Shudhify. case study

Transcription

1 Shudhify case study

2 Shudhify Fact Sheet Name of Project: Shudhify Country: India Brief Description: Shudhify produces and disseminates a highly localized datamap of selected government offices in Bangalore, India. The data are aggregated from surveys collected on site and track the quality of service provision, as well as the level of efficiency and corruption in the government offices covered. The project also conducts performance activism such as weekly dares, organized with theatre groups and colleges. These are aimed at communicating the data, making them alive, and capturing the public s imagination and attention to act on the corruption issues exposed. Responsible Organization: unregistered citizen-led project Problems Addressed: corruption, apathy, lack of information Areas of Work: perception change (changes in attitudes, opinions, awareness raising), agenda setting and institutional change (decision making, raised profile of issue, policy creation and change) Financing: World Bank Institute Community Action Project (WBI CAP) grant, Lampert Endowment at Colgate University. Contact Information: Srikar Gullapalli sgullapalli@colgate.edu +1 (713) Website: Background India lost around 462 billion dollars to corrupt government officials from 1948 to 2008, so says a 2010 paper by the World Bank. If the recent big scams (2G scam, UP rice scam etc) in India are anything to go by, that number has only increased since Everyone in India knows corruption and governmental inefficacy are issues. However, people are willing to accept it because on the individual level, bad government is just a qualitative idea; the beast is too big to fight on the national level, and on the individual level you can t even tell what the beast looks like. You can tell that you have to feed the beast with bribes and indifference but you don t know who the beast is or what it looks like. Hence you accept the former fact as a necessity, and the latter as an inevitability: When building a house takes a minimum of 6 bribes; when neither birth certificates nor death certificates are issued without bribes; when every citizen walks into an administrative office with an amorphous non-specific idea of general governmental inefficacy and hence is more than ready to just pay the bribe when asked; when we have no idea what issues our politicians are campaigning on, just that they re buying votes on a large scale that we can t measure; when MLA s and MLC s spend five totally unaccountable years on a publicly subsidized ego trip (quote from Yes, Minister) and we have no way of holding them accountable for their promises or basic duties even, since they can just use their gangs of hoodlums and bags of money to keep the business going, so to speak; it becomes clear that the lack of holistic real-time information and opaqueness in government operations gives the governing officials a bullying upper hand over the citizens, as it never should be in a democracy. Now that ordinary people for the first time in a long time are trying to battle corruption in India (by going on hunger strikes, protest marches etc), it s only right that they be empowered with the strongest weapon of all in a civic democracy: information. Srikar Gullapalli,

3 The Project Materials & Tools The datamaps that are central to Shudhify are fed by the results of a nine-question survey that are done manually and on site in government offices in Bangalore, starting with branches of transport offices and police stations. In addition to the surveys, the team behind Shudhify has managed to collect archives of corruption of all government agencies from the Lokayukta (the state Ombudsman), IPaidABribe (an online initiative that collects bribe reports), and from investigations for disproportionate assets. The team also came up with a ratings algorithm that allows citizens to rate local government agencies. Innovation & Performance Activism (aka Dares ) The most innovative part of the project is its data: how it is collected, aggregated, and disseminated. It is collected on site at the physical location of every government office branch with a short 9 question survey. It is aggregated using data-mapping, specifically by dividing the city into the constituency boundaries of local politicians, and tracking the level of efficiency and corruption in government office branches within those areas. Finally, the data is disseminated through the press, academic journals, and the internet. Another unique aspect of the project is its Dares initiative, which is now organized in partnership with theatre groups and colleges. From all the data collected about the government services in Bangalore, the team crafts individual-focused, wacky, youthful, and highly-attention-grabbing dares that are conducted on a weekly basis throughout this city. One of the dares is to go to the centre of the busiest Regional Transport Office (RTO), which was found to be the most corrupt/least efficient in Bangalore, sing the national anthem, and leave without a sound while leaving a stack of papers in the centre with the ratings of the RTO obtained from the ratings algorithm. It is aimed at not only catching media attention and inspiring citizens to demand honest services, but ultimately at putting pressure on the officials to be more patriotic and do a better job. Alliances In the beginning of the project, the team received official recognition and support from the Police Commissioner s office to conduct the project in all of the Police Stations in Bangalore. Given the primary immediate stake in the project, the team has also developed dedicated partnerships with the Regional Transport Office, and now has the ear of the top officials in both government agencies who have promised continued cooperation. In addition to attracting young people from different parts of the country, the Shudhify team has now developed partnerships that enable guidance, network-building, and implementation with Tiri, The Asia Foundation, U4, ISA (Institute for Solidarity in Asia), the UN, and Transparency International. Mr. Fredrik Eriksson of U4, who believes in the Shudhify concept of evidence-based corruption-fighting, is also pitching the project to sponsors all across Europe at various conferences with organizations like the Department for International Development. As for dissemination and awareness-raising, Shudhify has created partnerships with local colleges and theatre groups in Bangalore for its performance activism component. The performances are planned and carried out in a detailed schedule. Shudhify is also getting a research article published in the exclusive Governance Journal concerning their methodology and their results. Lastly, the team has conveyed its results and other significant deductions made from the survey data to the Media Bureau Chief of the world s largest circulating English daily newspaper, The Times of India, who then developed a campaign proposal for the project that will be implemented beginning in May. 3

