Questions/Answers

Surat Municipal Corporation (SMC) manages the city having geography of 326 sq.km. The city population as per current estimates is 5.5 million and as per last census 2011 it is 4.4 million. The Comprehensive Complaint Management System aims to achieve various objectives which are mainly centered around increasing citizen satisfaction and city’s living standards and also towards improving internal efficiencies and bring in accountability. • To create the enterprise class system that helps ensure effective resolution of citizen grievances • To automate the complaint redressal process right from registration to its compliance • To improve the overall service delivery standards and increase the citizen satisfaction • To ensure adherence to set SLA for compliance of each complaints • To have the holistic view of complaints coming from different sources • To adopt various channels that are popular amongst the citizens for complaint registration and thus increase citizen engagement by aiding them to raise grievances and report problems • To use new and evolving technologies for improving internal efficiencies and increasing citizen satisfaction • To bring in transparency and accountability • To empower citizens • To implement a system that is accessible to all sections of society

Surat Municipal Corporation is responsible to provide various physical and social infrastructure and services to the 5.5 citizens of the city spread across 326 sq.km. area. The city has over 17,000 employees and number of offices spread across the city. The citizens belonging to all sections of society consume different services in their day to day life. It is very important to have a strong, reliable and accessible public grievance management system in place. SMC’s Comprehensive Complaint Management System (CCMS) helps ensure accountability of the employees towards the citizens by ensuring proper service delivery and complaint resolution. At the same time, it also helps SMC monitor very large and diverse workforce working from different offices during different working hours. CCMS has been enhanced and augmented over a period of time with primary focus towards improving service delivery and bring in accountability.

The 2030 agenda revolves around improving living standards of citizens, empowering citizens and ensuring quality services to all sections of society. Urban Local Body in India are responsible to provide host of services to the citizens including basis services like drinking water, sanitation, health, education, roads, etc. To manage the city of 5.5 million population it is very important to adopt the evolving technologies. SMC has implemented the Comprehensive Complaint Management System that is aimed towards improving citizen service delivery and bringing in accountability. The system aids city administration to ensure satisfactory resolution of complaints. The data insights helps to identify the root cause of the issues and take short term as well as long term corrective steps.

Comprehensive Complaint Management System enables all sections of the society to report their grievances. The toll-free number, mobile app, whatsapp and website provides very easy to use avenues for reporting problems and thus help ensure citizen engagement. The system helps track the compliance vis-à-vis set compliance duration. The escalation and complaint reopening mechanism helps ensure timely and proper compliance. The proactive complaint registration through Command & Control Center, night round, employee connect app help identify issues well in advance and resolve them even before they are reported by citizens. The notification at every stage right from complaint registration to complaint resolution keeps citizen in loop of the process. The complaint reopening feature empowers them if they are not satisfied with the resolution. All in all the system helps SMC better utilise its diverse workforce of over 17,000 employees spread across different offices and facilities to ensure proper resolution of citizen grievances and also improve the overall service delivery. It has also resulted in building trust amongst the citizens regarding the way their grievances are handled. For current year, from 01/01/2018 to 15/01/2018, total 184,694 complaints have been registered through various channels. Out of these 184,593 complaints have been complied which indicates 99.95% compliance. The system has helped redress over 600,000 grievances reported in last 5 years.

The initiative is innovative in many ways. - SMC was one of the very few ULB to introduce call center with toll-free number for registering complaints in September 2010. - SMC was the first Urban Local Body in India to launch its mobile app in August 2013. The app enables citizens to report grievances on the go apart from obtaining other services. - SMC was the first Urban Local Body in India to start accepting complaints through whatsapp in August 2014. - SMC is one of the very few ULB in India that has empowered its employees with mobile app. This app helps employees to keep track of complaints assigned to them apart from marking field attendance, field reporting / field inspection, etc. - SMC is one of the very few ULB in India to have robust complaint management system incorporating escalation and complaint reopening mechanism. - SMC is the first ULB in India to proactively monitor and register grievance through Command and Control center from June 2016 - SMC is one of the very few ULB in India to have diver set of complaint registration channels like website, mobile app., call center (toll-free number), whatsapp and city civic center.

As mentioned above, the Comprehensive Complaint Management System is innovative in many ways. SMC was first to introduce various IT interventions and bring in reporting channels well before other ULBs in India. The enhancements in the systems are primarily involved towards improving citizen engagement, citizen satisfaction, bring in accountability and transparency and increasing efficiencies.

The complaint management system at current state has evolved over a period of time. It is very much relevant for any other ULB as the roles and responsibilities are similar. Various initiatives taken by SMC are recognized at national level. The political leaders and administrative officers of many ULBs and other government department visits SMC to understand the system with a view to implement or strengthen at their respective offices. However, there is no formal study carried out to identify whether similar system has been adapted by other organisations.

The Complaint Management System is managed by inhouse team of developers. SMC is the owner of the system and has flexibility to modify and enhance the system as per the requirement without reliance on external entity. The funding with regards to the imitative is done through SMC’s own fund. The cost of managing the infrastructure is nominal and is done along with management of SMC’s other IT systems. The system is taken care by the dedicated IT department of SMC having technically qualified and experienced manpower. The feature to register and track complaints through mobile app and website which is also used to offer various other services pertaining to SMC. The cost of toll-free number, whatsapp number and human resources of call center is borne by SMC.

