e-governance services launched in Housing & Urban Development Department (e-municipalties)

e-governance services launched in Housing & Urban Development Department (e-municipalties) http://jkhudd.gov.in 1. Introduction: The state of Jammu and Kashmir has two administrative divisions- Kashmir and Jammu. Jammu division has ten districts and Kashmir division has twelve district, including Leh and Kargil. There are 84 Urban Local Bodies in the state- two municipal corporations- Srinagar and Jammu, six municipal councils- Kathua, Udhampur, Poonch, Ananatnag, Sopore and Baramulla, and seventy six smaller towns called municipal committees. The size of these municipal bodies is variable with the smallest having the population of 5000 and the largest with a population of 1,100,000. These municipal bodies provide important services to the citizens ranging fromsanitation, solid waste disposal, registration and maintainance of deaths and births record, enforcement of building regulations, sanctioning of building permission etc. These municipal bodies, as per the state municipal laws, have the status of a local selfgovernment with well defined functions and powers to levy taxes and fees to enable them to raise resources to make them self-reliant, although the full potential of taxation has not been realised and important taxes like property tax has not been levied by any of the municipal body. All the muicipal bodies have their own staff to provide the various public services and discharge the assigned tasks. Before the start of the project, an assessment was made about the existing use of the egovernance and potential areas where egovernance could be used. None of the municipal bodies used any egovernance applications, even though some of them had computers which were mostly used as type writers and for storing some data. The most of the tasks were done manually which consumed lot of time, apart from usual problem of delays in providing services and allegations of corruption in many cases. After and in depth analysis and discussion with the municipal bodies it was proposed that the egovernance applications could be broadly used in three areas- services to the citizens, for back end office processes by the municipalities, human resource management, and for business use- e-tenders. The National Informatics Centre(NIC), J&K was assigned the task of preparing the preliminary project report. Project Proposal was prepared and submitted by NIC after various rounds of discussions and consultation with Housing & Urban Development Department(H&UDD) J&K. In the Project Proposal, the following maor e-governance components were proposed:-

I. Implementation of 7 identfied web applications in all the 84 Urban Local Bodies of J&K in phased manner( Phase-I : 27 Locations; Phase-II: 57) viz a. Birth and Death Registration and Issuance System b. Property Tax c. Payment of Property Tax, Utility Bills and Management of Utilities that come under the ULBs including Water Supply and other utilities d. Public Grievances and Suggestions e. Personal Information System f. Accounting System (Accrual Based double entry system) g. Online Building Permission System II. III. IV. Capacity Building for all the 84 ULBs in terms of establishment/provision of ICT Infrastructure, Connectivity through VPNoBB, mutiple rounds of Trainings Programmes for Officer/Officials of ULBs etc Onsite Technical Manpower support intially for one year which may be extended further depending upon requirment for all the ULBs. Launching of e-governance services for the Citizens V. Development of web based software applications through SDU NIC Pune VI. Hosting of the all web-based appilcations on NDC Pune as the State Data Centre is not ready yet 2. Objectives: The following objectives were sought to be achieved in using the e-governance applications: To provide online services to the citizens; To reduce the time for providing services; To introduce transparency in the functioning of the municipal bodies; To enhance the efficiency and productivity of the municipal staff To improve capacity building in terms of ICT Infrastructure and Training. With the above objectives in mind, it was decided to use the egovernance applications in the following areas:

A: Citizen Services: The following citizen services egovernance were designed and introduce: i. Facility for obtaining online birth certificate through internet by the citizens; ii. Facility for online births and deaths registration by hospitals and nursing homes; iii. Facility for online building permission; iv. Online system for registration of public grievances. B: Office Use: For equipping the municipalities for providing above mentioned services to the citizens online, the back end office process were re-engineered and some additional egovernance applications were also introduced in each municipalities. The following egovernance were designed and introduced for the office use: i. Birth and Death registration; ii. Building permission system; iii. Public grievance monitoring system; iv. Double Entry Accounting system; C: Human Resource Management: i. ULB Configration (administration module) for User-ID and Passwords creation and management for all the e-governance applications. ii. Establishment Module D: Court Cases Monitoring System E: e-procurement 3. Unique features: Most of the municipal bodies have absolutely no capacity and wherewithal to conceive, design and introduce and implement egovernance in their day to day functioning. Therefore, it was decided that the egovernance applications will be designed in such a way that their architecture is similar for all the municipalities and they reside in one

