Good Practices and Innovations in Public Governance 2003-2011

Good Practices and InnovATIONS in Public Governance
in the project. Thirdly, a system of positive and negative incentives was developed to
monitor the performance of all the officers (about 300 in number) on a weekly basis.
This system was publicized extensively to achieve the desired results.
The deadline for the test launch of the site was set to 15 November 2004. Pilot testing
began with public grievances on 9 November 2004, and the site was fully operational
by 10 December 2004. Initially, there were only 13 Lokvani kiosks (with
roughly two in each tehsil). In the first 20 days since the site was activated, they
received complaints in single digits (number of complaints received per day); by
the first month, they began receiving complaints in double digits (per day); and by
the end of the third month, they started getting triple-digit numbers of complaints.
As of 15 January 2008, Lokvani had received 109,086 grievances, of which 104,519
have been resolved (sitapur.nic.in/lokvani/stp/exsmry1.asp). Later on with time
other information/services were added/are being added upon request of the citizen/
kiosk owners.
To reach the rural illiterate and poor people through internet, the kiosks model was
copied from the Gyandoot project of MP. An intensive public campaign was launched
to break the initial barrier of fear of computers. Radio publicity using FM channels
was used to reach the illiterate people who could not read. The aim was to bring a few
initial users to the kiosks. Once their problems were solved effectively using Lokvani,
word of mouth publicity was enough to keep it moving.
The Lokvani system was also widely promoted through press conferences. Likewise,
the kiosk owners were also encouraged to organize awareness campaigns and to take
local level measures to publicize the initiative. The main objective was to gain the
trust of the people in the system by giving excellent solutions to initial problems. It
started with 13 kiosks and presently there are about 110 kiosks spread throughout the
district. About 150,000 people have directly benefited from this system in the last
three years. (The site can be viewed at: sitapur.nic.in/lokvani using “guest” as user id
as well as password). The system has registered more than 100,000 complaints and
disposed of over 90% complaints successfully. In the former system, ordinary citizens
had to forego wages to stand in a queue to merely file in a petition. They would
then have to follow it up with countless visits to various government offices to find
out the status and outcome of the petition that was filed. Clearly, with the Lokvani
system, citizens are able to put their time to a more productive use, which definitely
adds up to the local GDP. It has created employment in rural areas and has ushered
in a new era of enthusiastic kiosk operators whose incomes are rising steadily. An
unexpected positive outcome of the system has been a perceptible shift towards gender
equality as women are more computer literate and some of the most efficient kiosks
are being run by women.
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