Thoughtscapes

What should Maharashtra's e-governance Policy accomplish?

2011-01-30T21:37:00.000-08:00

The Maharashtra government is revising its e-governance policy. Lots of people have emailed and telephoned asking me what my recommendations are. So here are some points I suggest.

Purpose Statement

The purpose of this policy should be to further good governance by enabling transparency and participation of all stakeholders in governance.
In order to accomplish its purpose, the policy should also set common goals and standards in place for the e-Governance rollout in the state.

Common Goals

Within one year all government agencies in Maharashtra should:

Upload data they hold onto http://data.maharashtra.gov.in
Upload maps they hold onto http://maps.maharashtra.gov.in
Upload project information onto http://projects.maharashtra.gov.in
Upload budget information onto http://budgets.maharashtra.gov.in
Upload staff directories onto http://servants.maharashtra.gov.in
Implement wiki-based file systems for decision making on http://decisions.maharashtra.gov.in
Accept all government payments through a single payment gateway at http://payments.maharashtra.gov.in
List all government schemes and beneficiaries through a single site http://schemes.maharashtra.gov.in
Accept all service requests and grievances on http://requests.maharashtra.gov.in

Standards

In order to enable the government agencies to accomplish the common goals the IT department should develop, common standards for the Maharashtra government for the following:

Sharing and displaying data on the http://data.maharashtra.gov.in
Sharing and displaying maps on http://maps.maharashtra.gov.in
Sharing and displaying project information onto http://projects.maharashtra.gov.in
Sharing and displaying budget information onto http://budgets.maharashtra.gov.in
Sharing and displaying staff directories onto http://servants.maharashtra.gov.in
Sharing and displaying wiki-based file systems for decision making on http://decisions.maharashtra.gov.in
Accepting government payments through a single payment gateway at http://payments.maharashtra.gov.in
Listing all government schemes and beneficiaries through a single site http://schemes.maharashtra.gov.in
Accepting all service requests and grievances on http://requests.maharashtra.gov.in
Privacy, security, certification, storage and archival of data with the agencies that fall under the scope of this policy.
Identifying, sharing and protecting individual and business data.
Multilingual access to data and websites.
Mobile access to all information and transactions on http://maharashtra.gov.in

These standards should be enforced by the IT department through applications on the specified urls that will allow registered users from various government agencies to access and update the information on each of them. All stakeholders should be able to access at will the meta-information (the date of update, by whom, from where etc.) on update associated with each of the records on the websites. The applications should be developed on a high-priority basis and its beta versions be rolled out within 8 months of the release of this policy.

Capacity Building

Starting as soon as the draft version of the common standards are ready, YASHADA and other NGO's should provide capacity building workshops to all government agencies to implement and monitor the common goals. YASHADA should also create an audit and compliance cell that will audit every government agency for its adaptation of the government standards, implementation and continued use of the applications mandated in the egovernance policy.

Containing the H1N1

2009-08-09T23:13:00.000-07:00

H1N1 is spreading. The response is still uncoordinated, slow, confused, messy and lacking a clear direction. What could a coordinated, quick, focused response look like? Here is a first look at a better coordinated system.

What if you could help yourself?

If you’ve got flu, you should be able to register yourself on phone, through an sms or on the internet. A quick set of questions should be able to assess if you need to be tested for H1N1. If you do, then the information system should schedule you for test on one of the 15 mobile collection centers closest to your home. You should be intimated during your conversation the expected time when the unit will visit you and conduct the test. At the same time the mobile unit would be sent an SMS of your location. The blackberry on the mobile unit would indicate the google map of your location and allow them to update the information system as soon as the sample is collected.

The collection team would do a collection round for three hours and then shift to another vehicle as the first one goes to drop off the samples. The collection vans would be fumigated every day.

Can the patients get the right medical attention at home in time?

The diagnostic centre would log the results onto the website minutes after the results. You get a telephone call, sms or email from a dedicated team responding to the web-site updates. The google map gets automatically updated to track positive locations.

The closest of the 15 mobile rapid action teams of doctors gets an sms alert and a map of the address their blackberry. The new patients would now be under medical advice at home within 3 hours of diagnosis. A quarantine team would also visit and advise the family, neighbors set up waste disposal mechanisms, provide masks and advise about hygiene. The family physicians would be contacted and advised on a daily check and reporting. Patients needing hospital attention would be shifted immediately.

Can the spread be contained through information?

All airlines, railways, buses would log passenger lists to a health check site. All patients are checked in these databases and co-travelers in the city are visited by the containment team for a quick check-up and advise.

All the classes in schools of children in the families of the travelers who were exposed to a patient would undergo a check every morning after a class assembly. School assembly to be discontinued immediately. The school medical team to register a case of flu on the phone, through the mobile or on the net. A special team would visit the school for containment, hygiene and closure advisory.

All the co-workers of a patient would undergo a check-up and advice within a day. Periodic follow-up would be scheduled as needed.

What if there was a health monitoring team?

Instead of the central government, state government, local government and the dozens of associated agencies making different statements, there would be a single agency that would report on the health, the advisories and the action plans. Different agencies would have to agree to the directives of this single agency and implement them.

Containing H1N1

Undoubtedly there is more than this needed. This is just a glimpse at an alternate way of dealing with the crisis. Do build the ways to contain this virus. We need more coordinated, focused and simple action and we are running out of time. Coordinate your efforts on Pune H1N1 Wik i.

Driving Good Governance

2009-06-24T23:08:00.000-07:00

It’s already over a month of the new government in India. With less than 60 days to go for the first 100 days everyone is waiting for the first signs of initiatives for good governance.

What can the government do in the next 60 to establish a track for good governance?

Here are some of the ideas I’ve been sharing along with the IT Vision for the Next Prime Minister that I wrote earlier in the year.

