BMC goes hi-tech, will digitise docus

For the biggest municipal corporation, which has more than 80 crore documents that are as old as 140 years, the security and safety of these papers is of paramount importance. The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has decided to adopt stringent measures to ensure protection of these documents.
The civic body has provided the task of digitising and preserving these documents to the Stock Holding Corporation of India Ltd (SCHIL), which has its state of the art data centre at Mahape, Navi Mumbai. The data of all the BMC documents will be stored amidst tight security arrangements. The SCHIL Projects Limited (SPL), the subsidiary of SCHIL, will be carrying out the document management and digitisation of the BMC records.
“We have three data centres at Mahape, Airoli and Bangalore. While at Mahape, the original documents will be preserved, the centres at Airoli and Bengaluru will act as backup data centres,” said Sanjeev Vivrekar, managing direcor and CEO of SPL. Elaborate measures have been taken to ensure the safety of these documents in both ways — physically and digitally. Every document will have a unique identification number, a micro-coding and bar-coding, without which it cannot be viewed. The SCHIL’s Mahape data centre is missile proof and fireproof with various layers of security along with electronic identification for every employee. The firewall security has been applied to ensure the digital security of documents, he said.
According to the civic officials, the digitisation of civic documents will be useful for people to have free and quick access to them.
“All data will be uploaded on the server. A link will be made available on the website to view all uploaded documents. Hence, there will be no need to file a right to information (RTI) for any inquiry,” said Vasant Prabhu, deputy municipal commissioner.
The BMC has 68 departments including water, roads, health, open spaces, property tax, octroi, storm water drains, solid waste management, development plan, building proposals, and licences, among others.