Integrated GPMS for GIS-based e-Governance Real Time Monitoring System

Indian CST www.indiancst.in has developed its own distinctive brand of online Project Management platform called "Global Project Management System"(GPMS) www.gpms.in/gpmswiki that serves as a powerful program and project monitoring tool. It injects many of the basic elements of good governance into one tool, mnemonically called TEAM Building

T- Transparency and Technology

E- Empowerment and Efficiency

A- Audit Trails and Accountability

M- Metrics and Mutual Cooperation

This TEAM building process serves as an effective antidote and deterrence to the evils of wide-spread corruption and ineptitude prevalent in our public governance.

In its essence, the GPMS suite of applications is meant to strengthen the power of supervision, review and administrative control mechanism of leaders over the functioning of their team members.

The core strength of the GPMS is the online availability of real-time data that gets correlated constantly to provide reliable information and actionable intelligence. The GPMS-enabled remote monitoring process for ongoing projects at multiple locations leaves little scope for inefficiency or mishandling of projects and the funds associated with them, irrespective of the position in the government administrative hierarchy. Since there is an in-built escalation mechanism, superiors can quickly identify non-conformances and initiate interventions leading to appropriate preventive and corrective actions in time with all stakeholders being suitably kept informed. Thus our innovative, high-tech and simple-to-use system enabled by GPMS, empowers teams to deliver results efficiently and within cost-time-quality parameters prescribed.

The GPMS also provides a citizen-centric collaborative platform that serves as an effective mechanism in enlisting meaningful participation of all stakeholders in public good/services delivery process through online sharing and exchange of program and project related information. This way the technology will not only empower the masses but also make people access the centers of governance.

Yet another key feature of the GPMS-based collaborative platform is that it serves as an effective antidote complaint management and grievance redressal mechanism’ on one side, and as a powerful supervision and vigilance mechanism made available freely to all citizens on the other. Thus GPMS truly holds the promise to radically transform the delivery mechanism of public assets and services cutting across all layers of the Government-Central, State and Local.

(For a real time experience of the GPMS and its capabilities and achievements please visit www.indiancst.in or call us for a demonstration).

Raja Seevan

Founder Trustee

Indian Centre for Social Transformation

A Public Charitable Trust

Email: [email protected], [email protected]

Mobile: 91 9739047849, 91 9538874982

1. Legal status and ownership pattern of the organization

Indian Centre for Social Transformation A public charitable Trust www.indiancst.in Founded on 14-11-2009 and registered on 26- 12-2012 (Registration No. HLS-4-00228-2009-10 dated 26/12/2009) whose mission is to work towards realization of a national vision set out in Article 51A (j) of the Indian Constitution- which prescribes the Fundamental Duty for Indian Citizens and exhorts them "To strive towards excellence in all spheres of individual and collective activity so that the nation constantly rises to higher levels of endeavour and achievement."

2. When was the e-tool developed

From the year 2009 onwards till date Global Project Monitoring / Management Solution www.gpms.in/gpmswiki as Platform is been developed by Indian CST team based on crowd sourcing & cloud infrastructure model to take care of affordability of public sector Indian enterprises. It’s offered based on pay-per-usage mode. It’s also offered at free of cost when it’s of strategic importance & in alignment with our vision. Our GPMS platform integrates various tools & techniques for data collection, analyses & decision making. It’s enabled with multi-model capturing of data of various forms & pervasive availability. The framework is based on MVC architecture, and the main objective of MVC architecture based framework is to separate the Business logic and Application Data from Presentation Data to the User. The cloud computing applications developed using the Framework is platform independent; is can be easily deployed on LINUX or Windows Operating Systems

3. who has commissioned it and or

It been commissioned by the Indian CST teams on its own cloud computing infrastructure based out of the public sector undertaking ITI secured data centre with our technology platform/products to provide affordable computing, to keep delivering values to beneficiaries (empowerment through availability of information & participation), enabling human minds with choices, benchmarks, supporting facts to elevate their thinking & opportunity to make a difference instead of taking step by step instructions. GPMS platform has the capability to facilitate conversion of unstructured data to structured data, maintaining their integrity, survey tools, benchmarking from similar initiatives/projects.

