Delhi water utility set to upgrade software, to pave way for bill amnesty
The Delhi Jal Board (DJB) is in the final phase of hiring a new operator to manage and upgrade its old revenue management system, as well as shift to a cloud-based system, which will pave the way for the authority to implement the bill amnesty scheme, senior water utility officials said on Wednesday.
DJB officials said that the pre-bidding phase of the process is complete, and the bidding process is likely to be completed by next week.
'The project will include operation and maintenance of revenue management system 2.0 and a smooth transition. The bids will be opened on August 18. We are hiring a new service provider for one year during which the migration to cloud infrastructure will also take place,' a senior DJB official said.
The outdated revenue management system has been cited as a key hurdle for the implementation of the late payment surcharge amnesty scheme. On July 4, HT reported that water minister Parvesh Verma announced that the implementation of a bill waiver scheme is likely to take time as significant upgrades are required to the outdated DJB revenue software.
The DJB official said that the current infrastructure is in physical form and migration to cloud infrastructure— without disruption of all functionalities, billing cycles, collection or citizen services—will be implemented. 'In the meantime service providers will also be fully responsible for maintenance and smooth operation of existing infrastructure,' the official said.
The new service provider will also be responsible for incorporating the rebate and schemes in the RMS, according to a DJB report on the project. DJB also has a bill pendency of around ₹15,000 crore from domestic users, officials aware of the matter said.
On July 3, the government announced that DJB had given in-principle approval to waive 100% of the late payment surcharge (LPSC) on all pending water bills for domestic users. A decision on the pendency from the government and commercial users, which form the bulk of the bill pendency, has still not been taken.
The DJB project report said that the new service provider will be given three months to acquire complete knowledge and understanding of business processes, handholding and roll-out support from the existing system operator. Besides managing the revenue system, the project will include running DJB's call centre for revenue-related grievances or billing and metering from 7am to 9pm, managing servers, database, and the DJB website and mobile phone app.
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