The Hindu Business Line : Towards ‘citizen relationship management’

Consider this: Your name is misprinted in your ration card. Or better still, there is an addition to your family — could be a daughter-in-law, a new-born, whose name would have to be added to the family details on the last page of your ration card. What will you do?

Pen a requisition addressed to the concerned officer in the Food and Civil Supplies department and wait for the authorities to effect the correction/change. You have no system to track the movement of your application.

Situation 2: There is an electric pole in front of your house that needs to be removed and relocated or a pot-hole that has to be attended to immediately. How can you get this job done?

Obviously by placing a request in writing to the concerned district Urban Development Authority. Here again, you do not know the status of your request — whether it is approved or rejected.

Isn’t it essential for citizens approaching Government agencies to have a transparent mechanism for public grievance redressal? Grievance meetings do take place but the impact has not been on expected lines.

“Due to limited adoption of technology by governmental organisations here, structured and automated handling of complaints or feedback is unthinkable. But it is becoming more of an obligation as citizens’ awareness levels and their right to look to governmental organisations for help rise.

Need of the hour

The need of the hour is to improve efficiency and provide organised services to citizens,” says Rajendra Mruthyunjayappa, Managing Director, Talisma.

For Talisma, CRM is not just ‘customer relationship management’ but rather ‘Citizen Relationship Management’. “We have developed citizen-centric tools, tailor-made to suit the requirements of various government departments.

Talisma CRM will help these agencies cope with the paper pressure by complying with various regulatory requirements and the Right to Information (RTI) Act as well,” says Mruthyunjayappa.

The company is in the process of creating awareness for such solutions across government department and agencies. “We have implemented the solution outside India. The system is not very different here. At the end of the day, it is all about serving the citizen,” says Mruthyunjayappa.

The company is discussing the idea with the Governments of Kerala, Bihar, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka, among others.

How serious are these governments about implementing the CRM? “Most look at it as a populistic move. The tougher challenge could be in implementing the solution,” admits Mruthyunjayappa, before stating that the new generation of bureaucrats prefer technology adoption in a big way.

“Look at the radical change in the passport department,” he says.

Tracked at every turn

How would Talisma’s solution work, we ask. “The moment a citizen makes a telephone call or sends an SMS, a fax, or pens a requisition, it goes on record.

The requests are automatically categorised, prioritised and routed. The issues and workflows are standardised to provide consistent communication to citizens on policies and procedures.

The system is designed to provide the service in the language of citizen’s choice,” says Mruthyunjayappa.

He claims that Talisma’s CRM suite will help capture complaints from citizens, can be configured to generate automatic alerts if a specific complaint is not attended to in a pre-defined time, provide complete trail of action and provide self-service portal that functions as an information gateway.

If and when such a system is implemented, the common man would not have to bother too much after dropping his petition!

lnr@thehindu.co.in

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