ABM MAINet® - Municipal Administration Information Network                                                               Government of Maharashtra GR.  

Preamble

ABM implemented its comprehensive e-Governance solution for Municipal Corporations – MAINet at KDMC in the year 2002.  The test implementation of the project started in January 2002. Trial run of CFCs at Kalyan & Dombivli were started on May 27, 2002 & June 13, 2002, respectively. KDMC’s web portal was launched on August 30, 2002. After extensive testing and thorough software refinement Hon. Chief Minister of Maharashtra, Shri Vilasrao Deshmukh, dedicated the computerization project to the citizens on 24th of September 2002. He appreciated the efforts taken by KDMC and expressed the hope that this would emerge as Kalyan pattern which could be replicated in other Municipal Corporations.

This is by far, the most comprehensive & successful Municipal Corporation computerization project in Maharashtra, and has set an example of good governance.

In November 2003, Department of Administrative Reforms & PG (DARPG), Govt. of India awarded KDMC with a Merit Citation under the category exemplary e-Governance initiative. This has been followed by several other national and international awards from the Central and State Governments including the Gold Icon Award for the “Best Citizen Centric Project” in February 2007 from DARPG, Govt. of India and Certificate Of Achievement awarded by the Commonwealth Association for Public Administration & Management at the CAPAM International Innovations Award.

The benefits as perceived by the Government of Maharashtra have been documented in the Government GR (Government Order), issued by the Government of Maharashtra (GoM) Ref No: 2005/05/29dated 11 Nov 2005.

"ABM MAINet software implemented at KDMC has been running successfully for the last 6 years. The Citizen Facilitation Centre (CFC) at KDMC is also running successfully since 13th June 2002. Citizens are getting the services delivered through the CFC in a timely manner. These services include lodging Citizen Complaints, Tax bills, Water bills, New water connection, Market License and Birth and Death Certificates, etc. Increase in Property tax revenue and reduction in resources in administrative management are the fruits of the successful implementation of software. KDMC has offered more than 15 lacs computerized services in the last 6 years since the project was launched. All the ward offices are connected to Head Office and the entire software architecture is centralized with real-time update of data. This enables Citizens to avail of services from “Any Where”. KDMC Software has set an example for good governance and improvement in administration, bringing transparency and citizen centric services.

Considering all these factors and much more, Govt. of Maharashtra has decided to replicate the KDMC S/W across all the corporations, councils in Maharashtra."

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Methodology of S/W Development adopted for Best Practices

There are various vendors who have developed software applications for Municipal Corporations/Councils. But these software packages are not designed for end-to-end computerization of the Corporation/Council, as the focus was given only on facilitating the daily departmental transactions through software and not considering any best practices in the development process to empower citizen as well as employee of the organization.

ABM is the first company in India which has designed and developed the application software for adopting the best practices in the automation process. ABM’s MAINet (Municipal Administration Information Network) is an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software for any ULB (Urban Local Body) having capability of replication across any ULB with suitable customization. It is an end-to-end software having the citizen centric front end, from where the services are delivered, tightly integrated with backend departmental application software.

Before the initiation of this project, certain set of process standardization was brought in order achieve stated objectives. Following are some of the areas where standardization of the processes was done:

• Extensive studies of some 450+ processes was done during the conceptualizing of CFC
• The existing workflows of processes were redefined to make them more structured and increase the work efficiency.
• Various processes mentioned below were standardized:
• Application Forms
• Receipts
• Scrutiny Flow
• Outputs Delivered
• Prioritization of the Services/Applications
• The 14 attributes model for defining the citizen services was introduced. The 14 attributes model is used for defining any citizen service in 14 standard attributes like inputs required for service, output of service, tariff, etc.
• End to end process of Service delivery was studied and covered under the CFC S/W.
  