Develop official tweeters in every Ministry to broadcast public information and event reminders
Implement Google Calendars across government for every "Office of Government" and “Project of Government” and create a common interface to access them across government
Implement Google Maps or better still Sadak Maps tracked through a mysql database to track all budget heads (and projects) at every budget level (local, state, national)
Implement a National Governance Wiki, along the lines of Giki, to build inclusive, open dialog for good governance. Particularly seek collaboration of all stakeholders for creating development agenda and track project implementation across the nation
Implement a demography wiki from Census of India database linked with Sadak Map
Implement a Survey of India map based wiki for the Land, Geological, Zoological, Botanical, Archeological surveys (for an example see the website of CIO, Pune city)
Design an educational wiki for the CBSE curricula for all teachers to register and contribute to and all students to discuss on discussion pages
Create a Sadkamap linked Giki as visioned in BeyondVoting to build a development vision for the constituencies that its representatives can track
Develop open-source secure community-card system as a person and property level information system. For a description of the idea see One-India Cards. See Life with Punecards for a description of the difference such a card can make to peoples lives in a city or a village.

Can you rank the list by desirability? Can you improve the list? Better still, can you make it happen?

Life with a Punecard

2009-05-04T04:28:00.000-07:00

Punecards is round the corner if you wish it. It may no longer be a dream of the distant future. But we need to desire it strongly enough before it happens. What will a Punecard world look like? What will you be willing to do to make this a reality?

I travel to Zensar. Ganesh has already intimated the security at the gate of my meeting with him and my Punecard number. When I mention my name the security pulls up my photograph retrieved from Punecard in the visitors expected list he has. I can just pass through as the picture matches. He can also quiz me with any profile details if he is in doubt.
I exchange my Punecard – my digital visiting card – with the people at the meeting. My visiting card is now current even when my mobile or email change.
At the admission desk of the university I provide my Punecard number- the clerk uses that to fill up my form. I could well have filled up the form online from home through Punecard. In one click I am able to provide all the details that are required by the admissions committee.
All educational institutes are now uploading my educational certificates to my Punecard account. I can now provide a digital degree certificate to those who ask it of me.
My privacy is now better controlled. I provide information digitally to whom I may want. Every provision of information also leaves behind an audit trail so I know anytime who took what information from me.
My data on Punecards is scattered between multiple servers and strongly encrypted. I can have a premium account to increase transaction security.
The RTO just needs my Punecard number to register my vehicle. My neighbor, who is still at the silver card level and not a platinum cardholder like me, has to add certified copies of various certificates along with the PuneCard number. I can just provide the number!
My Punecard now facilitates cashless bus travel- All I need to do is flash my card and enter my PMPML pin into the small machine next to the driver.
Surprise- Just after few weeks of using the Pune Card on PMPML busses and the bus routes and frequencies seem to have improved to match my needs!
My kids have got enrolled into a free “Yellow Bus” service to take them to school automatically. The pickup and drop of points have been intimated to them and me on the Punecards account.
My neighbor who works at the Magarpatta IT park has automatically got enrolled to a “Red Bus” service to take him back and forth at a time that he specified!
The Municipal and Cantonment bodies now offer me all civic interactions on my Punecard account. Now all the documents that relate to me automatically available to me on my account - the birth records, properties I own, their approved plans, NOC’s, building permissions, the licenses I have obtained; all digitally certified – I can even back them up on my computer if I wish. No longer do I need to run around for these services.
At parking lots I simply provide my Punecard number and my PIN – no more cash to dole out here!
The parking lots have got reconfigured over the year to accommodate the short and long park vehicles and cope with the loads. Nice to see a responsive local body!
I just moved houses- Thanks to Punecard I just update my profile on PuneCard and all relying parties that I transact with automatically update my address. A verification intimation is sent instantly to my email and mobile.
Applying for an insurance policy is a click away- my Punecard profile simply fills up the form here as it does for the mutual fund I apply for.
Lol! I could just walk away with the new mobile phone in 5 minutes with my Punecard! With dynamic “KYC” provided by the card, telecom companies now use this for fast track mobile and internet account registration.
The police are happier now that Pune is a safe city. Crime prevention is now far easier. Tracking a criminal is minutes away.
Voting online will soon be possible with the integration of Punecards into the ECI’s voting system.
Whenever my profile changes, I start with an unauthenticated profile. As I provide my details to different organizations the authentication count of my profile increases.
My Punecard account tracks the use of my information- I now have a record of who I have shared my profiles with. I can opt to stop sharing update details of my profiles.
When I sign up for my club I provide my Punecard number. My club uses Punecard’s premium services that allow them to provide club-members directory, calendars, alerts and much more.
My company can now allow me to manage my profile- no more request letters or repeated form filling for expense reports, travel indents, reimbursements, address, phone, email changes; all of these are filled through Punecards.
My company can now provide a digital certificate for employment- My supervisor can endorse the projects I participated in. My references are people on Punecards, themselves with a public profile on Punecards.
As a Punecard holder I now have a firm reference of my city backing me for getting a job, for being an entrepreneur and doing good business.
With Punecard premium services I can have my own home page with a public profile and opt to be listed in a searchable directory as a punekar!
To upgrade my Silver Punecard to Gold I can visit any of the Gold Relying Parties. They simply sign me up as a subscriber to their services and verified at least three of the documents required by Punecard.
I got my Platinum Card by visiting a certified authority who uploaded my photograph and fingerprints and verified the certificates I had carried with me. I don’t need to leave unsecured photocopies of these certificates anymore- all Punecard relying parties can just access them online now, and I know who accessed them.
I registered myself for postpaid charges on various services. I now use my card in the bus, parking lots, public phones etc with my PIN or thumb-print to authenticate my use. At the end of the month I pay for the services I used. My Punecard account page lists my usage and the amounts.
My Punecard allows third parties to provide me applications around my secure identity- I am glad that my bank, hospital, insurance company are now allowing me to bank my information with them on my Punecard account.

India 2015: An IT Vision for the Next Prime Minister of India

2009-03-09T21:26:00.000-07:00

2015. Everyone is experiencing a prosperous India. Life is hassle free and people walk around with heads high. Rabindranath Tagore’s smiles from the heavens as atlast India has awakened into the heaven of freedom.

