Good Practices and Innovations in Public Governance 2003-2011

Good Practices and InnovATIONS in Public Governance
dia have a very large population base under their purview. But the infrastructure was
abysmally inadequate due to a negligible number of computer systems and the lack
of computer networks. There was not even basic awareness amongst officers about
basic usage of computers and internet. Even the letters in the DMs office were getting
typed on manual typewriters. This was the situation not only in Sitapur, but in most
of the districts of Uttar Pradesh.
The Solution
When Mr. Amod Kumar took over as the District Magistrate (DM) of Sitapur in July
2004, he sought to initiate a system that would ensure transparency in the administration.
He had heard of two “Government to Citizen” (G2C) initiatives, Gyandoot
(gyandoot.nic.in) at Dhar District of Madhya Pradesh, and Janmitra (jhalawar.nic.in/
janmitra.htm) at the Jhalawar District of Rajasthan. So he decided to establish a team
of three people, including the Sub-Divisional Magistrate, Sitapur (from the revenue
department), the District Information Officer (from the technical department), and
the Block Development Officer (from the development stream), who were sent to
study these two initiatives in September 2004.
After completing the study, a number of brain storming sessions were organized in
order to translate the ideas on paper into an actual service and to make it suitable for
Sitapur. Finally, the team decided to establish an Internet kiosk based G2C interface
(online portal) to provide relevant information to citizens, as well as a channel to effectively
redress people’s grievances in a transparent, accountable and time-bound
manner, and to furnish information about the performance of civil servants in real
time to ensure accountability.
To overcome the resistance of the employees, while designing the Lokvani system,
the District Magistrate worked closely with his team of officers. The Lokvani online
portal was designed by a team of three officers from NIC (National Informatics
Centre), namely Mr. A. P. Singh, Mr. AjaiGopal and Mr. Rajeev Lakhera. Due to
the inadequate electricity supply in the district (leading to frequent and long power
cuts), it was decided to host the site at the NIC’s Delhi server, rather than at the
district headquarters. Therefore, Lokvani would be based on the Internet rather
than the Intranet (like Gyandoot and Janmitra) to enable 24/7 access and 100%
transparency. The site design was customized to the local needs. The entire site was
in Hindi, the official language (which also happens to be the local language). They
conceptualized a user-friendly site with large jumbo-sized lists, rather than small
bullet points. The site therefore contained no graphics, large Hindi fonts, and was
easy to navigate. The text was written in the language of the commoners (like the
link for viewing complaint status was titled as “status of your complaints”, rather
than “complaint status”).
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