However, the challenges in India, specifically in its cities, have been somewhat bigger on account of constraints in healthcare facilities and greater vulnerability of a section of society to an financial shock. (Representative image)
By Anindya Mallick & Debashish Biswas
Covid-19 has impacted just about the whole globe, causing widespread disruptions in economies and healthcare services. India as well skilled disruptions for which citizens looked up to the government for guidance and leadership. The government’s response has also been somewhat comparable to these of other nations, focusing on minimising the influence on people’s wellness, lives, and the economy. Technology adoption across sensible cities in India and globally has been a crucial to provide much better service delivery to citizens and enhancing the top quality of life. However, the challenges in India, specifically in its cities, have been somewhat bigger on account of constraints in healthcare facilities and greater vulnerability of a section of society to an financial shock.
The Smart Cities Mission, launched by the government in 2015, has been a crucial enabler for many cities to properly leverage technologies in enhancing citizen services and enhance the general top quality of life. The pandemic has been the newest instance exactly where it played a essential part in shaping the government’s emergency response. Many of the Indian sensible cities made use of the Integrated Command and Control Centre, which types the “brain and nerve centre”, as Covid-19 War Rooms to strategy and handle their pandemic response approaches. This move helped them coordinate and monitor the activities of several state and city agencies.
As highlighted in Technology and Data Governance in Cities: Indian cities at the forefront of the fight against Covid-19, cities faced several challenges although formulating their response method, but have been in a position to swiftly address these:
Technology-knowhow to repurpose current sensible options for Covid-19 response was a crucial challenge that cities addressed with assistance from their consultants, academia and neighborhood enterprises. For instance, Bengaluru was supported by Indian Institute of Science and other locally primarily based IT organisations in setting up its war space.
Staff to operate the war space had to be swiftly educated for which cities partnered with neighborhood organisations and consultants. The Surat Municipal Corporation, with the assist from neighborhood organisations, arranged instruction sessions on Covid-19 protocols for healthcare workers and medical doctors manning the war space.
City administration had to swiftly deploy employees from other government agencies and onboard volunteers for operating the war space. Pimpri Chinchwad deployed municipal officers, wellness workers, city police and volunteers in their war space.
Sharing of understanding was crucial for cities to study from each and every other’s knowledge to decrease the finding out curve. Cities like Bengaluru shared their knowledge in setting up the war space via several webinars. Solution providers as well played a crucial part in sharing Covid-19 associated options currently implemented in one particular city with other cities.
Taking a cue from the experiences of each Indian and worldwide cities in responding to the pandemic, the following measures are probably to be crucial for making sure sustainable effectiveness in responding to comparable emergencies going forward.
Cities have to have to formulate technologies management policies for making sure standardisation and interoperability to allow seamless sharing of information and analytics involving several agencies’ systems.
Policies have to have to be framed and common operating procedures created for handling and managing information, addressing privacy norms, ownership and safety challenges.
Mechanisms for details sharing amongst cities and state agencies have to have to be in location.
Getting the ideal talent set and experience to operate the city information cell by like experts in places such as information architecture, safety, privacy, and analytics is crucial.
Using a number of channels for citizen outreach like assist desks, get in touch with centres, citizen portals and mobile applications.
The knowledge of Indian cities has clearly demonstrated that technologies and information-driven choice generating are essential for making sure powerful citizen outreach and service delivery. To institutionalise this transformation, governments would have to have to adopt the ideal institutional coordination mechanisms and invest in capabilities and processes supporting technologies and information-driven service delivery.
The authors are Partners, Deloitte India. Views are individual