platform rather than creating separate applications and platforms for different municipalities. Some of the unique features of the Jammu and Kashmir municipal bodies egovernace model are: i. All the applications are web-based; ii. Common architecture of applications for all the municipalities. iii. Common platform for all municipalities and applications- All the municipalities and applications can be accessed from a common platformwww.jkhudd.gov.in iv. Combination of information technology and mobile telephony in birth and death application; and building permission application for continously updating the applicants regarding the status of their case; v. Use of Virtual Private Network (VPN) over broadband for ensuring security; vi. System of a super-user for monitoring the functioning of the municiplaities from a central point; vii. Creation of a dashboard for a snapshot view of all the municipalities- viewing the abstract report of birth and death application; building permission cases status of all the municipalities; abstract reports of Double Entry Accounting System like Day Book, Cash book, total receipts & payments for particular periods; and Seniority lists cadre-wise generation for the ULBs etc. viii. User mannual for citizens and office use with each applications. Birth and Death Registration Application: As per the Births and Deaths Registration Act, the government has notified the Health officers of municipal corporations and Executive officers of the municipalities as the Registrars for the purpose of reigistering and maintainaing the records of births and deaths. The concerned persons have to approach these authorities for getting the birth or death certificate. Currently, the concerned persons have to approach the municipal authorities to report the cases of births and deaths and to get the these certificates. As most of the municipalities, currently, are maintaining these records munually,therefore, it takes considerable time for them to dig the old records and issue the certificates. The egovernance application for births and deaths has been designed to switch over from the manual system to digital online system. All the old records have been digitized by all the municipalities hosted in the server which can be accessed by the citizens online through http://jkhudd.gov.in and the certificates can be downloaded and printed

from anywhere through use of internet. Secondly, most of the hospitals and nursing homes, both public and private located in each municipality, have been networked with application and each have been provided a separate login ID and a password for maintaining security. These hospitals can report the incidences of births and deaths online for registration with the concerned municipalities; the concerned citizen gets a unique registeration number generated automatically by the software which is printed as in the discharge certificate issued by the concerned hospital. An sms alert is also automatically sent by the system to the citizen confirming the registration of the incidence of births and deaths; through this unique registration number, the citizen can track online the status of progress of the certificate. The hard file is subsequently sent by the hospitals or nursing homes to the concerned municipalities, which after two levels of verification put the certificate on the web for online viewing and printing by the citizens. A security feature has been built up in the system to prevent misuse by unscruplous elements. The certificate can be viewed by entering the name of father and date of birth of the child, email id and the post paid mobile number. A code is then generated automatically by the system which is received by the person through sms in his mobile. The document can be viewed only after entering this code, otherwise the access is denied. The sytem keeps a log of the people, through the mobile and email entered in the application who have accessed the application and viewed and printed the certificate. Now the citizens do not have to approach the municipalities for registering the incidences of births and deaths which takes place in hospitals or nursing homes, as these are reported automatically through the system when the discharge slip, generated by the system, is issued by the hospital to the citizen; the discharge slip contain the unique registration number printed on it. This unique number enables the citizen, through the use of internet to track the status of the preparation of certificate. However, in case of incidences of births and deaths, the citizen has to report it to the municipalities once by a personal visit and rest of the steps are same as for accessing, viewing and printing. In case of a citizen noticing mistakes in the birth or death record, the system provides an online facility to revert back to the municipalities intimating municipality the correct information; the muncipality after verification from the concerened files correct the relevant record.

