Putting up our learning as volunteer for nearly 6 months , for a political party , for a Assembly Constituency in recently held Karnataka State election ,,, into a product.

1. MicroNews (Simplified Citizen
Complaint System)

2. • We were volunteers for six months for a
political party for a particular AC, in recently
held Karnataka Assembly election.
• Whatever we Observed and learnt as a
volunteer, based on that We are trying to
build a tool that can help real stake holders of
public governance.

3. • Local level politics is all about civic amenities.
– Water , electricity ,sewage & sanitation , roads ,
public transportation , Law &order.
– Most people are affected by poor qualities of
these things.
– Not everybody is aware of full extent of the
problem
– How many people are affected , what all areas of
constituency we have these problems etc.

4. • Data collection is a very big challenge.
• Political parties, party workers do the jobs of
problem collection.
• But still, majority don’t get to participate.
• Reason, raising issue is not very simple,
tracking them and coordinating affected
people 10x harder.
• Many people raise the same issue in different
manner.

5. • So, we decided to develop Mobile app & web
Interface to standardize the problem
collection.
• So that later political parties , RTI activist ,
press have the same data to evaluate
governance.
• Data generation is crowd sourced.

6. SomeStats
• Total population of India 120cr.
• Total Assembly constituencies : ~ 4200
• Total number of voters : 75 Crore
• Average voters per AC ~ 2lacs
• Total polling booths :7,00,000
• Average polling booths per AC : 200
• Average voter per booth: 1071 ppl.

7. • Total number of city assembly
constituencies:
• 4200x1/5 ~ 800
• Total big cities ( top 6 ) constituencies
– 227
– Total voters there ~ 5 crore
– Total smartphones ~ 1.5 crore
– Android powered 60%.

8. • Numbers:
total big cities : 6
total assembly constituencies : 227
size per constituency : 2-3 lakh voters
typical Constituency size(area) : 40-50 km^2
Smartphone penetration 20% .
40-50 thousand ppl. Per constituency.
Lot of visibility.
10,000 Average margin between winner & Loser

9. • What we did , for POC , we took Bangalore ,
we divide it into a grid of 100mX100m.
• Such that for each node point , we know the
people representative responsible for
governance.
• With the lat/long of perimeter of a assembly
constituency and we generated this grid.

10. • Now when a citizen , have to complaint about the
quality of any of the civic amenity ,
• He/she does via app .
• Data generated goes to the server.
• Based on Lat/long we put it under correct
constituency.
• Thus issue or problem are out in open.
• Opposition parties , RTI activist , press have the
access to same information.

11. • Now we have high level of transparency , in
term of work done by current government.
• And also where people want them to improve
.
• Thus easing the jobs of everybody involved.
• What impact it will have ??? 
– You be the judge

14. Proto AppScreens

15. Mails / Subscription Mailers
ConcernCvic
Department
•Concern Utility Head
•For e.g BWSSB
MLA
• Opposition Party
• Ruling Party MLA_Office
SocialActivist
• Social Activist
• RTI Specializing firms
LocalPress/Media
OtherCitizens

16. Backend Analytics
• Assume that we have such data available from all parts of the city .
• We can publish RealTime relative performance of MLA’s.
• Also, Now its easy for RTI activist to file RTI to bring out corruption in areas of civic amenities
( roads/electricity/water/sewage & sanitation/transportation)
– Thus effective use of Citizen Charter and RTI Act.
• To an extent , App does the job of an party workers , not only party worker , all citizens are
empowered to participate in highlighting mis-governance.
• If such an app has user base in all metro , then we can do Realtime , factual evaluation of
governance by Ruling Party , bypassing pseudo image building..
– Making it easy to validate claims
– For e.g sitting in bangalore you know civic amenities/citizen satisfaction for each every constituency of Delhi
– Making it hard , to say anything but the truth.
– No Glorious claims without real work

17. • If we put it together with GIS /Maps technology,
what we get a very powerful feedback tool.
• This can be very useful to all real stake holders in
public governance ( citizens , people
representatives , RTI Activists , Press).
• We have covered few used cases in following
document:
http://www.slideshare.net/rakeshpsingh7/micro-
news-usedcases

18. • Such Visual/Map based Analytics is made
available to all.
• To students , grooming them for future way of
local governance.
• To Citizen , RTI Activists / NGO’s.
• To struggling political parties, trying to
connect with people .

19. Proto
• Link to the website:
• http://50.57.224.47/html/dev/micronews/
• Link to download the APK
• https://www.dropbox.com/s/l5k5e795p4knhta/ci
tizen-complaint.apk
• We are thankful to all people involved in proto
development

20. • Students : there are close to 8 Crore students in class 6
to 12th , with social science (civics) as one of the
subjects , some way this platform can be treated as live
lab for the subject.
• NGO’s: there are close to 33lakh of them, one per 400
ppl. , most of them are active in areas, traditionally
associated with government. In total they receive
around 40-80k crore of donation annually, to do the
same work , which govt. tries to do with amount at
least 10 times of that , what we thought instead of
patch work , if we bridge the gap , thus making
traditional governance more efficient and accountable ,
we will make more impact.

21. • If you find the idea interesting and looking
forward to contribute, or have any queries
– Please drop a mail .
• rakesh.pratap@gmail.com
• pradeep.sonkar@gmail.com
– Or website feedback form ( recommended)
• It will encourage others