The second edition of Tech for Citizen Engagement was held in New Delhi in December to spark ideas on how to leverage the power of technology in engaging with citizens for better public service delivery. Centered on the belief that an informed citizen is critical to a functioning democracy, the discussion among entrepreneurs, technologists, policymakers, and civil society organizations captured what’s working, dissected challenges, and plotted a course for the future.
Shifting Sands: The Urgency for Media to Stay Relevant in a Digital World
The first panel, with Manvi Sinha Dhillon (Times Group), Samir Patil (Scroll Media), Madhu Trehan (NewsLaundry), Govind Ethiraj (IndiaSpend), and Anant Goenka (The Indian Express) focused on how media can adapt to new patterns of news consumption by consumers. Other challenges such as staying relevant in a world where gossip still sells, the need for viable business models, and technology solutions for media houses were discussed. The panelists agreed that the key to staying relevant in the “Third Wave of the Internet” – or the age of sharing content, as Samir described it – was to stick to old journalistic standards at the speed of new media journalism. Despite digital distribution challenges, serious stories remain relevant.
Madhu made a strong case for citizen journalism, something that is working in the case of NewsLaundry. Madhu pointed out that despite the death of access journalism and limited free press under Section 66A, citizen journalism is able to hold government officials and journalists to account.
While others opposed the point, Anant believed that audiences for print and digital media are completely different. All however, agreed that technology is the most flexible tool that any journalist should invest in.
On the topic of revenue generation, all agreed that despite various business models being in place, a hybrid model that includes advertising seems most likely to be sustainable.
Rules of Engagement: Designing for the Citizen Consumer
Prof. MP Gupta, IIT Delhi, kicked off the second session by talking about government efforts to engage students using the digital medium. His prediction is that, “It will take 5-10 years of focused internal work in e-governance for a detailed citizen outreach program to become viable in India.” A solution offered was to make data available to the public.
Sunil Abraham from the Centre for Internet and Society focused on the importance of free software and open content. He pointed out that governments tend to avoid using existing source code and thus end up reinventing the wheel, though data regulations are needed before a government framework can begin working smoothly.
Yet an underlying issue is that despite the onset of e-governance, interfaces are not always designed with the end user in mind. Stephen King of Omidyar Network argued that too little of this technology is being built in partnership with the constituents. In major civic movements, the channels of dissemination are as important as social media itself. He believes the government needs to improve its service model through e-governance and the real push will come with the realisation that this can deliver higher savings and potentially increased votes.
Overall the panel agreed that digital media amplification of critical issues can bring about needed change. Coupled with open data opportunities available today, more punitive measures, and increased accountability, government agencies are more likely to launch more successful e-governance modules in the future.
Visualizing: Making Big Data Relevant
The keynote presentation delivered by S Anand of Gramener made a strong case for Data Visualization, reasoning that “We are much better equipped to deal with pictorial stories than raw data.” Claiming that "Creating relevance from Big Data helps in validating or disapproving assumptions held by masses,” he identified four patterns in data consumption: show, explain, explore, and expose.
Concluding his session, Anand reasoned that “Visualization is a mandatory catalyst for data to be translated into actionable insight.” Clearly, data does not give more or less power to its users and consumers; the power lies in the insights from it and how those insights are used.
The Use of Technology for Social Impact at Scale
Moderated by Prasanto Roy, the session discussed how technology solutions have played a key role in addressing difficult and long intractable developmental challenges. Examples include the delivery of health services, helping farmers, reforming education in rural locations, and most importantly, collecting feedback from stakeholders. Vijay Pratap Singh, Ekgaon, talked about designing technology for farmers, even though there is lack of connectivity amongst frontline consumers in India.
Vishal Agarwal of Spatial Ideas observed that many technological innovations focus on winning awards but not on how well they can be implemented or scaled.
“The focus of technology for impact needs to remain on the frontline workers. While dealing with government, several micro and macro-level problems exist from launching an app to sustaining its usage.”
The panel suggested that incentivizing the adoption and use of the app can go a long way in sustaining adoption.
Since use of technology in India is gendered, the way to break the psychological barrier, according to Stella Luk, of Dimagi, is to keep in mind social structures governing a geographical area. “Apps have great potential, although in India IVR still works better”, Stella said. “We need to drive behavioral change from the bottom up.” She further elaborated on the importance of open source apps to truly empower organizations.
She also believes that ready-to-use technology should be leveraged instead of inventing new gadgets because impact will be higher if there is a focus on improving processes and systems, not just building tech.
Panelists cautioned the audience about a wrong choice of platform that could lead to ineffectiveness and failure. The speakers asserted that more often than not, use of apps is not the intention at all and that information from them is not traceable since the government is not transparent. In the opposite case, “Collecting data, accessing, and cleaning it are often wasted efforts because nobody uses these inferences,” observed Stella Luk.
In building good-quality, low-budget apps quickly the most frequent problem the developers face is of the speed-accuracy tradeoff. For more often than not, one of these needs to be sacrificed for the other to function properly. Citizens are used to platforms like Facebook and WhatsApp, so unless the new app is robust enough to accommodate the public, the idea should be taken up on standardized platforms such as Facebook and WhatsApp.
How Donors See the Role of Technology
The concluding panel of the day took an in-depth look at how donors feel technology has a big role to play but it is not, in itself, a solution. “Though every proposal we get is tech-agnostic, it's yet not a front-end requirement for the social sector,” said Geeta Goel from the Michael and Susan Dell Foundation (MSDF). Geeta went on to say that in as much as funding technology is concerned, they do not fund front-end technology. Technology, to MSDF, is an enabler; it is not the solution.
Hari Menon from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, observed, “Technology has emerged as front and center for promoting financial inclusion in India.” He added, “Creating a vernacular tech platform allows for better acceptability in providing region-based solutions.”
More often than not, the end beneficiary has the most critical part to play in how technology will advance citizen engagement, but remains a largely inaccessible player. Experts again returned to the value of improved interfaces to result in more efficient apps and last mile connectivity, which in turn helps scale social impact. Sharing Omidyar Network’s practice, CV Madhukar said, “We use technology to make citizen services more simple and user friendly. If you take the example of electoral reform, technology is not central but it is definitely an enabler. Technology is required to scale up solutions.”
Geeta spoke of education pilots that were using technology to increase student engagement and improve learning outcomes. “Data needs to be digitized and analyzed in the education sector to better the quality,” she posited. Hari argued, “More data means awareness, which will eventually drive a change in the social sector and create impact.” Geeta made a forceful point when she said that while we are 10 steps behind, we are progressing in the right direction. "The current tech setup is not working well; disruptive innovations are the need of the hour,” she said.
The panel concluded that donors should make the necessary budgets available to scale up solutions, using technology as an enabler.