The Indian Express          07.11.2013

E-governance: PMC to make departments accountable

With its decision to rope in a new firm for the e-governance
initiative, the PMC is all set to get the legal, urban community,
central stores, disaster management cell, anti-encroachment and health
departments to adopt a computer-based system for their day-to-day
working and

ensure transparency and accountability.

As a mandatory reform for the civic bodies reaping the benefits
of the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM), the
PMC had to implement the e-governance project to improve the delivery of
its civic services.

A credit rating agency, Fitch Ratings, in 2011 had expressed the
need for PMC to improve its services. The PMC’s implementation of
mandatory reforms under JNNURM were rated very good, particularly in
e-governance, property tax coverage and services to the urban poor.
However, the e-governance project later faced problems.

The PMC, in a bid to revive the e-governance project, has decided
to bring in many departments in its ambit and make the civic work
transparent.

“The civic body not only wants to resolve its problems in
e-governance, but extend its efforts to bring in more departments under
the project,” said Rahul Jagtap, in-charge of the computer department of
PMC.

There are several civic departments that have no computer-based
systems in place and still follow the old system of maintaining
registers, he said adding, “The new e-governance project will bring in
the legal department that handles all kinds of legal matters of the
civic body and urban community department that implements schemes for
public and central stores department.”

There will be a system for disaster management cell,
anti-encroachment department and health department that issues various
licenses and implements health schemes. Also, a system to maintain
records of civic staff will be a part of the e-governance project.

“The PMC bought the software for various departments, but the
agreement with the firms that provide the software has expired. Thus,
the civic administration is facing problem in continuing the use of the
software as there is no source code available to incorporate change in
software, as per the change in PMC rules. The software is also
outdated,” said municipal commissioner Mahesh Pathak, in a proposal
tabled before the standing committee to appoint Probity Soft solutions
to implement the project for the PMC, as it successfully implemented it
in neighbouring Pimpri Chinchwad Municipal Corporation (PCMC).

Standing committee chairperson Vishal Tambe said the committee had sought more details of the e-governance project for the PMC.

“The civic administration has tabled the proposal to inform that a
firm is appointed to revive the e-governance project. We have some
doubts and need clarification on it before allowing the civic
administration to go ahead with it. The issue will be discussed at the
next meeting,” he said.