Town & Country Planning, Himachal Pradesh would perhaps be the first Department where all the public services are now online. The office has totally gone paperless and there is considerable reduction in footfalls. The procedural ambiguities have been completely eliminated. Department has transformed to an era of transparency, accountability and efficiency- Writes Shri Sandeep Kumar, IAS, Director, TCP, HP
Being a hill State, Himachal Pradesh is endowed with rich eco-system and cultural heritage. Although, there is a low level of urbanization in the State, yet recent years of urbanization has been exerting high pressure on scarce urban land resources. There are 59 small and medium towns in the State, with only Shimla as Class-I city. As per 2011 census, population of the State in these urban areas was 6, 88,704 persons, which is about 10.04% of the total population of the State. Due to various developmental priorities of the Government activities and opening of new areas, a large number of new growth centres are coming up very fast. The pressure on land in the State has increased manifold leading to haphazard and unplanned construction activities in the towns, growth centres and their surrounding areas. Town and Country Planning Department manages and regulates this increasing trend in urbanization and to check the un-authorized construction activities. The objectives of the Town and Country Planning Department are to encourage planned and systematic urban and rural growth in a comprehensive manner, stop haphazard constructions and make optimum use of precious urban land.
ICT APPLICATION The increased work-load and limited manpower with the Department necessitated the use of latest ICT tools to provide online services to the large number of citizens, professional and department officers. The objective of the TCP Online Services has been to improve efficiency, reduce back-log of planning permission applications and to reduce the footfall in TCP offices.
Two years earlier, the Department took the decision to develop Online Planning Permissions Software for the purpose of automating most of its functions. While searching for an existing application which could be replicated in the Department, it was observed that no Town and Country Planning Department in the country had developed such an application. Therefore, the Department proceeded to get the software developed.
STRATEGY ADOPTED • Involvement of all stakeholders • Infra built-up (Hardware, Connectivity & LAN) • Hands-on the system • Conversion of some obsolete posts into IT savvy professionals • Fresh recruitments, as per requirements
Software Features • Interfaces for citizens, professionals (architects) and departmental officials for providing G2C, G2B and G2G services • SMS and Email based alerts to Users • Live graphical dashboard for monitoring of applications status, processing, officer and day-wise pendency, issuing alerts • Work flow based application, limiting the usage of paper based file processing • Online payment gateway integrated for fee payments • Bilingual website: http://www.tcphp.in • Facility to online track and follow the progress of application processing
Paradigm Change/ Benefits • Favouritism and non-action eliminated • 24X7 Ease of Doing Business • No line- technological governance • Red tape to red carpet • Automated templates/ proceselimination of ambiguities • Standardisation of procedures & practices • Paperless working • Reduction in footfall- A green growth initiatives • Digital store created • Conversion of non-functional posts to IT professionals • Internal rationalisation & creation of new offices • Decrease in RTI applications • Replicable model
MOBILE APPLICATIONS Considering the importance and reach of smart phone among citizens of the State, the department developed the Him TCP mobile application for the citizens and professionals so that they could use smart phones to apply and check status of their applications. The Him TCP mobile App is available under all three major platforms; Android, Apple and Windows and can be downloaded from the Department website or concerned Playstores.
The NIC Himachal Pradesh Mobile App Development Competency Centre has also developed a new mobile App for citizens TCPHP so that they may check whether their land area fall in TCP Planning area or not. And if it falls in the Planning area, all related notifications of the Department are available at single click for the citizens to adhere with the guidelines as per Act during actual land use. The App has been developed under Android and iOS platforms.
TECHNOLOGY HPTCP application has been designed with a scalable architecture on MVC model. The application architecture follows industry standard protocols like SOAP, HTTP and XML for integration with backend systems. This enables the application to easily integrate with the systems and exchange information with the same. It is highly configurable and there is no requirement to change the basic engine to add different levels of users.
IMPLEMENTATION STATUS The application is being used in 17 Field Offices of this Department, 34 Authorities and various Urban Local Bodies throughout the State due to easy user guidelines and informative website. The application is being replicated in UD Department/ ULBs as well.
ACCOLADE The Online Planning Permissions software of the Department has been awarded the ‘State Innovation Award 2016’, carrying a cash prize of Rs. 2 lakh as incentive for further improving the software application.