Delivery of citizen services by municipal authorities or city corporations
The municipalities or the city corporations in both developed and developing countries constitute the major local government institutions in urban areas providing the civic amenities and services to the citizens. The direct citizen services would typically include birth and death certificates, trade license, tax assessment, tax collection, NOC, registration, mutation, licensing, building plan & CC, water supply, property transfer, etc. There are certain set of civic amenities that they are responsible for like public health and vaccination, public car parking, street lights, preservation of heritage sites, maintenance of public parks and open spaces, prevention of illegal construction, solid waste management, construction and maintenance of roads, walkways and foot-bridges, household waste collection and cleanliness of roads and public places.
In order to transform the service delivery landscape, municipal authorities and corporations are looking at ways to empower citizens to interact and transact more effectively with the Government personnel for faster and efficient delivery of the required services. This is currently envisaged through implementation of tech-enabled, digital solutions that reduces or eliminates the redundancy, duplication of effort, paperwork and administrative bottlenecks and challenges in the citizen service delivery process. These solutions are mostly aimed towards one-stop information source for citizen services, ease of service request, service status updates and closure, digital mode of documentation and certification, grievance management and customer support helpdesk. In a way, we are focusing only on one stakeholder group in the direct services category of the end-to-end citizen service delivery ecosystem.
We need to look at the citizen service delivery from a holistic point of view, keeping perspectives of all the stakeholders in the value chain, in order to deliver the right experience to the citizens at the right time with the right resources. One of the areas to delve into can be the effective and efficient monitoring and tracking of citizen service delivery, that includes the civic amenities, leveraging the emerging technologies that could improve the quality of life of citizens and create very positive sentiments for the Government authorities.
How technology can disrupt tracking of service delivery and improve citizen experience
Improved experience and positive sentiments of citizens in service delivery of municipalities or corporations is an essential indicator in the governance mechanism to show the level of confidence that citizens have towards the local government institutions. This experience would come with more inclusive citizen engagement in a hybrid service delivery mode of digital and physical, where the citizens are at the center of delivery space and can take active participation in voicing what service or civic amenities they want, when they want and where they want. This would not only personalize the whole service experience with a human touch but also give the much needed opportunity to the citizens to track the delivery of those services, provide feedback and improve the responsiveness of the government authorities to close any service issues.
Currently the citizen services related to registration, mutation, building plan or property and asset transfer requires exchange of confidential and sensitive data and information across multiple parties in the workflow where tracking and traceability with high degree of reliability and transparency is expected. Blockchain technology can be leveraged to achieve this tracking of ownership and transfer of assets and properties without the need for any manual administrative intervention.
Similarly in the public healthcare delivery space, blockchain technology will enable the citizens to track the movement and authenticity of drugs and essential substances in a transparent and secure manner from the source to the destination across different systems in the supply chain. Also, blockchain can be leveraged for recording, tracking and validation of citizens’ medical history and vaccination details in a fast, transparent and secure manner in order for them to receive the required care services.
On the other hand, the efficiency of the entire waste management process within a city can be improved through use of IoT sensors and AI prediction modelling for the tracking and timely disposal of both household or residential waste and roadside and public place garbages to maintain cleanliness and hygiene of the city. The monitoring of this citizen service can be done both by the citizen community as well as relevant government authority.
Likewise, use of IoT sensors and AI based prediction modelling can enable the citizens to track the availability of parking spaces and traffic route with conditions while driving, as well as allow them to track their supply of household water by municipality or corporation throughout the day and usage trend for more optimum utilization.
