New proposal for Loksatta Portal

We propose a new portal for Loksatta to implement what I have mentioned in my previous articles. After hours of discussion with Kumar, I came up with this document.

This portal will create a history. As of now I am not aware of any such portal for any political party in anywhere in the world.

Here we present you the benefits of this new portal..

1. Joining More People in to the party as Executive Members.
2. Motivating people who are already joined.
3. Improving transparency in the process and with in the party.
4. Improving Internal Democracy using innovative technologies.
5. Reducing cost of administration/communication
6. Measuring effectiveness of various activities.
7. Creating competitive environment between members and between divisions.
8. Identifying various skills of members and finding ways to utilize them.
9. Unified portal for party members

Joining More People in to the party as Executive Members

• Online promotion (SMS/Mails/Social Media)
• Tracking people who may join if convinced
• Staying in touch with those people
• Showing benefits of joining the party

Motivating people who are already joined

• Passing accurate transparent information
• Informing latest party activities on time
• Promoting best party members through online blogs

Improving transparency in the process and with in the party

• Online registration
• Online tracking of queries by making it visible to every member
• Putting all party financial information online
• Tracking all statistics online like activities, members count
• Making all party roles information available to every one.

Improving Internal Democracy using innovative technologies

• Reducing the need of Ballot Polls using SMS/Internet
• Giving opportunity for members to express their views
• Simplifying opinion collection using Online Polls
• Taking action based on results rather than opinion of individuals
• Using Open Discussions to resolve different problems

Reducing cost of administration/communication

• Using SMS/Email/Website to reach to people
• Maintaining central databases, and financial accounts
• Reducing the cost of discussions and gathering opinions using Internet

Measuring effectiveness of various activities

• Tracking the beneficiaries of the activities
• Live updates of activities
• Cost and Benefit analysis of activities
• Tracking member activities and history of individuals

Creating competitive environment between members and between divisions

• Giving ranking to members based on activities
• Giving ranking to divisions
• Advertising best members and divisions and increasing competitiveness
  

Identifyig various skills of members and finding ways to utilize them

• Making list of all possible activities
  
• Collecting members interests per activity/skill
• Maintaining pool of interested members per any given activity/skill
• Maintaining various groups and leaders per activity/skill

Unified portal for party members

• Acheving all about using single central website
• Mail service
• Opinion Polls
• Open Discussions
• Member Profiles
• Member Activity History
• Event Tracking
• Finance System
• SMS/Email Alerts and News
• Online/SMS Voting
• Fund Raising for Activities

Extra Ideas:
Every role/post in the party should clearly state all the benefits that it gives to the individual who is interested in that role/post.

We will wait for this week for changes to this list and will present it in our next meeting with the party members next week. Please send your views and ideas.

We will elaborate this portal features in coming weeks and will post them in this blog for your comments.

Meeting Kapra division party president

After an 1hr discussion with Mr.Kumar who is an active party member and one of my favorite employee, I got appointment with Mr.Parthasaradhi.

Parthasaradhi is a leader. He is a party president for Loksatta Kapra division. I will introduce each of these people in this blog later.

In our 1 hour meeting we have discussed the following issues..

• Problems I am facing while trying to join new members.
• General views of people whom I am asking to join on Loksatta.
• How these problems can be solved by being more transparent?
• How we can implement it through out the government?
• What activities he is doing now. How I can support him.
• How to pass our views to JP?

We have found that we agree that my suggestion of being more transparent will help the party.

He is kind enough to offer a meeting with some influential people in the party. We will have this meeting ofter 7th March 2010.

Kumar and me have agreed to spend one hour a day to plan and implement this mission. I will keep you updated on this.

Information availability

A public organigation like Loksatta should not have anything hidden from the public. There may be some exceptions which I am not aware as of now. Making information public is not just for the sake of people who wants to view it, but for the sake improving process of those activities.

Let tell you this through an example..

Consider that loksatta has decided to put a web based ticket system for every communication they received aither through phone, email, website. That means every thing is logged and assigned to some person. That person need to respond to it and change the status of the ticket.

Now, consider that this system is open and anyone can read and see status of all tickets.

Now tell me, will such system help Loksatta?

According to me it helps Loksatta to gain new followers in a massive way. We all have seen power of information sharing in the sussess of orkut, facebook, twitter etc. this step takes it one step ahead.

I will be able to find why i did not get reply to all my mails.
And will know how to fix it.

Now how to convince loksatta leadership to setup this system?
Any ideas guys?

Information Commission

I propose a nation wide database with all information that we need. It can be a database that exposes through simple query tools for any one. It will not have any front end of its own. It just takes queries from the users and provides the output. The website will promote the best queries given by users.

• All Information in Single Database.
• Will be the largest database people have ever built.
  
• May cost 1000cr rupees to setup and crores to operate.
• Will have connections to every Govt department in the country.
• Every Govt office is connected to it in one or other way.
• This database will be filled with data by properly organizing all information from all offices and other databases.
• Data will be 100% public.
• A autonomous independent organization like Election Commission will operate this database. It is called Information Commission(IC).
• IC will be so powerful that even Govt can not stop its functions at any point with out 4/5th majority in Parlament.
  
• IC will promote this database through ad campaigns.
• It will give price money for people who has found best uses of this information.
• A team of 100's of Database Experts will keep the database upto date and will work on improving/optimizing it every day. They will directly work for IC.
• There will be a limit to number of seconds a query can run depending on the load. After that time query will be terminated.

This database will capture every information we need from Govt. Here are some of those examples.

• How many govt buses are running today in Hyderabad?
• How many auto ricksha's have paid road taxes in last one year and how much?
• What is average Govt employee salary in the state?
• What are all the pending govt projects from last one year?
• Is this PAN number AP345534 valid?
• How much money is spent on Air Conditions in Govt offices in the country every year?
• How much taxes are paid by SO and SO MLA in last 10 years?
• How much money is allocated for roads development in my area in last 10 years?

These are just example queries only. We need all the data to answer all these queries. These are all public information and should be available to public.

RTI Act(Right To Information Act) is a good step. But is not enough. We can't run around every govt office to get this information. It is the duty of the Govt to keep all this information uptodate and available to every one.

What I can do for Loksatta?

Due to busy business life, I decided to keep this list small.
They are

• Join at least 20 people per year as Executive Members. Each member will pay Rs 1000/- per year.
• Convince Loksatta leadership about the power of information and try to create a movement.
• Help Loksatta in participating in this information movement.

I will explain more about the information movement in next articles.

I have already joined one person(Kisor Biswal) this month. I need to join another 2 in the month of Feb 2010.

Kisor Biswal is an extra ordinary person. How many times in your life you will come across some one like you? I am not sure about you. But for me it is very rare. But Kisor is an exception. It is like finding part of me another person.

Even though he is from Orissa, he has paid Rs1000 and joined as Executive Member all just because he knows that it is his duty to contribute to greater good.

"Hi Kisor, Thank you very much for your support. "

Please encourage people like Kisor by posting your comments to this article.