Support to Improved Administrative Services and City Capacity Development
This component aims to support the sustainability of component 1 investments, lay the foundations for better city management and improve selected citizen services in Karachi. The sub-project would focus on building a competitive business environment, improving governance performance of Provincial Public Providers and improving the city governance and accountability, urban livability and supporting better social inclusion.
Automation of construction Permits and Business Registration in Karachi
The sub-project’s intervention will include creating Government of Sindh’s Provincial Electronic One Stop Shop system which will involve creating a unified Web Portal driven by a central database that will source its information to provincial departments such as Excise and Taxation, Sindh Employees Social Security Institution, Employees Old Age Benefits Institution, Labor Department, Industries and Commerce Department for business licenses and e- licensing by other provincial agencies hosted by the Sindh Board of Investments. The sub-project will finance goods and services for the automation of construction permit processes including upgrading of inspection services, opening separate counters for industrial commercial buildings and for integrated public facilitation, complaints management and resolution and capacity building activities for Sindh Building Control Authority. It is estimated that the improvements can increase the Doing Business Indicator Distance to Frontier by 5 percentage points.
Laying foundations for better city management
This sub-project will also finance the implementation of an “Integrated Financial Management Information System” for KMC. This includes financing a city-wide survey to assessing and creating a computerized tax base, designing and implementation of an upgraded online platform. In addition, it will finance the design and development of a web-based platform for KMC and two partner DMCs for improved public access for information on city management, budgeting, planning, gathering citizen feedback on services and electronic payment of selected municipal fees and taxes. KMC has conducted a review of the “as-is” and prepared the “to-be” reengineered target business processes for a comprehensive IFMIS. The implementation phase will include a tool to import the approved budget; data upload on the IFMIS to provide a seamless access to historic transactions and reporting; a user-friendly web interface with capability to present and transfer financial data in real time to support Open Government data, which has emerged as one of the principal ways of increasing government transparency; periodic software updates; capacity to integrate and communicate with third party applications and database; interface with the State Bank of Pakistan for electronic funds transfer; seamless integration with the SAP-based Financial Accounting and the Budgeting system (FABS) at the federal and provincial levels in Pakistan. Preparatory activities include:
- Upgrading the KMC Data Center to serve as Tier 4 Primary Data Center
- Cleansing of existing data (3 years legacy data)
- Secured Local Area Network and Wide Area Network
- Business Continuity Management and Disaster Recovery Plan based on Recovery Time Objectives and Recovery Point Objectives.
KMC will fund annual maintenance and support from its own resources to demonstrate commitment to the use and sustainability of IFMIS. KMC controls, operates, maintains a larger number of movable and immovable physical assets such as roads, large parks, hospitals and other health facilities, public and civic use buildings, fire brigade equipment. This component will finance “Public Asset Management System” which involves designing and developing an asset management system at KMC for movable and immovable assets. This includes developing an operations and maintenance manual for municipal assets & infrastructure managed by KMC and delivery of hands on training to KMC staff in sustainably using these O&M manuals. This sub-project will focus on improving own source revenue (OSR) collection. The municipal utility tax is an important potential source of self-collected revenue for KMC. It is a tax levied on residential, commercial, and other uses of land to fund the provision of various municipal services. There is a substantial potential for increasing collections from this local tax in a sustainable manner. KMC has a rudimentary web portal with no interface with the citizens. These activities will finance: The design and development of a web-based platform for KMC for improved public access to information (on city management, budgeting, planning), gathering citizen feedback on services and enabling electronic payment of selected municipal fees and taxes. The development and implementation of a two year long public awareness and outreach program for city programs and activities.