The world is acknowledging the Prime Minister’s success in dealing with the major challenges India inherited: an unsafe and insecure India, a failing economy, an hassle filled life, failed land-use management, difficulties in making right projects happen in the right place at the right time, huge leaks in spending tax rupees, an absence of citizen friendly communication, lack of citizen involvement and inability to manage risks in a troubled world.

The ten-point IT program launched in 2009 has transformed the country.

The Ten Point IT Program
1. One-India Card: Building a safer India
2. Shared Information Systems: Information system across agencies and businesses to build a prosperous India
3. Citizen Benefits: Resident accounts for single-point hassle-free governance
4. Tracking Landuse: Vibrant and productive spaces for all
5. Mobility: Mobility cards for hassle free green transportation
6. Projects: Wiki to ensure right projects happen at the right place and right time
7. Budgets: Wiki to track that every rupee well spent for the people
8. Alerts: Broadcast channels for easy and people friendly communication
9. Collaborative governance: Letting people matter
10. Collaborative modeling and futures: Managing the risks of a troubled planet

One-India Card

Of the 3,976 villages with populations larger than 10,000 more than 3,000 have implemented the One-India Cards. Most of the remaining 634,389 villages with populations under 10,000 are implementing the One-India Cards. All of the 4,378 cities of India are now covered under the One-India Cards.

The One-India Cards were launched through licensed One-India Card providers in 2009 when the Prime Minister took over. Over 642,743 entrepreneurs are licensed providers of the One-India Card. They use the standard open-source technology already developed and implemented on a pilot scale in Pune. 35 exchanges run by the technology provider service the cities and villages in the 35 states and union territories to allow a quick query of the resident data from any One-India Card across the country.

Besides creating the huge number of entrepreneurs in the direct management of the cards for each city/village, there are a huge number of entrepreneurs customizing service and product delivery services around the One-India Card. Entrepreneurs have been integrating widgets and API’s into local commerce- the grocers, the libraries, the book shops, the malls, the insurance companies have all sought out ways to allow auto form-fill, customer business profiles, relationship management to integrate with the One-India Card. Some have even provided an integration of their data onto the One-India Card account of every resident signed on the card.

It is now mandatory for all government interactions to use the One-India Card to identify residents, obtain citizen information through forms and provide any services. Most of the Government offices have opted for the easy auto-form-fill services of the One-India Card to fill on-line forms for various requirements. They are also using the auto account-book to display the history and status of transactions with the government offices on the citizens account page.

Shared Information Systems

With One-India Cards the Prime Minister has ensured that there will be a single registry across India of its 1.14 billion residents. In fact there is a real-time information system of the demography of each region. The huge gap of information about the citizens is bridged as is the waste of resources in identifying citizens and authenticating them independently at every point of transaction. This has contributed to making a safer India. This has also brought accountability and responsiveness in dealing with every citizen across the country.

The Planning Commission and various Ministries now rely on information provided by the One-India Card to device and implement schemes for targeted demographic groups: women, children, economically underprivileged, handicapped, homeless, migrants, youth, elderly, unemployed illiterate to name a few.

The 309 million people (60% of the workers) in agriculture now form a backbone of the nation’s Agriculture Information System. Similarly the 61.92 million people (12% of the workers) in industry are the backbone of an Industry Information System. The 144.48 million people (28% of the workers) in services form the backbone of the Services Information System.

One-India Cards are also making it possible to track energy demand distribution of the 4.5 T kWh, 0.09 percent of India’s theoretical Solar Potential . One-India Cards are making it possible to locate the distribution and transmission network and better scale the various power plants and oil and gas stations. It is becoming easier to device a strategy to move from the current energy mix of 53% Coal, 33% Oil, 8% Natural Gas, 5% Hydroelectricity, 1% Nuclear and close to 0% Other Renewables to a different mix that will be more sustainable.

Naturally the One-India Information System has helped a quick revival of the economy- helping support to reach the regions and even individuals where it was needed. The stimulus plan having ensured that using the One-India Card appropriate incentive reached the bank account of each registered resident after an automatic evaluation of the eligibility.

The economy is now well past 4 trillion from the $3.305 trillion figure in 2008 and is growing at 9 to 12%.

Citizen Benefits

The account pages of each citizen now inform them about the demography, energy use, water use, land use, mobility and other details in their neighborhood. They are also told about the incentives, schemes, and programs that they have been automatically qualified for based on their profile information. They can also get their taxes worked out through third party licensed widgets and file them through the One-India Card. All this serves as a terrific incentive to help them update their profiles regularly.

While filling their profiles on the One-India Account Page individuals can quickly indicate their current or past employers or become one. Becoming an employer allows a one-step easy registration of a for-profit or a non-profit institution. Becoming an entrepreneur is as easy as that. This has helped create more jobs, compensating for the huge number of jobs lost when the recession hit in 2008-09.

Tracking Landuse

Recognizing the importance of tracking the conservation of the economic, energy and biological potential of its 3,287,240 square km tracking of land use, land records and property records have been standardized across the country.

Most of the 595 districts have initiated wiring every property. About 30 percent of the districts have completed more than 70 percent of the properties. The North East point of every property now has an official GPS device on it. Any movement of this point alerts the Land Use Information System. Each of the GPS coordinates link to a property database with records of its history and links to the One-India number for the owners.

Development Plans can now be monitored and implemented. Land acquisition is easier and partitioning property without violating Land Use has become possible.

The landless can now receive land, single property owners a 50% rebate in their taxes. Land taxes now work by a fixed rate per acre times the inflation, not by market rates.

One-India account holders can now search and view land-use, proposed use as per DP, encroachments, ownership, tenancy, other claims by loging in to their account. The information they sought on individual properties leaves a trail for purposes of security.

The forests, rivers, wetlands, fields and wastelands are now much better conserved as also the built environments across India.

Mobility

It has long been recognized that not just does mobility result in a happy people but it ensures a buoyant economy.

