Seberang Perai is a Malaysian city covering an area of 738 sq. km with a population of 897,600 inhabitants.The municipal Council of Seberang Perai or Majlis Perbandaran Seberang Perai (MPSP) has competences over urban planning, licensing, town beautification, health services, cleanliness, controlling contagious diseases, construction and regulating road system, managing traffic system, regulating drainage system, and providing and maintaining public amenities. Local revenue comes from rates, licensing fees and various municipal charges and compounds. Local tax revenues represented 72% of MPSP’s total revenue in 2015.

Originally, MPSP received citizen complaints through a myriad of system such letters, emails, phone calls but also meetings, mass media and the internet. With these conventional methods, response and feedback were slow and communication unilateral. To improve communication with residents and the governments’ responsiveness MPSP developed in 2013 the “SMART Monitoring System” (SMS). The SMS facilitates two-way communication between the public and the municipality. The two main functions of the SMS are i) to manage citizens’ complaints and enhance communication with MPSP to provide feedback on issues related to urban services; ii) to monitor progress of development project on sites and to ensure that the developers comply with the approved plans. Main topics addressed by the SMART tool related to floods; urban planning enforcement; illegal waste dumping and environmental issues.

The SMS integrates data and information from social networks (MPSP Watch Facebook) and the “Citizen Action Technology” (CAT) application. To submit a complaint, users take pictures with their mobile phones and describe the problem. In the application, complaints are registered according to categories and location. A reference number is automatically given to ensure that the report is received by MPSP and addressed quickly. A team dedicated to the follow-up makes sure that the complaints in the Smart Monitoring System are channelled to relevant departments for action. The response time is 1 to 3 days. Feedback is visible on the websites. This system also allows the Municipal President to monitor the progress of the work carried out to rectify the problems. According to Dato’Maimunah Mohd Sharif ,President of MPSP “the community becomes the eyes and ears of MPSP and anyone among them are welcomed to transmit information directly through the use of these applications.”

Since the launching of the application, 11,456 complaints have been received, with 100% of the complaints solved. The user-friendly app has 14,103 followers. It brings the following benefits to Seberang Perai’s management team and citizens:

• Improved service delivery and transparency on compliance with approved urban plans. The SMS enables MPSP to deal with complaints quickly and execute more comprehensive and systematic procedures, making more accurate conclusions.
  
• Costs savings (labour). The SMS helps covering the whole area of Seberang Perai with the existing human resources. One of the most significant and important contribution of the SMS is saving time, money and energy for workers.
  
• Communication and participation. Engaging the public to monitor urban services is part of a deliberate public empowerment strategy. MPSP uses this system as a platform to deliver information to its citizens and to provide a platform for social engagement. It takes a practical approach to help communities to deal with MPSP on various issues regarding urban services, particularly in cleanliness.
  
• Building trust and accountability. This is a new way for stakeholders to interact with the government. The implementation of the SMS has had a positive impact for the MPSP administration, whereby it is able to provide faster and more transparent services, which will eventually lead to a cleaner, greener and healthier Seberang Perai. This system helps to improve the quality, the effectiveness and the efficiencies of MPSP services on the ground and reinforces the citizens’ confidence in public action.
  

According to the MPSP, there are key issues that local governments must pay attention to when implementing similar initiatives, including:

• Build the tool with internal capacities. The SMS is an in-house operation financed by MPSP that can be replicated by other local governments inexpensively. The overall cost to establish the system was MYR 50,000 (USD 12,500).
  
• Strengthen staff capacity and motivation. Local staff needs to feel involved.
  
• Regularly improving the tool. In 2016, the SMS tool was improved to include supervision from municipal officers. Feedbacks and monitoring are now carried out more efficiently and effectively thanks to the use of the SmartEye mobile application. This app provides a platform for any officers to submit a report during a site visit. They have immediate access to all complaints, feedbacks and visual images and can go to the site to investigate and submit immediate feedbacks and provide the status of the case on the spot through This allows MPSP to monitor the 303 urban projects currently under construction.
  
• Increase citizen awareness with communication campaigns. Raising awareness among citizens is essential to make sure the app is widely used and trusted.
  

More information about the Smart monitoring System in Seberang Perai:

• http://www.cat.betterpg.com
• www.facebook.com/mpspwatch