IT For Local Self-Governance

Automating services of state transport office

The Kerala transport department wanted to computerise its various functionalities to provide quality services to the citizens. Thus came SMARTMOVE (customised VahanSarathi), a package that automates all the citizen-centric procedures of the motor vehicle department and obviates the necessity to maintain manual records. All the modules are interlinked for data interchange among the offices of the department.

The information is made available to the public through multichannel services like CALLS (Computer Aided Learners Licensing System), SMARTTouch (touch-screen facility implemented in RTOs/SRTOs), SMARTWeb (a web portal), SMARTTransfer (data transfer module developed for the transferring data from FRIENDS counter and RTOs/SRTOs) The government has decided to replicate the package at all RTOs and SRTOs as a BOOT model. Based on this, 20 offices are already computerised and the remaining 40 will soon be computerised.

The aim of the project is to provide better citizens services and give them quick access to information. Since the motor vehicle department has a huge number of records, it was difficult to trace a specifi record. An inefficient mode of information exchange among various offices of the department also hampered better services to citizens.

Process
SMARTMOVE, a customised and automated package, maintains all citizen-centric procedures. It has a systematic backup mechanism with a SQL Server maintenance plan. The system uses biometric devices to capture fingerprints for logging into the system. It also provides menu-level control for role administration. The system deploys encoded barcode for driving licenses, conductor licenses and registration certificates and can store photographs, signature and fingerprint data for each license holder.

Impact
The integrated modules in one package have made information access easy and interlinked efficiently, enabled the adoption of the any counter- any work concept and deployed auto-balancing of employee workload ensuring a citizen doesn’t have to wait unnecessarily. It manages tax calculation for any type of vehicle, lets citizens see their application status through kiosks and web portals and allots random registration numbers thus avoiding manipulation. The number allotment list, available registration numbers, range, reserved numbers and RC details can also be obtained through kiosks or the portal.