All vehicles now come with an embedded RFID that serves as a single registration of the vehicle with the Transport Ministry. Since road tax is now a pay-by-use per kilometer tax charged to the account of the person who owns the vehicle, all road junctions maintain a working RFID reader. The local-self-government of the region collects the road tax by billing the One-India Account of the vehicle owner. Inter city/town or village travel is simply charged the same way but a third party widget allows pay the road tax directly in a single click to multiple local governments.

All taxpayers get free information about traffic flows on different roads in any city, town or village. At a per-vehicle registered under the same name, the owner may subscribe to tracking her fleet of vehicles real time. Courier companies and transporters are using this system to track their fleet of vehicles.

The ministry of transport is able to generate real-time data as well as patterns of travel corridors for ensuring the smooth flow of vehicles in the city. The goods flow can be tracked by looking at the movement of goods vehicles.

Projects

Following the Web 3.0 emphasis on the IT Vision, every one of the government’s projects now has an online semantic wiki. For the Prime Minister this means every development project is track-able real time. It means that there is an overall development with millions of projects across the country tying together into a larger meaningful emergent whole. It means that projects happen, and happen on time. It means that projects are no longer about awarding contracts but rather about providing development.

For the people this is quite a startling change. Suddenly everyone can actually collaborate to make project be relevant to them, help to ensure they meet high quality standards and most importantly serve the purpose for which they were executed.

Simple semantic forms allow anyone to enter data about new projects: the description, the associated plans, start dates, milestones, end dates, budget links, contractors details and even the current status. Amazingly each project can be viewed on maps- even a small pop-up window on the location allows fill the semantic form! It is now possible to view the categories of projects happening across the country and obtain detailed information about each of them.

Budgets

Like the projects, all the tax Rupees are now track-able.

All government receipts through the multiple channels at local state and national levels now get displayed on a public semantic-wiki based application. Citizens can query and understand where the Tax Rupee is being collected real time. By geography, by income group, by item head, by level of government. They have an access to a huge spreadsheet to do a what-if analysis and suggest where it can come from and how it can be rationalized.

All the expenditure can now be tracked on a similar real time information system. Officials involved in the project associated with the budget head now have cards that allow them to expend money from the budget head upto the limit set for them. This has greatly speeded up the project execution process. This has also enabled the expenditure information to be available in real-time to everyone.

Alerts

Several public broadcasting feeds have become a common feature of all government offices. Twitter started it all in 2009. Most of the early adopters in the government designated an official tweeter who would broadcast deadlines, event alerts, sos messages, public notices, changes in people, processes or policies. This practice now continues but has been enhanced to reach out to non-twitter audiences through an RSS push on the One-India accounts of relevant persons.

Collaborative governance

The governance wiki now allows stakeholders to collaborate on all governance issues. It tracks people, projects, budgets, issues and visions of the various communities across the entire nation. India’s cost of governance has more than halved and it is regarded amongst the top three best governed countries in the world.

Recognizing the importance of the botanical, zoological, geological, archeological and land surveys in India there is now a National Wiki Institute that promotes the public participation. This has led a nation-wide collaboration to update the information on its assets and even provide a discovery of many that were not known before.

Schools, colleges and universities are actively researching on these assets and updating their findings on the national wikis for a nation wide collaboration.

Every city and village are following the pattern of Pune in providing a map to track information at the ward or community level.

Collaborative modeling and futures

After the failure of economic theories to identify and help cope with the economic meltdown of 2008-09 the Prime Minister called for an active program on futures research and alternative design. The National Institute on Futures Research and Design was set up to promote more resilient, stable and sustainable systems across the nation.

The Institute has successfully built a wiki based modeling platform that allows collaborative design of models that can be mixed and matched to help design real systems, processes, and organizations. Now all stakeholders can communicate effectively the impact of various decisions in different systems on them. This is enabling a better design. This is bringing a tremendous power to create networks, collaborations and communities that succeed. No wonder the economy has shot past 4 trillion and is galloping ahead close to double digits.

2015

The resulting India is one that brings prosperity to all. People can walk without fear and hold their heads high. Everyone has access to knowledge. The country is not fragmented by local, state and national governments.

The UN has requested the Prime Minister to replicate the vision across other countries and spread the prosperous and resilient economic and governance system across the globe.

You can make this your vision by modifying it on the the governance wiki.

Tweet for Pune!

2008-12-29T22:47:00.000-08:00

Imagine you could SMS to everyone. Imagine you could let everyone know there is a traffic jam at the University circle. Imagine you could send out an invite to the tree-planting drive on the Baner Hill. Imagine you could message the world that admissions open for the educational course you have been waiting for. Imagine you message out reports of malaria in your neighborhood or choose to report births, deaths, suspicious activities, new shops, sale offers, rentals….

Imagine as a government agency you message out water closures. Imagine you message out flood alerts, road closures or diversions, bus, train and air departures or arrivals, waste collection notices, new project announcements, vip visits, dates of elections, urls of actionable sites...

That’s like a twitter of birds- hundreds of messages all at once…No wonder that these public messages sent on the internet are called tweets.

Of course you do not want to have thousands of tweets clogging up your life and that’s why tweeters like @pravinnirmal are enabling location specific tweets on pages at the governance wiki. See the tweets at the bottom of this page on the governance wiki. Give it a try. This way you can see the tweets sent by anyone on a location on a page devoted to that location. You can even go edit that page and add your two-cents worth.

You can also signup on tweeter and choose to follow tweeters like myself, Barack Obama or anyone else! By following a tweeter you can see all the tweets the person sends out. Others interested in your tweets may choose to follow you too.

With the White House tweets, the US senate floor tweets, the US house floor and even the US Supreme Courts on twitter tweeting away, should the rest of the world be behind?

Cities in the US have begun tweeting. Look at: San Marcos, Texas, Greensborocity, North Carolina, Killeen, Texas, Round Rock, Texas, McAllen, Texas, Plano, Texas. The Police in Austin, Texas, are using tweets for law and order advisories, notices and quick reassurances.

Can we have our ward officers, the Pune Police, the Pune RTO, the Pune Collector, the PMC, the PCMC, the Cantonment Boards, the MIDC, the PWD, the telecom companies in Pune, the Income Tax commissionerate, the Service tax commissionerate, the Pune University and even the businesses in Pune tweet?

