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The Kerala government’s groundbreaking initiative named K-SMART is set to improve digital access to government services offered by local self-government bodies in the state from January 1, 2024, people familiar with the matter said.
The new initiative, consisting of a unified portal and a mobile application is a replacement to the existing myriad software that will take e-governance to a new level, becoming a one-stop for the public to access a range of services from birth, death, and marriage certificates, property tax and building permits, to business licences, they added.
The project will be inaugurated by chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan in Kochi on Monday and will be rolled out simultaneously, first in municipalities and municipal corporations followed by gram panchayats.
K-SMART has been developed by the Information Kerala Mission (IKM) and uses several advanced technologies like blockchain, artificial intelligence (AI), chatbot, machine learning, geographic information system (GIS), and the internet of things (IoT).
Dr Santhosh Babu IAS, who heads IKM and oversaw the development of K-SMART, said that an MoU was signed for the project with the National Urban Development Mission.
“There are around 904 government services of various departments that are online. Earlier, people went around different government offices, now they go to different websites. It’s not very user-friendly. So, K-SMART will be the single stop for a Malayali to interact (for services),” he said.
“One of our other purposes was to make IKM a world-class solutions provider and we have succeeded in that. This software development has been done on a 100 working days print using project management tools like Mantis, Confluence, Jira, Gitab, and Zoho, etc. Today, we can promise to develop and deliver software within a deadline,” said Babu.
The K-SMART app has been designed to offer a dashboard for a citizen on which he/she can access all the complaints or requests made to different departments and their respective status. Payments for services can be made through the app and receipts are generated online and delivered to one’s personal email IDs or WhatsApp accounts.
“Birth, death, and marriage certificates have gone through blockchain. So one can get tamper-proof blockchain certificates in one’s WhatsApp account. Through the Digital University’s Kerala Blockchain Academy, we have established a private Ethereum blockchain which is helping us in this,” said the IKM chief.
The app is enabled with video KYC and will help citizens, especially expatriates, register easily on the platform. One of the interesting features of the platform is also the geographic information system (GIS) that stores digital data about plots and buildings. With the help of the ‘know your land’ feature, a person can scan a plot of land through the app to find out if it falls under restrictive zones like Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ), Eco-sensitive Zone (ESZ), or close to the railway or defence land. This will aid in speedy delivery of building permits, which usually take longer time when routed through government offices.
While there are 35 modules in total encompassing different services under the LSG department, eight of them will become active from Jan 1 onwards and the remaining from April 1, 2024.
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