4. who is it managed by and for which purpose,

Indian CST has been developing, customizing, managing and supporting the GPMS cloud for BBMP, CVC India, CSIR-800, NHAI, KTK PWD, KTK Udyog Mitra, Valsad, Damin Dui, Central Government organizations and departments, Bangalore University, Indo-Amercian Cancer Hospital and Research Institute, etc. Thus our innovative, high-tech and simple to use project management system enabled by GPMS empowers the program management and project implementation teams, charged with the responsibility of its implementation, supervision, direction and administrative oversight, to deliver the results efficiently and within cost-time-quality parameters prescribed.

5. usage system eg. Back-end or not…)

GPMS platform is capable of interacting with any other database format/s from any of the existing or legacy applications or ERP systems of organizations system and import data in a seamless manner which allows organizations to upgrade themselves into this secured GPMS cloud computing environment with a fraction of the cost

6. functional abilities and relevant data capture for that function

The core strength of the GPMS is the online availability of real-time data that gets correlated constantly to provide reliable information and actionable intelligence. The GPMS-enabled remote monitoring process for ongoing projects at multiple locations leaves little scope for inefficiency or mishandling of projects and the funds associated with them, irrespective of the position in the government administrative hierarchy. Since there is an in-built escalation mechanism, superiors can quickly identify non-conformances and initiate interventions leading to appropriate preventive and corrective actions in time with all stakeholders being suitably kept informed. Thus our innovative, high-tech and simple-to-use system enabled by GPMS, empowers teams to deliver results efficiently and within cost-time-quality parameters prescribed.

7. Which construction project management processes is the system automating?

The Integrated GPMS platform enabled remote monitoring process integrated with task management for on-going projects at multiple locations based on flow of real-time data, quality geo-stamped information and analytics leaves little scope for inefficiency or mishandling of project. And this ensures that no one in the government administrative hierarchy- including the heads of field organizations and their bosses in the administrative Ministries/Departments-can escape from their individual responsibility and accountability in cases of underperformance and/or misuse of funds in project/program implementation

8. Eg Measurement approval and payments? Communication and coordination between….?

GPMS truly holds the promise to radically transform the delivery mechanism of public assets and services cutting across all layers of the Government-Central, State and Local as its Integrated with financial management system, project management system, document management system, data validated, annotated, indexed and is stored in real-time on the GPMS-FMS cloud with secured access from anywhere. Organizations that started using our GPMS solutions have benefited and have seen their own transformation happening in real time bringing Transparency, Efficiency & Accountability inside their departments, Majority of our users are from public sector, government, financial sectors, judicial hierarchy, Universities, Health Care sectors etc. and they use our system to set higher standards, promote uncompromising performance & deliver intended values to beneficiaries.

9. Which stakeholder in the construction project management process is benefitting most due to automation? Eg. Executing agency? Supervisor? Contractor? Why is this so

Ministries / Departments /Organizations / Agencies and Autonomous bodies, District Municipalities, Engineers, Contractors, All Stake holders related to the project, Public at large, Citizens, In its essence, the GPMS cloud computing solutions or applications is meant to strengthen the power of supervision, review and administrative control mechanism of leaders over the functioning of their team members. To name a few…BBMP 92000 Bangalore municipality projects, CVC India CWG 2010 Investigation 10,000 Projects, IAY-Bihar 30 lakh beneficiaries updated online, Flood Relief homes construction monitoring for Karnataka Housing Board (KHB), NHAI 217 Projects, etc.

10. Strategic Development Decisions

Realizing the narrow focus of rest of industry offering solutions in this space, we're in the process of defining project management capabilities into core & periphery and we see our competition getting lost in implementation details with periphery offerings. We're standing out in core capabilities based on top-10 issues faced in project management areas of larger scale, higher-impact projects. Affordability, Initial cost & running cost for specified number of users is comparatively very low as it's based on cloud infrastructure & crowd sourcing model using open source software.

Incremental or big bang approach?