All this is simple and free. Just sign into Twitter and start listening to the whole world- or talking too! Well not exactly the whole world, but to the whole world signed into twitter. If you are a government agency or a business in Pune you may qualify for some help and customization to get your tweets increasing your impact and effectiveness. Just email cio.pune@gmail.com to request your office to show the way to the rest of India.

Pune 2015

2008-05-17T20:29:00.000-07:00

Pune 2015. Of the 4 million, over 3 million citizens of Pune are using Pune-card and most of them keep track of the card-transactions through their ilife account. About 5 percent users still prefer a quarterly paper-statement of their ilife.

I log in as Anupam.Saraph at the punecity.gov.in site. It is the single point for my ilife. Single windows are passé. No longer do I need to go to “singe-windows” at different departments or offices of the local, state or central government, I simply log into my ilife. Better still my bank, insurance company, hospital and even my local grocer are ilife enabled.

The pain of providing the same information over and over at different counters is history. The first time I registered myself to ilife, through my computer at home, I was asked to provide information to identify myself. I was requested to visit any one of the 14 ward offices to provide a photograph and my thumbprint to receive my Pune-card, my username and a password to access ilife. That was it.

My Pune-card provides me with cashless bus-travel, parking and entry into all electronic access public locations as well as electronic entry enabled private locations. It works as a cash-card and also replaces time-consuming procedures with countless forms to make applications. It simplifies and secures transactions as I can simply allow the service providers to swipe my card and take my thumbprint to access information. Only information that I have marked as allow through Pune-card will be accessed at points-of-transaction. The transaction is updated in my account on ilife.

When I log in my account includes records of every institution with whom I did a transaction, either using the Pune-card or directly through ilife. Government departments, businesses and service providers have registered themselves to use Pune-cards and ilife. In one-step through a single-point they gain access to the reliable, authentic and consistent information that they need from me thus enabling them to shorten the time it takes to service my requirements.

ilife has made my life more hassle-free and organized. All my transactions are filed into my account, no longer do I need to search for documents, certificates or obtain “NOC’s” for any transaction- even my photographs and signatures have become unnecessary. From my birth, education, marriage records to tracking my assets and accounts, my income and expenses even my taxes all get organized securely and with full privacy by ilife.

Pune having become the country’s first city to be unwired has device connectivity across the city through secure channels. Thousands of card-readers, traffic sensors, flow-meters, switches can now communicate information or take instructions on secure channels across the city. This has enabled Pune-card readers to instantaneously access the ilife servers to query or update information.

ilife’s open source and open standards have enabled it to create an eco-system of services by diverse service providers. A whole industry of businesses has flourished providing solutions to enable their services onto ilife.
Even my travel has now become more hassle-free as I subscribe to itravel solutions built by third parties using the ilife framework. I can view my travel route for congestion before a journey- even book a route, at a price, for guaranteed average-time or lower travel times. I can get mobile alerts for bus routes I subscribe to or choose to be informed if the bus is delayed.
Other service providers enable my son’s tutoring for the courses he has chosen. iteach manages the city-wide teachers and the courses they run and allow me to book myself or my son onto any course run by a specific teacher at a venue- the various schools or colleges.

The city’s water distribution is now monitored over the unwired network as also the city’s lighting system. I am alerted into my ilife account of any system failures, scheduled closures or quality issues. I can in turn contribute to alerting the utilities about any problems or failures.

ilife now enables me to view my electoral ward’s map. I can choose to view the schools and display schools that can be reached on a bicycle track from my house. I can look for theaters and markets and check for bus routes that will take me directly there. I can look for restaurants I can walk to or parks and gyms that I can jog to. Third parties are running ipage services (the replacement of the yellow pages) to businesses to add additional query-able information updates about their business into the basic information on the map. Hotels are adding tariffs and booking-gateways. Restaurants are adding menus and home-delivery-gateways.

A vibrant collaboration to build the communities around local self-help is on through wiki-enabled web-pages. This has helped to bring world-class infrastructure standards to Pune. The city has already distinguished itself in creating a collaborative development plan that identified visions for the next 20 years, the challenges for the city over the next 20 years as well as various strategies to address these challenges. The city ran a world-wide simcity based competition to “Design for Pune” and generated a huge dialog about the challenges and strategies for the city. It also built a strong sense of belonging in the city, a commitment to common visions and a tremendous positive culture to address challenges and make visions happen.

As a result of this alignment, the city has made a transition to non-fossil-fuel based transportation systems, become energy surplus, has a 100% water access for 24x7 and the countries best record on recycling and managing waste. It has also been able to get the largest carbon-credits through the huge corridors of greening accomplished across all the city’s watersheds.
Web 2.0 based technologies have resulted in creating city-resource planning (CRP) across local-state and central government authorities.

Pune in 2015 is the country’s first icity. The Prime Minister has called for the creation of ilife servers in every city to ensure good-governance. The UN has decided to replicate the Pune model across the world for ensuring sustainable development and stable and value yielding economies.

Creating Collaboration in Governments

2008-03-24T21:44:00.000-07:00

Wikis
Wiki’s are websites that allow users to add, remove, edit and change content. Unlike typical websites wikis are invitations to collaborate, self-organize and create order from chaos.

The best-known wiki is Wikipedia, the free content collaborative encyclopedia with over 7.2 million articles. In March 2000 Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger initiated the then radical goal of creating a publicly editable encyclopedia. Today Wikipedia is ranked amongst the top 15 most visited sites in the world and its publicly edited content is recognized by Nature as having similar accuracy as the Encyclopedia Britannica.

The success of Wikipedia is attributed to it using the features of a wiki. Wikis are generally designed with the philosophy of making it easy to correct mistakes, rather than making it difficult to make mistakes. Thus, while wikis are very open, they provide a means to verify the validity of recent additions to the body of pages.

The "Recent Changes" page on a wiki provides a list of all the edits made within a given timeframe. The “History” page on a wiki allows to track all the edits made to a page since its posting. Wiki’s also help track the contributions of different users making vandals and vandalism easy to spot and correct.

