E-Paper
Single online portal for 28 public services in Chandigarh from April 1
₹10-crore system will minimise visits to government offices, manual intervention and ensure transparency
Chandigarh Smart City Limited’s (CSCL) ambitious e-governance project will be launched from April 1.
Awarded to UK-based PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), the ₹10-crore smart city project will bring a slew of services under a single online portal.
“As many as 14 of the 28 services that are planned to go online under this project will begin on the launch day, while the remaining services will be fully operational before October this year,” KK Yadav, MC commissioner-cum-CSCL CEO, told HT after a review meeting for the project.
The services to be launched on April 1 include building plan approvals; permission management, including booking of community centres; water supply and sewerage connections; property tax payment; fire no-objection certificates; and grievance system.
Yadav said the project had been conceived to minimise manual intervention, ensure transparency, provide 24x7 access to online citizen services and address public grievances by eliminating the need of visiting offices.
They will begin a trial of the project on March 1 to iron out any problems before the official launch, he added.
Yadav said residents will be able to access these services through Chandigarh Smart City Limited Web-portal and a mobile application.
“Currently, multiple apps of UT administration are in use. After the launch, there will be a single app system for the entire city. Several other services that may not be part of the project, but otherwise available online, will also be merged under this single online portal,” he said.
Yadav said with the new system, residents can not only submit forms and payments online, but also track the status of their applications from anywhere. They will also get alerts and notifications once their application is successfully processed, on the pattern of passport services.
He said the steering committee comprising additional commissioners, chief architect, officers from National Informatics Centre (NIC), Society for Promotion of IT in Chandigarh (SPIC) and UT estate department had been regularly monitoring the progress of the project.
E-governance is one of the six key projects worth over ₹60 crore conceived under the Smart City Mission. It is the second to be launched three years after Chandigarh was chosen among the 100 smart cities’ list. The waste removal project at Dadumajra ground was the first to be to inaugurated in December last year.
