Government of Puducherry Signs MoU with eGov Foundation for Enabling the Implementation of Online Building Permission System

BANGALORE, India, Sept. 21, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- To achieve the ambitious plan of driving e-governance across Planning Authorities in the Union Territory, the Town and Country Planning Department, Govt of Puducherry entered into a partnership with eGov Foundation on September 03, 2020.

The Memorandum of Understanding was signed between Er.V.Sathyamurthi, Chief Town Planner, Town & Country Planning Dept. and eGov Foundation. Under the MoU, eGov will be providing eDCR as a service for auto scrutiny of building plans by integrating the DIGIT eDCR with the OBPS software developed by NIC, Puducherry.

Bringing in transparency, accountability and time-bound service for the public, India's largest open source platform-DIGIT-Online Building Permission System-Auto Scrutiny of Building plans will enable the Town and Country Planning Department to facilitate easy online submission of application, verification, and approval of building plans and obtaining the approval online.

In the event of release of the MoU, Shri.A.Namassivayam, Hon'ble Minister for Town Planning, Govt of Puducherry, stated, "The success of this initiative is driven by how the citizens of the state are enabled to access the services of the Planning Authorities anytime, anywhere. These services will also have a direct impact on the Ease of Doing Business ranking for the state which has been one of our priority focus areas. We believe that DIGIT open platform will be a key enabler in the areas of online building permission system and help Planning Authorities to create a citizen-centric urban governance."

With ongoing efforts by our government to tackle the administrative roadblocks and accelerate the revival of Indian real estate, DIGIT-OBPS aims at reducing manual efforts and errors, improving the service levels and quality, enhancing the transparency and trust in public governance and increasing citizen convenience.

P.R.Krishnamoorthy, VP-Delivery, eGov Foundation, expressed, "The initiative, apart from putting an end to people running from pillar to post to get approvals, will also remove middlemen from the system. We hope to bring greater transparency, eliminate red tape and save citizen's time and money by enhancing the financial and technical capacity and operating systems of all Town Planning Departments of Puducherry."

About eGov Foundation

eGov Foundation was established in 2003 by Nandan Nilekani and Srikanth Nadhamuni to partner with city administrators in order to leverage the transformative power of technology for better quality of life in cities and to make them sustainable. The foundation is supported by Nilekani Philanthropies, Omidyar Network and Tata Trust as long term benefactors.

In order to address the need for scale and speed, eGov has built a DIGIT platform- a Public Digital Good that can be used by Governments, Enterprises and civil society to co-create and deploy locally relevant solutions. Over the last 17 years, the foundation has partnered with more than 1000+towns and cities across India and more than 12 crore citizens have benefited from its platform.