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Samadhan:Citizen Service Delivery System
Mr. Vivek Aggarwal, I.A.S.
India

The Problem

Indore is a centre of trade and commerce serving the state of Madhya Pradesh and central Indian region in particular. District Administration at Indore is responsible for providing various citizen services like different Certificates, Registration of Birth, Death, Marriage, Issue and Renewal of Licenses etc. Rapid industrial and commercial development coupled with rise in population in recent past has contributed to a large-scale increase in demand for these services. On the other hand the staff to cater to these services is limited and further reducing since no fresh recruitments are taking place in lieu of employees who retire every year.

The procedures and processes to facilitate these services were too complex for a common man. Although a citizen charter existed for each citizen service which states maximum time limit to deliver the service but there was no means of finding out how many cases had crossed time limits; the citizen had no acknowledgement as to by what date his application request would be attended; the top level management had no means of determining what was the status of any given citizen request; at what level it was stuck; if rejected then the reason thereof was never communicated to the citizen.

These multiple factors led to increasing complaints and grievances from citizens regarding delivery of government services; The middle men flourished by making use of common man in helpless situation alluring them to indulge into mal practices like bribing, producing false documents etc. The citizen suffered and spent valuable time and energy for knowing the procedure and processes to avail these services.


In absence of a proper Citizen Service Delivery System a mafia of lower level staff and middlemen was spreading its branches; Quantitatively 4 lakh requests per year with maximum time limit 6 months; the citizens of Indore specially the lower income group, women and the service class all were entangled in the prey of aforesaid middlemen community with no guaranteed service delivery assurance. The delay and uncertainty had a cascading effect because each citizen who got delayed further caused somebody else to wait where he/she worked.

In the past different projects like “Gyandoot” were attempted but they eventually ended up merely building up a database of citizen requests; it had no components whereby the poor employee is better equipped to handle increasing citizen service demands; it was an extra burden imposed on the employee in the name of IT along with the usual manual procedures.

Overall absolutely no set procedures, processes and means of service delivery existed which could be understood and availed by the common man. Both Employees and Citizens were a victim of inefficient, in-effective, unproductive citizen service delivery system.

The new initiative has given a System, which overcomes aforesaid problems and meant for both the employee and the citizen. It is a unique project that has redefined public services and literally given “SAMADHAN” to the masses. - A solution for the people and the Government vis a vis prompt delivery of services sought by public.

Solution and Key Benefits

 What is the initiative about? (the solution)
To establish an effective citizen service delivery system initiative was taken by the District Administration of Indore. The project was entitled ‘SAMADHAN’ meaning Solution. This new system was inaugurated on 19th June 2006 and working under PPP model. Presently 6 Samadhan centers are operational in the district, 3 in the urban area of Mhow, Sanwer and Depalpur and remaining 3 in the City limits. The system has efficiently handled 4 lakh requests till now.

Establishment of ‘Samadhan Ek Din’ solution for effective citizen service delivery system was taken up by Samadhan Samiti. The main components of the new system can be categorized as improved infrastructure for citizen delivery, process re-engineering which has simplified procedures and processes, use of Information Technology to bring transparency and accountability.

Samadhan Citizen Service Center has been setup in a Hall of 2400 Square feet. This hall is located at the front entry of District Collector’s Office. On entering this hall, the citizen finds himself in a well ventilated area equipped with good sitting arrangement, Writing Stands, Flex on the wall displaying the list of services, Notice Boards displaying the checklist of documents for each service; computerized counters to submit his request manned by extremely well mannered front end executives; To his surprise he learns that the bank counter is available for payment of required fee in this hall itself; two administrative officers are available to answer his queries if at all there are any; The application set is complete in itself with blank application form, format for affidavits, list of supporting documents to be attached; special subsidized rates are being charged by lawyers to prepare affidavits; all at one place. He is not required to roam around here and there to understand the procedures and processes; everything simplified and made an integral part of the Application Form.

Help Desk still available to assist the weaker sections and physically disabled. To summarize the benefits: Citizen no more at the mercy of Clerical staff for getting services, Middlemen/Agents eliminated. Timely Prompt Services, Citizens getting services at committed Date and Time, Response Time reduced as compared to Citizen Charter (Months to days, Week to single Day and Days to minutes).

Productivity Increased: Since Response time and efforts have been saved by use of IT, the savings in time and energy has led to increased capacity to handle growing demands. Prior to implementation of this project a tehsil was seen to handle approx. 25000 cases of Domicile/Caste/Income etc. But this project shows ~ 1 Lakh cases of above services registered and disposed within a period of 18 months. Samadhan Center has successfully handled requests for other misc. services also during this period and within the normal working hours (10:30 AM to 5:30 PM)

Overall the system is Modern, Transparent & Accountable; Printed Acknowledgement Slips, and Computerized Records for tracking and reviewing, Procedure same for all services, Intermediate Status Report at the click of a button.

