial sector, ICT industries sit at the intersection of economy and environment, and by extension at the heart of urban development.

3. Data Analysis and Interpretation 3.1 Stages of e-Government Development The assessment of e-Government is achieved through e-readiness categorization in Infrastructure Sector based on the level of interaction between Government and citizen through ICT (AOEMA, 2004, Gartner Group, 2000 and InfoDev, 2002) [1].

Emerging Presence. A government’s online presence is mainly comprised of a web page and / or an official website; links to Ministries or Departments of Education, Health, Social Welfare, Labour, Rural & Urban Planning, Public Works and Finance may / may not exist.

Enhanced Presence: Governments provide more information on Public policy and Governance. They have created links to archived information that is easily


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accessible to citizens, as for instance, Documents, Forms, Reports, Laws and Regulations and Newsletter.

Interactive presence: Governments deliver online services such as downloadable forms for Tax Payments and applications for Permits, Trade License Renewals.

Transactional presence: Governments begin to transform themselves by introducing two-way interactions between ‘Citizen and Government’. It includes options for Paying Taxes, Applying for ID Cards, Birth Certificates, Passports, Permits and License Renewals, as well as other similar G2C interactions, and allows the citizen to access these services online 24/7. All transactions are conducted online.

Networked/Connected presence: Governments transform themselves into a connected entity that responds to the needs of its citizens by developing an integrated back office infrastructure.

E-Government at the national level makes a governmental system interactive, cost-effective and quick, and provides quality service. Referring to the e-Government scenario as depicted in the surveys conducted by UN, India is lagging behind many countries which are at an equal or even on lower footing than India in the world. Many countries like Singapore, UAE, Israel, and Iran are well above world’s average (0.4877).Considering this trend (Fig.2) and the socio-economic factors of the country, we can conclude that; the economic structure of a country matters for its e-Government readiness. Regarding the socio-economic factors, the Gross Domestic Product and literacy affect e-Government scenario significantly. [3]

Fig. 2: Countries and their e-Development Trend Index [5]

4. Indian E-government Scenario in Infrastructure Sector JnNURM has imposed certain objectives based on the National Mission mode project on e-Governance in Municipalities. It covers all Urban Local Bodies in the cities (currently 67 eligible cities identified) with population of above 10 lakh as per 2001 Census. The objectives are to improve efficiency and effectiveness based on


interaction between local government and its citizens and other stakeholders, improve quality of internal local government operations to support and stimulate good governance., bring about transparency and accountability in the governance of urban local bodies, enhance interface between urban local bodies and citizens and help improve delivery of services to citizens.

Keeping the basic objective of improvement in urban governance, citizen services and financial position of ULB’s, JnNURM is assisting in implementing e-Government on financial level. Its policies are based upon integrated functioning of all the departments in a corporation and linkage with GIS, which will allow a visual user interface of infrastructure of the city.

The local bodies contribute more effectively to the development process and provide the citizens with better living conditions by meeting their aspirations in terms of required amenities, infrastructure and better environmental conditions, thus contributing to social and economic development of the society by better urban management.

4.1 Building Permit Procedure Automation and Scrutiny Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) was the first ULB taking e-Governance initiative in Automating scrutiny and approval process of building plans namely AutoDCR®, and for this has won the ‘World Leadership Award’. The case study tries to understand benefits achieved and challenges faced by PMC and the potential of the system to help ULB’s across India to bring uniformity and transparency in the building plan permit service to the citizen. [4]

Pune Municipal Corporation had taken major initiatives for policy changes, re-engineering the processes, finding more ways to substitute old methods of governance, expensive and over sized administration, delays in approvals and heaps of files in 2005. PMC was facing the challenges of rapid urbanization and a declining public image due to the increasing gap between service delivery and public expectations and decided to align their services to meet with the growing needs of the urbanization. To achieve these objectives, a Technology scheme: AutoDCR® (Automatic Scrutiny of building plans) was adopted which could help PMC deliver, efficient and transparent services to citizens for Building Permits.

Concept: Auto-DCR is a unique concept of eliminating human intervention building plan scrutiny process. The system reads CAD drawing and produces scrutiny reports in a few minutes, mapping all the relevant development control rules to the drawing entities automatically. The system automates lengthy and cumbersome manual process of checking the development regulations, thus reducing paper work, valuable time and effort of Architect and Authority. AutoDCR® accepts building plans online (Fig.3) and captures electronic versions of the documents along with the metadata.


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Fig. 3: Building Plan Approval Procedure.

The web component of AutoDCR® automates entire building permission process,

including online acceptance of proposal, electronic file movement as per designed work flows and rule engine to check validity of documents. The system has integrated mechanisms for documents and drawing management and conversion of approved drawings in pdf for future references. Automatic alerts and notifications are built-in features of the system. The documents are signed digitally. Payments are made through integrated payment gateways. The application captures site-visit reports and photos through mobile devices. The system is integrated to GIS database of the ULB’s for thematic queries related to permission. The benefits to the society were analyzed from the results that were derived from the survey. The results are encouraging;

Time required for sanctioning of Building proposal: Paper-based system: 45-50 days; AutoDCR® system: 1- 21 days.

