SAP@MCGM                                                                                                                                                                                                                              Web News | Technical presentation

Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM)  chose the consortium of ABM and SAP  along with a reputed Systems Integrator to partner with MCGM in one of the most ambitious e-governance projects in India. The project has gone live in April 2007.  This consortium has completed the work of implementation of SAP, covering almost 70% of the functioning of Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai. The scope would cover core functions like Finance, Materials Management, Project Systems, Human Resource, Funds Management, Plant Maintenance and Real Estate. Apart from this, it would also cover a specific Public Sector function i.e. Citizen Portal and Ward Management.

 The initial value of this contract was US$ 10Mn, which includes engagement with MCGM for 5 years, after implementation during the term of the project.  ABM has contributed substantially in bagging this order due to its reputation in e-governance (in the space of citizen services) sector in general, and proven track record of carrying out several successful projects in MCGM, in particular. The MCGM had followed a Quality Based Selection (QBS) procedure, similar to the one followed by World Bank.  In such selection process, proven track record and capacity of the bidders are also specifically evaluated, along with costs quoted by the bidders.

ABM provided Subject Matter Expertise, software licenses and entire post-implementation support to MCGM.  

E-governance SAGA begins at MCGM …..
What were the challenges ?

The Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai serves over 1.27 crore(12.7 MN) citizens with the help of apprx 1,17,000 staff deployed over 34 departments spread across 437 square kilometers span .  The whole city is divided into 24 Administrative Zones with a Ward Office in each of the Zone which  headed by senior MCGM official each . These ward offices are the primary interface to most of the citizens for availing multiple services, which the civic  administration provides to the citizens of Mumbai.  In addition to the 24 ward offices, MCGM functions through 500+ office establishments ranging from Hospitals, Fire Stations, Chowkis, Garages, Pumping stations, control room etc.

 Unlike several local governments in the other parts of the world, the MMC Act  envisages extremely  wide ranging services to be provided to the citizens to provide better quality of life.  There are almost 200+ services, which the MCGM provides to its citizens.  These services and other civic amenities are provided by MCGM through establishments like ward offices, hospitals, schools, water supply, conservancy functions, sewerage systems , crematoriums, disaster management, health care programmes, sanitation and waste management, shops & establishment and license  management, town planning and heritage structure management etc.  With rapid growth of urbanization and healthy and robust economic progress , the citizens of Mumbai correctly expect better services from the MCGM, which is  backed by over 100 years of existence and annual revenue budget of Rs.,17,000 crores ( USD 4 billion). 

The aspirations of Mumbai citizens vary and hence the expectations from MCGM vary widely. The Increasingly affluent class expects civic amenities/infrastructure/services, comparable to the developed world . Primary needs like clean drinking water, sanitation , affordable education and health services are the  expectations of  the economically deprived class .  MCGM has been listening to the needs of its diverse class of citizens continuously and attempting its level best to stand upto the expectations of the citizens.  The MCGM acknowledges the skepticism from the citizens and has been rolling out different initiatives continuously.

Meeting the demands of the citizens will, require continuous capacity building and civic infrastructure like roads, bridges, sewerage lines , hospitals, disaster management etc.  While driving these initiatives, MCGM has been using modern technology like construction, tunneling , road surfacing etc.   MCGM decided in 2004 to comprehensively use the Information and Communication Technology(ICT) to improve the quality of interactions and interfacing by the citizens with MCGM.  MCGM decided to pursue both the initiatives i.e. infrastructure development and leveraging the information and communication technology simultaneously.

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IT Landscape of MCGM in 2004

MCGM had taken some of the isolated initiatives in areas like ward computerization for better citizen services facilitation and computerisation of revenue earning departments like property tax, water billing etc.  These initiatives were taken on different technologies depending on the period in which they were taken and were deployed using distributed architecture.  The distributed architecture requires different installations to  processes data independently at each location and it does not get updated centrally on a real time basis.  For rendering high quality of interface and interaction between citizens and MCGM, it was necessary to improve the functioning of several departments which ultimately lead to deliver better quality services to the citizens and business establishments.  Hence, there was a need to lay down a comprehensive IT strategy which will blend the power of Information and Communication Technology with good governance, leading to e-governed municipal corporation. The e-governance in India is still in its nascent stage.   Hence, the challenge of creating an e-governed MCGM could not have been underestimated.  The 100+ years old organization with its multiple disciplinary staff and functions with existing legacy of processes and computerization, required a clinical approach towards rolling  out e-governance .

