| 4. In which ways is the initiative creative and innovative?
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The CCRS project emerged as result of thorough study of various modes of communications and approaches used by various departments within the city government. The study was led by a by a team of officers and IT experts headed by the Deputy Municipal Commissioner, 2nd highest ranked official in the administration who directly reported to the Municipal Commissioner i.e the civic chief.
The study was basically meant to understand the current manner of grievance redressal, the quantity of grievances received and the promptness and clarity with which they were dismissed. One of the biggest findings of the study team was that have a distributed grievance redressal mechanism which is not linked to any central system (computerized or non computerized) was major issue. Civic officials were unable to track if grievances were dismissed effectively or not. More importantly, they realized that the distributed mechanism was a very unclear process for citizens because they would have to identify the ward or section of the AMC where they need to submit grievances. If a person had multiple grievances relating to multiple area:
1. It would be difficult to locate the ward for each area and submit grievances locally.
2. It was even more difficult to track them as the hard work would need to be done by the citizens
The findings of the committee suggested that a common platform for registering all the complaints coming via any route within the organization be set up. This would help to set up a single window for all grievances across the city. The AMC can then use the right mechanism for routing these grievances to the local offices responsible and still monitor them to ensure speedy delivery. It also highlighted and listed frequent problems faced by citizens and created 205 predefined complaint types for 24 departments.
Along with the complaint types, all the employees with their hierarchy were provided in the system and they were responsible for addressing the complaints within the wards and zones.
to build the intelligence in the system for allocating the complaints to respective employee, 38000 residential and commercial localities were pre fed in the system. This helped in achieving the auto allocation for complaint for redressal, a first of its kind in india.
The study team also realized that the key to the success of the initiative was speedy clearance of redressal. So as a part of the execution strategy it was envisioned that SLAs would be setup to build a customer centric solution. Additionally senior most officials of each section needed an effective mechanism of monitoring grievances such as through a dashboard or an automated MIS system. It was envisioned that this can be achieved through mobile apps which will highlight the main areas of concern and will also provide a communication facility between senior officials and administration staff.
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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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AMC renders its various service with 45 different departments. while designing the CCRS project all the 45 departments were asked to prepare the possible types of complaints related to their services and out of the 45 departments, 24 departments were covered under this project with 205 predefined complaint types.
Stages at which stakeholder input was sought .
The initial study was led by the Deputy Commissioner and his team from the administration to assess the requirement. During development of the CCRS, a detailed user satisfaction study was done.
The CCRS application is also equipped with a feedback mechanism for citizens to provide their inputs on the quality of service. This helps AMC in improvising on the solution.
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| 6. How was the strategy implemented and what resources were mobilized?
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The costing for the initial hardware and software development was 85,000$ and annual recurring cost for manpower deployment was 160,000$. AMC has raised the complete funding from the revenue it generates from city administration.
Under this project a centralised call centre is setup with infrastructure for hosting the application. This call center can accommodate 30 operators at a time. This call center takes care of the complaint coming from phones and SMS and emails. To handle the walk in complainants at every ward and zonal offices, complaint supervisors are deployed at each of the 64 wards.
The entire system is monitored by the civic administration through civic officials who have been equipped with mobile apps.
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| 7. Who were the stakeholders involved in the design of the initiative and in its implementation?
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While one of the most successful outputs was speedy clearance of grievances, an even better result was that AMC was able to analyse these grievances and perform an RCA.
The project helped in understanding the relation and dependency of the citizens on Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation. During the conceptualization phase, a detailed survey was carried out to distinguish the different type of problems faced by citizens on day to day basis. These problems were later incorporated as predefined complaint types in the system. These complaint types were also helpful in re-engineering the resolution process of each of the department.
It was also found that the frequent complainers are very well aware of the jurisdictions and departments but the first time complainer is mostly unaware of such things and thus many of the complaints end up in the wrong offices, which were left unresolved due to not being allocated to the right ward.
After the implementation key behavioural aspects of the society were highlighted. The lower strata always prefer to register the complaints in person or face to face at ward offices but the middle and upper section tend to use technologically advanced options of call center or websites. The temporal map of complaint inflow also coincides with the major service delivery issue faced during the early hours in a day when water supply and drainage related issues are at their peak.
With the help of crowd sourced data on performance of various type of services rendered, exact locations were identified where the chronic problems needs to be addressed via budgetary works. The information will be used in next year's budget preparation and planning the work needed to be done at each of ward or zone level. Looking at the number of complaint received over the last one year, AMC concluded that the drainage section needs more attention. Top 10 type of complaints were also identified and a Root Cause Analysis was done for the same.
The system also helped in monitoring the individual employee performance. Average turnaround time for complaint resolution has shown drastic improvement thus building the confidence in the system among citizens.
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| 8. What were the most successful outputs and why was the initiative effective?
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The overall initiative was handled and led by the Civic Chief. The baseline study was performed by the Deputy Commissioner and his team. The initial study done by AMC formed the basis of solution designing. Coordination between all the 45 departments involved was facilitated through leadership support.
Once CCRS was implemented, a daily MIS of the project was regularly reviewed at the highest authority level in every department. Complaints which are not resolved in stipulated time period were highlighted and the responsible employees are alerted for their performance. The concerned authorities within their respective areas were empowered with real-time mobile Apps and web Apps to monitor the complaint resolution process and to intervene if necessary, to help in decision making process and to take needful corrective actions. The system also automates enforcement of SLA policies and streamlines and automates every process from initial citizen request to resolution, more efficiently and cost effectively.
The mobile app provides real-time dashboard of operational parameters and highlights the areas of concern. It also provides contact book of entire team, which immensely helps senior officers in reaching out to the right officer instantly for taking appropriate and timely decisions.
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| 9. What were the main obstacles encountered and how were they overcome?
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Due to distributed approach, complainants were forced to know the jurisdictions of wards and departments in order to register their complaints.
This was overcome by designing a centralized system with a single window system for citizens who would not need to worry about the ward or section they need to approach.
2. It was perceived that only those complaints get resolved which are lodged with the senior officers or political leaders. Due to this, officers and leaders are constantly approached by citizens for grievance Redressal.
With effective monitoring system provided through CCRS, senior officials were able to keep a tab on all grievances as per the SLA defined. Any deviation from SLA was communicated to the respective official to enforce speedy clearance.
3. Due to distributed and non tabulated record keeping, Real time Data Collection related to type of complaints, wards/offices, reporting hierarchy etc. were not possible.
This was effectively dealt with due to the computerized system brought in by CCRS. As a result, real time data, MIS and status reports could be availed at any point of time.
4. Complaint tracking was possible for selected few cases that also through manual method.
Complaint tracking was made available through CCRS
5. Detailed analysis of root causes of similar complaints was not possible.
With MIS and real time data available, it was possible to plot the graph of nature & type of complaints against the time of the day which helped the AMC officials to clearly segregate problems and deal with them individually in a focused manner, thus making RCA possible.
6. Need for consistent and efficient manpower in order to ensure effective execution and implementation of the process.
CCRS brought along with it a dedicated support team receiving and managing grievances through phone, IVRS, SMS etc.
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