Oracle Digital City

Development in all quarter seems to be the mantra of the day. Citizens are more and more
demanding with each passing day for civic amenities or government services in developed and
third world countries. They need best class physical infrastructure for better quality of life as
complete beautification of city, building bridges and over bridges, improving transport through
metro and new roads, better social and health services; same time there is an urgent demand of
best class ICT infrastructure with e-gov initiative, administrative reforms and government process
reengineering to facilitate citizen services to be more transparent, simplified, efficient and
accountable.

Oracle Digital City Initiative is one of the High Value Programs under Oracle Global e-governance
Strategy for emerging and mega cities; here Oracle is working with respective local governments
worldwide of developed and developing countries to develop best class ICT infrastructure and e-
gov solutions with Oracle successfully leverage technology landscape and software solutions
stack, our key initiative and steps to make a digital city are –

• Streamline common functions and integrate backend processes as HR, Finance,

Procurement, Tax management, Project management to improve business operations
and internal efficiencies.
• With Citizen Service Portal and Walk in Citizen Facilitation Center (CFC) city’s local
governments listen citizen demands and needs 24/7, ready to cater them online at the
click of finger, enabling single window services across multiple departments, deliver
benefits for better G2C and G2B interactions.
• Comprehensive initiative in the area of government process reengineering, process
reforms, employee development, health and social care services and budgetary details.
• Better city infrastructure along with efforts to harness technology for citywide computer
network, municipal Wi-Fi, GIS & GPS and implementing multiple software solutions and
technology programs with our partner network.
• Form Project Management Task Force (PMTF) for steering Digital City initiative to
leverage technology to give better quality of life.

Oracle Digital City initiative being implemented on service clustered approach with Public Private
Partnership basis with Oracle Citizen Services integrated with Technology solutions for local
governments. Oracle strategy with Digital City initiative to ensure that our customers can take the
approach and procedure that best suit the needs of stakeholders , citizens , executives and
elected members in the new world of local government.

Local governments in a Global World

In an information led technology driven world, citizen’s expectations are also changing driving
new behaviors and new ways of interacting with government organizations. National and local
governments are under great pressure to use emerging technologies and tools to interact with
citizens and constituents. Wealthier sections of the society can exercise choice and means to
interact with government and to avail government services; but it is the statuary duty of the
government not to ignore people lower on the economic scale and to give them the experience
and benefits of citizen centric economy.
Global demographics are also driving change worldwide. The issues and challenges of developed
and developing nations local governments are different and also the expectations of the citizens.
In developed countries aging populations with longer life expectancy are placing huge and
increasing demands on health and social care systems. There is need to deliver improved care
and to an increasing percentage of the populations funded by reducing workforce. For local
governments in developed world the only affordable answer is to improve efficiency and increase
public sector productivity.

In many developing nations, even basic services that support population life cycle and economic
processes are cumbersome and poorly implemented or altogether absent in most of the cities.

At the same time globalization and population growth are creating mega cities even in developing
countries where the strains of large, diverse populations create increasingly complex demands
that may include having to deal with over 100 ethnic groups and languages. The right technology
implemented in a model tailored approach to local conditions can help and bring these cities and
regions more fully into global economy.

There are wide variations in the extent to which governments both national and local level have
adopted technology to support their responses to these pressures. While many local
governments are able to deliver end-to end connected experiences for citizens and government
workers nowadays; but still there are many urban bodies without basic services as organization
e-mail. The most successful local governments are able to recognize the power of technology
and to focus on implementing business solutions that solve real world problems. More and more
people, business and governments connect via internet; security and privacy is also key concern.

Local governments and Use of Technology

Local governments and urban bodies & councils are regarded as the closest point for services
delivery to the citizens with the government. The majority of citizen interaction with the
government happens with the local authorities at the municipal and local level. In most countries
approximately 80% of transactions between governments and citizens or businesses take place
at local and regional level. In some countries even local governments are responsible for
delivering services on behalf of national or provincial authorities in addition to the services within
their geographic or organizational domain. Designing business applications and IT infrastructure
for local governments that are intended to serve thousands or millions of people are significantly
challenge.

Until recently, interest in government ICT has been focused at national level. Today the
importance of using ICT to support and drive change in local and regional governments
particularly in cities is becoming well recognized. By adopting Information and Communication
technologies and e-gov initiative, public service delivery by the local governments and urban local
bodies could be restructured to meet the needs of their citizens effectively and efficiently. Some
of the services include payment of utility bills – water, electricity, property; issuance of birth, death
and marriage certificates; facilitation of lodging complaints and their hassle free redressal and so
forth. Nowadays local governments are adopted the use technology and e-gov initiative
worldwide and citizens are being provided the above mentioned services online so that they can
access the services without travailing long distances and without waiting in queue.