Most other tools are licence based, less-user friendly and are costly for more users. The running infrastructure cost is also high and per visit costs for support is too high. Customization is generally not possible in COTS products. Decision was taken to build an Integrated GPMS cloud computing platform as a solution that allows the user flexibility to customize the solution to their requirement, add any number of users, empowers project management, monitoring, with knowledge management on secured cloud computing affordable infrastructure and enables evidence capture and transmission from site at very low costs.

The Team drew up a Solution wish list that started from scratch and took some very unconventional decisions. This was based on the wisdom that "The way we approach a Problem, can alter the very nature of the Problem" The team decided to approach the e-Governance challenge not as an IT company delivering services; but as a Social Entrepreneurship Organization delivering transformational change in the Quality of life of citizens. What this meant was that IT was only one of the many components. Many missing components were identified that would enhance the Solution with "What More is Possible?".

was any work done to sensitise management and staff to get them on board? To get budget approvals and commitment?

Indian CST teams bought the awareness of how the GPMS platform when integrated with all their departments and integration of their legacy data with incoming data information, when correlated with other information becomes more meaningful, when information is analysed using technological tools it can become actionable intelligence. Therefore information has to be collected at source / collated and analysed to be followed by appropriate actions on real time mode, and the combination empowers the user to wield power at will to enhance his /her position further.. Their own project data was successfully updated and is now displayed on our GPMS-FMS-REMS platform.

Who took the initiative IT department or Chief engineers or…?

Central and State Government departments, Chief Secretary, Municipality Mayor, Deputy Mayor, Commissioner/s, Special commissioner, Special Finance Officer, CAO, CFO, EIC, engineers, department head, staff, IT Advisor, as the goal was to use technology aided tools to bring about transparency in all the civic functions of BBMP and accountability in all e-governance services and to empower citizens by providing them accurate ready-to-view real-time information online.

How did the vision come about to develop e-tools?

The founders of the TRUST just started with vision of empowering people, developed a solution, set the vision for the product & driving.

Is it a COTS or Bespoke System or SaaS? Is it a mix of both if so which features. Why was this choice taken?

1. Taking care of needs of beneficiaries & visionary sponsor rather than implementers.

Enabling human minds with choices, benchmarks, supporting facts, elevate thinking & opportunity to make a difference instead of taking step by step instructions.

3. Ability to start with basic workflow & adopting to other benefits offered by the system gradually with time.

11. How was it installed (buy, build in house or outsourced development?) – Was it a mix eg. COTS with enhancements

GPMS incorporates World’s best practices on how to get things done are used to process the information, as it gets validated, collated, analysed and transformed to actionable intelligence. Instant availability to replicate success from others, ability to correlate information, lower cost of technology infrastructure & foundation technology, capacity aggregation, integration of disparate technology & resources.

GPMS-Global Project Monitoring System is a new Project Monitoring Tool with Task Management System for Project Monitoring online through Mobile phone to assist task teams supervision, Online Survey System for any Project feedback for conducting Implementation Impact Analysis Studies integrated with Latitude / Longitude captured automatically, from Hand Held/Mobile Devices to Capture Data from Ground, an end-to-end solution for any Government/Private Corporation to manage their project/s online, to get real time information updates from all their stake holders.

12. If developed or enhanced in-house?

Indian CST has developed its own distinctive brand of online Project Management platform called "Global Project Management System" (GPMS) that serves as a powerful program/project monitoring tool by injecting many of the basic elements of good governance into one Tool, mnemonically called TEAM Building; where TEAM is spelt as under:-

T- Transparency and Technology

E- Empowerment and Efficiency

A- Audit Trails and Accountability

M- Metrics and Mutual Cooperation

This TEAM building process also serves as an effective antidote and deterrence to the evils of wide-spread corruption and ineptitude prevalent in our public governance.

13. what was the staff input and time?

Developed over a period of 3.5 year involving efforts of 1,08000 man-days with parallel piloting and prototyping for these Governance cloud computing integrated applications /solutions at the local, district, state and country levels that is serving as a powerful program/project monitoring tool by injecting many of the basic elements of good governance into one GPMS eTool that has a unique feature for enhanced transparency by allowing public access to its web based monitoring systems. It includes the ability to send in actual geo-tagged photographs of work locations that can then be used to discuss and disseminate information about actual situation on work ground.

