Enhancing Institutional Capacities for Urban Management

1. Enhancing Institutional Capacities for Urban Management Vinod Tewari Director National Institute of Urban Affairs http://niua.org vtewari@niua.org

2. Who Manages the Cities? • Urban management is not exclusive responsibility of municipal governments • There are other bodies: • Parastatals • Development authorities • Special purpose boards and corporations • Private bodies

3. New Challenges in Urban Management • Large concentrations of populations • Opening up of economies • Provisions of constitution 74th amendment • Large number of urban poor • Inadequate financial resources • Complexities of urban situations

4. Major Issues • Limited technical expertise • Almost negligible managerial capacities • Outdated systems and procedures • Lack of transparency • Accountability is not enforced • Inefficiency • No cooperation and coordination among various agencies and civil society

5. Capacity Building Requirements • Training • About 4000 municipal governments • About 70,000 elected representatives • Large number of municipal officials • Employees of development authorities and special purpose corporations • Private sector • Community groups • Citizens

6. Capacity Building Requirements • Information systems • Land use • Cadastral • Land records • Poverty related data • Tax-related data • Budgeting and accounting

7. Capacity Building Requirements • Systems and procedures • Planning process (CDS/MasterPlan) • Financial, accounting, and audit systems • Project development, appraisal and monitoring • Personnel systems • Tax administration • Collection of taxes and user charges • Citizens charter

8. Strategy for Training • Training must respond to national and state agenda • Training should be linked with programmes and projects • Training should be demand-driven not thrust • Different packages for different groups • Training should be followed up by on-site projects

9. Key Areas of Training • Municipal government/para-statal officials • Municipal finance and accounting • Management of urban services • Urban infrastructure financing • Municipal resource mobilisation • Privatization, pricing and cost recovery • Urban environment management • Pro-poor city planning • Municipal information system

10. Key Areas of Training • Elected members • Urbanization • Policy issues and strategies • Pricing and cost recovery • Poverty alleviation strategies • Private sector • Government policies • Legislations • Regulatory frameworks

11. Key areas of Training • Citizens • City planning process • Role of various agencies involved in urban management • Citizens rights and responsibility • Community participation • Citizen’s charters • Pricing and cost recovery

12. Improving Urban Management Through IT Among the various efforts required for capacity building for urban governance and management, the most essential step is: Taking state-of-the-art information technology and applying it to various operations and functions of municipal governments for improving their efficiency and financial viability

13. Make Cities Computable • Convert all data, systems and procedures of governance and management in machine readable form • Demographic, socio-economic, landuse, land values, property characteristics, utilities, traffic flows, etc • Systems of finance and accounts, human resources, sanctions, approvals etc • Develop, maintain, and use information and decision support systems

14. Make Cities Wired • Improved communications • Bringing the planners, managers, clients, service providers, and users closer together • Providing new and innovative ways for addressing problems and solutions • Sharing information / increasing its power • Transacting the business of governance and management

15. Spatial Dimension of Cities • Most urban phenomena have spatial dimension • Similar activities and social groups tend to cluster together in space • Space provides site and acts as separator for urban elements • Space also provides means to overcome separation

16. Existing Spatial Information • Fragmented • Incomplete • Unreliable • Out-of-date • Inaccessible • Not computable • Not linked to other information

17. The GIS Technology • Makes enormous information - both spatial and non-spatial - easily accessible • Connects spatial and attribute (non-spatial) information • Makes updating of information a simple task • Provides inputs for planning and DSS • Provides base for other value-added systems

18. The Mirzapur Case • An attempt in IT application in urban management • To restore municipal administration and basic services • Part of Indo-Dutch project under the Ganga Action Plan • Small town (200,000 Pop) • Difficulties of large towns

19. Available Spatial Data

20. Required Form of Spatial Data

21. Non Spatial Data • All data are not available • Some data to be generated through surveys • High efforts in updating compared to spatial data • Security • Use of quantitative models

22. Wiring the City • Telephones • Optical Fibre/Coaxial Cables/ISDN • VSAT (for dedicated high speed connectivity) • Internet • Intranet/Extranet • Teleconferencing

23. Information Dissemination • National level clearing house of information • To provide information on urban sector to interested individuals and organisations • Product • CD ROMs, • Diskette, • Down loadable files • Website

24. Databases • Documents • City Profiles • Resource Institutions • Case studies • News and Events • Infrastructure Projects

25. Sample Template

26. Sample Template