By Nicholas Greene
SAP SE has partnered with the Bhopal Municipal Corporation of India (BMC) to enhance the country’s government and public services by implementing SAP solutions.
Through project ‘CityApp’, an SAP mobile app will be developed to provide an easy access point for city services and offer citizens the ability to find city services and stay involved in their communities more easily. The app is written completely in Hindi – the language spoken by approximately 50 per cent of the country’s 1.2 billion citizens.
This project is a first for SAP in the wider Asia-Pacific region.
Services that will be handled by the app include birth and death registrations, permits, water supply, health services, tax collection, and marriage certificates.
The larger partnership between BMC and SAP is designed to augment administration, automate some services and centralise others.
“Our vision is to make our services accessible to every citizen in the language they speak and understand,” said Tejaswi Naik, BMC commissioner. “With the adoption of this technology, we are quickly transforming into one of India’s first Municipal Corporations to formulate, promote and leverage technology at a grassroots level for the benefit of citizens in general and, specifically, the underprivileged.”
For SAP, the project is part of its Urban Matters program, which posits that by simplifying the role of government and improving living conditions, a city’s long-term success can be increased.
“This is an exciting time for India and the wider region,” said Vivek Puthucode, vice president, public services in Asia Pacific Japan, SAP. “From transportation to healthcare, innovations in technology and citizen engagement are poised to transform our cities and improve lives.”
Implemented in partnership with Deloitte, the solutions portfolio chosen by BMC includes the SAP ERP application, the SAP Enterprise Portal, SAP for Public Sector solutions and SAP Mobile Platform – provide the solution capabilities to automate and centralise end-to-end public service offerings and achieve integration of citizen-facing services and back office functions.
