While the entire world is connected via the internet and the government has decided to go digital, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has decided to ban the usage of internet for all its employees. This move comes after the civic body received an internet bill of Rs 10 crore.
According to the Mid-Day, the move came last year and was implemented in phases after the civic body generated an annual bill of Rs 10 crore towards internet charges in 2018. A senior civic official told the leading daily, "Usually the annual internet bill amounts to around Rs 3-4 crore. But in 2018, we were shocked to see that the bill was Rs 10 crore." Barring the official email, employees can no longer access other websites and their personal emails.
The official further told the leading daily that, "Staff members were on heavy usage websites like YouTube and were even downloading movies and songs all day long. We thus decided to ban all the websites barring the official email which is part of the SAP system." In order to cut down expenses, the civic body's Information Technology department has also been trying to cut down expenses on storage space which costs BMC Rs 30 crore for a period of 5 years. The BMC in March 2018, spent Rs 67 crore for the upgraded System Application Protocol (SAP) which is the software for data, payment of salaries, issuing of tenders and services such as issuing of licences.
The version of the software called SAP Hanna. Another senior civic official told the leading daily, "Employees put tender documents on the cloud and don't remove them leading to increased consumption of storage space. Once this system is active, we can clear around 55-60 percent of storage space and save money."
