PUNE, Maharashtra: In an effort to assess the effectiveness of the e-governance initiatives in 27 municipal corporations across Maharashtra by Policy Research Organisation (PRO), Pimpri Chinchwad Municipal Corporation (PCMC) has emerged as top performing municipal corporation, followed by Mumbai and Kolhapur. PRO is a Pune-based think tank, which primarily focuses on research and analysis of ULB policies and governance.
Civic bodies’s performance assessment took place based on three broad parameters — service delivery to the citizens and businesses, transparency in the governance, and accessibility of the earlier two parameters. These three parameters encompass a total of 103 sub-parameters, including how well these corporations are utilising new-age information and communication technology to provide efficient, transparent, and accessible services to citizens and businesses.
Out of the 27 municipal corporations, 12 corporations belonging to tier-II cities have barely scored three out of ten marks. Researchers at PRO found that data of some civic bodies was erroneous as many of the phone numbers were incorrect, and many emails provided to the researchers did not use official domain names, for example, gov.in or nic.in. PRO also found that finding information from the website is a long and slow exercise. Apart from that, the visitors would often require multiple visits to the website to check if the website worked or not. Neha Mahajan, Director, speaking over the issue, said, “The implementation of e-governance is uneven and inefficient. Overcoming bureaucratic inertia, aligning political will with citizen needs, and prioritising transparency and citizen engagement are essential for governments to better meet citizen’s expectations. We need periodic evaluation and tracking of e-governance initiative of the government.”