Mumbai: Flawed tender stalls BMC's digitisation dream

File Pic

Three years after the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation decided to go digital with its documents, work hit a roadblock back in 2017. An erroneous estimate prepared by the BMC-appointed consultant has led to the issue as the quantity of work is significantly higher than what was mentioned in the tender, making it difficult for the contractor to continue work.

The BMC had taken up the scanning and indexing of documents back in 2014 to bring in more transparency in civic administration. A multinational professional services company was hired as consultants by the civic body's IT department to prepare an estimate of the work. The Rs 60 crore project included scanning, indexing, providing data management services and software development.

Based on the estimate by the consultant, the tender mentioned scanning of 80 crore documents categorised into 16 lakh indexes. "The consultant had given a ratio of 500 documents per index. However, after work began in the health and estate departments, the number of indexes sanctioned in the tender were exhausted," an official of BMC's IT department said. The contractor was thus asked to stop work in October 2017.

Health dept exhausts indexes

The matter came to light after contractor Net Spider Infotech started work on the birth and death records in the health department in 2016 where scanning of 68 lakh documents took up all 16 lakh indexes. "Every person's birth and death certificate has to be in individual indexes. It cannot be clubbed. We have 1.75 crore birth and death certificates of people for the past 137 years," said a health official.

Samir Dhingra, CEO of Net Spider, stated that the tender was flawed. Apart from scanning documents, it also mentioned indexing for 10 crore documents previously scanned by three vendors. These took up 2 lakh indexes. Another 5.7 crore documents were scanned since 2015, Dhingra said, adding, "The BMC has to regularise the indexing quantity already accepted by it and issue an amended order for further work. We are waiting for a go-ahead from the BMC on the remaining work," he said.

Additional municipal commissioner Vijay Singhal of BMC said that he had ordered an inquiry into the matter. "A report is expected by next week. We will see who is responsible for the error in determining the quantity of work and take action accordingly," he said.

Catch up on all the latest Mumbai news, crime news, current affairs, and also a complete guide on Mumbai from food to things to do and events across the city here. Also download the new mid-day Android and iOS apps to get latest updates