Online Building Permission system: As per the Jammu and Kashmir Municipal Corporation Act, 2000, and Jammu and Kashmir Municipal Act, 2000, a permission is required from the municipal authorities for constructing a new building or repairing the old build of any kind. The citizen has to submit an application alongwith the site plan and building plan prepared by the registered architect, alongwith revenue papers to substantiate the ownership claim and type of land etc. After the acceptance of the application the concerned municipality prepares the file and the applicant approaches the different departments like revenue, public health engineering, power development department, traffic, public works department, town planning organisation etc. for getting the No Objection Certificate, which is mandatory, as per the law, before the permission is granted by the concerned municipality. This entire process is quite opaque, cumbersome, time consumig, full of inconvenience to the applicant and is also not free from allegations of gratification and corruption. In the revised system, a web-based, online single window system has been designed and all the NOC granting departments have been networked with the system. The applicant has to come to the municipality only once to submit the application alonwith the relevant documents. After entering the application in the system, which takes not more than five minutes, a system generated receipt containing the automatically unique reference number, acknowledging the application, documents submitted is handed over the applicant. After this the applicant is not required to approach either the municipality or the NOC granting departments as the applicant is updated about the status of the progress of the case automatically through periodic sms alert at each stage. Next step is to enter the details of the case and scan the documents attached with the application and upload them in the server. By doing this the an e-file is created, therby dispensing with the earlier system of hard file. The next step is to click the departments from whom NOC is required, the e-file is becomes instaneously accessible to the NOC departments who can view it by logging into the system with the help of a login id and password. The NOC departments, after field verification of the case, can record online their NOC or otherwise which becomes instantaneously to the municipality. Based on the NOCs received from the concerned departments, the municipality grants the permission, and instantaneously an sms alert is sent to the applicant asking him to deposit the required fee in the bank account of the municipality and collect the permission letter. Through the inbuilt provision in the software application, the building fee payable to the municipality is calculated automatically, thereby eliminating

subjectivity and discretion, and ensuring total transparency and speedy disposal of the cases. Advantages from the new system: The system of maintaining a hard file has been replaced with efile. The applicant has to come only once to the municipal office for a few minutes to submit the application. The system itself make the file accessible intantaneously to the NOC departments without any loss of time and therby eliminates the alibis that the file has not been received or is in transit somewhere. NOC departments are also updated through SMS and e-mails about the cases sent to them The NOC granting departments can record their NOC or otherwise online, thereby eliminating the time required in preparation of a file and the reply. The applicant is periodically updated, through sms and email, about the status of the case, thereby eliminating the need to approach the different offices for enquiring about the progress. The applicant can also track the progress of his case by using the refereence number given to him at the time of submission of application through internet. The building fee is calculated automatically by the system, thereby eliminating the discretion. The general public can view the building permission granted by the municipality, therby ensuring total transparency and eliminating opacity. The monitoring authority called superuser can see the progress of cases and pendency on real time basis. Online Double Entry Accounting System: Each municipality is required to use Acccrual Based Double Entry Accounting System and maintain and update the Cash Book dailly, and also prepare and submit the yearl Balance Sheet to the state government. However, in reality, due to paucity of skillm and wherewithal, most the municipalities are unable to maintain their accounts properly, therby violating the statutary provisions. The department of Housing and Urban Development, based on the National Municipal Accounting Manual prepared and notified The Jammu and Kashmir Municipal Accounting Manual for adoption and use by all the municipalities. The said manual, consisting of 559 pages, is based on the broad principle of accrual based double entry system. Based on the features of this

manual, a web based software application has been designed which enables the municipalities to enter online the details of all the revenue receipts and expenditure and update the cash book instantaneously, therby eliminating the manual upkeep and maintainance of the cash book. Similarily, the balance sheet is also generated automatically with each entry, therby eliminating the manual work. Since all the municipalities are on the single network, the superuser has online access to see the financial position of each municipality and can monitor their daily income and expenditure. The system also enables to generate different statements like income and expenditure, assets and liabilities etc, as required from time to time without much effort. Public Grievance Redressal System(PGRS) A centralised online Public Grievances Redressal Systems has been placed for the use of Citizens to lodge their complaints /grievances with the Muncipalties from anywehere. Citizens are required to select the particular ULB and lodge the complaint /grievance using H&UDD portal http://jkhudd.gov.in and they will be provided with a unique complaint ID through which they can track the status of their greivance. For backend processing of complaints is done through the system by the ULB staff and accordingly redressal/action taken is conveyed to the citizens online through system itself. Court Cases Monitoring System As on today, most of the Government Departments are flooded with the courts cases and their maximum office time is being spent handling these court cases which is very difficult for any organisation to mannually handled these cases as the volume is very large. Moreover the court cases are of a very sensitive in nature and required to be replied/filed in time bound manner to avoid further litigation. To overcome such problems, the Housing and Urban Development Department J&K has put in place a web-based solution i.e Court Cases Monitoring System for the use of H&UDD and its other sub-departments. The main features of the System are :- i. Alerts are generated by the system for the cases for which the hearing date falls with in the current week, coming week, next 10 days etc. ii. After every login by the departments the system displayed cases in different colours depending upon nature of cases viz Very Important, Important and least Important

