KOCHI: Kochi Corporation’s long-pending ambitious plan to digitalise its services offered to the public is likely to get delayed. The deadline for the e-governance project was scheduled this month end. The multi-crore project was announced in early 2000 and have been gone through numerous revisions so far. The past one-and-a-half decades witnessed the civic authorities bring in two agencies, Information Kerala Mission (IKM) and Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), for the project.
After sorting out the issues, the Corporation Council gave another extension to TCS in this March to complete it on time. “Apart from the initial four services namely marriage certificate, birth and death certificates, grievance cell and Town Hall booking, few others like building permit and others have already been made available to the public,” said Anuja, secretary, Kochi CorporationThe Corporation website was revamped earlier by TCS as per the plan and have been working on the data entry for the modules for internal official use.
More than 15 modules are yet to be completed. The delay in completing the e-governance project would affect the Smart City rankings as well. The formation of IT cell for the operation and maintenance of
e-governance system and setting up of kiosks at different hospitals to ease off the common man’s worries are yet to be materialised fully.
Earlier Mayor Soumini Jain said that the Corporation will complete the work at any cost. A designated corporation employee will be deployed as the special officer in charge of the grievance cell to look into complaints related to the functioning of the corporation. In addition, the new certificates are already available while old data needs to be added with regard to the birth and death registrations.
A bouquet of online services like registration of births and deaths, D&O Trade Licence, agenda and minutes of council meetings and committees, issue and renewal of building permit, occupancy certificate, ownership certificate, building tax, payments of various taxes, right to information, complaint redressal, Town Hall booking, monitoring of file movement, e-tendering, e-payment, plan monitoring, and issue of various permits, licenses, and certificates will be available once the first phase of the project is over. Administrative functions like accounts, pension, leave sanctioning, salary, and storekeeping will be made online in the second phase.