Written By admin123 - 1 December, 2009

Bangalore Transparency suggestion Praja related Praja initiatives Participation

Post Mobilicity, we, as a community, have this opening to create a Transport Policy proposal for Bengaluru using not just that draft we saw last week, but several such proposals that may exist today. What if we join hands to create a concrete document (a type of "crowdsourcing"), and try this as our first focused proposal creation exercise. Praja.in (neither an NGO, nor a media house) sort of exists for doing exactly such things - Internet based crowdsourcing for city's good - in open and transparent ways.

We would need some creativity to run a managed yet open and transparent community authoring process. It can't be a free for all. There will be good content and bad content, so we will need moderation. A combination of democratic means, and expert's opinions and interventions can help to filter things as much as possible.

How do we do it? One way could be the "two pools" approach:

The First Step

We would first sign up with Karnataka's transport department - they would be handed over a completed document at the end of this crowdsourcing exercise.

Two pools

We start with a skeleton document (a doc with just the basic headings) from some acknowledged expert. No content, just a structure.

#1 - Open Pool

A document or post, open to all and managed by a few volunteer moderators and translators.

• Community keep building the document using the starting skeleton, and referencing the documents available for viewing by all.
• Moderators keep merging comments and suggestions to fill the starting skeleton. Polls could be used for any loud disputes.
• Kannada translated version to be maintained in parallel.
• Merged and summarized output from this pool would regularly be transferred to a second pool.

#2 - Controlled Pool

Similar area (document or post) as open pool, but

• Only a pre-selected set of experts (say 7-10 of them) can edit here, everyone else can only read.
• All authors would be named experts with clear public resumes. So no anonymous authors here.
• City's technocrats can be part of the controlled pool to add in their angles and constraints. Their additions and edits will be transparent and visible.
• Output from pool#1 would be further edited and bettered here. The main objective for this controlled pool will be to resolve conflicts in the content received from the open pool. Experts might add entirely new content and references as well if the larger community misses any big points inside the open pool.

Expanding beyond Internet

Local NGOs, or activists could be enlisted as partners to connect knowledgeable and aware folks with no access to Internet (cargo movers, auto unions, cab operators) with this process. These partners will provide wider inputs via pool #1 mentioned above.

Closure

When majority of experts feel that the document has reached a good shape, or upon expiry of a set time period, the document will be closed for edits, and presented to Transport Deptt or Ministry.

...

What does everyone feel about such an Internet based community driven process? Definitely not perfect, but should be a worthy experiment to provide chances to a lot many more people than the usual to take part in preparing such policy proposals.

All inputs are welcome to tune and develop a process to build this policy proposal. Avoid off topic comments (on what the policy should be, etc), lend your thoughts to this managed crowdsourcing process please.

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