Building the Next Generation of Smart Governments and Smart Cities: Imex Systems Inc.

“ We focus on Smart Government and Smart City technologies and are well positioned as a leading provider of e-Government technology platform.”

The e-Government market is exploding worldwide. It is split into two types of customers. The first type of customers is emerging countries looking in improving transparency, efficiency and citizen services. These customers have no legacy systems and are striving to leapfrog to the latest available technology. The second type of customers are from advanced countries, who have invested heavily in e-Government in the early 2000s and are now looking to upgrade to improve efficiency, implement open data, and create a more personalized citizen centric service delivery through new technology. With the advent of smart phones, the demand for m-Government is at an all time high.

Imex Systems Inc. is exclusively focused on the public sector. Its products and solutions help governments run efficiently and improve citizen convenience to access government services 24×7. All these results in enhanced citizen satisfaction and reduced service delivery costs. Due to its innovative technology platform, Imex has received worldwide attention from several governments around the world. With clients in Middle East, Asia and Africa, North America, Imex has become a true global technology firm.

The Need for a New Technology Platform
Customers belonging to the first type are in a hurry. They are risk averse and need proven technology that is available off-the-shelf to reduce the timelines as well as the cost of implementation. They do not want to undertake mega projects, which are doomed to fail. Imex is well positioned for these customers, as it is able to offer them exactly what they are looking for – a proven readymade solution, which is built on a solid foundation of lessons learned, combined with new technology.

The second type of customers is mostly from advanced economies. They have invested a lot and have built many departmental systems. There are silos that work independent of other departments. They are not able to take advantage of improved efficiencies and a citizen centric system that could result from an integrated system. But at the same time, they cannot discard all their existing investments. They are in what we call as Gov1.0. Imex is able to offer the new technology platform that can be built upon their existing investments. They can integrate those systems using the Imex iGov platform, and provide a citizen centric system and deliver services through multiple channels – web, mobile, contact centre, IVR and evolving home service channels. The company is able to help them reduce their costs, while providing citizens with more choice and options to access and pay for the services.

A Leading Provider of e-Government technology
Since its inception in 1997, Imex Systems has focused on creating innovative products and solutions, using leading-edge technology. These innovations started with internet-based applications in early 2000, and have now evolved into a powerful e-Government platform for citizen services delivery by all levels of the government – Federal, State/Provincial, Regional/County and City. Imex has expanded this platform to create an integrated SMART CITY solution that integrates IoT (Internet of Things) with connected devices and city infrastructure management systems. Similarly, payment technologies are rapidly evolving with mobile payments and digital wallets. Imex has continuously moved with the changing electronic payments landscape, as receiving and making payments are two important aspects of running a government.

Building a Smart Government with Smart Solutions
As a specialist provider for the public sector, Imex products and services are designed to cater to all aspects of implementing e-Government and becoming a SMART GOVERNMENT.

iGov is the flagship e-Government platform. It is a single, integrated and ready to use technology platform that provides everything required for rapid implementation of citizen services, both inside and out. iGov helps integrate, optimize and automate service delivery and process, helps identify bottlenecks in the process and take corrective action to ensure that the service delivery SLAs are met. Citizen communications help keep citizens informed and engaged.

iCity is the Smart City platform that extends iGov to create a true smart city that is built upon smart city governance and smart payments, and integrates all sensors, devices and infrastructure through IoT to create smart operations.

Imex’s consulting services for governments include Enterprise Architecture and Business process re-engineering; to ensure that the government is well architected and service delivery processes are optimized.

Addressing the Pain Points of the Industry
Governments across the globe are having many challenges – reduced budgets, increasing costs, increasing citizen expectations, rapidly evolving technology, older work force, etc. They are being forced to become more efficient and more transparent. Bottom-line is that they need to become smart in how they run the government, how they deliver services, be fast and agile. They need to balance the need to support new technologies with the reality of reduced budgets. In addition, there are a number of pain points evolved over the last 15 years.

They are as described below:

• In spite of all computerization, fraud and revenue leakage have become common. As a result, people who should not be receiving social benefits are receiving them, while those who really need the benefits are not getting them. So reducing fraud and ensuring that the social benefits reach the people who really need them is important for governments.
• Lack of Analytics and proper reporting is making it difficult to manage the performance and identify service delivery issues.
• Departments and their applications are working in silos. There is no information sharing and collaboration resulting in inefficiencies and longer service delivery times. The Cross-departmental integration is essential to automate and accelerate service delivery. Consolidation of individual departmental portals in to a single government portal in order to create a single gateway for all government services is an important consideration in creating a “No wrong door approach”.
• Citizen engagement is a key factor in improving customer service. It is very important to keep citizens pro-actively informed of various issues, as well as the status of their service requests. The need for obtaining input from citizens is critical to ensure that the government is spending wisely on things that are important for citizens.
• Governments have difficulty in keeping up with the rapidly evolving technologies – especially in mobility and payments. With Imex miGov mobile government system, governments will be able to deliver all services through a single mobile app that supports all major operating systems on both smart phones and tablets.
• Scalability, performance and reliability are other issues that governments are concerned with. They need to create a sense of trust and maintain it.

With Imex iGov, governments can rapidly implement a system that helps them to deal with all these challenges. iGov is a SMART GOVERNMENT platform that enables SMART OPERATIONS, SMART SERVICES and SMART PAYMENTS. iGov is built on modern technology, but is much cheaper than building a custom made solution.

Standing Tall Amongst Peers
Imex is the only known provider of a completely integrated system that helps governments to realize a true “ONE GOVERNMENT”. Since it is a pre-built and proven system, the risk is low. Everything required for implementing and delivering citizen services is available right out of the box. There isn’t any need to purchase different components and integrate them. Its rapid implementation technology enables governments to implement citizen services very quickly, even in an hour in some cases, without writing any code. Once a service is published, it becomes available instantly on both web and mobile channels. iGov is an ideal platform for achieving citizen service transformation and become a connected digital government.

Revenue Model
Imex Systems Inc. has been supplying its e-Government technology as an on-premise solution. It will continue to do so in the near future in international markets. The company has already started delivering the same e-Government platform as a cloud service based on monthly subscriptions. In some cases, the company is providing this technology on public private partnership (P3) model at no cost to the government. This is a user pay model based on the citizen service transactions. The advantage of this model is that it costs very little for governments to use an advanced technology like iGov and provide convenience to citizens.

Key Clientele
The company’s clients are on different continents, right from small cities, state/provincial governments to federal governments.

Client Speaks
One of Imex’s clients said “We surveyed the vendors worldwide, and found that Imex Systems is the only company that offered a complete e-Government solution that met all our needs for our ONE GOVERNMENT initiative. Otherwise, we would have to work with multiple vendors and integrate their solutions or custom develop a solution at an enormous cost and time.”

Future Road Map
Imex is investing heavily in new concepts and technologies to improve service delivery and citizen convenience and simplify government operations. The company is now creating next generation customer service technologies for governments using Robotics, Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence. It is already doing pilots with a few clients.

The Driving Force of Imex – Damodar Arapakota

The founder and CEO, Damodar Arapakota, had a background in automation and wanted to take it to the most important aspect of our lives – the Government. Frustrated by how difficult it is to deal with governments, he wanted to improve citizen convenience and improve efficiency. The advent of the internet had made this easier and cheaper. However, while working on several e-Government applications in the early 2000s, he realized that the governments should adopt an integrated approach and not a siloed approach. This motivated Damodar to design the iGov system which led him to found Imex Systems.

“We recognize government challenges and help to align and integrate people, processes and technology to become efficient and citizen centric.”