Indian CST Social Transformation Initiatives are supported by powerful passionate Network of Social Entrepreneurs, Network of Volunteers, Network of Students, Network of citizens, Network of NGOs, Network of Professionals & Experts from Various domains, Network of International supporters and clients, Network of Information Analysis Experts, Network of Process Improvement Experts, Network of Retired Civil Servants, Commissioners, IAS, IPS, IRS, IFS Officers, Scientists, Technologists, Doctors etc. The above mentioned alliances and partnerships that facilitated this technological innovation/s with their contributions through this crowd sourcing capabilities.

14. If outsourced development, how were the services procured (bidding? Quotations? How was the selection?)

As Indian CST is an Public Charitable Trust (Regd.) is selected through a transparent process then an MOU is signed, or on Nomination basis, or on Collaborative Research and Development basis, to make periodical bills or invoices for reimbursement of cost associated related to the project works in relation to the works services offered both in terms of manpower resources, support services which are mutually agreed upon before the services rendered by Indian CST.

15. What was the technology used?

Indian CST has developed a frame work that is a robust development environment facilitating the developer to build efficient applications by providing numerous built –in functions to perform various operations like data insertion, deletion, updating /modification etc. The framework is based on MVC architecture, and the main objective of MVC architecture based framework is to separate the Business logic and Application Data from Presentation Data to the User. The Indian CST frame work has enhancements in terms of Performance, Scalability incorporating latest Jquery components. The cloud computing applications developed using the Framework is platform independent; is can be easily deployed on LINUX or Windows Operating Systems.

16.How is the e-tool benefitting construction project management process?

Collection, Collation, Analysis and Actionable intelligence for action and feedback for loop Convergence of ideas what started as a project GPMS, Cloud computing, crowd sourcing, financial accountability, actionable intelligence, data is converted into information for action, when compliant is converted into actionable intelligence became knowledge. The core strength of the GPMS-FMS-REMS is the online availability of real-time data & quality information in intelligent and customised formats, leading to less error-prone and speedier decision making initiatives being prompted at every level with an in built escalating mechanism. The GPMS also ensures that the superiors/supervisory officers can quickly identify the non-conformances and initiate interventions leading to appropriate preventive and corrective actions in time with all stakeholders being suitably kept informed.

17.Which challenges has it been able to address?

Partial list of challenges:- Overburdened municipalities, Lack of transparency within working bodies in sharing information, Existence of multiple agencies with minimum coordination resulting in poor levels of citizen service delivery, delays and overruns. Low accountability as a result of crisscrossing administrative jurisdictions of city agencies that have no congruence with political boundaries e.g. Bangalore is divided into 278 parts for Garbage Collection division, 88 parts for Policing, 39 for electricity, 30 for property tax, 12 by the PWD etc. In none of the above is there overlap between the administrative jurisdictions of these agencies, or congruence with the ward boundary. The result: the citizen is confused, the local politician is confused, the agency representatives are confused.

Difficulties faced

1. Non-cooperation of departments

2. Giving false information/data

3. Shortage of Man power/resources at Ward level

4. Fear among wards for sharing data

5. No verification/checking of data

6. There are 530 accounts for salary disbursement and issuance of letter of credit.

7. Threat perception due to increased transparency and more Accountability and so on..

Hence the data collection was focused on gathering information at source as it was the necessity to integrate all information and for benefit of the departments, organizations, citizen’s services etc.

18. What are the enhancements planned for the future? What are the lessons for other agencies?

Integrated GPMS for GIS-based e-Governance Real Time Monitoring System with The following GPMS features will be integrated for any organization to use who want to bring Transparency in their existing systems: Highly Replicable Model, Potential to replicate this model at various sectors with adjustment to language and structure, across other states in India and across other countries for Data Utilization and Evidence-Based Decision Making.

