Containing the H1N1

H1N1 is spreading. The response is still uncoordinated, slow, confused, messy and lacking a clear direction. What could a coordinated, quick, focused response look like? Here is a first look at a better coordinated system.

What if you could help yourself?

If you’ve got flu, you should be able to register yourself on phone, through an sms or on the internet. A quick set of questions should be able to assess if you need to be tested for H1N1. If you do, then the information system should schedule you for test on one of the 15 mobile collection centers closest to your home. You should be intimated during your conversation the expected time when the unit will visit you and conduct the test. At the same time the mobile unit would be sent an SMS of your location. The blackberry on the mobile unit would indicate the google map of your location and allow them to update the information system as soon as the sample is collected.

The collection team would do a collection round for three hours and then shift to another vehicle as the first one goes to drop off the samples. The collection vans would be fumigated every day.

Can the patients get the right medical attention at home in time?

The diagnostic centre would log the results onto the website minutes after the results. You get a telephone call, sms or email from a dedicated team responding to the web-site updates. The google map gets automatically updated to track positive locations.

The closest of the 15 mobile rapid action teams of doctors gets an sms alert and a map of the address their blackberry. The new patients would now be under medical advice at home within 3 hours of diagnosis. A quarantine team would also visit and advise the family, neighbors set up waste disposal mechanisms, provide masks and advise about hygiene. The family physicians would be contacted and advised on a daily check and reporting. Patients needing hospital attention would be shifted immediately.

Can the spread be contained through information?

All airlines, railways, buses would log passenger lists to a health check site. All patients are checked in these databases and co-travelers in the city are visited by the containment team for a quick check-up and advise.

All the classes in schools of children in the families of the travelers who were exposed to a patient would undergo a check every morning after a class assembly. School assembly to be discontinued immediately. The school medical team to register a case of flu on the phone, through the mobile or on the net. A special team would visit the school for containment, hygiene and closure advisory.

All the co-workers of a patient would undergo a check-up and advice within a day. Periodic follow-up would be scheduled as needed.

What if there was a health monitoring team?

Instead of the central government, state government, local government and the dozens of associated agencies making different statements, there would be a single agency that would report on the health, the advisories and the action plans. Different agencies would have to agree to the directives of this single agency and implement them.

Containing H1N1

Undoubtedly there is more than this needed. This is just a glimpse at an alternate way of dealing with the crisis. Do build the ways to contain this virus. We need more coordinated, focused and simple action and we are running out of time. Coordinate your efforts on Pune H1N1 Wiki.

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Driving Good Governance

It’s already over a month of the new government in India. With less than 60 days to go for the first 100 days everyone is waiting for the first signs of initiatives for good governance.

What can the government do in the next 60 to establish a track for good governance?

Here are some of the ideas I’ve been sharing along with the IT Vision for the Next Prime Minister that I wrote earlier in the year.

1. Develop official tweeters in every Ministry to broadcast public information and event reminders
2. Implement Google Calendars across government for every "Office of Government" and “Project of Government” and create a common interface to access them across government
3. Implement Google Maps or better still Sadak Maps tracked through a mysql database to track all budget heads (and projects) at every budget level (local, state, national)
4. Implement a National Governance Wiki, along the lines of Giki, to build inclusive, open dialog for good governance. Particularly seek collaboration of all stakeholders for creating development agenda and track project implementation across the nation
5. Implement a demography wiki from Census of India database linked with Sadak Map
6. Implement a Survey of India map based wiki for the Land, Geological, Zoological, Botanical, Archeological surveys (for an example see the website of CIO, Pune city)
7. Design an educational wiki for the CBSE curricula for all teachers to register and contribute to and all students to discuss on discussion pages
8. Create a Sadkamap linked Giki as visioned in BeyondVoting to build a development vision for the constituencies that its representatives can track
9. Develop open-source secure community-card system as a person and property level information system. For a description of the idea see One-India Cards. See Life with Punecards for a description of the difference such a card can make to peoples lives in a city or a village.

Can you rank the list by desirability? Can you improve the list? Better still, can you make it happen?

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Life with a Punecard

Punecards is round the corner if you wish it. It may no longer be a dream of the distant future. But we need to desire it strongly enough before it happens. What will a Punecard world look like? What will you be willing to do to make this a reality?

