Smart city mission implementation dismays IT sector

  • | Monday | 20th November, 2017

If we are looking at creating smart cities, what we really need to create is something like a smart city authority. "Government authorities, senior officials and people who should be taking decisions, are not taking decisions quick enough. "I definitely wanted more from the smart city mission. "Till the time we put the residents at the centre of the entire initiative, smart city has no meaning. Panaji: The delay in the execution of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's flagship smart cities mission has disappointed the industry, which feels that a bureaucratic decision making process and piece meal implementation threatens to derail the objective of the mission.

Panaji: The delay in the execution of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's flagship smart cities mission has disappointed the industry, which feels that a bureaucratic decision making process and piece meal implementation threatens to derail the objective of the mission."The sentiment is that the smart city project is delayed, and the limbo is largely because of the bureaucratic structure that we have in terms of the decision making process," managing vice president at Gartner Ganesh Ramamoorthy said while speaking to TOI on the sidelines of the just-concluded Gartner Symposium/ITxpo held at Bambolim."I definitely wanted more from the smart city mission. If you want to call that disappointment, you can," Ramamoorthy said."Till the time we put the residents at the centre of the entire initiative, smart city has no meaning."Gartner is a research and advisory firm providing information technology related insight for multinational companies.The NDA government's move to allocate Rs 7,060 crore for smart cities in 2014 had generated a lot of excitement in the Indian IT industry who had sensed a major opportunity in urban modernization.However, except for free wifi and a few smartphone applications, the Smart City Mission has failed to bring about any major technology-driven improvement in urban renewal attempts. "Government authorities, senior officials and people who should be taking decisions, are not taking decisions quick enough. It is taking too long from an evaluation point of view. If it takes too long, then we may miss the bus," Ramamoorthy said.To bring the Smart City Mission back on track, a dedicated authority capable of taking policy decisions is required."Putting the citizen at the centre and driving certain initiatives is a public policy issue, but public policy changes whenever the government changes. If we are looking at creating smart cities, what we really need to create is something like a smart city authority. We do have that structure but we have only seen it on paper," Ramamoorthy said.He added that he expected implementation of the smart city projects to pick up in another four to five years.

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