Bangalore-One: Lacunae come to the fore

Bangalore-One: Lacunae come to the fore
New Indian Express

BANGALORE: The cracks in the ambitious e-governance project Bangalore-One (B1) planned by the State promising 15 free, one stop e-service shops by April 1 in the city are showing.

With Bangalore City Corporation (BCC) and Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board (BWSSB) wanting to keep away and continue with their successful e-service kiosks even after B1, investments seem redundant.

BCC commissioner K. Jothiramalingam would rather have the four computerised service centres of BCC even after B1 starts. ‘‘The BCC service centres will continue and we are also planning to set up 12 more,’’ he told this website’s newspaper.

The 50-odd Cauvery Kiosks of BWSSB would also continue to operate even as it looks for other partners like banks and BSNL. ‘‘The 50 Cauvery kiosks are unmanned centres while the B1 centres will be manned. In fact, our kiosks are not enough to meet the demand and B1 centres will supplement them,’’ said a senior BWSSB official.

BDA commissioner M.N. Vidyashankar, however, maintained that BDA was not part of the B1 initiative.

These seem to contradict what e-governance secretary Rajeev Chawla said while B1 was launched. He said all kiosks run by stake-holders will be phased out to reduce duplication .

B1 service centres will be largely supported by Government and stake-holder organisations like BCC, BWSSB, BSNL, Bangalore Electricity Supply Company (BESCOM) and other private service providers.

Each stake-holder will donate 2,000 sq ft office space to B1 and UTI Bank will pay staff salaries while the Government has committed to provide 200 computers. The Government will pay Rs. 4.70 per transaction for an estimated 35 lakh transactions a month.

For this initiative, the State has signed an agreement with a consortium of Ram Informatics and CMS Computers.

All stake-holders have already computerised their services and the consortium has to just put up a front-end interface and maintain B1 centres.