Consultant hired to help city become smarter

 International consultancy firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) will shoulder a bulk of the responsibility of giving Delhi a smart city makeover as part of the central government scheme to promote 100 such cities, sources in the Delhi government said.

The government shortlisted PricewaterhouseCoopersas the consultant for the project as it also agreed to be the project manager for giving Delhi the global touch.

“The consultant will be paid Rs 1.02 crore for making the detailed project report (DPR),” said an official of the information technology department.

While the contours of how to make Delhi a smart city are not yet clear, officials said a lot of focus would be on delivery of public services through e-governance and mobile applications.

“Security for citizens through CCTV camera and satellite mapping of the colonies and digital maps of roads, power, water and sewer lines and telephone and optic fibre cables may be the other features,” said the official.

Sources said the work for appointing the consultant could be completed quickly as the previous state governments had already got the go-ahead from the centre for it.The state government had earlier sent a proposal to the central government for digitisation of the state infrastructural data using geospatial technology.

The proposal was for using a number of different satellite-based technologies and use the captured data for applications related to engineering, planning, management, transport/logistics, insurance, telecommunications, and business.

“The central government had already given its nod to the state government to go ahead and appoint a project management consultant. This approval has been used to engage PcW,” said an official.

He said once the DPR is given by the consultant, the Delhi government would speed up the process for seeking funds from the central government out of the over Rs 7,000 crore announced by Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitely for setting up 100 smart cities.