1. I travel to Zensar. Ganesh has already intimated the security at the gate of my meeting with him and my Punecard number. When I mention my name the security pulls up my photograph retrieved from Punecard in the visitors expected list he has. I can just pass through as the picture matches. He can also quiz me with any profile details if he is in doubt.
2. I exchange my Punecard – my digital visiting card – with the people at the meeting. My visiting card is now current even when my mobile or email change.
3. At the admission desk of the university I provide my Punecard number- the clerk uses that to fill up my form. I could well have filled up the form online from home through Punecard. In one click I am able to provide all the details that are required by the admissions committee.
4. All educational institutes are now uploading my educational certificates to my Punecard account. I can now provide a digital degree certificate to those who ask it of me.
5. My privacy is now better controlled. I provide information digitally to whom I may want. Every provision of information also leaves behind an audit trail so I know anytime who took what information from me.
6. My data on Punecards is scattered between multiple servers and strongly encrypted. I can have a premium account to increase transaction security.
7. The RTO just needs my Punecard number to register my vehicle. My neighbor, who is still at the silver card level and not a platinum cardholder like me, has to add certified copies of various certificates along with the PuneCard number. I can just provide the number!
8. My Punecard now facilitates cashless bus travel- All I need to do is flash my card and enter my PMPML pin into the small machine next to the driver.
9. Surprise- Just after few weeks of using the Pune Card on PMPML busses and the bus routes and frequencies seem to have improved to match my needs!
10. My kids have got enrolled into a free “Yellow Bus” service to take them to school automatically. The pickup and drop of points have been intimated to them and me on the Punecards account.
11. My neighbor who works at the Magarpatta IT park has automatically got enrolled to a “Red Bus” service to take him back and forth at a time that he specified!
12. The Municipal and Cantonment bodies now offer me all civic interactions on my Punecard account. Now all the documents that relate to me automatically available to me on my account - the birth records, properties I own, their approved plans, NOC’s, building permissions, the licenses I have obtained; all digitally certified – I can even back them up on my computer if I wish. No longer do I need to run around for these services.
13. At parking lots I simply provide my Punecard number and my PIN – no more cash to dole out here!
14. The parking lots have got reconfigured over the year to accommodate the short and long park vehicles and cope with the loads. Nice to see a responsive local body!
15. I just moved houses- Thanks to Punecard I just update my profile on PuneCard and all relying parties that I transact with automatically update my address. A verification intimation is sent instantly to my email and mobile.
16. Applying for an insurance policy is a click away- my Punecard profile simply fills up the form here as it does for the mutual fund I apply for.
17. Lol! I could just walk away with the new mobile phone in 5 minutes with my Punecard! With dynamic “KYC” provided by the card, telecom companies now use this for fast track mobile and internet account registration.
18. The police are happier now that Pune is a safe city. Crime prevention is now far easier. Tracking a criminal is minutes away.
19. Voting online will soon be possible with the integration of Punecards into the ECI’s voting system.
20. Whenever my profile changes, I start with an unauthenticated profile. As I provide my details to different organizations the authentication count of my profile increases.
21. My Punecard account tracks the use of my information- I now have a record of who I have shared my profiles with. I can opt to stop sharing update details of my profiles.
22. When I sign up for my club I provide my Punecard number. My club uses Punecard’s premium services that allow them to provide club-members directory, calendars, alerts and much more.
23. My company can now allow me to manage my profile- no more request letters or repeated form filling for expense reports, travel indents, reimbursements, address, phone, email changes; all of these are filled through Punecards.
24. My company can now provide a digital certificate for employment- My supervisor can endorse the projects I participated in. My references are people on Punecards, themselves with a public profile on Punecards.
25. As a Punecard holder I now have a firm reference of my city backing me for getting a job, for being an entrepreneur and doing good business.
26. With Punecard premium services I can have my own home page with a public profile and opt to be listed in a searchable directory as a punekar!
27. To upgrade my Silver Punecard to Gold I can visit any of the Gold Relying Parties. They simply sign me up as a subscriber to their services and verified at least three of the documents required by Punecard.
28. I got my Platinum Card by visiting a certified authority who uploaded my photograph and fingerprints and verified the certificates I had carried with me. I don’t need to leave unsecured photocopies of these certificates anymore- all Punecard relying parties can just access them online now, and I know who accessed them.
29. I registered myself for postpaid charges on various services. I now use my card in the bus, parking lots, public phones etc with my PIN or thumb-print to authenticate my use. At the end of the month I pay for the services I used. My Punecard account page lists my usage and the amounts.
30. My Punecard allows third parties to provide me applications around my secure identity- I am glad that my bank, hospital, insurance company are now allowing me to bank my information with them on my Punecard account.