The e-governance implementation strategy

The e-governance vision adopted by MCGM is pre-dominantly revolving  around, providing more convenient and hassle free access to the majority of the civic services  to the citizens.  The vision also envisages better planning and control by the Administration and monitoring by the corporators. Hence, it was decided to further strengthen the 24 Citizen Facilitation Centers (CFCs). These CFCs were designed ,developed, implemented and institutionalized by ABM since 2003  .These CFCs were functioning at 24 ward offices and delivering around 20 services related to  birth and death, shops and establishments, water and property  payments, etc. in each ward office.  

The key objective laid down for the e-governance initiatives were –

Improvement in Citizen Services
To provide Any-time Anywhere, transparent and time-bound services delivery, involving minimum touch points for the citizens
Improvement in revenue collections
Complete automation of property tax, water billing system by introducing extensive process reforms
Improvement in expenditure monitoring and control
Budgetary control  in project execution/management and procurement
Creating an integrated and Enterprise Wide back bone of technology
Bringing all the legacy applications on state-of-the-art technology and carrying out integrated back-end computerization with centralized architecture leveraged over the city vide computer net work

This ambitious e-governance initiative, on one hand, require strong political will and  tremendous support from MCGM employees.On the other hand, it requires state-of-the-art technology and best of its class technology providers and service providers.
 
Unlike several other Urban Local Bodies in the state and in the country, MCGM is one of those few Urban Local Bodies which is  comparable to a full-fledged state government.  Hence, MCGM’s PMTF(Project Management Task Force)decided to implement an integrated Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) package in MCGM.   The ERP package was envisaged to cover important functions like citizen services and ward management processes, finance and control , project management, procurement, materials management & human resource management.  In addition, the ERP package was also envisaged to suitably integrate with the existing application softwares automating revenue earning departments like property tax, water billing .   In early 2006, MCGM launched its extremely elaborate and Quality Based Selection process for appointing an agency for implementation of an ERP package.  After following stringent selection processes, the consortium of Siemens Information Systems Limited (SISL), ABM Knowledgeware Limited (ABM) and  SAP was appointed to execute the vision laid down by MCGM .  Simultaneously,out of the currently implemented application software , M/s. ABM were given independently the contract of re-platforming their existing application software for automation of property tax department and water billing functions of the Hydraulic Engineer’s Department.

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Business Process Engineering and Extensive Involvement of senior administrators
 While  implementation of different Applications Software like SAP, P-Tax (for property tax computerization), AQUA ( for water bilking computerization) primary focus was given to  studying business process in each and every department and re-visiting them for pragmatic re-engineering leading to more efficient and transparent municipal processes. 

MCGM started conducting weekly meetings with the representatives from every department for debating the existing municipal processes and evaluating the possibilities of process reforms in the same.  Each of such meeting would normally span around 2 – 3 hours and during 2006-07, more than 100 such meetings were  conducted.  Various Core Groups were formed for the departments like  finance, ward management processes and citizen services, projects execution, material management and procurement, human resource development, property tax, water billing, octroi etc.  In addition to these meetings, the core group used to meet frequently with their respective software solution providers and they, in turn, dovetailed their meetings  with the meetings of PMTF(project Management Tsk Force) .  The project management task force, in turn, would appraise the Steering Committee headed by the Municipal Commissioner and attended by all the Addl.Municipal Commissioners and Jt.Municipal Commissioner In-charge of computerization  .The issues delat by the steering committee were pre-dominantly related provision of necessary budget  and mid-term correction of techno-commercial issues. 

History Data Collation, Digitization and Porting data in the application software
The importance of accurate and updated data in any successful e-governance initiative need not be emphasized.  MCGM also had the Herculean task of collating, digitizing and authenticating porting extremely large amount of data in the computerised system. The e-governance initiative entailed data preparation related to all the employees of MCGM , all stores and inventory cut off data , data related to different licenses, fleet management etc.  This job was undertaken by respective departments and HoDs with utmost degree of commitment and hardwork.  Data preparation exercise in itself has turned out to be extremely useful exercise for setting right municipal records.

