Glitch-hit in City, but Palike's GIS wins e-gov prize in China

BBMP uploading road history of last two years, mayor says

The Geographic Information System (GIS) adopted by the Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) to have road history may have faced glitches in the past but that has not come in the way of the Palike winning an e-government prize recently in Chengdu, China.

The BBMP has been awarded with the best e-government prize for adopting GIS to improve the overall efficiency of city administration at the World e-Governments Organisation of Cities and Local Governments (WeGo) held in Chengdu, China on November 5, Mayor N Shanthakumari announced at a press conference here on Wednesday. “The Palike is in the process of uploading the road history of the past two years and we will begin implementing the technology by April 2015,” she added.

Training
Five government agencies—BBMP, BDA, BWSSB, Bescom and Bangalore traffic police—will be trained in using the GIS-based technology to have better co-ordination in executing various infrastructure works.

Former chairpersons of the BBMP’s standing committees, Manjunath Raju, Mohan Kumar and V Vagish, visited Chengdu to represent the Palike at WeGo.

Highlighting the role of the GIS, Raju said, “The software will enable paper-less functioning and provide details of the history of asphalting, road cutting, optic fibre cables, solid waste management, advertisement and the expenditure incurred. Details will be fed as and when the work progresses. There will be no duplication of bills or any scope for manipulation,” he added.

Yediyur corporator N R Ramesh said that it took sometime for the software to stabilise as there were technical glitches initially.

Changing software
“We had to change the software entirely and it was only early this year that it stabilised and was in functioning condition. Two other cities, Ahmedabad and Surat, have already started to copy the technology and are taking it forward. We have already trained our zonal wise engineers and hope to complete the feeding of information of the past two years in a month so that the technology can be implemented from April 2015 onwards,” he explained.

According to sources, the BBMP officials were not keen on uploading road history details in the GIS, hence the delay in implementing the technology.

The GIS was developed at Rs 1.65 crore by Cybertech Systems and Software Limited.
The BBMP initially intended to incorporate GIS-based Property Identity (PID) in order to collect property tax.

The PID data, however, was found to be inaccurate as the data of 4,000 properties did not match with the records. Now, the technology will be used not only for PID, but will also act a mother for all infrastructure development.