  The following activities were carried out for the Process Simplification at KDMC:

• Elimination of Duplicate efforts
• Elimination of redundant activities
• Elimination of paper work
• Parameterization of decisions
• Proper documentation of the activities
• Elimination of any room for subjective interpretation

We sought the contribution of various key personnel in defining, designing and implementing the project at ULB as follows:

• Municipal Commissioner
• Employees of Municipal Body
• Elected Representatives of Municipal Body
• Retired officers of the Municipal Body
• Citizen
• ABM’s domain experts

• Concept Presentations on CFC to the Sr. Officers.
• Concept Presentations on CFC model to the politicians and elected representatives.
• Presentations on CFC to the Operating staff to introduce the concepts of the CFC and the functioning of CFC
• Conducting User Trainings
• Insistence on trial run phase before the official inauguration.
• Collection of Feedback from the citizens at the CFC, during and after Trial Runs.

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(i)  The core layer: This layer manages the user authentication, workflow rules, and procedural guidelines

(ii)  Functional systems layer.  This layer manages various departmental functions of the Municipal Corporation through integrated /automated functional modules and MIS for different departments. 

(iii)  Citizens Services Layer:  This layer manages time-bound service delivery of various citizen services on CFCs and Portals.

• Return on Investment:

 The return on Investment in this project is a blend of direct and indirect benefits to the citizens and the ULB such as:

• Improvement in Citizen Services leading to Speed and Transparency
• Reduction in transaction cost to citizens and business organizations
• More liquidity to the Municipal Body due to predictable and consistent cash-flows
• Increase in revenue by charging some reasonable amount to Citizen services which to be delivered through CFC.
• Increase in revenue due to prevention of leakage of revenue through holes in the processes
• Reduction in cost of manual data transfer, the related manpower cost, Time loss, paper work, Human Error
• Frozen Administrative/Establishment cost
• Availability of MIS leading to better forecast

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• Citizen Centric Approach
  
  Initially, before the commencement of day-to-day use of ABM MAINet® at Municipal Bodies, all the citizens who needed services from the various departments had to visit the concerned departments. This procedure was very time consuming because of the following reasons:

• Subjectivity in interpretation and decision making
• Highly person dependent operations due to lack of Process definition
• There was no pre-defined Service Delivery Time.
• Absence of Citizen Charter
• Lack of Single point of Accountability for Service Delivery

Scope and Scalability of CFC:

• CFC CORE
• Extended CFC
• Back Office Application Integration
• Web Extensibility
• Third Party Services Integration.

While the CFC CORE covers the basic functionalities of CFC, the other four components provide the scalability to the CFC CORE. However, each functionality of CFC CORE is also scalable and can be implemented in a flexible manner.
The complete scope and scalability described above can be summarized diagrammatically as follows:

On implementation of the ABM MAINet® CFC S/W the following transformations are made in the working system. These changes are as follows:

• In order to offer Citizen centric service delivery, the concept of Citizen Facilitation Centre (CFC) was introduced and implemented. The CFC has become a Single Point Contact for all interactions between citizens and ULB. 
• Definition and Implementation of citizen charter and SLAs for Service delivery for all the Services. This citizen charter consists of the duration in which the Citizen service will be completed and delivered to the citizens.
• For every service the entry and the exit criteria are pre–defined, leading to a systematic approach to delivery of the service.
• The concept of Token No is introduced at the CFC. The token no is an acknowledgement issued to the citizen against his/her application for a service. A standard format for the token no. is designed and followed for all the services irrespective of the department to which the service belongs.
• The facility for Payment Collection is now been centralized and can be made through the CFC for all the departments.
• In short, the service is executed completely with backend departmental processing.

Functionality of ABM MAINet® Modules

ABM MAINet® Application S/W is an integrated end – to – end S/W, facilitating the automation of the back-end departmental processes and the front – end Citizen interaction processes. The schematic representation of the set up of ABM MAINet® at KDMC is as follows:

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The ABM MAINet® Application S/W comprises of the following modules:

Assessment / Property Tax

The Assessment Module maintains the details of the properties in the corporation area and facilitates the calculation of R.V. for a property, generation of bills, maintaining details regarding the collection of bills, generation and maintenance of record against the various notices issued to the Property holders.