Workforce efficiency: Paper-based system: 60 %; AutoDCR® system: 95 % Sanctioned Proposals: Before AutoDCR®: 2500 cases; After AutoDCR®:

4500 cases AutoDCR® has currently been successfully implemented in about 40 Municipal

Corporations in India. Although the Building Permit procedure automation has been done, the next stage of integrated working of all departments with the help of GIS is being achieved on Municipal corporation level with the help of JnNURM guidelines.

4.2 Public Works Procurement Transformation The Infrastructure works procurement cycle is almost uniform in common wealth countries and are depicted in a PWD manual. The preparation of estimates, administrative and technical sanction of estimates, maintaining Schedule of Rates (SOR) for respective zones, ensuring transparency in the tendering process,


maintaining measurement book and approval of billing and most importantly provisioning a decision making system that provides alerts and reports covering all areas of its operations, are key parameters desired from complete procurement management system.

A typical works organization like PWD has core line processes which includes procurement of works and supporting processes which include Budgeting, Accounting and Establishments [4]. One case study of PWIMS™ is implementation at Maharashtra Industrial development Corporation. PWIMS™ at MIDC is significantly enhancing MIDC’s responsiveness to its customers, its ability to monitor various aspects of its services and creating significant accountability and transparency in works procurement related operations. All the records related to Procurement of work are kept in a single repository with version controls for future success.

Fig. 4: Typical Processes in Public Works Organization for Management of Works.

4.3 Line of action and initiatives for successful implementation of ICT applications The challenges and opportunities to improve the corporation’s own operations as well as the effectiveness of its service delivery mechanism which would lead to administrative and management revolution.

Risks Mitigation strategy

The complex nature of records and many rules interrelated to each other. Authorities engaged were interpreting the rules as they could understand.

System Requirement Specifications (SRS) document is prepared by gathering and integrating information. Considerable efforts are made to bring uniformity in the interpretation of the rules.


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Accessing Information: The person who is accessing information may not necessarily be educated person

User friendly software that would allow different categories of users to visualize the data in a form easy to understand.

Shortage of skills shall call for extensive training for the government officials and operating staff.

Training and awareness programs are required to be conducted at all levels.

Strict Adherence to specifications: A simple change may invoke legal implications for govt. departments.

So great care has been taken regarding legal implications throughout the project lifecycle.

Security & Privacy of Information: Allows information to be gathered, stored, and shared more readily than ever before, it also raises imp issues of protecting information from unauthorized changes and safeguarding personal privacy.

Proper user authentication and access control mechanisms are implemented to ensure that only authorized users can access any particular information. Biometric login technology can also be used to safeguard information by unauthorized users while it flows through communication channels.

4.4. Information and Communications Technology innovations and their Low Carbon effect The combined environmental and economic benefit can be achieved through innovative communications applications and solutions in various areas. ICT companies can further help organizations from sectors and individual consumers reduce emissions by increasing energy efficiency, reducing energy use, virtualising activities that currently require physical resources, and manage other scarce resources. The potential savings are as per the graphs shown below;

Fig. 5: Potential savings from ICT applications to energy savings in other sectors

(Alcatel-Lucent analysis of GeSI SMART 2020 data)

5. Conclusion E-governance is perhaps the only solution to sustain the growth of the developing country like India. The need for sustainable development due to population explosion


and awareness about the ICT benefits is what’s driving the e-Government integration in India. The final objective is to attain a networked presence by archiving the metadata through this integration. Our Government Organizations need to ensure that through e-Governance they attain a great level of efficiency in delivery of services to the citizen. The records and data captured electronically is shared among various departments engaged in service delivery mechanism of the city. For example; the City planners should be able to view the information on how many building permissions are granted in which regions. Accordingly they will be able to better plan water supply, drainage, road network and various other services required by the citizen who are going to occupy such units in near future. We are required to have networked information from various departments, so that the citizen should not move from pillar to post for getting ‘No Objections’ from various departments. Single window clearance would be need of hour to bring efficiency in overall service delivery system of government enterprises.

6. Acknowledgement Mrs Sheetal Jagtap and Mr. Neetesh Singhal from AutoDCR® Team, Mr. Chandrashekhar from PWIMS™ Team and Mr Vijay Jain for imparting knowledge regarding e-Government sector. Also, our Product Development, Implementation, Business Development and Marketing Team for their seamless efforts during the years.

References

[1] Faisal, M.N. & Rahman (2008), Z. An International Journal, E-government in

India: modeling the barriers to its adoption and diffusion, Electronic Government, 5 (2), 181–202.

[2] E-Governance initiatives in India, History, http://workspace.unpan.org/sites/internet/documents/S4IN13%20E-Governance%20Initiatives%20in%20Inida.pdf

[3] Jamal A. Farooquie. A Review of E-Government Readiness in India and the UAE, International Journal of Humanities and Social Science, Vol. 1 No. 1; January 2011, Centre for Promoting Ideas, USA.

[4] SoftTech Engineers Pvt. Ltd. (2013) Products description, http://www.softtech-engr.com/

[5] EGS (2012, 2010, 2008, 2005, 2004, 2003). UN E-government Survey and analysis, Economic and Social Affairs. (Retrieved during December 15, 2013), from: http://unpan3.un.org/egovkb/datacenter/countryview.aspx.


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