GS Paper: E-Governance

Context

Data-based governance can assist in reducing traffic congestion, as illustrated by a pilot study in Hyderabad.

How the Digital revolution is transforming lives

• Seamless and efficient interaction: The digital revolution has made interactions between humans and machines, and among citizens, governments and businesses, seamless and efficient.
• Helping efficient delivery of services: Today, e-governance enables and empowers citizens to directly engage with the state, thereby eliminating barriers in the delivery of public services.
• The next wave of transformation: The next wave of transformation in digital governance is at the intersection of data and the public good.
  • Data as a strategic asset: The key to this transformation lies in incorporating data as a strategic asset in all aspects of-
  • Policy.
  • Planning.
  • Service delivery and-
  • Operations of the government.

Transportation system improvement by leveraging Digital revolution

• Loss caused by the congestion
  • Congestion caused an estimated $24 billion to the four metro cities in India in 2018.
  • Given the limited land resources available, the key to solving congestion lies in improving the efficiency of existing transportation systems.
• How can Digital revolution help tackle the problem?
  • An efficient transportation system would help ease congestion, reduce travel time and cost, and provide greater convenience.
  • How it will work? Data from multiple sources such as-
  • CCTV cameras.
  • Automatic traffic 
  • Map services and-
  • Transportation service providers could be used.
• Results of the previous studies
  • London example: A study by Transport for London estimates that its open data initiative on sharing of real-time transit data has helped add £130 million a year to London’s economy by improving productivity and efficiency.
  • Results from China: In China, an artificial intelligence-based traffic management platform developed by Alibaba has helped improve average speeds by 15%.

Hyderabad Open Transit Data portal

• Hyderabad Open Transit Data, launched by Open Data Telangana, is the country’s first data portal.
  • What does it do? It publishes datasets on bus stops, bus routes, metro routes, metro stations, schedules, fares, and frequency of public transit services.
• The objective of the portal: The objective is to empower start-ups and developers to create useful mobility applications.
  • The datasets were built after an intensive exercise carried out by the Open Data Team and Telangana State Road Transport Corporation to collect, verify and digitise the data.
• Collaboration with the private sector: Hyderabad has also begun collaborating with the private sector to improve traffic infrastructure.
  • MoU with Ola Mobility Institute: One such partnership followed a Memorandum of Understanding signed between the Telangana government and Ola Mobility Institute.
  • Monitoring the quality of roads in the city: Under this collaboration, Ola has developed a tool, Ola City Sense, to provide data-based insights that can monitor the quality of Hyderabad’s roads and identify bad quality patches.
  • Other areas in which the data is used: The information thus given is useful not only for carrying out road repairs, it also helps officials take initiatives to improve road safety, monitor quality of construction, and study the role of bad roads in causing congestion.
• A pilot project to prioritisation of repairs: A pilot was implemented in a municipal zone to gauge the efficacy of the data in supporting road monitoring and prioritisation of repairs.
  • The early results of this pilot project were encouraging. The dashboard helped city officials plan the pre-monsoon repair work and budget for repairs last year.

Conclusion

• The willingness of the government to apply data-based insights: The Hyderabad project and the pilot demonstrated the willingness of government departments to apply data-based insights for better decision making.
  • This could also serve as a model for other cities to emulate.
• Making the departments data-centric: The Hyderabad example also shows that governments can make their departments data-centric by-
  • Institutionalising data collection.
  • Building technology platforms.
  • And helping the departments develop the capacity to handle the insights generated from the data.
  • Smart cities as a starting point: Command and control centres under the ‘smart cities’ initiative can be an ideal starting point.
  • Data security and privacy: Such interventions, however, also need to address genuine concerns around data security and privacy.