The key challenge of many local governments of mega cities are their closed technology legacy
applications that often cause many duplication of the same processes to be created, incurring
inefficiencies errors in operations. Most of the local governments in developing nations can’t
provide reliable and efficient services to their citizens due to the non-integrated nature of manual
procedures of information management followed by them. Many cities and their local
governments started to follow the process of automating individual functions and operations but
they create silos of information and obstacles for a single window access to services.

In Digital City initiative, Oracle’s vision and roadmap is sustained improvement in efficiency and
productivity of cities and at the same time effective, transparent and quick delivery of municipal
and local government level services to citizens. The Key Objectives of this Core Focus Area are :-

• Provide Single Window services to citizens on anytime, anywhere basis

• Increase the efficiency and productivity of local governments and municipal local bodies
of cities.
• Develop a single and integrated view of local body information system across all local
level governments and urban bodies of the state.
• Provide timely & reliable management information relating to local and municipal
administration for effective decision making.
• Adopt a standards-based approach to enable integration with other related applications
and e-gov solutions of the state.

Objectives of Digital City

While the local governments around the world operate in a different cultural context and scale;
but the challenges are same consistently in spite of those differences. Every local government
citizen wants better quality lower cost service. Every politician’s wants to see regulatory
compliance and obligations met properly. All civil servants want work to with the best tools,
having one accurate picture of up to date informations and to make decisions without taking risks.
Digital City initiative envisages and provides the following benefits to local governments
worldwide:-

Improving Customer (Citizen and Business) Service Delivery :- Digital City gives citizens
and businesses better access to government informations and services with simpler processes,
less paperwork and more efficient interactions. Citizens now get 24/7 access, sophisticated online
services and prompts response to their request, rapid resolution of their inquires. We provide
multichannel access ( Web, telephone, SMS and face to face) to allow customers to access
services in ways that suit their needs.

Increasing Operational Efficiency :- Public Services are coming under increasing pressure to
work more efficiently and to deliver more services at lower cost. There is also pressure on
national government budgets usually means less funding to local governments in recession led
econonmy. Oracle proven technologies and best practices in Digital City offer ways to reconcile
these pressures by improving efficiencies, transforming working practices and delivering more for
less.

Improving Compliance and Accountability :- Digital City improves regulatory compliance and
accountability for good governance showing what money has been received and how it is has
been used to deliver agreed upon services and who is accountable for the delivery and
performance of services in functioning of cities and local governments.

Leverage the Power of Technology :- Local Governments can achieve dramatic improvements
in efficiencies by developing new business models that are supported by technologies such as
CRM and ERP. These technologies offer significant opportunity to public sector bodies to
transform their ways of working; to move resources from back office administrative functions and
reinvest them in delivering front line services. Digital City gives local governments planned and
integrated ICT platform include economies of scale in terms of reduced administration,
maintenance and training integrated with business applications. It also provide improved integrity
of data, better business intelligence, increased internal controls and significantly reduced
potential for fraud.

Caring for Environment: - All local governments are concerned with protecting the environment
with limited human resources and budgets, looking for technology to assistance for environmental
problems. They need to create a safe, attractive, healthy, sustainable, environment for the benefit
of local people. As population increases so do pressure on the local environment and
infrastructure. Digital City of Oracle with its Green It initiative working with urban authorities to
make policies to reducing carbon footprint , noise nuisance , improving street scene , protecting
parks and trees and solid waste management program.

Sustaining the Local Economy and Infrastructure :- Most local governments have similar
vision to sustain their local communities and culture. Most cities compete on a global level to
attract investments based upon relative measure of quality of life, economic benchmarks and
transport, physical and IT infrastructure like broadband and telecommuting to attract industry and
commerce. Oracle has engaged in Public Private Partnership basis to assist cities and regions to
help and promote the local ICT economies.

Delivering Social Care :- In developed world aging populations is placing increasing demands
on public services. In other parts of the world, expanding populations are expecting better public
services and putting local governments under pressure to deliver better quality services with
static or diminishing budgets. Oracle Digital City transform the ways local governments deliver
social care to handle these pressures and dramatically improve the efficiency of services
responsive to people’s needs.

Raising Standards in Education :- Most of the educational infrastructure is under the

management and control of the local authorities in cities. Traditionally the support of ICT has
been confined to a dedicated facility, be it a school or further education institution, and entirely
separated from the wider community. Much of a region’s economic prosperity is tied to the
employability of its workforce and education is a major tool to achieve such an aim. Digital City
we raise standards in education; provide online learning to citizens as well as in schools and
colleges; support standard ICT literacy education in the community.

Improving Staff Productivity :- Local governments have historically labored with poor ICT tools
and facilities for productivity and collaboration. The use of emerging technologies and modern
ICT tools like availabity of e-forms, broadband, mobile devices and instant messaging
communication provides significant opportunities for staff productivity.Intelligent applications that
capture data once only can further improve processing by avoiding a second back-office pass in
many processes.

