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E-Tracking of BBMP complaints
Written By Rithesh - 21 July, 2009
Bangalore egovernance BBMP Media Reports
BBMP plans to computerize its control room and introduce e-tracking of all grievances.
"The BBMP is planning to make its control room on line. The system will be in place within a month. Any complaint that you make to the central control room will be immediately absorbed by the software and the officials concerned can see it online. A message in the form of an sms, which has the public grievance number and area from where the complaint is received, will be sent to the officer concerned immediately."
epaper.dnaindia.com/dnabangalore/newsview.aspx
I should say this is a very positive initiative from BBMP. Hopefully it will see the light of the day soon (one month is what BBMP is promising).
COMMENTS
Outsourcing is not the anathema- OCMS package is ready in NIC
Vasanthkumar Mysoremath - 22 July, 2009 - 16:06
Dear All,
After nearly 8 months of backbreaking Research and Analysis on how to solve the problems pertaining to civic services like water, elec, garbage, etc., of aam aadmi in his daily life (Research facility Courtesy: National Informatic Centre of the Min.of Infn.& Tech, Karnataka Center with space in their office with a computer with high end technical back up andwith back end operation from their scientific pool, and Shri N.L.Narendra Babu, now sitting MLA, Mahalakshmi Layout Constituency) I was instrumental in web designing, content creation and launching a portal: http://www.rajajinagara.kar.nic.in (now being relaunched as Mahalakshmi Layout constitutency website, for helping Mr.N.L.Narendra Babu, MLA of the then Rajajinagara constitutency now sitting MLA from Mahalakshmi Layout Constituency (due to delimitation of wards and redrawing boundaries) to be in touch with his tech savvy voters directly and other non-tech savvy aam aadmis through cyber cafes to solve their demands and grievances. It was an OCMS - Online Complaints Management System, managed from the MLA's office.
In addition, the portal contained very useful information about the constituency and also information / downloading application forms and online submission etc., for obtaining voter ID, driving license, passport, telephone / cell numbers of various officers of service providers, stake holders, IT/ITeS services in Rajajinagara etc. and a host of other information that are required by the citizens.
This OCMS enabled people, to lodge any complaint on demands and grievances with 5 clicks of mouse with the help of ready made menus and obtain instantly a computer generated ack.No. for follow up action and with facility for escalating the complaints to the next levels of responsibile officers.
The common man was also enabled to lodge a complaint (free) by just getting into a cyber cafe, giving details of their complaint for uploading the same to the MLA of Rajajinagara and obtain the automatically generated ack number.
The portal received, within one year of its launch, more than 50,000 hits (Rajajinagara voters: 2.5 lakhs) and about 350 online complaints, most of them solved and intimated to the complainants either through their email IDs / telephone numbers
The only difficulty we found was that the lower end officials of service providers, though very helpful, were not able to log on to the website and give a feedback on the successful redressal of the grievances of the citizens (they are used to paper work) to their higher ups who were the designated officials to respond to the MLA's office. They were helpful in their responxes over phone/mobiles.
Kudos to Karnataka Center of National Informatics Center; they did a commendable job and the back end operation of OCMS is an identifiable package available with them for any elected representative who desires to adopt the OCMS with necessary checks, balances and by creating localised statistic content for embedding the same without much problem.
- NIC's OCMS is available for the asking by any elected representative/ government department..
- GO GET IT. Office of NIC is located in VI Floor, Visveswaraya Mini Towers, opp: coffee board building, Ambedkar Veedhi. Mr.Venkateshan, State Informatics Officer, Cell No.9986731299.
- Is there a political will? 'Hittala gida maddalla' ?
- Is anybody listening?
- Vasanthkumar Mysoremath http://www.rajajinagara.kar.nic.in
murali772 - 21 July, 2009 - 05:41
Perhaps they need to outsource these kinds of jobs to competent professional organisations. I am not sure they have the in-house capacity, nor be able to build or sustain it.
idontspam - 21 July, 2009 - 09:34
The wrong approach for BBMP will be to do all of this by themselves. The control room will become hand in glove with the officials and become dysfunctional very soon. In fact the control room itself should be hosted outside of any BBMP premises. Having a third party be accountable for raising, tracking and closing trouble tickets and publishing statistics directly to a public website will ensure they also escalate unresolved tickets in time.
This is a chance to do it right.
pathykv - 21 July, 2009 - 15:30
What is more important is the action taken on the complaints, not just the concerned officer replying vaguely that 'action being taken ' or 'will be taken'.
Only if the problem pointed out by the complainant is resolved to his satisfaction the same should be closed.
K.V.Pathy
How are they implementing the proposed system?
Rithesh - 21 July, 2009 - 16:24
An outsourced model seams to be the best way forward. Atleast it might solve the complaint recording issues, if not the actual problem itself.
It makes sense for us to ask BBMP how they plan to implement the propsed e-tracking system - like who will be handling the customer calls (whether it will be BBMP employees or is it being outsourced) and who is developing the software to run his system and ofcourse the costs involved.
RTI or can somebody use their contacts?
I hope they will also consider SB's proposal for a toll free service with a easy to remember phone number.
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