Actors and Stakeholders

 Who proposed the solution, who implemented it and who were the stakeholders?
The nominee Mr. Vivek Aggarwal, IAS, District Collector Indore felt the need to establish Citizen Service Center at the earliest which would facilitate prompt service delivery to citizens in a time bound and transparent way. Under his directions establishment of the first “Samadhan Center” was taken up on a war footing and the results came with a week’s time.
‘Samadhan Samiti’ was established under the chairmanship of Nominee and other administrative officers as members of the samiti; Officers of National Informatics Center Indore are the Technical Committee members of the samiti. This samiti has been established because as per law government cannot take revenue in lieu of services given; whereas a samiti can impose service charges which is required to meet the day to day expenditures in running such Citizen Service Centers.
The main objective of Samadhan Samiti are: implementation of G2C,G2B and G2G solutions, establish a work flow process which integrates all offices and departments of the district and continuously improve the quality of citizen services.
Member of Parliament provided initial Funds for the renovation of identified hall. The private-public partnership model has been designed to benefit the citizens, the samiti and the private partners. The Samiti is now investing the income generated from the service in the enhancement of Citizen Services in the district.
The management of all Samadhan Centers is done under the supervision of Samadhan Samiti. It is empowered to float tenders, enter into contracts and agreements with private partners and see that the terms and conditions of the contracts/agreements are being adhered to. The samiti also facilitates resolution of inter-departmental issues for adding respective department’s services to Samadhan Project.
The technical committee members are responsible for carrying out system study, simplifying procedures and formats wherever possible, drawing plans for process re-engineering related to each service, implementing process re-engineering plans, training government staff as per re-engineered processes, design, development, implementation and maintenance of software, distributing the software to private vendors and imparting hands on training to operational staff at all Samadhan Centers.
Samadhan Center at District Collector’s Office is owned and run by Samadhan Samiti. 5 Samadhan Centers have been given to NICT, an NGO to be run for a period of 5 years on BOT basis. They use the software developed by NIC Indore (Technical Members of Samiti).
3 Samadhan Centers are in rural areas of Mhow, Sanwer and Depalpur and 2 in the city limits of District Indore.

(a) Strategies

 Describe how and when the initiative was implemented by answering these questions
 a.      What were the strategies used to implement the initiative? In no more than 500 words, provide a summary of the main objectives and strategies of the initiative, how they were established and by whom.
The main objectives of the initiative are to create an effective Citizen Service Delivery System, which benefits the citizen in terms of time bound service, cost effective and within easy reach; Provide a conducive environment to the citizen when he visits the citizen service center; a solution which is not an additional burden on the employee, one which becomes part and parcel of his/her day to day working. Over and above to provide a self-sustainable, efficient citizen service model.
A chain of Samadhan Centers was aimed for easy reach of the common man. Samadhan Samiti was established as described in previous Queries. Initial funding of Rs. 5 lakhs was arranged through Member of Parliament Fund for renovating a hall of 2400 Sq. Feet. The hall was furnished, flooring and roofing changed, good seating arrangement, writing stands, computerized counters setup; Samadhan Center was equipped with a Database Server, 10 computers as clients for the counters, Laser Printers, UPS for Power Backup and Local Area Network established under supervision of 3 NIC Officers.
Identifying the Services: a team of technical and administrative officers identified Samadhan Services on following grounds –
Demand (in terms of volumes) – Frequently availed citizen services, Possibility to deliver services on the same day, Services where the time lag can be reduced as compared to Citizen Charter, Services where automation can help in cutting down response time, Part of Administrative setup which can be freed for more useful work if computer records can replace routine record keeping tasks.(Searching, indexing, tracking cases etc.)

The Technical officers carried out system study for identified citizen services, suggested simplification of procedures and formats, prepared a process re-engineering plan and carried out its implementation, conducted training programmes for administrative staff, designed and developed an application software as per requirement specifications, conducted interviews for recruitment of front end executive staff to be employed by samadhan samiti and final finishing touches to get the system rolling.

First Samadhan Center at District Collector’s Office was inaugurated on 19th June 2006. Mr. Vivek Aggarwal, DM Indore took firm steps for enforcing the new system. Strict orders were issued that all requests for services would be submitted through Samadhan Center counters only; no backdoor entry was allowed; 1 SDM and 1 tehsildar rank officer was deployed in rotation on each day for signing the certificates to be issued on the same day; the timings for accepting the request is upto 1:30 PM daily and certificates to be delivered the same day from 4 PM onwards. One bank officer from a nationalized bank was deployed to collect fee for each service, which is deposited as revenue in respective head of accounts. Police officials deployed for maintaining security in the area.