Wikis also provide for creating pages with restrictive access- only those with a valid access can view, add, remove and change the content on these pages. This allows the creation of wikis with access to registered users or controlled groups.

Decision Making in Government
In a government the process of decision-making is a collaborative process- whenever new ideas are proposed, applications are made or decisions need to be made the government creates a ‘file’. This file then takes a journey back and forth through the hierarchy of the government from the clerk who generated it to the Minister or even the Chief Minister and then back. The file travels through the government office across through a path defined by a ‘book of rules or procedures’, tradition of the office or a path marked by the person who created the file. It can also be redirected to other people, departments, and ministries. Sometimes files remain on a table for long periods.

Each file has a right hand side of the proposal backed with supporting documents and a left hand side that tracks its journey and the comments or ‘notations’ of those who receive, ‘study’ and forward the file.

A wiki is an ideal way to enable this government wide collaboration of decision-making. Instead of a file a wiki would create a wiki-page on the file-topic. All who are given access to the wiki could see new pages or edits on old pages using the “Recent-Changes” feature or simply search for pages with categories relevant to them. They can then just make any changes, which then become instantly available to all across the government.

With a wiki the government office is well equipped for quick turnaround and transparent decision making.

Imagine- no more file tracking, no-more wait. No more barriers of departmental walls to seek out information on relevant projects.

Imagine a complete transparency of the changes made by everyone who contributed to the process. Imagine the Right to Information Act (RTI) simply granting access to the relevant pages and no painful searches for information that does not exist.

Collaborating with citizens
Governments traditionally do not collaborate with citizens- inputs of citizens can at best be heard through citizen-groups, lobbyists, NGO's, media focus or representations. Governments therefore become very insular and loose the sense of purpose of activities in a sector or area.

By creating wiki’s that allow citizens to add, modify or even delete information the government can create collaborative-governance. For example a draft development plan could be ‘opened-up’ to citizen collaboration in the form of wiki pages. Citizens would then be able to fill in the gaps, add content and collaborate to developing a better region.

The opportunity
There are enormous possibilities to use the power of the internet to not only create collaboration in government but empowering the democratic process beyond the electoral process. It is an opportunity to see other offices, departments and citizens as partners and not adversaries. An opportunity to create shared visions and empower powerful missions.

Creating collaborative systems

2007-09-10T03:59:00.000-07:00

Roles

To cooperate you need to share a common goal with those you cooperate with. Most of the time the failure of cooperation is from an inability to share a common goal.

To collaborate you do not need to share a common goal- rather for you to work together to evolve goals, some of which may be shared and others may find strong disagreement.

To participate you do not need to work together- you only need to take part.

Unfortunately we use the word cooperation to describe what at best may be a participation. Most systems that enable, reinforce or cause success of these roles are therefore often accidental and not by design. It is not uncommon therefore to encounter a poverty of systems that enable, reinforce or cause success of participatory, collaborative or cooperative roles.

At best most democratic processes result in participating. They enable participation by franchise. However they do not reinforce participation- the participant is rarely rewarded by the act of participating. It is little wonder that democratic processes report poor turnouts and hung verdicts. H.G.Wells in his Anticipations has even predicted democracy to be a passing phase.

The value and endurance of the outcomes depends on what roles people play. It depends on the systems that enable, reinforce or cause the success of the roles.

Collaborative roles

Participative decision making requires those with a stake in the decision to take part- it does not require a voice nor a result favorable to the participant. Unless of course you want the participant to continue to participate.

Collaborative decision making moves a step ahead- it focuses on having people work together and discover common goals and even define common projects. Systems that enable collaboration ensure a voice for every participant. Such systems ensure they reinforce dialog and reward positive attitudes and working together.

Systems that enable participation, collaboration or cooperation can be restricted to a set of predefined participants (closed) or they can be open to participation from anyone.

Decision making

Meetings in organizations are a participatory process- they provide a means to participate. They do not necessarily provide the participants with a voice. They also do not require the participants to work together.

Decision making in governments is perhaps the best example of collaborative decision making. Yet unfortunately in most governments collaboration lacks a proper system to enable, reinforce and reward working together.

In a government decisions are made through a “consensus” evolved from people working together. Decisions start as a proposal, complaint, suggestion, request or even a brochure that is put on a government file. The file journeys through the government hierarchy based on the “rules of business” of the government or sometimes on the route explicitly suggested by the initiator of the proposal. This requires that all people who are part of the route work together to evolve a consensus. While this system enables different participants to work together, this system does not reinforce working together nor does it reward working together.

On-line collaboration

Wikipedia is perhaps the best example of online open collaboration. Anyone can take part in creating wikipedia. All you need to do is visit www.wikipedia.org and create an article on a subject of interest to you or just modify an existing article to incorporate your suggestions. It is the working together of man individuals interested in the topics on wikipedia that shapes each article. The more the people who take part the better is the final product, the greater is the value and benefit to the contributors.

Wikipedia thus not only enables collaboration but it reinforces it- authors take part in each others articles and make positive contributions. Negative contributions are quickly removed by other participants. Wikipedia also rewards the contributors with the end product: the allowing them to enjoy the fruits of articles they initiated, authored and edited.

Wikis in business and government

Businesses and governments can use a wiki- the open source software that allows you to create user-editable websites like the wikipedia- to create collaborative systems. Such systems can be open or restricted to private participation.

Wikis offer themselves as excellent means to adress the many collaborative needs of business and government: creating customer support, providing customer-driven services, designing new products, writing manuals, creating relevant projects, discovering missions, negotiating, gathering data, benchmarking, discovering what works- or what does not, understanding the progress, capturing changes in the environment.

Need of the hour

All projects and problems require a participative, collaborative or cooperative role. If we do not create systems that enable, reinforce or reward the role we desire we will not have the performance that we desire.

Thankfully designing participatory, collaborative and cooperative systems is getting easier and easier!

Take it to a new level

2007-05-22T08:49:00.000-07:00

For the people, by the people, of the people- take it to a new level.

