The Hindu : New Delhi News : NDMC's computerisation drive fails

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Sep 14, 2004

New Delhi

New Delhi

NDMC's computerisation drive fails

By Sandeep Joshi

NEW DELHI, SEPT. 13. The New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC) might claim to have made "much progress" in its efforts to make the civic body information technology (IT)-savvy, but the fact remains that even after an investment of crores of rupees, the citizens are still awaiting the launch of electronically-enabled services.

What has surprised everyone is that while the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) has been successfully offering different services to citizens through its website, the NDMC, which started its computerisation drive almost five years ago, is yet to have an interactive website. Significantly, even the President, A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, lauded the MCD's move to provide electronically-enabled services to its residents.

Both civic bodies offer almost similar services. However, the basic difference between the two is the amount of effort required in collecting and compiling the data and managing services considering the area they cover. While the MCD covers over 95 per cent of the Capital's total area of 1483 sq. km., the NDMC manages just 42 sq. km. of VVIP area in the central part of Delhi.

It was early last year when the MCD started providing various services through its interactive website like booking of parks and community centres online, getting death and birth certificates at their doorstep and even make payments to the civic body. It also opened a number of citizens' service bureaus.

However, the NDMC, which has established a full-fledged IT Department and has even hired an IT company -- CMC Corporation -- for computerisation of its departments and e-storage of its records, is still to initiate a major initiative for its citizens. The CMC Corporation has been working for the NDMC for the past several years, but it has failed to make any major impact on its functioning. Even repeated reminders from successive NDMC's chairpersons to their subordinates asking them to use computers in their day-to-day functioning has not yielded results.

Those applying for birth or death certificates have to wait for weeks as there are no detailed computerised records of the same available with the Council. Its employees go through several files to fetch data after which certificates are issued to applicants. While in the MCD all these services are available online and people do not have to go to its office to fill forms, long queues can be seen at the NDMC's office on Mandir Marg where applicants have to face the bitter experience of "babudom".

The state of the NDMC's computerisation drive can be gauged from the fact that its much-hyped Interactive Voice Response Service (IVRS), launched a few months ago with much fanfare, is lying virtually defunct. The service was supposed to electronically register complaints of citizens and then automatically forward them to the respective control rooms and service centres for redressal.

But citizens have not only been complaining about the system's failure to register their complaints. Conceding that the effort to provide electronically-enabled services to its citizens has been delayed by a few months, the NDMC spokesperson said the Council would soon launch its interactive website. He, however, claimed that its computerisation drive was well on track.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

New Delhi