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India 2015: An IT Vision for the Next Prime Minister of India

2015. Everyone is experiencing a prosperous India. Life is hassle free and people walk around with heads high. Rabindranath Tagore’s smiles from the heavens as atlast India has awakened into the heaven of freedom.

The world is acknowledging the Prime Minister’s success in dealing with the major challenges India inherited: an unsafe and insecure India, a failing economy, an hassle filled life, failed land-use management, difficulties in making right projects happen in the right place at the right time, huge leaks in spending tax rupees, an absence of citizen friendly communication, lack of citizen involvement and inability to manage risks in a troubled world.

The ten-point IT program launched in 2009 has transformed the country.

The Ten Point IT Program
1. One-India Card: Building a safer India
2. Shared Information Systems: Information system across agencies and businesses to build a prosperous India
3. Citizen Benefits: Resident accounts for single-point hassle-free governance
4. Tracking Landuse: Vibrant and productive spaces for all
5. Mobility: Mobility cards for hassle free green transportation
6. Projects: Wiki to ensure right projects happen at the right place and right time
7. Budgets: Wiki to track that every rupee well spent for the people
8. Alerts: Broadcast channels for easy and people friendly communication
9. Collaborative governance: Letting people matter
10. Collaborative modeling and futures: Managing the risks of a troubled planet

One-India Card

Of the 3,976 villages with populations larger than 10,000 more than 3,000 have implemented the One-India Cards. Most of the remaining 634,389 villages with populations under 10,000 are implementing the One-India Cards. All of the 4,378 cities of India are now covered under the One-India Cards.

The One-India Cards were launched through licensed One-India Card providers in 2009 when the Prime Minister took over. Over 642,743 entrepreneurs are licensed providers of the One-India Card. They use the standard open-source technology already developed and implemented on a pilot scale in Pune. 35 exchanges run by the technology provider service the cities and villages in the 35 states and union territories to allow a quick query of the resident data from any One-India Card across the country.

Besides creating the huge number of entrepreneurs in the direct management of the cards for each city/village, there are a huge number of entrepreneurs customizing service and product delivery services around the One-India Card. Entrepreneurs have been integrating widgets and API’s into local commerce- the grocers, the libraries, the book shops, the malls, the insurance companies have all sought out ways to allow auto form-fill, customer business profiles, relationship management to integrate with the One-India Card. Some have even provided an integration of their data onto the One-India Card account of every resident signed on the card.

It is now mandatory for all government interactions to use the One-India Card to identify residents, obtain citizen information through forms and provide any services. Most of the Government offices have opted for the easy auto-form-fill services of the One-India Card to fill on-line forms for various requirements. They are also using the auto account-book to display the history and status of transactions with the government offices on the citizens account page.

Shared Information Systems

With One-India Cards the Prime Minister has ensured that there will be a single registry across India of its 1.14 billion residents. In fact there is a real-time information system of the demography of each region. The huge gap of information about the citizens is bridged as is the waste of resources in identifying citizens and authenticating them independently at every point of transaction. This has contributed to making a safer India. This has also brought accountability and responsiveness in dealing with every citizen across the country.

The Planning Commission and various Ministries now rely on information provided by the One-India Card to device and implement schemes for targeted demographic groups: women, children, economically underprivileged, handicapped, homeless, migrants, youth, elderly, unemployed illiterate to name a few.

The 309 million people (60% of the workers) in agriculture now form a backbone of the nation’s Agriculture Information System. Similarly the 61.92 million people (12% of the workers) in industry are the backbone of an Industry Information System. The 144.48 million people (28% of the workers) in services form the backbone of the Services Information System.