Financial Sustainability The cost to manage and maintain the Complaint Management System is very minimal as the same is developed and managed in-house. The cost attached with making available the feature as part of website and mobile app is also nominal. In the backend, the system utilizes the same resources (like power, internet bandwidth, etc.) which are required and already available for running the corporation’s other services. The notification of SMS is done utilizing the SMS gateway of Mobile Seva Platform offered by the Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology, the cost of which is very nominal. The call center is part of Command & Control Center and the staff is effectively utilized for not only registering complaints but also for monitoring its compliance and taking random feedback from the citizens. Considering all these aspects operations and maintenance of the Complaint Management System is cost effective and the initiative is financially sustainable. Environmental Sustainability Various complaint registration avenues, like toll free number, whatsapp, website and mobile can access the services from their convenient place. They need not travel to SMC offices. In a larger context, the reduced footprints leads to reduced fuel consumption and reduced pollution. Social and Cultural Sustainability The easy user interface and local language support ensures that any person can use the website and mobile application easily. The toll-free number can be used by any one. The ability to report complaint through whatsapp is also very easy, all one has to do is to send the complaint details along with photograph if any.

Yes

It is very important to evaluate the system with regards to its functioning as the system is used to interact with the citizens. It enables the citizens to report their grievances which can be very critical. The system is also aiding SMC to assess the quality of services and satisfaction level of its services. It is critical to engage the citizens to report maximum problems so that any service parameter that has been overlooked or not addressed properly is brought to the notice of city administration. The inputs from citizens will be helpful in identification of root cause which can be due to multiple reasons like insufficient infrastructure, aging infrastructure, improper supervision, improper services/maintenance, etc. Considering the criticality of the system, it must be evaluated w.r.t. the accuracy, authenticity and timeliness of the data it reports.

The system has been evaluated and tested on the following parameters by in-house testers and system quality assurance personnel: a. Registration of complaints coming from different sources in a single database b. Generation of the unique complaint id c. Instantaneous SMS notification to the complainant and employee responsible for resolution d. Instantaneous SMS notification as and when complaint status changes and complaint gets escalated e. Employee Connect App notification on complaints from time to time f. Employee Connect App functional testing w.r.t. availability of accurate information related to complaints pertaining to specific employee, ability to transfer complaint or comply complaint g. Accuracy of the data with regards to various MIS reports used for review by higher officials h. Synchronous functioning of the webbased interface and mobile interface and accuracy of the information reported to both the interfaces

It has been found that the system works consistently and in synchronised manner despite of registration of complaints through different channels. The system has been a very important empowering tools to the citizens to report problems and get resolution of the same. Using system in current year from 01/01/2018 to 15/01/2018, total 184,694 complaints have been registered, of these 184,593 complaints have been complied which indicates 99.95% compliance. The system has helped redress over 600,000 grievances reported in last 5 years.

Elected representatives of people, frequent users of services, relevant department and department heads were consulted for designing of the system and it improvement from time to time. The aspirations of the citizens from time to time are also taken into consideration while incorporation various channels for registration of complaints. The feedback from citizens was crucial in incorporating the features that ensure reliability of the compliance. Features such of complaint escalation and complaint reopening have been incorporated in this regard. The feedback of the employees responsible for complaint compliance was also taken into consideration and accordingly the feature for managing complaint was launched as part of Employee Connect Mobile App. The inputs from the higher officials were taken while designing various MIS reports. Thus, the existing state of Complaint Management System is the result of the constant improvements and enhancements that has been incorporated taking into consideration the feedbacks from the stakeholders which constitutes the citizens (end consumers), elected representatives, employees, higher officials, etc.

It is learned that the citizen grievance redressal system should be structured, responsive, efficient and flexible enough to adapt itself to changes. Complaint resolution process should be systematic and structured. After the complaint is recorded it should be automatically forwarded to concerned department official without any time lag to ensure speedy resolution of complaints. An official should be able to see all the complaints that have been allocated to him. Monitoring complaints at all stages of grievance redressal is essential to bring in accountability. It also helps in measuring the performance of employees with respect to complaint redressal. Monitoring should be done at various levels within the Municipal Corporation. Analysis of complaints on the basis of system generated MIS reports is absolutely vital as it serves as an important reviewing tool to know the efficacy of the system. Based on the system-generated reports, regular complaint analysis should be undertaken to identify trends in complaints based on various parameters. A comprehensive complaint analysis in a municipal corporation can help to identify various aspects such as: - Recurring complaint in a particular zone/ward - Any significant shift in the number and category of complaints in a particular zone/ward - Any specific department that received maximum complaints in a given period of time - Particular officials who are continuously not able to provide timely resolution to complaints that have been allocated to them Feedback from citizens is essential to know if the system is performing efficiently and is able to deliver the desired outcomes. Feedback is also important to improvise the system with respect to changing needs and expectations of the citizens in order to provide them quality service. The Comprehensive Complaint Management System at SMC incorporates these learnings and is improved upon from time to time to incorporate new learnings and new requirements. The system is very agile and has been sustained over a long period.