Zen Citizen conducted an audit of the BDA’s property tax portal and identified the following issues, prioritized by urgency and need for immediate resolution.

Search function not working

The search feature for properties using the property ID is not working. The combination from BDA records used are : PID 6000044357, Challan 1688637, Amount  604.40. 

We have reported this to the vendor team to test if indeed this is true. Citizens will be hitting the portal once the tax payment opens up. We hope this will be fixed immediately. Improving user experience is the goal and it starts with having a functioning website.

A note on what is the PID and which document to refer to to find the PID would be most useful for the citizen.

Remove the requirement to enter challan ID and use the first three letters of name?

Please remove the requirement to enter challan ID and corresponding amount. BDA agrees it is most inconvenient to have this requirement. Instead, we could ask the user to enter, say, the first three letters of their name as it appears in the previous tax receipt or Khata/ any other property system the tax portal is integrated with.

If the team prefers to continue with the challan ID requirement, then we request an explanation of what is a ‘challan ID’, or consider using the words ‘tax receipt’ instead.

Mobile number linking 

The FRS states that after entering the search details, an OTP will be sent to the linked mobile number. Upon validation the amount due is displayed to the citizen. There is no coverage for a common scenario – citizen’s mobile numbers are not linked to the mobile numbers in many instances – this is one of the most common queries that the BDA Helpdesk receives.  

‘Report my problem’ link

Per BDA, issues reported here go into your database but there is no system for sharing feedback received with BDA. There is no communication from the vendor to BDA about the reported issues. If there is no system for this, why not display BDA contact information here? 

Notifications

Currently no notifications are being sent by email or SMS to remind citizens that tax is due, or about the rebate period. 

Accessibility 

The current URL is https://app.bda.karnataka.gov.in/bdaptax-citizen/ Without copy pasting, chances of getting the URL right are slim. 

• app.bdakarnataka.gov.in leads to a ‘Site can’t be reached’ page
• At the minimum ‘bdaptax-citizen’ needs to be changed; it’s not easy for citizens to notice the ‘p’, an having ‘-citizen’ does not seem to serve any purpose (I’m happy to be corrected) 

The solution suggested by vendor is to redirect a URL such as bdakarnataka.in/propertytax to https://app.bda.karnataka.gov.in/bdaptax-citizen/login which is a great near-term fix.   

Since bda.karnataka.gov.in no longer exists, the longer term plan needs to be to migrate the site to bda.karnataka.gov.in. Having multiple URL’s for the same entity is confusing to citizens. A search of google for BDA shows this tax portal with bda.karnataka.gov.in as the second URL. 

Immediate fix 

1. Create a page  bdakarnataka.in/propertytax and redirect it to https://app.bda.karnataka.gov.in/bdaptax-citizen/. 
2. Also, during tax season mention this link prominently on the home page. One suggestion is to create a text box before ‘Press Releases’

Medium-term fix 

Consider migrating the portal to bdakarnataka.in. 

Data

Please set up a dashboard to monitor metrics such as logins, successful searches, payment completions on the portal. Vendor team says they track “success” and “failures” – it is not clear how these metrics are exactly defined? 

Documentation

Neither the Functional Requirements Specification nor BDA have details such as: list of system messages, including error messages, confirmation messages, and any other pop-up notifications. Context: Some of the error messages can be simpler. Example: “Incorrect combination of inputs. Please try again with correct data’ —> ‘Incorrect inputs. Try again.’

Dummy PID

BDA does not have a dummy PID to login and QA the portal.

Basic Text Edits

• A common problem reported by citizens to the BDA Helpline is that the property is not linked to their mobile number. We request a message such as ‘‘If your property is not listed here, please contact +91-9483166622’

• There is a section called ‘Other Transacted Properties’‘. A simple description of this section can clarify what this section means. Does it mean properties for which tax has been paid using the mobile number used to login?