Going Online: How Govt Is Using Technology To Govern Better

Consider these:

• Municipal authorities of Jaipur are dedicating a lot of their time in handling their Twitter and Facebook pages. They are taking citizen inputs' on board to prepare a roadmap for turning the Pink City into a smart one. The Rajasthan capital is among the 100 cities selected for the Centre's Smart City Mission. 

• Gujarat has recently launched an application (app), termed m-Governance, for industries to get pollution clearances. The app can also be used to access pollution reports, check the status of no-objection certificates (NOCs), waste-water generation details, etc. This app is helping make the whole process more transparent apart from lessening the paper work. 

• In June this year, the Development Authority held an exclusive e-auction of Common Wealth Games apartments. 

• The State Bank of India has started online sale of homes that are turned into non-performing assets (NPAs).

These are some examples of how, from paper to paperless, there has been a sea change in the way the government machinery now functions in India. Such initiatives are a peak into how government and civic authorities are turning to technology to connect with the citizens. They are doing away with layers of bureaucracy that distances citizens from the authorities and vice versa.

What's new?

Moving forward, the government is planning to come up with a property auction portal. A professionally managed platform, the portal will list all NPA properties, featuring their floor plans, photographs and other details, which banks are allowed to sell after necessary permissions from debt recovery tribunals. The portal is expected to auction around 50,000 residential properties. After the success of this forts round, the portal is expected to move on to commercial properties.

Reaching out

Till now, auctions of NPA properties have been criticised for being non-transparent and having a limited access to the common public. The new portal will make the whole process transparent along with putting it in public domain. By this, government organisations will also get a wider range of buyers.