Process Framework for Service Transformation in Smart Cities
Introduction
Government of India recently launched initiatives namely Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban transformation (AMRUT) and “Smart City “. Both these align to a common goal for a transparent, expeditious and economical service delivery. The initiatives focus on physical infrastructure development through AMRUT and Smart Cities Mission is to drive economic growth to improve the quality of life of people by enabling local area development using technology. The introduction of IT initiatives as catalyst in both initiatives, ensure that they complement each other
The idea behind the phased implementation of these, with selection of 20 cities is to look at compact areas, create a replicable model which will act like a light house to other aspiring cities (Smart City Guidelines 2015). A macro map of a framework which can be adopted to replicate both the initiatives in multiple cities is outlined in this article.
AMRUT and Smart City Initiative Synergy
AMRUT program covers 500 cities initially. Preparation of Service Level Improvement Plans (SLIP) covering the assessment of gaps in service provision with alternatives to bridge those with effective solutions is the first task for participating cities. On the other side the in Smart City program 20 cities have been shortlisted for phase I. One key aspect of both SLIP and SCPs is to have an approach to improve the efficiency of city operations, the quality of life for its citizens and help grow the local economy. The awareness of citizen about usage of technology is also expected to be leveraged in these. Illustration 1 gives the outline of the programs and the content of plans
Illustration 1 – Amrut & Smart City Initiatives – An overview
Infrastructure & Citizen Services
Under Amrut & Smart City initiative, the Infrastructure and the service provision for the citizen are the focus areas for both the programs. The base of for these is already in place as, in almost all cities covered in the scheme, have worked on projects like
· GIS mapping of infrastructure with satellite image processing
· User data base creation with regular updates with geospatial tagging
· Automation of service delivery process with various e-governance projects carried out.
In addition to these, service delivery processes have undergone automation as part of several IT initiatives since inception of National e-Governance Plan , as a result information for many services in static form has been made available with few services going online as well. However all these initiatives which are run in various departments have now an opportunity to be brought one single interface platform for meaningful information exchange leading to better service delivery. The illustration 2 below gives a graphic representation of the of works on ground which shall serve as a good launching pad for both these initiatives
Illustration2 – Development Elements and Administrative Setup
The stake holder departments listed in illustration above are not fully under control of Urban Local body which may become potential bottleneck unless resolved at initial stages of current initiatives as services cut across departments and the agility intended to be brought into the system shall be induced by such an information sharing.
Outline of the Implementation Plans
The service level benchmarks and indicator reporting is one of the key aspects that shall be looked for in SLIPs as well as SCPs. In order to achieve these the one common goal these program intend to have is “reduce cost of services and providing services without having to go to municipal offices”. Leveraging Information and Communication Technology (ICT) is the way forward. To be able to dovetail the solution to fulfil this goal it is important to look at requirements of key stake holders’ i.e citizen and the administration. For a citizen the availability of a service catalogue that contains majority of requirements of services needed by them is a key need. An ability to request for a service they desire to have can be a delighter.
Illustration 3 Service Delivery – Touchpoints for Information Exchange
At the same time as an administrator , municipal corporation need to have ways and means to extend the service requested in a given cycle time. The fulfilment of the need for both is solely dependent on the Information related to Infrastructure for the service requested being available for decision making and effectively communicating to end user. Illustration 3 provides the graphic representation of the same. While conceptualizing the SLIPs / SCPs a City Information Data base (CIDB) covering the infrastructure mapping, Geo referencing of assets, Inventory data, user information base parameters from applications become the key pre requisites for developing action plans to meet the objectives of the program.
Common Process Framework for Extending Services
Service management principles have evolved and effectively leveraged in domains like retail, banking etc where IT solutions have transformed the service provision and end user satisfactions also rising .Initiatives like AMRUT & Smart Cities give a chance for all cities to know the best practices implemented in each of these cities there by evolving a knowledge base which shall benefit in the long run for the cities which are at lower maturity level. The concepts of in Service Management processes can be adopted for provision of G2C and G2B services thus can be effectively used to align with the vision of digital India , one such framework in illustrated below..
The end user is the customer of the services i.e. Citizen, the concept of Amrut cities & Smart cities revolve around provision of services this customer. Further the parameters of Service Level benchmarks make the provision of services even more challenging for the administration. The Urban Service delivery framework depicted below is based on best practices in service management which have a potential to fulfil the challenge SLIPs & SCPs have put forward to the experts working on the same. The functional aspects and categorization of processes are depicted in Illustration 4 below.
Illustration 4 Process Framework for Service Management Transformation
The framework above thus formulates a skeleton for establishing service delivery procedures with a generic processes adoptable by all providers. Establishment of process framework and a common citizen interface shall aid in effective information exchange through CIDB amongst all stakeholder departments with agreed service catalogue. These procedures essentially deal with end user requests , complaints , suggestions and information parameters of such requests get related to infrastructure capacity / availability and if needed augmentation before fulfilment. The overall landscape of the processes is depicted in Illustration 4 above.
Benefits of Process Framework Adoption
Once the processes for service delivery and service support covering the service providers become operational with City Infrastructure database and identity mapping of end users, the results shall show the catalytic effects of e-Governance initiatives with Service level Improvement.
These shall bring in benefits which shall have far reaching effects for end user such as
• Reduction in steps for services with elimination of paper submissions and duplicate steps
• Information on frequency and details of changes to city infrastructure
• City areas can get differentiated with development index based on infrastructure.
• Expeditious response to customer requests.
• Record of outages of the services
• Virtual “Single Window Service” eliminating the need for user to visit multiple offices.
• Single channel of information and online validations with real-time data update
• Transparency in transaction with pendency data availability.
• Ease of tracking requests, complaints and SLAs.
• “Big data” becoming reality in Municipal space.
• Control of building activity in areas where infrastructure capacity is inadequate.
• Useful information for capacity planning for infrastructure provision based on land transactions/service requests received
In addition, the tertiary benefits include
• Online exchange of interdepartmental user specific data to effectively reduce cycle time for service fulfilment.
• Ease of reference to similar cases.
• Initiation of transactions by citizens shall lead to revenue enhancement for service provider department with charging for information services
• Optimised infrastructure both Utility & IT Infrastructure
• Employment opportunities through City Administration with avenues of Skill Mapping of citizen and leveraging Citizen Service Centre (CSC) network
• Improved interdepartmental teamwork.
• Saving in travel time of citizens to offices reducing traffic on roads as an added benefit.
Conclusion
The underlying cause of challenges for digital service delivery is the silo style of IT implementations by service provider departments. While we work on action plans towards initiatives like Smart Cities, infrastructure and solutions already in place, needs to be fully leveraged to complement the tasks to be undertaken in future. In other words operating frameworks like one described is needed to support interoperability across service delivery channels, within a tier across different domains, to complement digital delivery functions.
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