Water billing and Accounting

The Water billing and accounting Module maintains the details of the metered and non-metered Water Connections in the corporation area. This module executes the process for Issuance of New Connection, generation of bills, maintaining details regarding the collection of bills, other activities such as Closing of Connection, reconnection, etc

Birth and Death

The Birth and Death Module maintains the details regarding the birth and death instances occurring in the corporation area. It deals with the issuance of Birth/Death Certificates, generation of critical statutory reports related to Birth and Death based on the record maintained in the database for the same.

Accounts - Single Entry Accounting System  (SEAS) & Double Entry Accounting System (DEAS)

The Accounts Module facilitates recording of every transaction of the Accounts Department. The Accounts module is integrated with all the remaining ABM MAINet® Modules. The Double Entry Accounting System facilitates single data entry and operation of SEAS and DEAS, which enables the Municipal Body to migrate from SEAS to DEAS.
 
Citizen Facilitation Center (CFC)

The CFC Module is the front-end to all the departmental modules. It delivers the Citizen Services through Single Window System. It deals with the application details maintenance, help desk, pending work details maintenance, etc.

Food License

This module deals with maintaining the records regarding the various types of food licenses issued by the corporation, renewal, transfer, and change of name of the licenses.

Market and Trade License

This module deals with maintaining the records regarding the various types of Market related licenses issued by the corporation, renewal, transfer, and change of name of the licenses.

User Workflow Management System (UWMS)

This module comprises of the Authentication server, Registry module for maintaining the details of the inward and outward letters and files.

Complaints And Redressal System (CARE)

This module facilitates the lodging of the complaints, monitoring the redressal of these complaints and generating reports related to the complaints.

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Technology Environment

Software Architecture

The following is the software architecture of ABM MAINet®
Browser Based Architecture

• These modules will be browser-based with Oracle Forms-Report Server 10.1.2 (10g)
• Centralized Database
• UI supporting all Unicode languages
• User connectivity through LAN
• Application Software Technical Specifications
• Three/N Tier Centralized Architecture

Benefits

Benefits to the Citizens:

• Hassle-free Single Touch Point Interactions for Citizens. No more visits to different departments or different tables to avail any service or register any civic complaint.
• Time bound service delivery. Every citizen gets a token when he / she applies for any service with assurance of the service delivery within a specific time frame.
• Home delivery service (optional) to the citizens at a nominal extra rate of Rs. 8/-.
• Unique allotment of Citizen ID. This facility saves citizen's time in filling personal information on our service and complaint forms.
• Redressal of civic complaints to the satisfaction of citizens.
• Saves Time and Money of the citizens.

Benefits to the Corporation:

• More transparency in service applications and the issue of licenses / certificates.
• More efficiency in day-to-day administration of the corporation.
• Increase in productivity of the manpower due to assistance by the computer system in decision-making.

The tables below describes how the introduction of the ABM MAINet® Application S/W resulted in the improvement in the processes at KDMC:

A) Birth and Death Services

B) New Water Connection

C) Assessment of Property Tax

Critical Success Factors in ABM MAINet® Implementation

• Holistic and Integrated Approach
• Balancing of Citizen-centric and Process-centric Computerization.
• Focus on “Time Bound Service Delivery”; and its monitoring through the system.
• Administrative Reforms covering Business Process Re-engineering, and Organizational Re-alignment, in terms of people and locations.
• PPP approach wherein the interest and involvement of TSP viz. ABM Knowledgeware Ltd., were ensured by PPP clauses in the agreement.
• Building a Team Effort culture throughout the organization, which led to active and enthusiastic participation of all top authorities.
• Efficient Funds flow management, which took in to account the TCO for entire SDLC as well as for further sustenance and institutionalization.
• A judicious blend of Result Orientation and Ideal Solution orientation, leading to fast paced implementation and sustenance.