IfG.CC -
Institute for eGovernment

Equipped with advanced machines, a central health laboratory developed under the Agra smart city project with an investment of Rs 4.80 crore officially started working on Saturday. Mayor Naveen Jain inaugurated the facility and dedicated it for better health care of the people of Agra. He also got his blood test conducted at the laboratory and received the result within two minutes.

The centralised lab developed inside the Agra Municipal Corporation (AMC) premises has adequate facilities to conduct 700 different types of tests. The lab has a capacity to generate 1,800 test reports in an hour.

Agra Smart City Private Limited has launched the first panic button in the city at Soor Sadan crossing on Wednesday for rapid assistance in the case of emergencies.

ASCL aims to install a total of 43 panic buttons in the city within a month. These red buttons are connected to the smart city command and control centre to offer immediate help in the case of emergencies. The command centre would alert the nearby police station for rapid action.

• Airtel has announced a statewide area network for UP called UPSWAN 2.0
• The initiative will make digital government services accessible to people in rural areas
• 885 points of presence provide secure and high-speed delivery to signed-up users

Telecom operator Airtel has announced that will implemented a future-ready state wide area network (SWAN) for the Uttar Pradesh government to provide citizens access to the government’s digital services.

Several important works under the Agra smart city project have been stalled due to objections raised by the Archeological Survey of India (ASI) and forest department. Officials said that Agra Smart City Private Limited, the special purpose vehicle (SPV) which was constituted to plan, apprise, approve, release funds and evaluate development works, didn’t take permission from government agencies before starting work in protected areas.

The Agra Municipal Corporation (AMC), which is the nodal agency for implementing the smart city project, has now applied for no-objection certificates (NOC) for construction of a duct, repairing of drainage system, illumination in Taj vicinity and street vending zone plan.

Terming development of the ‘smart city’ project as disappointing, minister for urban development Suresh Khanna said that out of Rs 303 crore allocated for the project, only Rs 113 crore had so far been spent by the agencies. There was a need to complete the project on a warfooting.

The minister, presiding over a review meeting here on Saturday, said Rs 2,311 crore ‘smart city’ project is aimed at providing basic facilities to the residents by the local bodies.

After performing poorly in Swachh Bharat ranking, the Lucknow Municipal Corporation (LMC) faced another embarrassment, when it was ranked 45th among 100 cities across the country in the execution of smart city projects.

This was revealed in an evaluation report recently released by the Union ministry of housing and urban affairs (MOHUA). Even in the state, the city stood third after Kanpur (all-India 3rd rank) and Varanasi (all-India 11th rank) out of eight cities evaluated by the ministry. Lucknow was among 100 cities in the country and eight in the state selected under the smart city mission of the central government in 2015. The ranking was based on the progress of projects initiated through funds received under the smart city schemes. In swachhta campaign, the city scored 122 rank in 402 cities.

Officials from Lucknow Smart City Limited (LSCL) will be on a tour to state capital on Wednesday to study the transformation of Anand Samaj Library by Raipur Smart City Limited (RSCL).

Official sources informed that two of the officials of LSCL are impressed with the facelift of the historic public library, Anand Samaj Library in Raipur and they are going to tour the state capital.

The city will have to wait for some more time for the smart city command and control centre to be fully functional.

According to officials, it will take around 14 more days before the complaints of electricity, water supply, parking availability at markets, bus stands and multi-variable sign boards are installed.

The roadmap for making Lucknow a smart city was unveiled on Monday. It will focus on three key areas - retro-fitting, redevelopment and Greenfield development. In addition it includes a Pan-city initiative under which bigger problems affecting the city will be addressed.

An area of 500 acres or more would be chosen under retrofitting. The issues to be addressed would be identified after seeking residents' opinions and a survey by the Lucknow Municipal Corporation, the agency overseeing the smart city project.

The city of Taj emerged as the smartest city on Friday evening, in terms of the public participation it received to prepare the smart city proposal. Based on the suggestions and votes of the residents of the city, the proposal prepared by the Agra Municipal Corporation (AMC) received its approval from the state level high powered committee (HPC).

Due to lack of time the proposal would be first forwarded to the central government by December 15 and will then be tabled at the city parliament.

The Varanasi Municipal Corporation (VMC) received good response of citizens regarding the second round of the proposal of Smart City Project via online and offline platforms this year.