One-India Cards are also making it possible to track energy demand distribution of the 4.5 T kWh, 0.09 percent of India’s theoretical Solar Potential . One-India Cards are making it possible to locate the distribution and transmission network and better scale the various power plants and oil and gas stations. It is becoming easier to device a strategy to move from the current energy mix of 53% Coal, 33% Oil, 8% Natural Gas, 5% Hydroelectricity, 1% Nuclear and close to 0% Other Renewables to a different mix that will be more sustainable.

Naturally the One-India Information System has helped a quick revival of the economy- helping support to reach the regions and even individuals where it was needed. The stimulus plan having ensured that using the One-India Card appropriate incentive reached the bank account of each registered resident after an automatic evaluation of the eligibility.

The economy is now well past 4 trillion from the $3.305 trillion figure in 2008 and is growing at 9 to 12%.

Citizen Benefits

The account pages of each citizen now inform them about the demography, energy use, water use, land use, mobility and other details in their neighborhood. They are also told about the incentives, schemes, and programs that they have been automatically qualified for based on their profile information. They can also get their taxes worked out through third party licensed widgets and file them through the One-India Card. All this serves as a terrific incentive to help them update their profiles regularly.

While filling their profiles on the One-India Account Page individuals can quickly indicate their current or past employers or become one. Becoming an employer allows a one-step easy registration of a for-profit or a non-profit institution. Becoming an entrepreneur is as easy as that. This has helped create more jobs, compensating for the huge number of jobs lost when the recession hit in 2008-09.

Tracking Landuse

Recognizing the importance of tracking the conservation of the economic, energy and biological potential of its 3,287,240 square km tracking of land use, land records and property records have been standardized across the country.

Most of the 595 districts have initiated wiring every property. About 30 percent of the districts have completed more than 70 percent of the properties. The North East point of every property now has an official GPS device on it. Any movement of this point alerts the Land Use Information System. Each of the GPS coordinates link to a property database with records of its history and links to the One-India number for the owners.

Development Plans can now be monitored and implemented. Land acquisition is easier and partitioning property without violating Land Use has become possible.

The landless can now receive land, single property owners a 50% rebate in their taxes. Land taxes now work by a fixed rate per acre times the inflation, not by market rates.

One-India account holders can now search and view land-use, proposed use as per DP, encroachments, ownership, tenancy, other claims by loging in to their account. The information they sought on individual properties leaves a trail for purposes of security.

The forests, rivers, wetlands, fields and wastelands are now much better conserved as also the built environments across India.

Mobility

It has long been recognized that not just does mobility result in a happy people but it ensures a buoyant economy.

All vehicles now come with an embedded RFID that serves as a single registration of the vehicle with the Transport Ministry. Since road tax is now a pay-by-use per kilometer tax charged to the account of the person who owns the vehicle, all road junctions maintain a working RFID reader. The local-self-government of the region collects the road tax by billing the One-India Account of the vehicle owner. Inter city/town or village travel is simply charged the same way but a third party widget allows pay the road tax directly in a single click to multiple local governments.

All taxpayers get free information about traffic flows on different roads in any city, town or village. At a per-vehicle registered under the same name, the owner may subscribe to tracking her fleet of vehicles real time. Courier companies and transporters are using this system to track their fleet of vehicles.

The ministry of transport is able to generate real-time data as well as patterns of travel corridors for ensuring the smooth flow of vehicles in the city. The goods flow can be tracked by looking at the movement of goods vehicles.

Projects

Following the Web 3.0 emphasis on the IT Vision, every one of the government’s projects now has an online semantic wiki. For the Prime Minister this means every development project is track-able real time. It means that there is an overall development with millions of projects across the country tying together into a larger meaningful emergent whole. It means that projects happen, and happen on time. It means that projects are no longer about awarding contracts but rather about providing development.

For the people this is quite a startling change. Suddenly everyone can actually collaborate to make project be relevant to them, help to ensure they meet high quality standards and most importantly serve the purpose for which they were executed.

Simple semantic forms allow anyone to enter data about new projects: the description, the associated plans, start dates, milestones, end dates, budget links, contractors details and even the current status. Amazingly each project can be viewed on maps- even a small pop-up window on the location allows fill the semantic form! It is now possible to view the categories of projects happening across the country and obtain detailed information about each of them.

Budgets

Like the projects, all the tax Rupees are now track-able.

