Turnkey-solution providers for computers, Advent Business Machines (ABM) are involved in the project, and are currently working on a scheme for wardwise computerisation of the water billing and accounting system.

ABM managing director Prakash Rane said a proposal of Rs 165 lakh for wardwise water billing and accounting system has been accepted by the BMC administration and submitted to the standing committee for approval. Initially, the software will be in English, and it will later be available in Marathi.

In the BMC, the water billing and accounting system is currently carried out on old software and hardware technology through batch-processing. ``Such a method has inherent defects ofdisintegrity of data and delayed revenue collection,'' he said, adding the proposed project is expected to result into expeditious and more convenient mode of revenue collection.

He said the endeavour is to develop 23 local area networks (LANs) for each ward, which will be connected to a master computer. All the operations of the BMC will be computerised in a phased manner. Rane said he has also submitted a detailed report for a pilot project for computerisation of the housing department, which has been approved in principle and a sum to carry out the project has also been sanctioned.