Four years later, no e-governance in CMDA

CHENNAI: The Chennai Metropolitan Development Authority’s (CMDA) e-governance project aimed at ushering in transparency in approval of building plans is yet to see the light of the day thanks to the dilly-dallying of officials implementing it, documents available with Express show.While the CMDA has blamed the National Informatics Centre (NIC) for the delay in implementation, NIC sources said that they are awaiting a response from the CMDA on how the software NIC installed was working. “The software has been provided to CMDA a long time ago. We don’t know the reason why it is being delayed,” a NIC source said.Interestingly, CMDA sources blame the officials, who are in-charge of implementing the e-governance system, for failing to implement it. “For four years, they slept over it. What is more, even during a press conference in December 2009, tall claims were made about the implementation of the Rs 16 lakh e-governance scheme by the then vice-chairman. But till now nothing has happened,” a CMDA source alleged.According to RTI information available with Express, the CMDA’s e-governance system was to be implemented in three phases and the first two phases had to be completed by 2007. Besides, the third phase was an open-ended one.While the external agency involved in e-governance is the National Informatics Centre, the tender to develop the scrutiny system for automating the process of the plan was awarded to Vinza Solution, Chennai, the RTI stated.Interestingly,  the automation of plan scrutiny system in Coimbatore, Tiruchy, Chennai Corporation, which was taken up in 2009-10, has been implemented. When Express contacted senior planner S Chithra on the delay in implementation of the e-governance, she refused to comment. Even the member secretary R Venkatesan was unavailable for comment.Sources said if the computerised system was implemented, red-tapism and corruption could have been avoided as the planning permission could be achieved in the stipulated 45 days.Interestingly, even the maps on land use plans are yet to be converted into Geographical Informatics System compatible format. While the CMDA claims that they have been hosted on the website from 27 December 2009, sources say that the map is not in GIS format. “It is just a map put up to look like a survey department map,” the source added.