i. GPMS-Global Project Monitoring System and end-to-end solution available for any Government organization or department use to manage their projects online to get real time information updates from all their stake holders

ii. GPMS- E-File management System available for any Government department to move files online for giving approvals or rejecting and for any BPO’s to digitize data online just by viewing the scanned documents online

iii. GPMS-Investor Relationship Management System available for any Govt. ministry or department use to manage investors who have proposed to invest in the country, state etc., this helps them monitor, track communications, projects, various stages of Investments, MSME’s Schemes and grants, etc

iv. GPMS- Online and offline Survey System with Geo tagging available for any Government Project or feedback for conducting Implementation Impact Analysis Studies integrated with Latitude / Longitude captured automatically for technologies, schemes, products, programs surveys undertaken etc., from Hand Held/Mobile Devices Capture Data from Ground; Beneficiary Verification System (Dashboard) hosts all Data and Metrics in a Central Location for dynamic real-time display of information online for public viewing / decision making.

v. GPMS- Task Management System available for any Government Project monitoring online to use through Mobile devises or phones to assist their task teams by having a wide array of reliable data to focus limited supervision capacity

vi. GPMS- Environment Health Safety System available for any Government Project monitoring remote sites with Video Surveillance and for monitoring medical reimbursement schemes online of the organization or project related stake holders, employees etc.

vii. GPMS-Compliant Management System available for any Government Project or Citizen charter’s use for brining in the public participation in this specific project or view status of complaints online.

viii. GPMS- Financial Management System available for any Government department to Track their incoming all Receipts and outgoing Payments happening in real time along with Bank reconciliation enabled online.

ix. GPMS-Financial Document Management System available for any Government department to scan and upload their vendor bills online, digitize and post to Financial Management system for generating various Tax compliance reports or mismatch tax wise reports etc

x. GPMS-Public page integrated with Face Book available for any Government department to display their project status for pubic in their particular location to view, send their feedback, comments, complaints or upload the photos, videos, audio's, documents, etc.

xi. GPMS- Stake holder Management System available for any Government department to validate their company vendors, beneficiaries, organizations employees, NGO's, MSME's, etc. online and update the information in real time to improve governance and accountability, public voice in governance, public pressure, and civil society engagement: Information collected from the field can be made available through public sites to improve transparency on program performance and public voice in governance. Stake Holder teams can access the dashboard through the internet and engage in continuous supervision from their offices.

xii. GPMS-Family Tree available for any Government department or Individual to create or validate their tree information etc.

xiii. GPMS- Bullion Network System available for any Intelligence agency or Government department to use enabled to track the stake holder network information related to that particular specific project

xiv. GPMS-Financial Transaction Tracking System available for tax department or Investigating agency use for collecting details or evidence required of the particular transaction related to the individuals or organizations.

xv. GPMS-Vault System available for any Individual person or any Government department use to validate the repository based on the various integrated GPMS databases.

xvi. GPMS- Beneficiary Verification System available for any Government organization department use to improve evidence based decision making by policy-makers; governance and accountability; continuous monitoring of progress towards output / outcome indicators and collection of reliable information from the field.

xvii. GPMS for Municipalities available for monitoring infrastructure Projects, GIS System for Road history, Property History, Advertising Hoardings, Health Information history, complaints and grievances history, Revenue and Expenditure history, etc.

xviii. GPMS for Finance Management System (FMS)- available for any Government department to track their General Payments and Receipts and monitoring them online.

xix. GPMS for Birth and Death Monitoring System available for any Govt. health department use to track the specific event taking place in the particular location or for monitoring online or for collecting information or reports from various Hospitals, PHC’s, Nursing homes, etc.

xx. GPMS for Education for monitoring students available for any school, college, university or educational institutions etc. especially for introducing the examination reforms into their institutions for managing and monitoring all their examinations related activities online, digitization of their student answer books, then comparing the answer book information with their results declared etc. online ( very useful for Preliminary, High school, Pre-University, UG and PG )

xxi. GPMS for Health Information Monitoring – Cloud Based solutions available as hospital Information management, monitoring system for their patient/s to view their medical records online through secured access useful for any Govt. hospitals, PHC, country or any state etc.

xxii. GPMS-Connect - A cloud based video conferencing and surveillance online facility enabled for tracking projects online and for monitoring safety onsite.

xxiii. GPMS Survey System available for Beneficiary monitoring of BPL families along with their social-demographic details for online capturing of information or verification towards delivery of the Govt. funded schemes.