iii. System helps to generate different types of reports of Court Cases like Courts- Wise, Legal Concils-wise, Department-Wise, Hearing date-wise, year-wise, case-type-wise and so on. iv. System also help to enter proceedings and details of the cases. v. H&UDD can also monitor the progress of cases of sub-departments as cases are intre-linked. Human Resource Management System A urgent need has been felt to have strong Human Resource Managment System(HRMS) which will help to properly manage and store the records pertaining to employees of all the municipalties. It was very difficult to know exactly the status of employees working in the various municpalties and their service particulars. A centralised web based HRMS has been launched for all the 84 Muncipalties in J&K. HRMS designed to capture all the details of employees including personal details, appointment, promotion, increment, transfer, posting details, GPF, Loans, and Salaries dues etc are maintained through this system. Copies of each document like educational qualifications, date of birth, appointment orders, promotion order, increment orders, transfer/posting orders and scanned service books etc are uploaded and maintained through system. Various monitoring Reports are also available online to the authorities at each level. With the click of a button seniority list of different cadres and other details are available. 4. e-procurement The following Sub-Departments of Housing & Urban Department Department, J&K have migrated to online e-procurement System(https://jktenders.gov.in) for procurement of works, goods and services for all the tenders worth Rs.5.00 Lakh and above. i. Directorate of Urban Local Bodies Jammu/Kashmir ii. Jammu and Srinagar Development Authorities iii. Lakes and Waterways Development Authority iv. Jammu and Srinagar Muncipal Corporations v. UEED vi. Housing Board

5. Design and Development of different applications It was proposed in the Project Proposal and also decided during the initial discussion between NIC & H&UDD that the software development would be done through the SDU NIC Pune. A team from NIC Pune has visited Srinagar and Jammu twice and interacted with Principal Secretary (H&UDD) and its staff, Officers/Offcials of Municipal Corporations Jammu and Srinagar, Directoarte of Urban Local Bodies Jammu/Srinagar and Muncipal Councils and Committees. Various rounds interactions and discussions were held in person as well as through Video Conferenecing with the concerned officers/officials of different sections of the above mentioned organisations. Based on these brainstorming discussions and VC sessions, requirements of the user department for each applications were captured and Software Requirements Sepcifications(SRS) were prepared by NIC Pune and submitted to the department for approval. The SRS were approved after incorporation of little modifications/additions prorposed by the department. Software development and its trial test takes around 10-12 months time. 6. Training and Capacity Building of the staff of municipalities Since most of the staff working in municipalties is less qualified. Use of computers by them was a very distant dream. To make implement e-governance in such organisations was a big challenge which has been made easy with several rounds of training. Three rounds of General Computer Awareness programmes were held for all the employees of municipalties through NIC District Offces alongwith exhaustive hands on training. Demontrations-cum-training on e-governance applications were also held through multiple VC session. Principal Secretary(H&UDD) has visited almost all the districts alongwith NIC Team and also involved Deputy Commissioners of each districts in implementation of e-governance and conducted senitization-cum-training workshops for all the staff of Municipalties and other departments associated with issuance of NOC for Building Permission Cases. Several rounds of training were also conducted for the staff of Government Hospitals and Nursing Homes where the birth and deaths are taken place. With such exhaustive trainings and workshops, the department is able to implement e-governance applications in municipalties of J&K. 7. Data entry of the records births and death by all the municipalities Volume of Birth & Deaths records available with the Municipalties was very huge. The data entry work was done through the outsourced agencies. Data Entry of Birth & Death records from 1984 onwards in respect of Jammu Municipal Corporation and Srinagar

