The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh / Hyderabad News : GIS project gets bogged down

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Aug 11, 2007
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Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh - Hyderabad

GIS project gets bogged down

V. Geetanath

Lack of supervision, coordination with departments main reasons

Project to help improve civic facilities
GHMC fails to convince NRSA to release maps

HYDERABAD: The Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation’s grand scheme of developing a Geographical Information System (GIS) for providing better civic facilities and administration seems to run aground. Almost a year after it was launched, officials are unsure of its completion leave alone applicability.

The near Rs. 3-crore project involved a comprehensive survey for mapping all properties and utilities for an integrated system. The idea was also to have a proper classification of all residential and commercial properties in the twin cities for the proposed area based property tax system.

The time frame now looks impossible with “only 60 per cent” of the work completed and surveys done for 134 of the 254 localities in the erstwhile MCH area. Plus, the empowered committee of senior officials are yet to vet reports submitted by the six private agencies doing the job so far. GHMC’s Chief Information Officer and in-charge Saibaba explains that it was a very “tough exercise” and admits that the deadline of six months was too presumptuous. He claims surveys were completed and cross-checking was on. Base maps were ready and scaling of utilities like power and water lines, etc., could take another two-three months.

“A GIS project of this size was done nowhere in the country. We cannot afford to go wrong even assuming there are bound to be some errors since tax system would be based on it,” he says. Yet, the fact remains the work was dogged by delays due to lack of proper supervision, failure to coordinate with other departments and non-cooperation by the suspicious public.

Security aspect

The authorities have also failed to convince the National Remote Sensing Authority (NRSA) to release the aerial maps which could have made the job easier for agencies at the field level to map utilities. NRSA had started the work two years ago as part of the National Informatics Centre’s project but the information was not released due to “security concerns”. GHMC, therefore, had to go back to the base maps prepared a decade ago for the project. “The city has changed a lot since then and we have to fill several gaps,” points out an official. It might be two years before the GIS data can be utilised, confesses Mr. Saibaba.

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