To participate in making a difference visit Giki.

Giki, the government wiki

2007-05-03T12:01:00.000-07:00

It’s finally out there! Thank you to the many of you who supported the initiative- you are far too numerous for me to name you all- my gratitude to you for caring about a better world! Special thanks to Chad Lupkes for helping improve the concept, seeding intial pages and for his enthusiasm and commitment to making a better world!

Government wiki or Giki is a wiki application designed to be used by governments and citizens alike. It's mission is to help citizens and government organizations to form a community around common purposes to make the world a better place.

Wikis are increasingly used internally by companies and public sector organizations, some as prominent as Adobe, Microsoft and the FBI. They represent an alternative to centrally-managed Content Management Systems. They potentially allow a more flexible approach to Project Management than dedicated software.

Features of Giki

Features of giki specifically helpful to citizens and organizations include:

creating a participatory space for evolving a common purpose, mission and sharing visions.

updating project and budget information and benchmarking against similar activities elsewhere in the world.

sharing functions and procedures and discovering best practices with other similar bodies elsewhere.

keeping organizational information: its constitution, its organizational structure and contact information current.

evolving a way for cross organizational dialogue where common or shared purpose matters.

Using Giki

This wiki space is a great opportunity for citizens to evolve a shared vision with government agencies- to learn and update information on the functions offices of different agencies, to compare practices worldwide.

It’s great for governments too- One way to organize communities around missions. Great possibility space to listen to what the purposes government organizations should serve in a new world. A fantastic way to see and share the practice of government.

This is a wiki to help the community to create a better world for everyone. Remember, we're all in this together!

Giki is YOUR single point to connect with communities, share purpose, missions and practices for local and global governance.

Giki will include articles for government departments for different countries, states and towns across the world. It will include information on the constitution, purpose, mission, offices and indicators of performance. It may include a history or timeline of people in office, purpose and focus at the time, rules, laws, and performance indicators.

In fact it will contain the information that will help YOU to build a better world fro everyone.

The idea is to get the community to share and evolve purposes, missions, document critical issues, performances and create a chaordic model of governance from a "Neutral Point of View" of wiki.

An example

Imagine a small government disconnected without a web-site can now reach out to the community it serves. Or dedicated citizens can help people from thier communities connect around their governments.

Imagine helping your government to discover what purpose is more relevant now- as against the decades or centuries ago that its constitution was laid out.

Imagine government departments discovering common projects, practices. Or just projects addressing the same space and that need to be coordinated. Even in the same town!

Imagine the community from San Francisco creating a wiki page on the DMV there- its purposes, practices, goals, programs and performance.

Imagine someone in Bangalore or Delhi making a similar page for the Department of Transportation or Road Transport Organization. Perhaps many more across the world have a similar page.

Now imagine the opportunity to connect- create common purposes, evolve best practices. Imagine the opportunity to create global citizenry and local responsibility.

Making it happen

Like to see a different way to make your voice be heard? To live a life that matters? To contribute to the "long now"? To address the long tail of government?

Newbies to wiki's can experiment adding and editing at http://government.wikia.com/wiki/Sandbox .
If you have used wiki's like wikipedia before just go straight to http://government.wikia.com/wiki/Giki.. Those who would like to learn more about using wiki's can go to a quick tutorial. Don't worry even I learnt how to do it for this project in 15 minutes! If you would like to experiment before you make contributions use this area, its called a "sandbox".

Many of you are experienced and passionate about building communities, build a community around issues that matter to you. Remember this is a space about mutual respect and love. So long as you do not violate that it's your second chance to live a life you would like to live.
And of course, invite your friends and family in this adventure to make a difference.

May your efforts bear many successes and your experiences fun and rewarding!

tags technorati : wiki government world

A government wiki for a better world

2007-04-27T06:58:00.000-07:00

I've proposed the creation of a government wiki at http://requests.wikia.com/wiki/Government.

Why a government wiki?
The world has formidable numbers to contend with: 6.5 billion people, 1.27 quadrillion Btu energy to be used every day, 130 million cubic meters of water to be delivered every day, 325 billion kilometers of movement of people to be managed every day, 8 million tones of solid wastes to be collected, removed and processed every day, 13 petabytes (1 petabyte is 1,000,000,000,000,000 bytes OR 10¹⁵ bytes) of information to be processed every day….

More than 193 countries in the world with dozens of states and thousands of towns and villages. Tens of thousands of governments and hundreds of thousand departments-

That is a massive “control” system to deal with a world on the edge of chaos. It is beyond any well-intentioned government to manage the formidable challenges of our times.

Chaordic (the intersection of chaos and order- see dee Hock or visa )- organizations are organizations with a common purpose and principle- participants take what they like and what works for them. A wiki provides the chaordic framework to help the community to work to common purposes.

This is a wiki to help the community to create a better world.

This wiki will transform the governance space into a live chaordic community- it will encourage discovery of common purpose, learning of best practice, global citizenry and local responsibility.

What will the wiki contain?
This wiki will provide a single point for communities to share purpose, missions and practices for local and global governance.

The wiki will include articles for government departments for different countries, states and towns across the world. It will include information on the constitution, purpose, mission, offices and indicators of performance. It may include a history or timeline of people in office, purpose and focus at the time, rules, laws, and performance indicators.

You should be able to create pages specific to villages, town, state and federal government departments for regions of your interest, including your own town, state or country, on this wiki.

The idea is to get the community to evolve the purpose, mission, document critical issues, performance and create a chaordic model of governance from a "Neutral Point of View" of wiki.

An example
Imagine the community from San Francisco creating a wiki page on the DMV there- its purposes, practices, goals, programs and performance.

Imagine someone in Bangalore or Delhi making a similar page for the Department of Transportation or Road Transport Organization. Perhaps many more across the world have a similar page.

Now imagine the opportunity to connect- create common purposes, evolve best practices. Imagine the opportunity to create global citizenry and local responsibility.

Support the Initiative
Please show your support by adding {{support}} ~~~~ in the comments at section at the site at http://requests.wikia.com/wiki/Government.

