In The Spotlight

Driving change for citizens – the Pune way

Data Quest Article, 02/2010, Ganesh Natarajan

Within an ocean of mediocrity lies one oasis of aspiration and performance. The Pune Municipal Corporation has shown many times that it has the vision and ability to translate citizen expectations to delivery – of a new environment and a new city for its many constituencies. A few years ago it was one of the first to use technology to speed up the transfer of properties and land and the announcement of a fully wireless enabled city created a new hope that a city which has been transformed through the growth of the IT and BPO sector in the first decade of the new millennium would blaze new trails in enabling seamless information access for all its citizens.

It takes focus to build an environment where citizens can access the corporation through multiple modes – the telephone and the internet in addition to letters, and the recent move by the Corporation to develop a Citizen Grievance Redressal system and support it though a call center that is equipped to handle and direct specific issues to the correct area for finding and implementing solutions is one step in that direction. An ambitious project is now on the anvil which will integrate all citizen services through a comprehensive ERP and Municipal Commissioner Zagade with an able team of professionals helping to articulate and enable the project are determined to put Pune on the map of outstanding Citizen to Government interfaces.

The progress of e-Government projects in the country has hitherto consisted of anecdotal success stories like the much vaunted Karnataka Bhoomi project and the Andhra Twin Cities initiative and the recent Passport Computerisation program but with the country set to return to a nine percent growth trajectory in the not so distant future, a more orchestrated effort between the Ministry of IT, the States and Corporations and all providers of Hardware Telecommunications and Software applications is needed if the ten billion dollar investment planned in e-Government is to be effectively utilized to solve Information needs of future generations of Indians.

There are many other rays of hope too, The CISCO Connected Communities initiative which is being implemented in some of the emerging townships in the country is an opportunity for many new investments, from Lavasa near Pune to the planned new cities in Assam West Bengal and many other states to initiate green field projects while brown field initiatives as seen in Pune start delivering results. At a recent National Committee meeting for this initiative in Bangalore, the consensus that emerged was that the time has come to move from rhetoric to action. Some significant success stories need to be implemented and seen on the ground in 2010 so that e-Government projects can gather momentum. The excellent partnership between the Ministry of IT and NASSCOM through the National Institute of Smart Governance has put in place many of the governance mechanisms needed to launch major initiatives and there should be opportunities provided for many more firms to participate in development and implementation of central mission mode solutions as well as state level projects.

The National Committee of the CII has been focused on some of the more innovative applications of IT in the domestic context particularly in e-Government, Agriculture, Healthcare, Education and SMEs. The last has been one of the most exciting because our efforts have shown how much cooperation is needed between all the players in the eco-system - Software and Applications providers, Hosting service providers, Systems Integrators, the larger companies themselves and the Government to enable Manufacturing excellence even in Micro SMEs.. The hosted solution that is being proposed for the auto cluster, the extension of medical services through high quality telemedicine initiatives and the productivity improvement in agriculture through tested IT enablement – all this and more has been shown to be possible on a pilot level and can be scaled as national missions in this year and beyond.

There have been too many disparate moves in the past which have resulted in more chaos than results and if India is to take its rightful place as a major economic power with a position of leadership in core sectors to add to its proven prowess in IT services, higher productivity and capabilities have to be enabled by IT and Business Services providers to new users for these services. A concerted effort is now underway with the CII Initiative which should lead results in the current year and with many NASSCOM companies having their eyes firmly set on the domestic opportunity; success should not prove to be elusive any longer!