Oracle Solutions and Technologies for Digital City

Oracle offer high value solutions at low cost to solve the challenges and issues of local
government organizations face everyday. Our Technology solutions are designed to provide
organizations with long term stability and maximum agility in responding to the evolving needs of
the local governments and cities.

Technology Architecture :- We provide local government greatest range of choices in the

use and deployment of software from on premise to online basis. Our software–plus-services
vision means local government organizations can deploy software and solutions from the cloud or
the enterprise data center and deliver rich applications to PCs, the Web and mobile devices. Our
solutions integrate with heterogeneous computing environment and set new standards in
interoperability between new and existing applications; supporting fully open standards and on
demand operating environment.

Oracle gives local governments and urban bodes the more secure, reliable, flexible and well-
mannered IT infrastructure with its software solution stack and products in every area of
computing, provide the most fascinated IT environment on a solid foundation of integrated
technologies from Applications Oracle e-biz suite ; Peoplesoft ; Siebel ;Open Office, JAVA ; Sun
Servers ; Solaris ; 11g ; My SQL to Enterprise Linux. We provide all the key software components
from Operating Systems and Servers, Desktop Applications and Unified Communication tools,
Database, Middleware and Applications all based on open industry standards.

Application Architecture: - Oracle has investigated the needs of governments in multiple

dimensions to understand how to best compose products, applications, solutions and templates
and address the business needs of local governments. The applications architecture and
solutions designed to accommodate the varying levels of size and maturity of local governments
in Oracle Digital City initiative.

• Very small local government agencies with limited technology resources.

• Small local government agencies with focus on internal optimization of processes and
limited citizen interaction.
• Larger local government agencies with needs spanning complex challenges, technology
capabilities and rich business processes.

For all those scenarios, levels and size of local governments, Oracle offer common set of
presentation components, technology capabilities and business templates in people ready
technology solutions offered in Digital City initiative which has business productivity and
application platform infrastructure. Oracle provides best class technology solutions to improve
operational efficiency and service delivery mechanism of local governments those are fully
integrated with Oracle Citizen Services. Citizen Services are one of the key products and solutions
offered under Public Sector Group which ensure that effective, transparent, efficient citizen
centric services reach the entire constituency and enable growth and social development at
government level.

Operational Efficiency and Productivity Solutions :- Oracle offer Applications

Oracle e-biz Suite ; PeopleSoft ; Siebel ; JD Edwards ; Open Office in Digital City initiative for
improving internal efficiencies and to better access to information, revenue collection, enhanced
transparency and accountability and reduced operational overheads that lead to more efficient
utilization of taxpayers money. Oracle delivers a suite of integrated tools for managing finances,
human resources, citizen relationship, supply chain, funds & grants , compliance obligations all with
lower TCO. These tools are used by government organizations to improve operational efficiency
with effective services and greater accountability.

• Financial Solutions --- enable and automate end-to-end financial operations of local
government and urban body by providing integrated systems that manage budgeting,
asset management in addition to accounting and reporting.
• Supply Chain Management Solutions --- applications that assist in all aspect of supply
chain from effective purchasing and procurement function to inventory tracking.Provide
control over entire purchase and supply chain process.
• Tax Management Solutions --- enable more transparent revenue and tax collection
ward and council wise throughout urban body.
• Human Resource Management Solution --- enable all aspect of employee relation from
application, hiring to compensation and benefits, certification and education tracking to
much more ; increase level of satisfaction in career management.
• Asset Management Solution --- enable more efficient usage of internal assets and
inventory of municipal authorities.
• Project Management Solution --- monitor municipal and council’s projects and ward
works from budget to execution.

Service Delivery Solutions :- Oracle offers CRM and partner solutions to deliver high
quality transparent services to citizens and businesses to conceptualize Digital City initiative.
CRM for local governments offer citizen centric approach for service delivery, inquiry
management and other business practices. These citizen centric approaches deliver
centralized access to detailed informations about citizens and services to many government
organizations. CRM offer citizen interaction management, case management, community
communication management, grant management, field inspection to business intelligence tools
to the modernization and integration of public services for local government of all sizes.

• CRM Citizen Interaction Management Solutions --- offer information call center or
contact center enable real time multi channel (walk in, telephone call, web etc) access of
services to constituents and citizens.
• CRM Case Management Solutions --- enable public grievances and their redressal and
increase effective governance by city officials, through feedback on various problems and
issues in the city, helps citizens to lodge complaints at single counter and their efficient
resolution.
• Social Services Solutions --- enable improved transactional services with citizens and
businesses (service for birth, death, marriage certificates and issuance of trade licenses)
with citizen service centers.
• Environment / Social Care / Infrastructure and Education Solutions --- Microsoft
with its partner ecosystem and technology landscape provide solutions to better manage
environmental, social care, education standard, physical and ICT infrastructure
development process.
• Oracle Earth --- enable capturing, storing and analyzing geographical data to efficiently
governing city as GIS. This next generation solutions from Microsoft helps in emergency
response system in traffic management, crisis management and many other processes.