With Vellore on the journey towards becoming a Smart City, netizens have been active participants, chipping in with their ideas, suggestions and participating in online contests on the dedicated Facebook page.
With 4,028 likes (at the time of writing the report), the Vellore Smart City page on Facebook – www.facebook.com/velloresmartcity - has been packed with action for nearly three months.
The page has turned into a platform to post information on the latest developments in the project for Velloreans, invite suggestions and make announcements on citizen engagement initiatives.
The project consultant – Athena Infonomics – is managing the page that was started in early September. The Vellore Smart City FB page is one among the most active smart city pages.
“The response to the Facebook page has been overwhelming. It is another medium of citizen engagement. It was started to also involve people who had grown up in Vellore but are staying out of the city now,” said Vinod Ramanarayanan, consultant with Athena Infonomics.
Vellore is one of the 12 cities in the State selected for the Union Ministry of Urban Development’s Smart City project. The Vellore Corporation along with the consultancy has been preparing a project report to the submitted to the Ministry.
The Centre will be allotting funds first to top 20 cities, literally creating a race-like scenario.
It is here that the Facebook page has come in handy. The consultant has been inviting netizens to post their ideas, suggestions on initiatives, and highlight challenges faced by the city.
For instance, it asked the netizens to like the post if they will prefer to ride the bus more often if information boards were put up around the city informing bus arrival times, backed by a mobile app to let them track the bus.
It also asked the netizens to hit like if they would want a public cycle sharing system in Vellore or segregated dustbins outside every house in the city.
One of the Facebook events that drew good response was the photography contest, Mr. Ramanarayanan noted.
Netizens were asked to capture and post photographs on the themes given every week. This included heritage of Vellore, people of Vellore and challenges of Vellore such as moments of traffic, water clogging and improper solid waste disposal.
The picture with the maximum likes went on to become the cover picture of the page.
“We have an exclusive person to post updates regularly on the page. We posts information on public events too asking people to participate in interactions,” he added.
However, citizen engagement for events is not encouraging. “We get good feedback for Facebook events but it is not that great when it comes to public events. Netizens do not come beyond the FB,” he mentioned.
