| 4. In which ways is the initiative creative and innovative?
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SMC already has computerised systems in place for rendering various citizen centric services through city civic centers and online through Virtual Civic Center from its website.
The architecture of Mobile app was designed in such a way that it is easy to integrate with SMC’s existing in-house applications. It uses the same database and business logic that physical city civic center uses. The Mobile App utilizes a specialized Service Oriented Object Protocol (SOAP) web service client library for constrained Java environments such as Mobile Devices, Applets or J2ME applications along with JavaScript Object Notation (JSON), an open standard format that uses human-readable text to transmit data objects consisting of attribute–value pairs.
The Mobile App utilizes a specialized Service Oriented Object Protocol (SOAP) web service client library for constrained Java environments such as Mobile Devices, Applets or J2ME applications along with JavaScript Object Notation (JSON), an open standard format that uses human-readable text to transmit data objects consisting of attribute–value pairs.
Other important factor identified was that of larger inclusion. This can be achieved only if the facility is available to all, irrespective of the bank or card they possess. To ensure maximum inclusion, SMC tied up with leading payment integrator offering maximum number of banks under net-banking facility, debit cards and master and visa credit cards.
To make the service offering attractive, the mobile app is made available free of cost. Also no additional charges are levied for utilising mobile app. On the contrary, SMC took a policy decision wherein if the forms for various services are downloaded from SMC’s mobile app or website, the same are accepted at free of cost (form fee waved off).
To increase user acceptability and faith in system, it is important to make sure that the user knows exact status of his/her transaction and does not remain in the dark. To achieve this, as soon as the transaction is completed through Mobile App, the status details from which citizens can view the pdf file of the payment receipt and certificate are displayed. An email along with pdf of receipt and/or certificate is sent for future reference. User is also notified by an SMS regarding failed or successful transaction status. For all section “Check Status” page is provided which enables checking the transaction status along with printing of receipt and/or certificate. Users can view the receipts/certificates online by providing Tenement No. along with either email ID or unique Transaction ID or unique Reference No.
The Mobile Application was widely appreciated and downloaded by the citizens. It also helped provide accurate information to citizens during recent flood situations by providing water level details for river passing through the city and the nearby dam to the city.
Necessary accounts were created to make the mobile app available from Google Play Store and Apple App Store.
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| 5. Who implemented the initiative and what is the size of the population affected by this initiative?
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SMC is having various applications in place for the purpose of catering services through physical Civic Center, Virtual Civic Center and Information Kiosks. The Mobile App was designed in such a way that it seamlessly integrate with existing backend infrastructure.
In-house development team is deployed with a view to carry out necessary development. Necessary inputs were obtained from the parent department for the respective services.
The initiative was implemented under the leadership of the Municipal Commissioner of Surat Municipal Corporation and the Deputy Commissioner of SMC. The Corporation has a dedicated IT department which manages and implements all ICT based initiative and this is headed by an IT manager who is responsible for day to day monitoring of ICT initiatives. The mobile app was developed by an inhouse team of 3-4 members.
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| 6. How was the strategy implemented and what resources were mobilized?
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The cost to manage and maintain the Mobile App is very minimal as the same is developed and managed in-house. The cost attached with making the mobile apple available in market place through Google Play Store and Apple App Store is also nominal. In the backend, the mobile application utilizes the same resources (like power, internet bandwidth, etc.) which are required and already available for running the corporation’s website.
The IT department at the Surat Municipal Corporation has a dedicated team of 20-25 members who are responsible for technology implementation. The total expenditure on this team stands roughly at 15 lacs per month. While this is the monthly expenditure, the cost required to develop this app was much lesser than this as the IT team works on multiple projects simultaneously and the SMC app was one of them.
The Entire project right from conception to final rollout was funded through SMC’s own budget without any external aid.
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| 7. Who were the stakeholders involved in the design of the initiative and in its implementation?
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SMC Mobile App got a very good response from the citizen. So far over 60,000 download have taken place through Google Play Store and Apple App Store. Over 15 lakh hits are registered through Mobile App. Infact, even people who are not a resident of India have downloaded this app from across 15 countries.
During the flood like situation in the month of September 2013 for three days, the mobile application was downloaded and accessed by number of citizens to receive the authentic and timely information regarding the rainfall and discharge from Ukai Dam. During this very short period, over 3 lakh hits were registered through Mobile App and the same was instrumental in preventing rumours and anxiety amongst the citizens.
The SMC app has developed a sense of positivity about the administration of Surat Municipal Corporation and this has been widely publicized by the media thus increasing the acceptance of the app.
With the help of mobile app, citizen can now register any complaints as soon as they get to know about it. Complaints from Mobile App now contribute around 20-25% of overall complaints to SMC from different sources. This indicates that Mobile App has been a handy tool to citizens.
The availability of SMC Mobile App has empowered the citizens to access of critical information and services on the go – anywhere and anytime. Citizens are no longer depended on SMC staff or machinery to obtain information or services.
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| 8. What were the most successful outputs and why was the initiative effective?
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The idea for the launch of the mobile app was conceptualized in May 2013 and it was decided to roll-out the same within shortest possible time. The team responsible for the development was identified and assigned the relevant responsibility. Activities like creating the account in the Google Play Store and Apple App Store were carried out in parallel.
SMC app, being one of the most crucial and citizen centric initiatives, deserved attention of the highest authority and hence this was led effectively by the Civic Chief and his Deputy Commissioner. The IT department is quite efficient in its functioning and more than capable of rolling out such a solution by itself.
The idea for this project came up in May 2013 and by August 2013, the mobile had already been rolled out. The project activities and progress were evaluated on a regular basis by the commissioner and necessary course corrections were incorporated. The mobile app was subjected to thorough testing to ensure that the user interface is friendly and delivers as expected.
Additionally, an initiative such as this requires constant additions and enhancements which is performed continuously with inputs from the leaderships and suggestions from the IT department.
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| 9. What were the main obstacles encountered and how were they overcome?
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Since the idea of development of Mobile App was new and not implemented by any government organisation, the first challenge was to finalize the operational framework for the mobile application. Maintaining the security of SMC’s existing applications while integrating the mobile app with it was essential. It was crucial to maintain the uniformity and sanctity of the data by avoiding duplication. A Web Service based architecture was developed to integrate Mobile App with SMC’s existing MS SQL based backend. The architecture preserves the existing systems by not writing directly. The backend mechanism is developed to sync the Mobile App data in near real time. Another challenge was to implement payment facility to enable payment of various taxes and generate certificates. At the time of implementation of SMC Mobile App, there were very few Apps in market place with mobile payment facility. It was a big challenge for the development team to provide the secure payment option to citizens. A WebView based architecture was adopted for the mobile payment facility to ensure the security using SSL and session-less use of pages.
Challenge of updating application data: The comprehensive features provided in the mobile application would also require master data for each feature. In many cases, it was required to update the master data on periodic basis. It would not make sense to give updates through App stores for updating master data every time. Considering this, it was decided that a minimal framework at mobile app level would be developed and necessary data which requires frequent changes would be fetched from server at run time. Necessary care was taken to ensure that this data fetching does not incur additional load. Further, in case of major changes, necessary version control mechanism is developed at SMC level to prompt users to compulsorily update the mobile app for further usage.
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