Amid of unpreceded economic crisis that has been tolling the country since October 2019, officials across the country curtailed many elements of the life we knew to fight the coronavirus outbreak on Sunday 15th, 2020, with officials recommending that municipal and local government services are on a 14-days national shutdown.
Mayors were forced to close restaurants, bars as the nation sank deeper into chaos. In a sign of deepened economic gloom with a GDP sinking to more than -14%, the president addressed a jittery nation by declaring the government has “tremendous control” over the situation and urging people to stay home. The government pressured the municipalities to implement the lock down and enforce it.
Amid of unpreceded economic crisis that has been tolling the country since October 2019, officials across the country curtailed many elements of the life we knew to fight the coronavirus outbreak on Sunday 15th, 2020, with officials recommending that municipal and local government services are on a 14-days national shutdown.
Mayors were forced to close restaurants, bars as the nation sank deeper into chaos. In a sign of deepened economic gloom with a GDP sinking to more than -14%, the president addressed a jittery nation by declaring the government has “tremendous control” over the situation and urging people to stay home. The government pressured the municipalities to implement the lock down and enforce it.
Struggling Local Municipalities are facing mounting pressure from dilution of their financial resources since early 2018. The Ministry of Finance has been blocking their dues to finance the deteriorating economy. Uncollected taxes and the diminishing construction permit which served since 1990’s as leveraged income to most of them dwindled by 50% pressured by the deteriorating economy. Mayors are facing unmounted challenges to keep their budget in place and service the growing need of their local citizens.
All these chaotic circumstances should be utilized to change the way the municipal work was envisioned since the 1950’s. With the country in a lockdown mode and municipalities of less than 13.53% of digital presence (Social Media presence is not accounted for – See Figure 1) , 7.5% of which have basic e-services , the citizens are finding themselves with no access to their municipal services and certainly unable to reach out to their local authorities for help.
Municipalities are taking unplanned decisions as most of them do not have any well-informed contingency plans to face such drastic lockdown. Citizen are looking for their local authorities to help them overcome the daily hurdle imposed by the lockdown as well as provide basic medical and transportation services.
The exigence of a lockdown can easily be controlled by street cameras connected to a remote situation room giving automated orders to the police to take action ONLY in case of violation instead of wasting time and important resources and in some unfortunate situation allowing terrified locals to implement the lockdown in their own hands.
The majority of the Lebanese municipalities do not have any information-based system, they are not aware of their local citizen demographics unbeknown to jobs, way of life and needs. Citizen in return do not have any municipal e-platform to communicate with their elected local authorities.
A typical e-Platform would allow citizens to signal for help from their mobile phones and the municipality personnel will take necessary and immediate actions knowing full details about the person location and status before barging in.
This turmoil repercussions should motivate local municipalities to immediately adopt a digital transformation plan allowing them to automate their local processes and have them available online. Citizens should be able to reach out to ALL their municipal services online leading to an uninterrupted service. Citizens can still request, pay and receive their services online without the need for onsite presence. Such platform will stabilize the revenues streamline of the already struggling municipalities by overcoming the lockdown losses.
Local authorities should adopt a yearly updated e-census of their tax papers having most of the basic information such as accurate addresses , date of birth , family information , job information and utilize them to create a well-informed GIS system allowing them to respond to drastic measures and create a well-informed contingency plan in a more efficient and fast way. A possible scenario would be the need to contact Doctors and or nurses in pandemic times or engineers for natural disasters
The digital transformation is no more an option, it should be the basis of any electoral program and citizens should lead this effort. The COVID-19 probably locked down the world but most of it went virtual and excelled, sadly we sank into total Chaos.
