Kerala local bodies to become digital using K-Smart from January 1st

With the K-Smart (Kerala Solutions for Managing Administrative Reformation and Transformation) project in Kerala, local body government services would be available on mobile devices, revolutionising digital governance in the process. It will be launched on January 1, 2024 by Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, and it will do away with the necessity for in-person office visits. Applications for certificates and the filing of complaints are among the services that will be offered. K-Smart encourages cost savings, efficiency, and openness for people of Kerala.

According to State Local Self Government Minister MP Rajesh, all the services of local bodies will be available at fingertips with the launch of K-SMART.

"It will enable people to access services of all local bodies in the state in a time-bound manner without visiting the offices. The application is embedded with an Integrated Messaging System that will ensure delivery of receipts of applications and complaints through the respective login of the applicant/complainant and also over their WhatsApp and e-mail," he said.    

The operations and services provided by local bodies are divided into 35 modules in K-SMART and citizens can access that over a single platform. Initially, eight services will be available to citizens over K-SMART and they can access them by logging in to the web portal.

"These services are death, birth and marriage registration, business facilitation (licences for traders and industries), property tax, user management, file management system, finance module, building permission module, complaint redressal system. K-SMART will be especially beneficial to expatriates as they will be able to access the services of local bodies without physically visiting the offices," added Rajesh.

Once the video-enabled KYC (Know Your Customer) using login ID is also introduced, expatriates will be able to do marriage registrations and similar other formalities from their foreign destination itself. These services will also be accessible over the K-SMART mobile app. Through this new facility, building permits will be issued to the applicants in the least possible time besides people will be able to know the kind of buildings permissible in an area with the help of the ‘Know Your Land’ feature in K-SMART.