Jan Soochna Portal and Digital Dialogues Need Replication across States
Rakshita Swamy
The age of digitalization saw millions of government records move from offline to online formats. However, the benefits of this change did not reach ordinary citizens in terms of improving their access to basic rights and essential public services. Instead, governments created databases and information architectures that were opaque, in terms of the logic that drove their design and its use. Digital locks came in the form of “administrative logins” wherein information collected, compiled and generated was available only to those who had state authorized usernames and passwords to access to the same. This resulted in the administration and State having privileged access to information which it used for closed door monitoring and decision making.
At the same time, citizens face a plethora of public grievances on account of inadequate budgetary allocations, vacancy in staff positions, poor communication of citizen entitlements, elaborate application and processing norms, discretion in sanctioning, denial, corruption, wrongful exclusion etc. The absence of systematic disclosure of information across all stages of the planning, application, verification, sanction and expenditure process has led to poor enforcement of accountability on public officials when citizens’ rights were violated. Therefore, there is a tremendous divergence between the State and the citizen in terms of access to actionable information and the utility of the said information for public purposes. Information systems that dictated what information from citizens would be collected, how they would be compiled, what decisions they would drive were all conceptualized and designed to meet the needs of the administrator. Hence the term, “Management Information System” (MIS) where only those pieces of information that the administration decides to put out in the public domain is made public.
Therefore, there exists a severe imbalance between the ability of the State to collect information about individuals and the ability of people, individually and collectively, to use information to question the State and hold it accountable to minimum standards of performance. The Jan Soochna Portal and the ‘Digital Dialogues’ that led to its creation are important breakthroughs in correcting this imbalance. The Jan Soochna Portal of the Government of Rajasthan proactively discloses information regarding 260 schemes across 115 State departments and public authorities. In a span of two and a half years, the website has received more than a 100 million visits. It contains a spectacular diversity of information. It discloses in the public domain disaggregated, demystified and actionable information with respect to: National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA), toilets constructed under Swachh Bharat Mission, works constructed by the Panchayat under Finance Commission Grants, distribution of free medicines, Ayushman Bharat, Right to Information (RTI) applications, Ration distribution, loan waivers to farmers, functioning of educational institutions, special benefits to labour and specially abled persons, distribution of social security pensions, mining lease contracts and payments, land title distribution under Forest Rights Act amongst others. The information is being provided in an unhindered manner, where no usernames and passwords are required to access the above information. Information on the portal is arranged according to geography so that citizens residing in a particular Panchayat or Municipal Ward can access information about themselves and public institutions in their geographical area. It is important to bear in mind that more than a 100 RTI applicants paid with their life for seeking information that ought to have been proactively disclosed in the public domain by the State, as is mandated under Section 4 of the RTI Act. Portals like the Jan Soochna Portal ought also to be recognized as a preventive measure against future cases of intimidation against RTI applicants and whistle-blowers.
However, in the case of the Jan Soochna Portal , the means has been as important as the end. The portal has been built based on dialogue and conversation with users of information, practitioners and activists through institutionalized interactions between the State and civil society organizations known as “Digital Dialogues”. Civil Society Organizations conceptualized and advocated for this portal to demonstrate how digital technology should be used for empowering citizens to access their rights with the least effort and how information should be made available proactively in the public domain for every scheme so that citizens can identify when their rights are being violated and why, and can seek answers from the administration for it. These dialogues were initiated at the request of civil society, and were also claimed by them. They were characterized by government officials who could not fathom why they even had to explain their decision on why certain information would or would not be disclosed. It took consistent effort over four years to bring the dialogues to a point where they are now organised on a monthly basis under an administrative mandate, and where participation of officials is mandatory. Any denials of requests to make information public by the State Department are required to be legally justified (particularly under what exemption clause of the RTI Act is the disclosure of this information is being denied).
The process of these digital dialogues taught all those of us involved with it that consultative processes to drive reform are not a one-time event where everyone’s suggestions are taken down, and the State is left to decide which inputs it would incorporate and which it wouldn’t. They are a continuous and collective process where representatives of movements, networks, campaigns, organizations and ‘domain experts’ need to consistently engage in dialogue with the State to claim their right to information, and hold them accountable for the inputs they give to the process.
The journey of the Jan Soochna Portal and the digital dialogues reminds us all once again that political and democratic processes need to be at the centre of digital and information rights advocacy. The means always remain as important as the ends.
Rakshita Swamy leads SAFAR-Social Accountability Forum for Action and Research. The views expressed in the piece are born out of a collective process of action and reflection of civil society organisations involved in the digital dialogue process in Rajasthan.