Municipal commissioner Shrihari Pratap Shahi said, "The involvement of citizens in governance is important to make the city smarter. We received an overwhelming response from the people, both on offline and online. In offline medium, we got more than 4,32,000 responses." Last year, the corporation received about 1,50,000 responses offline.

Dr R Meenakshi Sundaram, vice chairman, Mussoorie Dehradun Development Authority talks about the vision, mission and challenges of making Dehradun a smart city.

Dehradun is among 23 cities which have been asked to resubmit their proposal for the smart city project by the ministry of urban development. The Uttarakhand government carried out an opinion poll to get public feedback, which would help in revising its proposal. As per reports, approximately 26,000 votes were received by the authorities. Dr R Meenakshi Sundaram, IAS, the nodal officer of this programme, talks about the vision, mission and challenges of making Dehradun a smart city.

The state Department of Urban Development is facing a difficulty in selecting one city out of the three probables (Dehradun, Haridwar and Roorkee) for the Central government’s smart city project.

According to the guidelines of the project, three potential cities will have to compete with each other by presenting proposals for the smart city project.

“The selection of the smart city will be based on a two-stage competition called city challenge. While states will first compete to name their cities, the second stage will be about cities making the cut. The evaluation of the cities and towns will be based on a criteria framed by the Ministry of Urban Development in consultation with states. The Centre has mandated every state to be made part of the smart city universe,” said Preetam Panwar, Minister for Urban Development.

From energy management to waste disposal, here are a few ingredients of a model city

The debate on what indeed is a ‘smart city’ continues to reverberate even almost a year after the mission on smart cities was launched in June 2015. Environmentalists keep insisting on clean and green dimensions as the key themes for smart cities, while sociologists talk of social equity, architects of signature structures, technologists of ICT as the main driver and town & country planners define smart city in terms of integrated and sustainable land use planning. These concerns are all very genuine and appropriate. However, the role of technology in making cities smart is, in many ways, overarching, in as much as technology can facilitate every aspect of the city, be it environmental, social, or managerial.

Rather than grandiose plans, smart cities should focus on just three things: transportation, e-governance and easy land titling

There is no one definition for India’s proposed smart cities. The Ministry of Urban Development provides benchmarks for various services — maximum commute time should be 30 minutes in medium-sized cities and 45 minutes in metros; water availability must be 135 litres per capita per day; 95 per cent of homes should have shops, parks, primary schools and recreational areas within 400 metres, and so on. The proposed cities range from Varanasi to Dholera to Amravati, covering brownfield and greenfield areas. Benchmarks would be different for both; given lack of significant Internet penetration, brownfield smart cities cannot, for instance, focus on skyscrapers or lavish promenades first.

The Modi government has stopped talking about the progress of the smart cities project; it is focusing on showing development in sectoral terms.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in his euphoric ‘Mann Ki Baat’ (speech from the heart) broadcast on All India Radio on December 30, focused on the ‘positivity’ to be made viral as proclivity in the coming days. But where will this positivity emanate from? It perhaps should come from the worksheet of his 55-month rule in the country. However, in reality, it has been a very sorry state of affairs, where promises like ‘smart cities’ have been forgotten as easily as they were made.

The ambitious Smart City Mission was one of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's key electoral promises in 2014. The scheme, launched on June 25, 2015, aimed to develop 100 cities across the country, making them citizen-friendly and sustainable.

The total proposed investment in the selected cities under the scheme is over Rs. 2.05 lakh crore. But according to government data, a mere 33 per cent of the total 5,151 Smart City Mission projects have been completed or are under implementation, utilising 25 per cent of the envisaged investment.

Chief minister Pramod Sawant on Friday said that it will take five years Smart City projects to be completed and that the chief minister’s office (CMO) will provide documents to counter corruption allegations made by Congress.

Sawant released the manifesto for Panaji byelection which has put the focus on cleaning of the St Inez creek, parking facilities and provisions for a garbage treatment plant, among others.

A Q&A with Deloitte’s Dan Berner and Kathleen O’Dell.

As urban populations grow increasingly diverse, many cities are turning to technology and smart city solutions to build more livable environments and improve the delivery of public services. However, smart city design and implementation challenges, coupled with the digital divide between different population segments, might unintentionally leave some communities behind. This is forcing some cities to confront the question: How can digital solutions advance, rather than impede, inclusion?

The first of the global Smart Cities Council, this regional chapter aims to develop sustainable Indian cities to live and work in.

India’s population is expected to grow to 590 million by 2030, which is twice the population of the United States today.