4 Results & Recommendations Results One of the primary goals of Shudhify was to come up with a democratic measure of corruption for a developing nation like India. The first metric is to identify where small-scale corruption typically starts, thereby sensitizing the people to corruption at large. The project has successfully identified and shortlisted government office branches throughout Bangalore, where the team found that petty corruption typically originates and permeates into the societal fabric itself. The second metric is collection and analysis of data. Towards that, the team has surveyed all the Regional Transport Offices so far and came up with a rating algorithm to comparatively rank the various offices. The team collected data on 40 police stations, 9 RTOs, and all regional branches of four civic agencies which are now all incorporated in the datamap they have created. Lastly, the prime metric of the project s ultimate success is the percentage of the population made aware of the patterns highlighted in the survey data, so they realize that corruption is in fact not the most efficient route to getting business done. After conducting a ratings surveys in all Regional Transport Offices in Bangalore city, the Shudhify algorithm was used to obtain ratings for each office branch and the team found multiple patterns in how business gets done in the office, as well as trends that go against many traditional perceptions (e.g., people who use middlemen on average spend much more but get their service at the same speed as people who don t use middlemen). One of the key patterns that could be deduced from the surveys was the zero correlation between the amount of the bribe and the speed with which the work gets done. Additionally, even if someone paid a bribe, the probability that one would be satisfied with the service is very slim as signified by the very small number of satisfied customers who used agents to get work done at the government offices. Impact The primary impact that the project has had, and will have on the community is perception change. Currently, in Bangalore, the perception is that corruption has become more of an economic tool to get business done quicker and easier rather than a social ill eating away at the moral fabric of the society. This is the perception that the team set out to change in the first place. Through the surveys done at government offices, the team found that corruption in government offices is more due to a psychological placebo effect than due an actual wheel-greasing effect... The Additional Commissioner of Transport in charge of Bangalore has truly appreciated our project and is excited to tackle the implications of our data that he didn t have access to before. says Srikar. Obstacles One obstacle faced by the project was the somewhat haphazard nature of data in the status quo, and the lack of existing channels to collect this data. For instance, there was no real functioning mechanism to collect any sort of feedback in the government services of Bangalore City. The project had to start from scratch within its existing resources, and it was challenging for the team to get official recognition from the government offices themselves. The official recognition and a promise of further discussion of policy and agendas were eventually obtained from two government agencies, after they provide the second batch of information needed by the project (i.e., the views of the employees of the individual government office branches, as to why their office has low ratings or is reported as corrupt, etc). In terms of the haphazardness of data, corruption reports officially held by the government watchdog agencies are all over the place, and filing Right To Information documents was hard because the government data was organized in the most confusing way possible. 4

5 Lessons Learned Bureaucracy is much more of a nightmare than I could ve ever imagined it to be. You have to make 5 phone calls and go to the office 3 times trying to convince a Personal Assistant to the Transport Commissioner that all the data we have collected will be important to the Commissioner and that his input/support, if substantial, would get him recognition on an international platform, to realize the above. But once you do manage to get past the bureaucracy, it can really be worth it (sometimes), says Srikar. The team also learned that brand value is still important. If the project didn t have the British Council and World Bank Institute and Colgate University brands affixed to it, the first lesson would ve been even more difficult to achieve, without the guarantee of a happy ending. A lot of doors were opened by the strength of these brands, and while it was the project that then kept the door open, the initial push that brand value can give is enormous. Thirdly, pure nobility of purpose doesn t guarantee support, partnerships, or help even from well-meaning individuals and organizations. Gullapalli says that quite a few NGOs that he and his team talked to were happy with the activities and wanted to help in any way they could, but most of them balked when confronted with the specific agenda of partnerships. They stopped returning calls and gave vague and delayed responses. Gullapalli also learned that one s connections can grow at an astronomical rate once you get into the field. Many people we ve met have managed to get us in touch with other people that could help us, he says. Despite being disappointed by the promises of some NGOs, they were able to connect with other groups who helped them produce the expected outcomes. Recommendations Be a little less naïve about nobility of purpose in terms of real support you can obtain. Instead of getting friends and relatives to do some pro-bono work (which was great, but in the end it was more inefficient than we expected), or expecting similar pro-bono support from NGOs, and influential groups and individuals, hire paid interns and hold them to strict deadlines and performance metrics; and sign official business contracts with NGO s, groups and individuals that you hope to work with, with clearly laid out terms, failure criteria, and compensations, Gullapalli says. At the time of writing, the Shudhify team is under negotiations with private sector surveying organizations Ikonet and C-Voter to conduct another 4,000 surveys. Those working on a similar project and facing similar challenges should also learn to find joy and triumph in Incrementalism, in the small changes as they add up slowly, instead of holding out for one life-changing event. This is particularly evident in their work the website which took six months of work, after much disappointments and revision. Lastly, Gullapalli recommends having an official organization backing: The fact that we were not an established NGO meant there were very few foundations and international organizations that were willing to work with us. Even though we started the process a while back, the paperwork takes much longer than we expected to do this, and there are many little formalities that have been hard to fulfil... Life is made a lot easier, in terms of building networks, signing contracts, getting funding, and making a change if you set up as an official organization/ngo within the law of the land, he says. 5

6 2012