eGov-Nov-2011-[46-48]-A CEO for Mumbai-Sanjay Mehta

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opinion

HIGH-TECH GOVERNANCE

Sanjay Mehta CEO MAIA Intelligence

A CEO for Mumbai? A power-packed leader, armed with high-end technologies and equipped with new-age mechanisms can fulfil the futuristic imagination for having a CEO for Metros

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here is a discussion on a strong need for a CEO for Mumbai. Let’s assume that very soon Mumbai shall have its own CEO. What shall be the person’s role? How he/ she will drive the city? What all resources he/she shall require to do so? The Mumbai CEO would be a leader with power and authority to act, and seen to be taking up tasks. The CEO would be chosen by the people, and would be removed by them. The CEO will be accountable to the people he’s supposed to serve. An empowered CEO would be guided by a council of specialists, including one member from each government agency such as MMRDA, MHADA, Mumbai Police, BEST, MSRTC and NGOs. He would be authroised to seek reports from such different authorities. At the worst of times, when everything goes into paralysis like it happened, disastrously, in July 2005 when there is the lack of power, water, relief, etc, Mumbai CEO will be the most of ‘a trusted face’, the Person In Charge. How will the Mumbai CEO to be, run the city’s municipal operations efficiently, effectively and economically?

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If given a chance, Mumbai CEO shall have highly diversified tasks in terms of measuring the performance of the services delivered by various government entities, and there is lot of data available to be analyzes & assessed that shall help him take informed decision. In the last decade or so, Mumbai has grown substantially in terms of population, infrastructure, and economy. Use of performance measurement systems to evaluate how well their operating agencies perform shall be critical for the CEO of any modern city today. The diversity of services, practices and cultures inherent in municipal government complicates efforts to get data on time for taking right decisions. Each operational unit normally has its own idiosyncratic view of an optimal mix of business process, customer relations and human resource practices. CEO of Mumbai shall require a Municipal performance measures which are more federalist in structure than the ‘single business line’ approach most often used in private industry. CEO of Mumbai shall enter office with a promise to improve city’s municipal operations and it’s connection to the public. A team thus will be needed to develop and put together the “Mumbai

The Mumbai CEO would be a leader with power and authority to act

CEO Dashboard” to track performance of the city’s operating units and make recommendations for improvements. It will help the CEO operate the city more efficiently by moving the focus of city services to outcomes. Just as critical, it shall help CEO make city operations transparent and accountable, which will further improve public perception of the city in showing verifiable, successful results. A CEO Dashboard would presumably start with measures of performance: overall growth and its sectorial breakdown, plus infrastructure, economy and the like. Trade, industry, population and employment would also be significant indicators. Of course, such measures are available in the various governmental surveys, and various other statistical compilations. How would our hypothetical dashboard data be different? First, they would be more up-to-date and reliable. Second, they would be compiled from the ground up, allowing our ‘CEO’ immediate access to the disaggregated source data. Suppose manufacturing growth is looking anemic—let’s find out which sectors are worst off, and even whether specific firms are struggling. Even better, one could see how the head office—in this case, the civic


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eGov-Nov-2011-[46-48]-A CEO for Mumbai-Sanjay Mehta by eGov Magazine - Elets Technomedia Pvt Ltd - Issuu