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Digital ‘Information Technology’ (IT) is projected by policy makers as a “fool proof” mechanism for ensuring inclusion of eligible beneficiaries and transparency in implementation of public programmes.  With the launch of the Digital India campaign, the State seems to be investing increasing attention and financial resources towards laying down a digital architecture for service delivery on a mission mode apparently for the more effective implementation of the latter.

The rationale underpinning all these interventions is the premise that IT and digital technology is a neutral force that eliminates the scope of potential corruption as it removes possibilities of human interaction in decision making.

However, in the collective work of numerous campaigns, movements, and research organizations trying to make public programmes run more efficiently by demanding greater transparency and accountability in its implementation, it is understood that accessing services and entitlements by the State is a political exercise. The unequal balance between the State and the citizen that plays itself out when citizens access services implemented by the State, cannot be wished away with the mere introduction of digital technology in the access, implementation and evaluation of public programmes.

The use of technology is not neutral, and is in fact biased in favour of those who design its modalities. In recent times the design of technology is in fact determining the way programmes are implemented on the ground. Instead of facilitating programme implementation to meet its norms, there have been instances of digital architectures dominating them.

With the passage of the Right to Information act, there has been a growing understanding that free access to understandable and reliable information available through offline and online modes, is crucial for governance. This is in fact a necessary pre-requisite to move from a representative democracy to a participatory democracy. Section 4(2) of the Right to Information Act serves as the legal underpinning of such a principle and states that “It shall be a constant endeavor of every public authority to take steps in accordance with the requirements of the Act to provide as much information suo-moto to the public at regular intervals through various means of communication, including internet so that the public have minimum resort to the use of this Act to obtain information”.

 Platforms such as Section 4 of the Right to Information Act mandating disclosure, social audits,  real time transaction based public management information systems and information and facilitation centres are some practical mechanisms evolved over the last decade to institutionalize citizens’ access to information.

However, the term information itself needs to be unpacked to understand the role it plays in democratic governance. What is the information gathered, how is it currently organized, who has access to it, how should it be presented and in what form are some of the essential elements of what goes into conceptualizing the term, information.  Information disclosures cannot be designed in a top down manner on the basis of norms laid down by an administration alone. What information needs to be disclosed, at what level of aggregation and in what format needs to be arrived at through a consultative process with the participation of all concerned such that a “Janta Information System’ can be developed. Janta Information System refers to an end to end process of information disclosure given life to by institutionalized platforms and processes at various stages of the implementation process.

An initiative of organizing ‘Digital Dialogues’ has begun between CSOs and the Department of IT in Rajasthan to make the transition from a ‘Management Information System’ to a ‘Janta Information System’ with the objective of negotiating the power that citizens can exercise over digital technology, to suit their requirements instead of those of the administration. It is an attempt to bring more parity in power between citizens and administration in accessing and designing information.

It has been 2 years since the Dialogues began, and there are already some gains made.

A Jan Soochna Portal has been developed to serve as a single source of information for all public programmes implemented in a Panchayat or Municipal Ward. The portal enables all public information corresponding to a Gram Panchayat and/or a Municipal Ward to be pro-actively provided by the Government to citizens through a single portal. The portal discloses Gram Panchayat/Municipal Ward level information from the real time, transaction based databases of multiple programmes thereby ensuring that the citizen is provided with credible and effective information at all times. Most importantly, the development of this portal demonstrates an example of how mandatory disclosure of information as mandated under Section 4 of the RTI Act and the building of a Janta Information System can be done in practice.

Efforts were made to get implementing Departments to work together to use digital technology and databases to identify eligible beneficiaries automatically and deliver the entitlements pro-actively. In a historic step, approximately 9 lakh pensioners eligible for the enhancement have been automatically identified from the State Government’s Bhamashah Database an given sanction who were eligible but unable to access their entitlements for over a year. Many of these beneficiaries had applied under the old manual process but were not provided the enhancement. Others did not even know they were entitled to a doubling of their pension.

An effort was made to work with the DoIT to build an end to end, real time, transaction based MIS for citizens to submit and track their applications under the FRA. The process of building the MIS relied extensively on the experience of citizens and CSOs having deep knowledge of grassroots level implementation of the Act and how a digital system could attempt to plug its inadequacies. Efforts were made to identify ways in which a digital architecture can facilitate citizens when they face issues such as non-involvement of gram sabhas in decision making, non-acknowledgement of applications received, non time bound completion of sub processes and opacity in tracking applications submitted.

The Digital Dialogues aims to make a beginning towards building an effective discourse on Janta Information Systems.

 

The views expressed in this piece are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the position of CBGA. You can reach Rakshita Swamy at rakshitaswamy@gmail.com.