All government receipts through the multiple channels at local state and national levels now get displayed on a public semantic-wiki based application. Citizens can query and understand where the Tax Rupee is being collected real time. By geography, by income group, by item head, by level of government. They have an access to a huge spreadsheet to do a what-if analysis and suggest where it can come from and how it can be rationalized.

All the expenditure can now be tracked on a similar real time information system. Officials involved in the project associated with the budget head now have cards that allow them to expend money from the budget head upto the limit set for them. This has greatly speeded up the project execution process. This has also enabled the expenditure information to be available in real-time to everyone.

Alerts

Several public broadcasting feeds have become a common feature of all government offices. Twitter started it all in 2009. Most of the early adopters in the government designated an official tweeter who would broadcast deadlines, event alerts, sos messages, public notices, changes in people, processes or policies. This practice now continues but has been enhanced to reach out to non-twitter audiences through an RSS push on the One-India accounts of relevant persons.

Collaborative governance

The governance wiki now allows stakeholders to collaborate on all governance issues. It tracks people, projects, budgets, issues and visions of the various communities across the entire nation. India’s cost of governance has more than halved and it is regarded amongst the top three best governed countries in the world.

Recognizing the importance of the botanical, zoological, geological, archeological and land surveys in India there is now a National Wiki Institute that promotes the public participation. This has led a nation-wide collaboration to update the information on its assets and even provide a discovery of many that were not known before.

Schools, colleges and universities are actively researching on these assets and updating their findings on the national wikis for a nation wide collaboration.

Every city and village are following the pattern of Pune in providing a map to track information at the ward or community level.

Collaborative modeling and futures

After the failure of economic theories to identify and help cope with the economic meltdown of 2008-09 the Prime Minister called for an active program on futures research and alternative design. The National Institute on Futures Research and Design was set up to promote more resilient, stable and sustainable systems across the nation.

The Institute has successfully built a wiki based modeling platform that allows collaborative design of models that can be mixed and matched to help design real systems, processes, and organizations. Now all stakeholders can communicate effectively the impact of various decisions in different systems on them. This is enabling a better design. This is bringing a tremendous power to create networks, collaborations and communities that succeed. No wonder the economy has shot past 4 trillion and is galloping ahead close to double digits.

2015

The resulting India is one that brings prosperity to all. People can walk without fear and hold their heads high. Everyone has access to knowledge. The country is not fragmented by local, state and national governments.

The UN has requested the Prime Minister to replicate the vision across other countries and spread the prosperous and resilient economic and governance system across the globe.

You can make this your vision by modifying it on the the governance wiki.

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Tweet for Pune!

Imagine you could SMS to everyone. Imagine you could let everyone know there is a traffic jam at the University circle. Imagine you could send out an invite to the tree-planting drive on the Baner Hill. Imagine you could message the world that admissions open for the educational course you have been waiting for. Imagine you message out reports of malaria in your neighborhood or choose to report births, deaths, suspicious activities, new shops, sale offers, rentals….

Imagine as a government agency you message out water closures. Imagine you message out flood alerts, road closures or diversions, bus, train and air departures or arrivals, waste collection notices, new project announcements, vip visits, dates of elections, urls of actionable sites...

That’s like a twitter of birds- hundreds of messages all at once…No wonder that these public messages sent on the internet are called tweets.

Of course you do not want to have thousands of tweets clogging up your life and that’s why tweeters like @pravinnirmal are enabling location specific tweets on pages at the governance wiki. See the tweets at the bottom of this page on the governance wiki. Give it a try. This way you can see the tweets sent by anyone on a location on a page devoted to that location. You can even go edit that page and add your two-cents worth.

You can also signup on tweeter and choose to follow tweeters like myself, Barack Obama or anyone else! By following a tweeter you can see all the tweets the person sends out. Others interested in your tweets may choose to follow you too.

With the White House tweets, the US senate floor tweets, the US house floor and even the US Supreme Courts on twitter tweeting away, should the rest of the world be behind?

Cities in the US have begun tweeting. Look at: San Marcos, Texas, Greensborocity, North Carolina, Killeen, Texas, Round Rock, Texas, McAllen, Texas, Plano, Texas. The Police in Austin, Texas, are using tweets for law and order advisories, notices and quick reassurances.

