Delhi government moves towards paperless services, smart cards

The Delhi government is trying to integrate transport, health and power sector services through technology and Internet to make the national capital a smart city. As part of the initiative, the city government is moving towards a paperless citizen service which will enable users to access government documents through the Internet. “There are 219 forms for different services like birth and death certificates. At present one needs to take a day off and go to a government office, stand in a queue and chances are high that they have to pay bribe to the officer for the service. The entire process takes three days. “So we are in process of identifying various services where with proper authentication and digital signature one can take a printout sitting at home or at office.Therefore, cutting more layers of corruption and bringing efficiency,” Parliamentary Secretary to minister of IT, Adarsh Shastri said. Likewise in the transport sector, government is planning to bring smart cards for all modes of transport. “Delhi has moved to multi-transport system. We have buses, autos, cabs, metro and the process is to integrate it all together and issue single card which can be used to access all transport modes. Through this card one can pay in the metro bus and even pay for the parking and toll taxes,” Shastri said. The city government is following the example of London where one card is used to pay for boat, bus, metro and parking. The move will also help government track the vehicle and improve the safety mechanism in transport sector. Similarly in the health sector, government is planning to give health cards to each citizen and entire data of the card holder along with his medical history will be stored in it. “If a patient goes to any hospital or dispensary then through this card his entire medical history, how many times the patient has visited a hospital, name of the doctor he has consulted along with medicines prescribed and his reports will come before the doctor treating him. “We are also trying to make the entire bed availability system online by integrating all the hospitals and medical institutions so that doctors can check availability of beds and medicine on real time basis,” Shastri said. According to government, the move will help end corruption and increase efficiency. Similar system is being followed in US and Europe. In the power sector, government is trying to introduce smart street lights. Officials said street lighting power efficiency is low and it consumes lot of electricity. World over countries have started using smart street lighting depending upon ambient lighting.Street lighting works on the basis of surrounding light as requirement is different in summers and winters. “Smart street lights decide at what time how much light is needed. Through this we can save 30 per cent of light,” Shastri said. Government is also working on grid metering through which a user can produce electricity by installing solar power system. “If a user generates power through solar panel, then smart meters can be installed which will communicate directly with billing system without human intervention. If one generates one KW of energy at home in a day and daily consumption is three KW then he will be billed for only two KW,” Shastri said. PTI