PMC CARE aims at providing a multi-channel single window delivery mechanism to provide assistance and response in a more efficient way than ever before
Project Head: Rahul Jagtap, Head-IT, Pune Municipal Corporation
As a municipality, the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) is responsible to take care of all the major civic services for the city of Pune. As is evident in any Indian city, the citizens of Pune too had common problems in the fields of solid waste management, encroachment, water supply, roads, water logging etc. To get these issues resolved, citizens had to personally visit the nearest PMC ward office or the PMC head office.
Most of the times, citizens had to wait for weeks or even months only to get an appointment from the concerned officer. On the other hand PMC officers too were bogged down by the number of complaints they received from the citizens on a daily basis. Moreover there was no set process to resolve these complaints neither were there any SLA’s that ensured timely redressal of the issues. There were very limited channels that the citizens could use to ensure that their complaints are being resolved as they should be. Absence of a digital platform made it even more difficult for PMC to analyze the data and to take informed decisions. This often led PMC departments to lose track of the complaint being solved. These issues and challenges demanded that PMC came up with a solution that could take care of its citizen’s grievances in a streamlined and effective way. And as a result PMC came up with the concept of PMC CARE – CARE stands Citizen, Assistance, Response and Engagement.
PMC CARE is a 360-degree framework to extend various delivery channels to its citizens for effective and responsive governance. CARE stands for Citizen Assistance Response and Engagement. A digitally driven, citizen-centric initiative, PMC CARE has been conceived keeping various segments of civic society in mind.
PMC CARE aims at providing a multi-channel single window delivery mechanism to provide assistance and response in a more efficient way than ever before. The objectives of CARE are being achieved by various IT interventions. PMC’s mobile app PuneConnect integrates all its services like Grievance registering, Property Tax Payment, Water Bill payment Contacts Directory, Tender Information etc. All the processes involved in this service are IT enabled. Once the citizen raises a complaint he/she gets a token number for the complaint raised. The token number is used as a reference by the Citizen, Call Center team, FMC team and PMC Officers for the complaint being raised. All further communications are made with reference to this token number. The CARE system also has a comprehensive dashboard that helps fetch repots across multiple parameters over a specified duration.
PMC’s dedicated call centre enhances CARE’s experience and citizen’s grievance redressal is just a call away. PMC’s websites are a central repository of all civic services information that citizens seek. Its Social Media Platform ensures CARE’s outreach to masses. For citizens who prefer to text rather than call, PMC has introduced SMS and Whatsapp services. PMC’s Feedback Management Cell ensures that citizens get faster resolution to their problems, suggesting citizen’s feedback to concerned authorities. All the platforms like Grievance System, Call Centre, and Social Media were designed and implemented in a way that they could interact with each other seamlessly. Service Level Agreements (SLAs) have been defined at each level of the grievance redressal process. The complaint once registered gets assigned to respective officers of PMC. There are different employees as per hierarchy mapped in the system and the severity level is named L1, L2 and L3 in the increasing order.
Post deployment of this solution the grievance redressal process has been streamlined seamlessly. Citizens were no more required to visit PMC offices to lodge their grievances. It was possible for the citizens to track the status of their complaints. The complaints were taken care of on priority as per their SLA’a and specified timelines. Citizens could not only lodge their grievances but a few select citizens also came forward and provided their valuable suggestions and advice to better the current process even further. A brief look at numbers will speak volumes about PMC CARE’s success. Till date more than 40,000 complaints have been launched by citizens through this portal. 97% of these complaints have been successfully resolved with an average citizen rating of 2.8 out of 5.
The complaint portal becomes a central platform where citizen may contact PMC and PMC may contact its citizen to provide better services. This project has truly considered a 360 degree perspective while developing a mechanism to redress the grievances of citizens in the most effective manner.