Can we have our ward officers, the Pune Police, the Pune RTO, the Pune Collector, the PMC, the PCMC, the Cantonment Boards, the MIDC, the PWD, the telecom companies in Pune, the Income Tax commissionerate, the Service tax commissionerate, the Pune University and even the businesses in Pune tweet?

All this is simple and free. Just sign into Twitter and start listening to the whole world- or talking too! Well not exactly the whole world, but to the whole world signed into twitter. If you are a government agency or a business in Pune you may qualify for some help and customization to get your tweets increasing your impact and effectiveness. Just email cio.pune@gmail.com to request your office to show the way to the rest of India.

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Pune 2015

Pune 2015. Of the 4 million, over 3 million citizens of Pune are using Pune-card and most of them keep track of the card-transactions through their ilife account. About 5 percent users still prefer a quarterly paper-statement of their ilife.

I log in as Anupam.Saraph at the punecity.gov.in site. It is the single point for my ilife. Single windows are passé. No longer do I need to go to “singe-windows” at different departments or offices of the local, state or central government, I simply log into my ilife. Better still my bank, insurance company, hospital and even my local grocer are ilife enabled.

The pain of providing the same information over and over at different counters is history. The first time I registered myself to ilife, through my computer at home, I was asked to provide information to identify myself. I was requested to visit any one of the 14 ward offices to provide a photograph and my thumbprint to receive my Pune-card, my username and a password to access ilife. That was it.

My Pune-card provides me with cashless bus-travel, parking and entry into all electronic access public locations as well as electronic entry enabled private locations. It works as a cash-card and also replaces time-consuming procedures with countless forms to make applications. It simplifies and secures transactions as I can simply allow the service providers to swipe my card and take my thumbprint to access information. Only information that I have marked as allow through Pune-card will be accessed at points-of-transaction. The transaction is updated in my account on ilife.

When I log in my account includes records of every institution with whom I did a transaction, either using the Pune-card or directly through ilife. Government departments, businesses and service providers have registered themselves to use Pune-cards and ilife. In one-step through a single-point they gain access to the reliable, authentic and consistent information that they need from me thus enabling them to shorten the time it takes to service my requirements.

ilife has made my life more hassle-free and organized. All my transactions are filed into my account, no longer do I need to search for documents, certificates or obtain “NOC’s” for any transaction- even my photographs and signatures have become unnecessary. From my birth, education, marriage records to tracking my assets and accounts, my income and expenses even my taxes all get organized securely and with full privacy by ilife.

Pune having become the country’s first city to be unwired has device connectivity across the city through secure channels. Thousands of card-readers, traffic sensors, flow-meters, switches can now communicate information or take instructions on secure channels across the city. This has enabled Pune-card readers to instantaneously access the ilife servers to query or update information.

ilife’s open source and open standards have enabled it to create an eco-system of services by diverse service providers. A whole industry of businesses has flourished providing solutions to enable their services onto ilife.
Even my travel has now become more hassle-free as I subscribe to itravel solutions built by third parties using the ilife framework. I can view my travel route for congestion before a journey- even book a route, at a price, for guaranteed average-time or lower travel times. I can get mobile alerts for bus routes I subscribe to or choose to be informed if the bus is delayed.
Other service providers enable my son’s tutoring for the courses he has chosen. iteach manages the city-wide teachers and the courses they run and allow me to book myself or my son onto any course run by a specific teacher at a venue- the various schools or colleges.

The city’s water distribution is now monitored over the unwired network as also the city’s lighting system. I am alerted into my ilife account of any system failures, scheduled closures or quality issues. I can in turn contribute to alerting the utilities about any problems or failures.

ilife now enables me to view my electoral ward’s map. I can choose to view the schools and display schools that can be reached on a bicycle track from my house. I can look for theaters and markets and check for bus routes that will take me directly there. I can look for restaurants I can walk to or parks and gyms that I can jog to. Third parties are running ipage services (the replacement of the yellow pages) to businesses to add additional query-able information updates about their business into the basic information on the map. Hotels are adding tariffs and booking-gateways. Restaurants are adding menus and home-delivery-gateways.

