An example use case showing the shape and economics of a typical Big Helpers government build — paper file workflow digitised with e-sign, role-based escalation, audit trail, and citizen-facing status tracking.
Note: this is an example use case illustrating a typical Big Helpers engagement of this shape — not a named client. Real client names and numbers are kept private.
A state-level revenue department in central India was processing land record mutation (correction) applications on physical paper files. A typical mutation passed through four offices — Revenue Inspector, Naib Tehsildar, Tehsildar, and SDM — each adding a noting sheet, manual signature, and stamp. Average pendency from filing to final order was about 84 days, against a citizen charter target of 30 days. Citizens visited the tehsil office 4-5 times per case to track status. Section officers had no consolidated view of pendency across tehsils or by category. The department had a previous vendor's half-built mutation portal that was never accepted into UAT — it didn't model the existing dak register or the 4-step approval chain, and tried to force a generic 2-step workflow that the department wouldn't sign off on.
Three problems compounded: (1) citizen wait time was running at 2.8× the charter target, drawing media attention and chief minister's grievance cell escalations; (2) the previous vendor's portal had been billed at about ₹52 lakh and was unusable, leaving the procurement team cautious about a second attempt; (3) any new system had to satisfy multiple constraints — match the actual physical workflow (not a textbook one), integrate with the state data centre, pass CERT-In audit, support Hindi + the regional state language, expose a citizen-facing status track, and produce RTI-ready audit logs going back years. The department did not want to be locked into another single vendor.
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We bid via GeM, won on an L1 + technical-evaluation basis at roughly ₹38 lakh including 12-month warranty. Built the full mutation workflow system in 16 weeks. Citizen intake was a Hindi + regional-language form with document upload and DigiLocker pull for Aadhaar / PAN. Internal workflow modelled the actual 4-step physical chain (RI / NT / TS / SDM) with role-based escalation, parallel routing where the local SOP allowed it, and configurable SLAs per step. Each officer added a digital noting (replacing the paper noting sheet) and signed with Class 3 digital signature (NIC-CA). The final SDM order was generated as a Hindi PDF with the SDM's e-sign, automatically posted to the public order repository, and SMS + WhatsApp notification was sent to the citizen. The full audit trail — every view, every edit, every signature — was queryable for RTI. Hosted on the state data centre. Source code was placed in escrow with NIXI. CERT-In audit cleared in cycle one. DPDP-aligned consent and retention notice presented to the citizen at intake.
Within 6 months of full state-wide rollout, median mutation pendency dropped from about 84 days to about 26 days — comfortably inside the 30-day citizen charter target. Citizen visits per case dropped from 4-5 to 1, with most citizens checking status purely via SMS / WhatsApp updates. The department's own MIS now showed pendency by tehsil, by category, by officer in real time — replacing a monthly Excel exercise that had previously taken 3 days to compile and was usually obsolete by the time it landed on the secretary's desk. Chief minister's grievance cell escalations on mutation cases dropped by an estimated 60%. The build was cited in the department's annual report as a benchmark for digitising legacy file-based workflows. The department has since expanded the same workflow engine to two additional services (sub-divisional registration corrections and revenue court orders).
It's an example use case representative of typical Big Helpers government builds for state revenue and similar departments. Specific client names and exact numbers are kept private out of procurement confidentiality. The shape, technical choices, and rough economics are accurate to real engagements of this size. References available on written request from a verified government email.
Open tender via GeM with a published RFP, technical and financial evaluation. Milestone-based payment: 10% on PO + design sign-off, 30% on alpha demo, 30% on UAT entry, 20% on go-live, 10% retained for 12-month warranty. PBG of 5% submitted via SBI for the warranty period. Standard government-tender invoice format with HSN code, GST, TDS, and GST-TDS deducted at source.
Included in the build. We worked with a CERT-In empanelled auditor for a full audit cycle pre-go-live, addressed all observations, and delivered the audit report formatted for the department's IT cell and state CISO. Re-audit was scheduled for the 12-month anniversary as part of the AMC.
e-Office is excellent for inter-departmental file movement at the secretariat level. For a citizen-facing transactional workflow with high volume (mutation applications run into thousands per month per district), e-Office is not the right shape — it's a file movement system, not an application workflow engine. We discussed this in pre-bid and the department's IT cell agreed. The system feeds into e-Office for policy file movement where needed.
Annual maintenance contract is 14% of build cost per year (about ₹5.3 lakh in this case). Covers bug fixes, security patches, three rounds of refresher training per year, OS / framework version upgrades, support for new officer enrolment in NIC-CA, and minor enhancements up to 8 person-days per quarter. Major enhancements quoted separately.
Adoption was the riskiest part of the project. We mitigated by: (a) co-designing with section officers from week 2, (b) keeping the digital noting screen visually similar to the paper noting sheet they were used to, (c) running parallel paper + digital for 4 weeks before paper was retired, (d) two rounds of training and a WhatsApp-based help desk for the first 90 days. Final adoption hit 100% within 60 days of paper retirement; the few escalations were handled within hours, not days.
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