The Times of India              01.11.2013

PMC to make e-governance more effective

PUNE: The Pune Municipal Corporation's e-governance system will undergo a major revamp. The present system, which is almost 15 years old, will be replaced by a new one which will help make administrative works more people-oriented and interactive.

The civic administration has placed a proposal effecting these changes before the standing committee which will discuss it next week.

The project, sponsored by a group of banks, will cost Rs 2.2 crore and would effectively mean replacing the existing system with 22 new software programs.

"Some of the software programs currently used in the PMC are over 15 years old. The programming languages are outdated. So, the need for a complete revamp," said a senior official associated with the project. The official added that almost all systems that are currently "offline" will be converted into "online" after the changes.

This will help in better coordination between various offices of the PMC, which are geographically apart. The interlinking of these offices will help in quick exchange of data and communication, the official said.

Works such as allotment of birth and death certificates, water bills, payment system, citizen's facilitation centres will are likely to improve after the conversion to the online system. Even works in offices of disaster management cell, law division, municipal secretary office, urban development department will see an improvement.

"It will be an open source system which has been successfully tried in other municipal corporations. So there will be fewer hurdles in getting their licences," the official said.

The e-governance system emphasizes on use of technology in the government administration. The Information Technology (IT) driven applications are used in various government offices.

These technologies are used for improving services between government and citizen, government to employees, government to government, and government and industries.

The e-governance aims to reduce paper work and provide government services to customers in a more efficient way.

The Indian Express              01.11.2013

E-governance project: PMC to go PCMC way

The Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) has decided to follow the neighbouring Pimpri-Chinchwad Municipal Corporation (PCMC) to implement the e-governance project to enable user-friendly online facility for civic services after the PCMC project was recognised at the national level.

In a proposal tabled before the standing committee, municipal commissioner Mahesh Pathak said the PCMC work in e-governance has been applauded by the Union government and all the civic bodies had been recommended to follow the model.

"The PMC had undertaken the e-governance project in 2009, as per the guidelines under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM). However, the civic administration has been facing problem with regard to its implementation, as the software is outdated and the civic administration is unable to bring in changes to accommodate the revised civic rules, as there is no source code available for the purpose," he said.

Later, the company that was shortlisted to implement the project was blacklisted and there had been a delay in appointing a new agency for the purpose. Thus, the PMC administration has decided to rope in the same agency that was working in PCMC for the project.

"The PMC will have to sign an agreement with the agency. The civic body will not have to shell out anything, as four banks have decided to pay the agency Rs 2.2 crore for the e-governance project," he added.

A total of 28 civic facilities will be provided through the project. It includes collection of property tax, local body tax, issuance of birth and death certificates.