A vibrant collaboration to build the communities around local self-help is on through wiki-enabled web-pages. This has helped to bring world-class infrastructure standards to Pune. The city has already distinguished itself in creating a collaborative development plan that identified visions for the next 20 years, the challenges for the city over the next 20 years as well as various strategies to address these challenges. The city ran a world-wide simcity based competition to “Design for Pune” and generated a huge dialog about the challenges and strategies for the city. It also built a strong sense of belonging in the city, a commitment to common visions and a tremendous positive culture to address challenges and make visions happen.

As a result of this alignment, the city has made a transition to non-fossil-fuel based transportation systems, become energy surplus, has a 100% water access for 24x7 and the countries best record on recycling and managing waste. It has also been able to get the largest carbon-credits through the huge corridors of greening accomplished across all the city’s watersheds.
Web 2.0 based technologies have resulted in creating city-resource planning (CRP) across local-state and central government authorities.

Pune in 2015 is the country’s first icity. The Prime Minister has called for the creation of ilife servers in every city to ensure good-governance. The UN has decided to replicate the Pune model across the world for ensuring sustainable development and stable and value yielding economies.

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Creating Collaboration in Governments

Wikis
Wiki’s are websites that allow users to add, remove, edit and change content. Unlike typical websites wikis are invitations to collaborate, self-organize and create order from chaos.

The best-known wiki is Wikipedia, the free content collaborative encyclopedia with over 7.2 million articles. In March 2000 Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger initiated the then radical goal of creating a publicly editable encyclopedia. Today Wikipedia is ranked amongst the top 15 most visited sites in the world and its publicly edited content is recognized by Nature as having similar accuracy as the Encyclopedia Britannica.

The success of Wikipedia is attributed to it using the features of a wiki. Wikis are generally designed with the philosophy of making it easy to correct mistakes, rather than making it difficult to make mistakes. Thus, while wikis are very open, they provide a means to verify the validity of recent additions to the body of pages.


The "Recent Changes" page on a wiki provides a list of all the edits made within a given timeframe. The “History” page on a wiki allows to track all the edits made to a page since its posting. Wiki’s also help track the contributions of different users making vandals and vandalism easy to spot and correct.

Wikis also provide for creating pages with restrictive access- only those with a valid access can view, add, remove and change the content on these pages. This allows the creation of wikis with access to registered users or controlled groups.

Decision Making in Government
In a government the process of decision-making is a collaborative process- whenever new ideas are proposed, applications are made or decisions need to be made the government creates a ‘file’. This file then takes a journey back and forth through the hierarchy of the government from the clerk who generated it to the Minister or even the Chief Minister and then back. The file travels through the government office across through a path defined by a ‘book of rules or procedures’, tradition of the office or a path marked by the person who created the file. It can also be redirected to other people, departments, and ministries. Sometimes files remain on a table for long periods.

Each file has a right hand side of the proposal backed with supporting documents and a left hand side that tracks its journey and the comments or ‘notations’ of those who receive, ‘study’ and forward the file.

A wiki is an ideal way to enable this government wide collaboration of decision-making. Instead of a file a wiki would create a wiki-page on the file-topic. All who are given access to the wiki could see new pages or edits on old pages using the “Recent-Changes” feature or simply search for pages with categories relevant to them. They can then just make any changes, which then become instantly available to all across the government.

With a wiki the government office is well equipped for quick turnaround and transparent decision making.

Imagine- no more file tracking, no-more wait. No more barriers of departmental walls to seek out information on relevant projects.

Imagine a complete transparency of the changes made by everyone who contributed to the process. Imagine the Right to Information Act (RTI) simply granting access to the relevant pages and no painful searches for information that does not exist.

Collaborating with citizens
Governments traditionally do not collaborate with citizens- inputs of citizens can at best be heard through citizen-groups, lobbyists, NGO's, media focus or representations. Governments therefore become very insular and loose the sense of purpose of activities in a sector or area.

By creating wiki’s that allow citizens to add, modify or even delete information the government can create collaborative-governance. For example a draft development plan could be ‘opened-up’ to citizen collaboration in the form of wiki pages. Citizens would then be able to fill in the gaps, add content and collaborate to developing a better region.

The opportunity
There are enormous possibilities to use the power of the internet to not only create collaboration in government but empowering the democratic process beyond the electoral process. It is an opportunity to see other offices, departments and citizens as partners and not adversaries. An opportunity to create shared visions and empower powerful missions.

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