eGov-Feb-2010-[42-43]-Process Framework for Urban eGovernance

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Process Framework for Urban e-Governance www.tcs.com

INTRODUCTION The National e-Governance Plan (NeGP) launched by Government of India has induced a wave of automation in procedures in government departments.

IT implementation has found a place on agenda of almost every department. One of the key aspects missing in all the work so far is the reach of these initiatives to the common man, who is the customer for the services. The provision of citizen centric service through e-Governance shall lead to involvement of citizens in developmental works in their surrounding as well as the end user satisfaction. In addition, the city administration shall be able to better manage the services with the help of statistics generated and new revenue channel.

NEED FOR IT SOLUTION FOR SERVICES As per Census 2001, the urban areas in India account for 27.8 % of the population. About one-third of urban India (71 million) lives in metropolitan cities. The number of such cities in India has increased from 23 in 1991 to 35 in 2001. Urbanisation is associated with increased incomes, improved health, higher literacy and improved quality of life. In the recent past we have seen rise in urbanisation trends with the onset of shift of Information Technology Enabled Services (ITES) to Tier II cities which fall in the list of million plus cities. The city administrations need to step-up the plans to use Information Technology via e-Governance initiatives aiming for the provision of the urban services to

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Praful Gharpure

the growing number of potential urban customers.

STAGES IN e-GOVERNANCE INITIATIVES e-Governance initiatives go through three distinct phases of implementation.

These stages are: 1. Provision of Static Information: This stage is where an urban local body/government department has a website of its own. Citizens can access information, seek procedural details about city services, however they cannot interact with any of the process within Urban Local Body (ULB)/ department 2. Capability for Transactional Services: This stage is where users can carry out transactions online.

3. Creating Online Communities: At this stage, ULB website provides interoperability with various organisations within urban area.

Majority of current e-Governance initiatives fall under the first stage.

ANALYSIS OF EXISTING SOLUTIONS Customer Requirements For a user of urban services in India, there are some basic requirements which are “Critical to Quality” (CTQs) for the service under consideration.

These essentially are the “Voice of Customer” (VOCs). In the context of the current subject where the final aim is to deliver an improved urban service, the improvement measures, need to be based on end user requirements. The

solutions need to be complimentary for the user requirements which come out from such VOCs. Some of the VOCs for the subject under consideration from the customer viewpoint are as follows: • No clarity of the setup of Civic authority (Municipal Corporations) • Poor information availability on initiatives • Lack of clarity on procedures • Time consuming processes lead to ignorance • Lack of accountability of officials • Too many agencies and overlap of work • Interdependencies/ document exchange NEED FOR FRAMEWORK IT implementation in Urban India is happening in bits and pieces. Though IT has found place on the agenda of all the departments, however, an integrated approach to its roll-out and effective sharing of IT infrastructure to economise the initiatives is required. At National Level this has been achieved with agencies like NIC where a centralised data base has been created and information is available through one source. However it still falls in the first category i.e. providing static information.

For effective implementation of e-Governance in Urban Services, it is essential for these initiatives to mature to stage II where in its users can carry out transactions and use the service leading to wide-ranging benefits.

A centralised data repository shall result in faster transactions and reduction of non value added work for the customer of

the service. A single process framework covering all the service providers shall facilitate this. ITIL ® process framework is one such option which has been widely used in IT Service management. An IT solution covering the processes shall aid to bring out the required transparency in compliance of the processes.

PROCESS FRAMEWORK The ITIL ® is a set of best practices intended to facilitate the delivery of high quality Information Technology (IT) services. It defines IT process mechanisms that are required to support businesses processes. The ITIL ® processes aims at achieving high financial quality and value in IT operations. These procedures are supplier-independent and have been developed to provide guidance across the breadth of IT infrastructure, development, and operations.

IT Service Management (ITSM) has derived enormous benefit from ITIL ® best practice approach and follows ITIL ® framework in accordance to the ITIL ® documentation. ITIL ® best practices are drawn from the IT implementations in public and private sectors internationally.

MAPPING URBAN SERVICES TO ITIL ® PROCESS FRAMEWORK. The e-Governance initiatives in the different departments are carried out independent of each other. As such the benefits of the initiatives are not visible to the citizens who are the customers to the service. In addition to this, the city administration has very limited control over it. These processes need to be defined and implemented across the service provider departments in order to bridge the interdependencies and facilitate a smooth work flow. This current challenge is the lack of co-ordination of work within same implementation area resulting in rework, failure of a service.

IT SOLUTION FRAMEWORK While providing ITIL ® practices the organisations within themselves have different IT applications supported by different teams. In the context of urban services a similar situation exists where in individual service provider is interacting with same set of users independently

multiple times. As a result the processes followed result in series of rework loops, duplication of efforts and non value added works. At the same time the optimal use of IT infrastructure is not achieved.

Application of ITIL framework to the provision of urban services shall result in mutual benefits to the providers as well as its users.

to be able to fulfill the same. This shall also call for certain decision making to bring out certain changes to infrastructure / put new infrastructure element etc. For such a solution to be in place there are certain prerequisites listed as under:

IMPLEMENTATION CHALLANGES

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Following are the challenges that stand out for implementation of such a framework: 1. Infrastructure capacity 2. Compatibility with other IT systems/ databases /platforms 3. Scalability of existing applications 4. Information exchange mechanisms 5. Geo referencing of assets 6. Ability to carry out financial transactions POTENTIAL SOLUTION IDEAS The intent of e-Governance is to accelerate the current processes by automating the same and making them accessible to the end-user. It shall lead to value enhancement for both process owner department and the customer of the process.

Phase I - Service Requests Fulfillment The ground work for the type of solution described here is reasonably in place with IT implementation across majority of departments providing citizen service. The need of the hour is to bring these services under one single place for user to avail those.

Federated identity management using Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) is a potential quick win solution where in the user’s identity if already created on a central website / service provider, it can be linked with the identity of the same user with other provider based on unique linkage parameter.

Phase II: Facilitate Integrated Service Provision by all Providers The Phase I solution described facilitates the provision of service requested by a user for a particular department. The next phase is where the user can submit a request which needs co-ordination of multiple service providers

BENEFITS A few important ones are listed below: Information on volume of service requests with break-up by type and nature • Cycle time and first level resolution of service requests.

• Monitoring of incidents (Complaints) and their resolution cycle time • Information on frequency and details of changes to city infrastructure • Useful information for capacity planning for infrastructure provision based on land transactions/service requests received • Control of building activity in areas where infrastructure capacity is inadequate The Tertiary Benefits include • Online exchange of interdepartmental user specific data to effectively reduce cycle time for service fulfilment.

• Initiation of transactions by citizens shall lead to revenue enhancement for ULB. • Optimised IT infrastructure.

• Employment opportunities through mechanism like agent login.

• Reduced paperwork.

CONCLUSION Successful implementation is a key to realization of benefits of concept like the one proposed which brings in multiple stakeholders on a single forum.

Careful planning, selected piloting and ease of replication of solution is the key success factors. In order to translate the concept to reality one needs to adopt a two phase approach as outlined below. \\

Praful Gharpure Tata Consultancy Services

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