Indian
Express: National: Wednesday, 30 December 2015.
India’s RTI
Act, which completed its first decade of implementation this year, is arguably
one of the world’s most widely used freedom of information acts. In one year
alone (2011-12), over two million requests were submitted to the Central
government and 10 of India’s 29 states. Yet, choosing to file an RTI is not
always an innocuous act.
Exposing
corruption can make you enemies, and accounts abound of RTI users and activists
being threatened, harassed, even assaulted or killed as a result of their
requests.
As the RTI
starts its second decade, we need India’s government to ensure that information
provision has a more impersonal face. This requires the government to invest in
a data infrastructure that will allow it to go from passive to active
transparency.
The RTI and
other freedom of information laws around the world are examples of how
governments offer transparency, but passively. The citizens are the active
agents, filling out request forms and, in the process, often dealing with
resistance and delays.
In recent
years, many countries have opened their administrative datasets to the public,
with several goals in mind: To make government more transparent and
accountable, track progress toward performance targets, and help policymakers
and administrators do their jobs effectively. Such active transparency brings
huge benefits to citizens who can directly access data without filing requests.
Citizens also benefit indirectly as researchers begin to use this data for a
range of purposes, including to evaluate policy. While active transparency
requires technical and organisational know-how as well as political shifts, as
researchers engaged with the ministry of rural development (MoRD) on making
MGNREGA data usable, we are convinced that active transparency is possible in
India.
From its
inception in 2005, the MGNREGA has shown a commitment to transparency. But in
2013, when we had a look at the website providing access to the data one of the
largest databases for a social programme in the developing world we saw that
its design made the data difficult to access and use to gain insights for
research or to improve implementation. In collaboration with the MoRD, we
created the MGNREGA Public Data Portal, an interface designed to serve as a
one-stop shop for over 50 indicators deemed crucial for evaluating the MGNREGA.
In the
process, we identified three lessons on what it would take to foster active
transparency across ministries.
First, invest
in technical inputs. Ironically, safeguards against cronyism, which are
otherwise beneficial, can keep ministries from hiring the technicians needed to
complement the skills of their staff. The government can also improve its
digital services, especially website speed, by increasing the use of
open-source technologies, which avoid costly licensing fees that can create
procurement bottlenecks, and by taking advantage of efficient cloud web-hosting
services.
Second,
encourage collaboration between policymakers, researchers and technicians from
the get go. Our team at Evidence for Policy Design has created a method we call
“Smart Policy Design”, where researchers don’t just provide answers, they sit
down with policymakers to help formulate the question. Together with MoRD
officials, we determined the best indicators to track and how to present the
data. Then we worked side-by-side with technicians at India’s National
Informatics Centre to build the portal. (That’s literally side-by-side: We
often worked two to a computer, as there were none to spare.) Since completion,
the ministry has not only maintained the portal, it’s updated it, making it
more robust and versatile.
Third, employ
“agile” methodologies. The tech team at the National Informatics Centre and the
“client” bureaucrats struggled to communicate and meet each other’s needs.
Software developers now widely use “agile” methodology to keep fast-moving
projects from going astray and creating waste. Using a clearly defined set of
user needs, the team creates prototypes and proceeds through short rounds of
cooperative iteration. This method can benefit a wide range of government
initiatives by keeping all sides informed and involved, and the project on track.
Through the
portal, MGNREGA data now enters the public sphere automatically. Mention
increasing automation in government and you risk conjuring images of grey
dystopias, where the government has no human face and the citizen is just a
number. However, automating systems that are currently in the hands of biased
individuals may be the best option to actively increase the data the programme
produces on itself and, thereby, strengthen human rights and quality of life.
This will
take money, and policymakers grapple not only with tight budgets, but often
with organisational resistance to change. However, investments in data
infrastructure are like investments in physical infrastructure such as roads
and power lines up-front costs may well be outweighed by long-run benefits.
Plugging some of the MGNREGA’s many holes could itself pay the costs of
automating aspects of its implementation.
Automation
can serve purposes outside the immediate operational concerns of the particular
programme. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) include Goal 17 on
revitalising the global partnership for development. This includes efforts “to
increase significantly the availability of high-quality, timely and reliable
data”. Although it is the last goal on the list, it would enable us to track
progress on all the others.
The “timely”
aspect is key: The more real-time data we have, the earlier we can correct
ourselves and set a path toward goals that will improve the lives of
individuals. And the best source of real-time data is a machine programmed to
broadcast it.
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