(b) Implementation

 b.      What were the key development and implementation steps and the chronology? No more than 500 words
The nominee identified the need for an efficient self-sustainable Citizen Service Delivery system and floated the concept of computerized citizen service system under PPP model. The issue was discussed during weekly officers meeting on 5th June 2006. All district level decision makers were present; Sunita Jain, DIO NIC Indore was asked to design and develop an application which would encompass all the requirements of an efficient citizen service model.
It was decided to get a samiti registered; hence objectives for this samiti were enlisted; members and their roles and responsibilities identified; by-laws of samiti framed; Collector, Addl. Collector and District Informatics Officer NIC Indore were identified as lifetime permanent members of Samiti. ‘Samadhan Samiti’ was registered; A hall identified for setting up Samadhan Center; the initial amount arranged from member of Parliament fund given by Hon.’ble Mrs. Sumitra Mahajan, Member of Parliament from Indore Constituency; The execution was the responsibility of Mr. Vivek Aggarwal (Collector, Indore). The model decided was of public-private partnership.
The model was designed to ensure 'Minimum Investment with Maximum Returns' for all concerned. Nominee designed it with flawless technique and scientific approach. The financial model provides viability and has proved to be a self-sustaining model. The operational aspect provides impeccable control for both the citizens and the employees with use of latest technology.
The target launch date was decided as June 19, 2006. It meant just 12 days to do the gigantic task. Following activities were carried out in parallel :
Identification of Services, Renovation of Hall for setting up computerized citizen counters, process re-engineering, training administrative staff, design, development and implementation of Application Software. The computers purchased a short time ago were deployed for citizen counters; NIC’s software recources and UPS was deployed and we were all set to roll out the project on 19th June 2006; the first arms licence was renewed in presence of Mrs. Sumitra Mahajan, MP and given to the applicant on the spot and thereafter there was no looking back. We started with 5 citizen services on day 1 at a nominal serviced charge of Rs. 10 and today we have 26 citizen services being delivered through 6 Samadhan Centers in district Indore.
We are working on inclusion of Payment Gateway facility and coming up with Web Enabled Application to be replicated in entire country and in any local language.

(c) Overcoming Obstacles

 c.      What were the main obstacles encountered? How were they overcome? No more than 500 words
The Main Obstacles encountered were,
Resistance from Middlemen and Agents: Prior to this initiative a complete network of middlemen/agents and the lower level clerical staff was in action, alluring the common man, describing the procedures and processes for any citizen service in such a way that it appeared to be a Herculean task; This network was flourishing, hence with this initiative the extra income to this network was suddenly stopped; Hence a lot of resistance from these agents and clerical staff was encountered. The nominee strictly suppressed unreasonable demands, false rumors spread by them; administrative officers were asked to be more vigilant and keep an eye on techniques adopted by such agents to misguide the citizens;
Disbelief in Government Organization: There was a general disbelief in the masses to trust this new initiative; this face of the government was hard believe; till now citizens had seen government staff asking for bribes to get any work done; so this was taken as a surprise; Administrative Machinery played a key role in building faith and the very presence of the Mr. Vivek Aggarwal District’s highest authority made a difference. When citizen found District Collector asking them if they had any problem using the new system citizens were convinced that this is neither a dream nor a fake stunt; it is a system for citizens and it is there to last.
Creating Awareness: Not many knew about this new system when it started; So there was still a chance for the agent gang to misguide the citizens; Media, Newspapers, local TV channels were used to publicize the New initiative taken.
Lack of trained manpower: Lack of trained manpower was a major constraint. Through a PPP model most of the manpower has been deployed on contractual basis. A very small team drawn from the pool of District Administration is able to run the service in a very efficient and cost effective manner.
Various Government agencies were brought on a common platform; Diversified citizen services from various departments were integrated by use of IT; specially tailored training programmes were conducted to implement re-engineered processes.

