Praja was founded in 1998 by a group of Mumbai citizens who, frustrated by the public services and the apathy of civic bodies, wanted to pressurise city administrators into establishing a citizen-friendly work ethic. With the launch of the Online Complaint and Monitoring System (OCMS), Praja hopes to make citizens more active and the Mumbai Municipal Corporation's functioning far more transparent.

"Mumbai has an Internet user base of approximately two million. Garnering a portion of this would aid the process of accountability and transparency," says Sumangali Gada, Praja trustee and one of its founder members.

"For the first time, the BMC will be open to scrutiny by an independent organisation, and immediately track the people performing and not performing. It will also track all complaints on a real-time basis," says Nitai Mehta, another Praja trustee-cum-founding member.

"It offers an immediate solution to networking all 23 wards and allows citizens to work with the BMC from their home or workplace," says Nikhil Narayan of Nixel Technologies, Praja member and designer of the OCMS. "The system will enable citizens to register complaints from anywhere, any time, and check their status periodically. For the BMC, it reduces workload and enables better communication with citizens and coordination among departments."

All complaints and follow-ups are stored in the OCMS. The forms have Marathi sub-titles, enabling non-English literate people to use the system.

Citizens log on to the site and register their complaint. The system then provides them with a tracking number to check the complaint status. Each complainant gets a password so only they can access the information.

Every complaint is automatically routed to the concerned ward. The minute it's viewed by the complaint officer, a flag is registered by the system. This tells the complainant that his complaint has been seen when he checks its status.

The OCMS is guided by the Praja-BMC Citizens Charter, which provides performance benchmarks for different types of complaints. If the complaint is unresolved in the required time, the system automatically sends it to the higher level. Citizens can also see this taking place, giving them a real-time perception of the status of their complaint.

Praja is optimistic that the OCMS will bring about a change in Mumbai's civic landscape within the next six to eight months.

Another Web site that offers an online complaint facility is Civicsense.com. The brainchild of Ashok Kumar Ajmera, a socially active citizen, it is privately funded and works with the BMC, BEST and Videsh Sanchar Nigam Ltd (VSNL). Citizens can complain about anything from pollution to public menaces to video piracy.

"At the BMC office, you find thousands of complaints lying on the floor, that are not being redressed," says Anuj Ajmera, CEO, Civicsense.com. "In contrast, our site makes it very easy for the complainant - just a user name and password can lead him through it."

Civicsense.com uses a three-bulb tracker system to check complaint status online. If a complaint has been registered but not acknowledged by the concerned department, a red bulb glows by the action report; if the complaint is acknowledged, the bulb is yellow; and a green bulb shows up if the complaint has been redressed.

Simultaneously, Civicsense.com is alerted about unresolved complaints and it exerts pressure on the department concerned. Ajmera doesn't specify how many complaints have been addressed, but says the site got 6,000 hits in the last one-and-a-half months. "A good number of complaints have been solved," he says. The only drawback -- the site is entirely in English. But on the cards are Hindi and Marathi editions.

Saukaryam, Vishakhapatnam

Anita Bora

The Saukaryam project is aimed at delivering civic services online and through call centres to the citizens of Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh.

Visakhapatnam Municipal Commissioner Sanjay Jaju says, "I'm hard pressed to find anything that technology cannot improve. The good news is that most governments have woken up to this fact."

According to Jaju, who oversaw the implementation of the project, "Connectivity brings proximity. This betters the delivery of services. Local self-governments deserve maximum attention as they immensely affect the daily lives of citizens."

The project has been completed as a public-private partnership initiative all at no additional cost to the VMC.

And it all began with a small incident.

Says the commissioner, "The project came about when I went for a city round and found a group of people waiting around an office for the local tax collector to write the demand note for them to pay their taxes.

"I couldn't swallow the fact that for an act as fundamental as paying their taxes there was such an intimidating arrangement. We had to do something to change that."

The Internet has played a vital part in the project as it provides the most cost-effective method of reaching out to people. "The Web disseminates information quickly and also gives citizens access to various services that earlier required their physical presence," says Jaju.

The project faced many challenges. "The resistance to change is inevitable and bureaucracy, ever so reluctant to open up, created many hurdles." For instance, officials worried that sharing of information on the Net would result in a loss of power and employees feared the transparency would expose their inefficiency.

Paucity of funds was another constraint. To counter this, the project was taken up as public-private initiative, and sought investments from entrepreneurs.

The idea is to track online every service offered by the corporation, from taxation to public works to city sanitation. Citizens can check on their property dues, or the status of garbage collection and access birth and death records, while a builder can track the status of his building application. The site also posts information on infrastructural work being taken up by the corporation, tender notices for contractors, and information on the city weather, news, places to visit, bus and train timings, etc.

Besides all these, Saukaryam provides a discussion forum for people to exchange their views about issues that affect them.

Jaju is happy with the results: "Citizens are surprised and enthused by the ease with which their needs are getting attended to without running from pillar to post." This is clearly established by the jump in corporation revenue collection after the current system was put into place, says Jaju. The site has also seen a steady increase in number of hits and registered users. "The response of the citizens has to be seen to be believed. However, we in the project know there's still a long way to go," says Jaju.

The project details are now being made available to other governments who may want to replicate the model. Jaju hopes that Saukaryam would finally grow into a complete government portal, incorporating other areas of governance.