xxiv. GPMS for MSME - A cloud based solution available to monitor MSME programs and registrations online, Indian CST consultancy for preparing Business Proposals, Offering Video conferencing facility online, MSME GPMS IRMS customer relationship management system enabled to bring in the awareness and provide affordable computing to bring in the accountability

xxv.GPMS-IRMS-CRM cloud solutions with GPMS-E-File Management system for any Govt. organization or department for monitoring and recording interactions of all their Citizens charter services, etc.

xxvi. GPMS-Cloud computing available for UID, programs, Schemes, Govt Fund, CSIR-Products and technologies monitoring services online

xxvii.GPMS e-Governance Facilitation Council - Subject Matter Experts available from Indian CST as project management crowd sourcing services online, team compromises of Governance Experts- Retired IAS, IPS, IRS Officials, Bureaucrats, Judicial authorities, Public Sector & like-minded Public Servants etc., Domain Experts- Doctors, Engineers (All major discipline), Auditors, Charted Accountants, Lawyers, Project Management Professionals etc., Information Technology Experts, Specialized in e-Governance, Project Management, Cloud Computing, Mobile, Security Technologies etc., Media, Public relations, Coverage, Case Study, Publications etc. offered as consultancy services under Indian CST.

19. Lessons learned from BBMP have to be taken into account

1. Lack of coordination between Central and State Govt. departments, Municipality, Department and Solution developers

2. Comprehensive approach covering policy, process, people and technology aspects needed to be adopted at any municipality department

3. Continuity of key personnel as project champions is crucial for success needs to be adopted at any municipality

4. Domain knowledge and implementation expertise of external change organizations is vital for proper implementation needs to be adopted at any municipality.

5. The Proof-of-concept implementation should not be viewed as a mere computerization exercise, customization work, integrating with the mobile framework, Integrating, various data bases, BBMP 16,657 Employees, 21 departments, Administration, Health, Accounts, Forest, Revenue, Engineering, Horticulture, Education, Legal Cell, Welfare, JNNURM, Estate, Town Planning, Markets, Advertisement, TVCC, Land Acquisition, Animal Husbandry, Solid Waste Management Cell, Lakes, head office, all 8 zones, Divisions, Sub-Divisions, 198 wards, 450 offices, etc., Accounts departments, 327 R-codes, P-codes, 936 bank branches, 1800 hospitals, schools, colleges, universities, process approval work flows and issue user names with passwords, stake holders information, contractors details, hand holding to clean legacy data, Bank reconciliation, MIS reports, Public page to display real time information for citizen to make their comments online, making them update legacy and current projects online, External change organization should handhold the municipality through one complete financial year needs to be located who can hand hold at any urban municipality.

6. Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) has collected funds and processed and paid payments totaling Rs. 10 billion in 2012-13 ? 2,230,548,919.34 Received in Jan 2013

7. In this financial year so far - Bengaluru citizens have received payments, receipts from the BBMP cloud after depositing- house tax, building cess, conservancy charges and fees for birth and death registration etc etc.

8. Though the Ministry of Urban Development (MoUD) has issued a set of guidelines for implementing the project to the various state governments, it did not specify the solution to be applied in rolling out the project. Other factors apart, lack of standardised application to roll out this massive plan has been widely felt in all such projects being undertaken by different municipal bodies across the country.

9. Hence, it is very important to bring in the awareness to the government agencies to change their traditional procurement models if they are serious about procuring GPMS resources from the cloud

20. How GPMS-FMS implementation improved municipality department’s efficiencies and performances?

Periodical training programs, fortnightly reviews meeting and status updates were conducted on regular basis for all the engineers, staff and officers by fixing responsibility for initiating the majority of actions required to guide the projects and programs as they get started on how to report current progress, how to update status or were asked to add missing data information, validate the data, how to generate their daily / monthly / quarterly types of reports online showed continuous improvement and an substantial increase in the working efficiency of these department engineers, officers and its staff, overall it has resulted in bringing transparency across all the departments reporting online, on-going projects status, financial approvals status, payments done reported online in real-time has now made all its beneficiaries, key stakeholders in the operating departments who are participating in these programs, project management people as their accountabilities are established across all the programs and projects.