Improvement in Citizen Services through CFCs and Portal
Most of the activities covered above are those back-end activities which the citizens or the business organizations dealing with MCGM may not necessarily come across with directly .  These activities with all the process reforms and computerization supported by a state of the art Data Center  will definitely lead to improvements in the civic services. But in addition  there are certain areas where the citizens and business organisations deal with MCGM more frequently and need better quality of interfacing or interaction with MCGM.  Some of these activities include the Ward Management Processes, Property tax assessment and payment, Water billing and payments, Issuance and renewal of licenses, Various other kinds of payments to be made to MCGM etc.  The Project Management Task Force of MCGM, as mentioned above, has identified more than 200 services  that citizens need take from MCGM.  Most of the services are visibly connected with the above mentioned departments. These functions constitute majority of the citizen interfacing services provided by MCGM. 

The work of computerization of Property Tax dept and Water Tax/Charges billing was  awarded to M/S ABM Knowledgeware Ltd .The entire property tax assessment and billing process has been reformed by incorporating significant process requirements.  The assessment of the properties has been made rule-based, rather than discretionary. This will, in turn, lead to objective and transparent assessment of the properties.  This transparent process of assessment will give full information to citizens while issuing the assessment notice.  MCGM has targeted  the process reforms to minimize  the disputes and complaints related to assessment of their properties by adopting these processes  reforms.

Similarly, the whole process of water bill meter reading, resulting into calculation of water charges, has been automated.  Majority of the water bill charges are calculated without manual intervention. MCGM has introduced a software to schedule  the water billing related disputes.  In property tax as well water billing, centralized billing method has been adopted which will help in improved and transparent mechanism in settling queries and disputes of the citizens from any of the interconnected wards.  As a result of the improvements  in the property tax and water billing, MCGM expects better revenue mobilization, coupled with efficient and transparent citizens services.

The MCGM portal provides several Online services to the citizens dealing with MCGM.  The entire portal of MCGM has been revamped under this  e-governance initiatives by the consortium of ABM-SAP and a reputed Systems Integrator . Several online services will be available to the citizens through inter-active forms.  Security payment gateway is being implemented for online payments of property tax, water etc.   This  portal also facilitates online registration of complaints and its status monitoring including automatic escalation of the un-resolved complaints through the rule based processing of the complaint.  The e-tendering process which has been already tested is ready to be launched on the portal soon.  The 200+ citizen services have also undergone reforms leading to reduction of the service delivery time by 25 – 50%.  These processes are either available Online through the portal or by walk-in in any of the 24 Citizen Facilitation Centers (CFC) spread across the 24 wards on the city.  The CFCs are re-designed and modernized, making them more and more citizen friendly for availing any services over any counter as well as making disemination of information extremely simple and effective.

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The Paradigm Shift
 The entire efforts put in by Project Management Task Force and the Steering Committee of the MCGM in last 2 years would strengthen CFCs across the 24 wards.  This transformation amounts to a paradigm shift for different strake holders  like employees, contractors, corporators, citizens and business establishment dealing with MCGM.  The rule based functioning of different processes is expected to cause discomfort to several stake holders during the initial stage of the e-governed MCGM.  Substantial change management and resistance management techniques have been deployed by MCGM to make this transition smooth, though not avoidable. More than 2500 employees have been thoroughly trained on the different applications software and more employees are being trained. 

Institutionalization of the e-governance initiatives
 MCGM understands the importance of institutionalization of e-governance initiatives built carefully over the past 2 years. Due care has been taken to depute support consultants  for initial 5 years period.  MCGM employees would be assisted closely in the areas which have high citizen interfaces by well trained SAP support consultants provided by the consortium of Siemens –ABM-SAP .  This process will ensure tackling issues arising out of evolution of the IT systems as well as enhancement in the same. Such arrangement will also provide MCGM’s future e-governance champions to enhance the original vision of  fulfilling the dream of providing efficient, transparent and time-bound civic services to the citizens of Mumbai.  In addition to more responsive services to its citizens available 24x7x365, these e-governance initiatives will also be useful to   the Corporators and Administration.  The Corporators will have instant and faster access to budget and expenditure reports.  They will be able to access transparently the  process of contracting and the tendering.  The process of complaint management tracking would help improve their proximity to citizens and needs of the citizens.  The Administration in MCGM will have a better decision support team, coupled with better fiscal control and co-ordinated planning & execution of the departmental Works/Projects.  The improvement in the work flow  automation would increase the predictability of results and better risk analysis and mitigation.  The initial benefits from this e-governance initiative have already started giving its results in the form of better revenue mobilization and improvement in citizen services. 

Last Updated on June 29, 2008