Ponnani: Starting from next year, municipal council and corporation offices in the state will go paperless. Instead, all the services will be provided online.  This will be made possible by making use of K-SMART (Kerala Solutions For Managing Administrative Reformation and Transformation) software which is developed for local self government institutions by the Information Kerala Mission.

As part of the changes that are going to be introduced, there are possibilities that the ongoing services will all be stalled starting from Wednesday till the end of the year inorder to ease the transition process. Going ahead, such services will only be available on the K-SMART web portal. A mobile application of the same name will also be available for download soon.

In the next phase, the facility will be extended to block and gram panchayats as well.

With the introduction of the new facility, the public will no longer have to go through the tedious paperworks at these offices. They will no longer be required to visit the government offices for several purposes which will definitely help them save a lot of time. They can instead login through the web portal and submit their applications online. The public will be constantly notified about the status of their applications through Whatsapp or text messages.

Almost 20 softwares have been developed for this purpose. Under K-SMART, the services will be encompassed in 35 modules and will be brought under the umbrella of a single platform. Money transactions can also be done using K-SMART. Artificial Intelligence plays a key role in the upcoming updations.