(d) Use of Resources

 d.      What resources were used for the initiative and what were its key benefits? In no more than 500 words, specify what were the financial, technical and human resources’ costs associated with this initiative. Describe how resources were mobilized
The concept of the new Citizen Service Delivery model for Indore was initiated keeping in mind limited resources available. Public Private Partnership model with innovative revenue sharing mechanism was adopted to fulfill the requirements of financial, technical and human resources and costs associated to successfully implement the initiative.
Existing computers, UPS and printers were deployed to start the new Samadhan Center. Member of Parliament Local Area Development Fund of Rs. 5 lakhs was used to renovate the identified area of 2400 Sq. feet. Initial stationery and other consumables were procured on credit basis and its payment done from the service charge of Rs. 10/- collected per service request. Samadhan Samiti got approx. Rs. 1 lakh in the first 10 days collected from service charge. This formed the capital amount and the initiative got a big impetus to move on.
A tender was floated after 3 months in the month of Oct. 2006 inviting bids to operate 5 Samadhan Centers (3 in Rural Areas and 2 more in City limits) on Build, Operate and Transfer basis. The lowest bid offered citizen service at a cost of Rs. 8.99 and revenue sharing of Rs. 1.01 with Samadhan Samiti. So this was a lucrative offer and it was given to the lowest bidder. NIC officers at Indore successfully carried out the technical responsibilities assigned to them at no cost. Front end Executives were employed by Samadhan Samiti at monthly salary of Rs. 3000 per month on contractual basis and they have contributed not only to operate the computerized counters but to build up information for services that are being regularly added to the system.
The revenue earned from Samadhan Services is regularly being utilized to improve citizen services, to equip technical officers with state of the art technology, to procure new computers for Samadhan Center and the officers who are involved in providing the services, Backup system etc. besides meeting the daily expenses incurred in running the Samadhan Center. The aim is to establish a flawless work flow system which will be role based and each officer/employee doing his bit of work by logging into the system; the life cycle of each service starting from Samadhan Center and ending at Samadhan Center. The citizen need not wander anywhere else. All department’s services integrated into one single system “SAMADHAN”.

Sustainability and Transferability

  Is the initiative sustainable and transferable?
Yes the Initiative is Transferable as well as sustainable. Sustainability is closely linked to satisfaction. If all wheels are balanced, all players satisfied then there is no reason for the system to totter. It has relieved the burden of employees and equipped them to handle lot more requests per day. Most of their works like Revenue Order Sheet generation, Dispatch Register generation; initial scrutiny of applications is automated. The system does not allow incomplete application requests to be registered. It has saved time and energy, which can be productively utilized to handle growing demands within regular office hours. In the long run such automation will give a better life style to the employees, officers and the citizens alike.
The PPP component has given it sustainability from financial point of view. Soon after its success District Indore was asked to present its concept for state government on 24th June 2006. It was highly appreciated and chosen for replication in the entire state of Madhya Pradesh.
The project is an ideal candidate for replication not only within Madhya Pradesh but across the country. It is uniquely modeled and unlike past similar citizen service models it is financially viable self-surviving model for delivery of citizen services. It has been equally well accepted and appreciated by both Govt. officials and the citizens. ‘IT’ in this project has not been used as an ancillary piggybacked on the traditional system but it is now homogeneously mingled in the existing system of Govt. Operations. It is an honest effort for both the Govt. and the citizen.
Many officers across the country visited Indore to have a look at the system.

Lessons Learned

 What are the impact of your initiative and the lessons learned?
Identifying the need of the masses and initiative to rise to occasion at the right time by involving all stakeholders was a major contributor to success. Providing a reliable, efficient and well-managed citizen service model was a dire necessity. Process Re-engineering for the worn out citizen service delivery system allowed the employees to become an integral part of the new initiative. Since their requirements were well understood by the technical team the new system evolved as a true solution for employee and the citizen alike. It was not imposed on them but happily accepted.
Even Citizens whose application requests were rejected appreciated the new initiative because they got a valid reason for such rejections. The Application Set, which was re-designed, had every information - right from Application filing, documents to be attached, formalities to be completed, fees to be paid, process followed for issuing a certificate. So there was little for citizen, which remained unanswered.
Public Private Partnership model for delivery of public services has proven track record. This methodology was put into operation resulting in massive success. Combination of the might of state with efficiency of private capital has resulted in creation of a very successful public service delivery model which is not only sustainable for the city of Indore but has also proven its replicability for other cities.
A very lean public organization managed by private partners has proven another success. The Samiti is being managed by only 8 full time employees with the top management working part time along with their designated duties under District Administration. In spite of a very lean organization the efficiency and cost effectiveness of the service is being admired by experts.

Further details about the project can be seen on website www.indore.nic.in.

Contact Information

Institution Name:   Mr. Vivek Aggarwal, I.A.S.
Institution Type:   Government Agency  
Contact Person:   Vivek Aggarwal
Title:   Collector and District Magistrate Indore(M.P.)  
Telephone/ Fax:   91-0731-2449111
Institution's / Project's Website:   91-0731-2449114
E-mail:   dmindore@mp.nic.in  
Address:   Collector and District Magistrate Indore (M.P.) Collectorate Campus Moti Tabela
Postal Code:   452004
City:   Indore
State/Province:   Madhya Pradesh
Country:   India

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