Bangalore set to go `online' from April

Bangalore set to go `online' from April

The Hindu Business Line

STARTING April next, 15 minutes is all Bangaloreans will have to wait to pay their power, water, phone bills; submit passport forms; pay property tax or get land-related services.

All this will be at a single, citizen-friendly centre where they can sip coffee or browse through a library, thanks to a new e-governance initiative called BangaloreOne.

The Karnataka Government on Monday signed an agreement with the combine of CMS Computers and Ram Informatics to set up its ambitious one-stop shop for citizens' services.

The G2C (Government to citizen) system through 50 citizen service centres would be offered through mobile, kiosk or the Internet and would be extended to Mysore, Hubli-Dharwad and other urban centres and create new job opportunities under the public-private partnership initiative, said Additional Chief Secretary Mr Vijay Gore.

The team was chosen from among seven bidders including CMC, BEL, Wipro, ECIL and TCS.

It will be the technology provider to the Government on a five-year BOOT basis, according to Mr Rajeev Chawla, Secretary, e-governance.

The system is based on Microsoft's .Net software, which has been offered at 45 per cent of the cost.

In the project, estimated to cost Rs 10 crore initially, BangaloreOne will provide 24 services of seven departments - Bangalore Water supply & Sewerage Board, Bangalore Electric Supply Company, Bangalore Mahanagara Palike, BSNL, RTO, Stamps & Registration, Passport, and Commercial Tax Office.

As many as 15 centres would be set up in the first phase and 35 more would be added in the next two years to cover all the municipal bodies around Bangalore.

The consortium would hire 400 employees, who would work in two shifts - from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.

UTI Bank would handle the finance of the project and also pay Rs 3 crore annually towards their salaries.

The State will provide 200 PCs to the info centres while the private partner will train the staff and network the centres.

The CMS-Ram Informatics combine would be paid a transaction-based service charge up to a maximum of Rs 4.70 each from the respective departments.

Some 30 lakh routine transactions are expected in a month. Mr Chawla said that the system would be extended to the districts as rural digital services centres, 2,000 of which would be set up in two years.

BangaloreOne is part-funded up to Rs 1.5 crore by the Hyderabad-based National Institute of Smart Government (NISG) under a UNDP project.

The NISG CEO, Mr J. Sathyanarayana, said that BangaloreOne was fashioned after Hyderabad's eSeva, which has recorded three crore transactions in over two years.

Mr Jagannath, Regional Manager of CMS Computers, said once it gets going, BangaloreOne would be a cut above eSeva; it has new features such as the 15-minute service, a disaster recovery service, a third party audit, besides the ambience.

Similar systems are being planned for Chennai, Ahmedabad and Baroda.

According to Mr Chawla, a separate BangaloreOne directorate is being set up.

Future transactions through BangaloreOne would include exam results, income-tax filing, cinema tickets, matrimonials, police department information, and bus passes.