Muncipal Corporation and 2001 onward onward for remaining Urban Local Bodies(ULBs) were got fed into the computer. All the Birth records fed for all the 84 are currently available in public domain and citizens can view/print their births records. 8. Outcomes of the e-governance Project Following are the outcomes of the e-governance Muncipalities Project :- i. Housing & Urban Develoment Department, J&K portal has been launched. URL: http://jkhudd.gov.in. All the e-governance applications are being accessed by all the 84 Urban Local Bodies(ULBs) through this portal only. Currently all the applications are hosted at NDC Pune as State Data Centre is not yet ready ii. Online Birth Certificate printing facility provided to the citizens iii. Online lodging of grievances facility provided to the citizens iv. Online Building Permission System has been rolled out for 27 ULBs v. Online Birth & Death Registration from the Hospitals & Nursing Homes started vi. Backend processing module for Birth & Death Records Registration /Building Permission Cases Public Grievances Monitoring System/ Establishment Module rolled out vii. Double Entry Accounting System rolled out for 27 ULBs viii. Citizen; Inetrnal ; NOC users Mannual provided on the e-governance applications itself ix. Hardware (Clients; Switches; UPS; Printers; Sccaners etc) and newtorking installed at all the 84 ULBs x. Internet Connectivity provided to all the 84 ULBs(2 MBPS Leased lines to Corporations & VPNoBB BANL to rest of Muncipal Councils & Committees) xi. One Technical Manpower placed at each ULBs for onsite technical support xii. The Officers/Officials of all the ULBs are well trained through exhausted multiple Trainings Programmes.

9. Annexure- District-wise list of Municipal Bodies S.NO DISTRICT NAME OF MUNICIPAL BODY 1. Jammu Jammu Municipal Corporation 2. Akhnoor Municipal Committee 3. Bishnah Municipal Committee 4. Ghou-Manhasan Municipal Committee 5. Arnia Municipal Committee 6. Jourian Municipal Committee 7. Khour Municipal Committee 8. R.S. Pura Municipal Committee 9. Samba Samba Municipal Committee 10. Vijaypur Municipal Committee 11, Ramgarh Municipal Committee 12. Bari Brahmana Municipal Committee 13. Kathua Kathua Municipal Council 14. Billawar Municipal Committee 15. Hiranagar Municipal Committee 16. Lakhanpur Municipal Committee 17. Parole Municipal Committee 18. Basholi Municipal Committee 19. Rajouri Rajouri Municipal Committee 20. Kalakote Municipal Committee 21. Thannamandi Municipal Committee 22. Nowshera Municipal Committee 23. Sunderbani Municipal Committee 24. Poonch Poonch Municipal Council 25. Surankote Municipal Committee 26. Udhampur Udhampur Municipal Council 27. Chenani Municipal Committee 28. Ramnagar Municipal Committee 29. Reasi Reasi Municipal Comittee 30. Katra Municipal Comittee 31. Doda Doda Municipal Committee 32. Thatri Municipal Committee 33. Bhaderwah Municipal Committee 34. Kishtwar Kishtwar Municipal Committee 35. Ramban Ramban Municipal Committee 36. Banihal Municipal Committee 37. Batote Municipal Committee 38. Srinagar Srinagar Municipal Corporation 39. Ganderbal Ganderbal Municipal Committee 40. Anantnag Anantnag Municipal Councils

41. Achabal Municipal Committee 42. Ashmuqam Municipal Committee 43. Bijbehara Municipal Committee 44. Dooru-Verinaag Municipal Committee 48. Qazigund Municipal Committee 48. Qazigund Municipal Committee 49. Seer Hamdani Municipal Committee 50. Shangus Municipal Committee 51. Pulwama Pulwama Municipal Committee 52. Awantipora Municipal Committee 53. Khrew Municipal Committee 54. Tral Municipal Committee 55. Pampore Municipal Committee 56. Shopian Shopian Municipal Committee 57. Kulgam Kulgam Municipal Committee 58. Yariporai Municipal Committee 59. Quimoh Municipal Committee 60. Frisal Municipal Committee 61. Devsar Municipal Committee 62. Ashmuji Municipal Committee 63. Budgam Budgam Municipal Committee 64. Beerwah Municipal Committee 65. Chadoora Municipal Committee 66. Chararisharief Municipal Committee 67. Chadoora Municipal Committee 68. Khansahib Municipal Committee 69. Magam Municipal Committee 70. Baramulla Baramulla Municipal Council 71. Sopore Municipal Committee 72. Uri Municipal Committee 73. Watergam Municipal Committee 74. Pattan Municipal Committee 75. Kunzer Municipal Committee 76. Tangmarg Gulmarg Municipal Committee 77. Bandipore Bandipore Municipal Committee 78. Hajin Municipal Committee 79. Kupwara Kupwara Municipal Committee 80. Tral Municipal 81. Langate Municipal Committee 82. Handwara Municipal Committee 83. Leh Leh Municipal Committee 84. Kargil Kargil Municipal Committee