Thoughtscapes

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

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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posted by Anupam Saraph at permalink 11:08 PM

4 Comments:

  • Terrific! Very doable and highly impact-able!

    They should have guys like you on a national think-tank! This could even be great for other countries, Obama, have you seen this stuff?

    Would like to see all the ideas implemented, would make it a wonderful country to be in! Good governance is so important and I am glad you are putting tons of innovative ideas out there!

    Thanks!

    By Anonymous Saraswati, at 3:27 AM  

  • 1. I would put the One-India Card first. Looks like the government has got it right too. I like your One-India name better than the government's UIN.
    2. I would twitter next, it's low hanging fruit.
    3. The mysql database of budget and projects linked to a map is a superb idea- make every rupee and paisa show!

    Good work!

    By Anonymous Webblazer, at 5:02 AM  

  • The CBSE curricula wiki sounds like a wonderful idea!
    It will provide us teachers an opportunity to improve the experience we create for our students and also add several creative experiences to the curricula!

    Hope Mr Kapil Sibal enables projects like these to improve the lot of education in the country!

    By Anonymous Shikshak, at 7:33 PM  

  • The government shud have this in the 100 day plan! All very doable and wud make India so cool! But will the dudes do it?

    By Anonymous samantha, at 8:35 PM  

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