Please do invite others across the world who can do the same for their region to join, support and build the wiki and build a better world.

tags technorati : wiki government world

Sustainable Energy Consumption

2007-01-24T12:34:00.000-08:00

The world primary energy consumption increases by about 2% per anum or doubles in roughly 36 years.

From 1970 when we consumed about 215 Quadrillion Btu in 2006 we were consuming an estimated 464 Quadrillion Btu. At this rate the world will demand an additional 215 Quadrillion Btu by 2021!

Global responses?

We have just 15 years to provide for as much increase in available energy as was being consumed by the entire world just 36 years ago! Unless of course we are able to chose a path that decreases global energy consumption with whatever consequences that may entail.

Unfortunately global responses to ensuring sustained energy percapita seem amazingly obtuse at addressing real issues (See for example: UN Commission on Sustainable Development) and in creating options for responding to the clearly unsustainable future.

Key questions

The key questions that need urgent attention to create a sustainable energy consumption are:

How much time do we have before we are unable to meet the economy's energy needs? We may be unable to meet the need because meeting it would destroy our environment or we have simply peaked the rates at which we can produce energy from the current sources. I am not even looking at geo-political constraints.

How long does it take our current global and local systems to respond to meet these needs?

So if we have say 10 years, say, before our energy systems break down or cannot deliver the economy's need (locally this can be sooner or longer) and it takes our systems (governments, utilities, businesses and citizens) more than 10 years to respond with a cope strategy we are on an unsustainable trajectory.

Principles for creating a sustainable path

Clearly the response time being larger than the respite available would be an unsustainable in any sector. In the entire sustainability debate policy makers have clearly missed this point. For sustainable development to happen each government has to move to increasing the respite time and decreasing the response time.

Increasing respite will require local respite policy: for the energy sector local demand management is one such option. Each local region will also need to build its response policy that decreases the time it takes to respond to the scenario. This could be generation, distribution options, it could be information and feedback options, it could be through coupling or decoupling different energy systems.

The key action agenda for sustainable development is therefore to create and implement local respite and response policies else we can just be like Alice in wonderland running faster and faster to try to stay in the same place!

tags technorati : energy sustainable UN

Finding God

2006-07-20T03:10:00.000-07:00

Belief in god is not about religion or scripture. It is not a belief in a being who is responsible for each action by everyone in the universe. It is not a belief of a master plan that predecided how the world would be. It is not a belief that you can leave everything to god and can sit back and relax. It is not a belief for blame- whenever you need the scapegoat you cannot find- nor one that can forgive your inaction or actions that you may not like to discuss publicly.

God is something that humbles you to the incompleteness of your reason, of your experience. God is something that ties together the bundle of assumptions you use to live your life; brings integrity into your thought and actions. God is something that liberates your spirit to imagine- and to strive to seemingly impossible goals and usually accomplish them. God is something that gives you strength when your experiences have destroyed your ability to reason and act.

God is that which brings character to your being by giving you the strength to do what is right- even when your fragmented reasoning and experience (and perhaps scripture or peer pressure) keeps showing you the easy way in your own "comfort zone". God is that which gives you the courage to take responsibility of your thoughts and acts. God is what pushes you to stretch- and learn- far beyond your own comfort zones. God is all that makes ordinary moments magical by giving inspiration and helping you to find meaning!

May god always be with you!

tags technorati : god integrity, thought, mind, change, model

Reforming the United Nations

2006-06-30T21:34:00.000-07:00

On the 26th of June we celebrated the Anniversary of 50 nations coming together in San Francisco, in 1945, to sign the charter of the United Nations.

In synch with the political correctness of the post world-war days the UN charter established multiple ends for the vision of "a better world". The charter identified the purposes of the United Nations being the maintenance of international peace and security; development of friendly relations among nations; creation of cooperation in solving international economic, social, cultural and humanitarian problems and the promotion of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms; and to be a centre to harmonize the actions of nations in attaining these ends.

The passage of time has transformed the world into a global village. The global demographics have altered. The movements of people, money, resources, goods and services have significantly increased and transformed the landscape of every country. The nature of global society has changed. The global economics is significantly interdependent; the global environment is a significant common challenge. The population age-structures, the needs of maintaining their living standards, renewing capital and servicing resource needs is no longer possible by the local geographies and their resource endowments.

Many countries have even far exceeded their carrying capacities for economic growth. Naturally they are pressed to seek economic growth by expansion of their geographic extents, by seeking resource controls, by innovating their business processes and extending the technologies to increase productivity. A failure to accomplish the end of economic growth through these means has pressed communities and even nation states to wars and genocide. We have built a global village without a means of governance.

How relevant, then, is the United Nations today? One way forward is to look at the operational success or failure of the ends within the UN charter. Another is to look at the relevance and integrity of the charter objectives themselves: what should be the real end, real purpose, or mission of a framework of global governance?

Should there be reforms in the UN or should we be reforming the United Nations? Reforms are a continuous process of adapting best practices, procedures, and changing business processes in a learning organization. Reforming would mean reinventing, redefining, re-looking at the purpose and ends themselves. Unless the purpose is different we will still continue do the same things but perhaps in a different way.

If we take the latter approach, what should be the fundamental end of the UN? Establishing a global government? Building a civilized world? Building a secure future for the world? Or really just building a secure world? Or building a just world? Should security encompass economic and resource security, dignity, and freedom? Or should it only mean physical security? What would the new charter look like?

The mission, the purpose, the ends are what shape and build the actions of the UN. That is why it is useful to look at the purposes, their relevance and role to make such an organization useful.

We all come with a history that we can do nothing about. Many a person or institution, even countries, may have fallen short of the desirable purpose, character and integrity. So why would the UN be any exception? But there is plenty we can do about things now, can we begin with what should the purpose be? History is useful to show us how today’s conditions are different, what structures are likely to fail, under what conditions they can fail, the frailty of human nature, greed; but history is a quicksand to submerge our efforts and to repeat itself if it were to be the basis of our present to do what we can and what we must!

So are we looking for reforms in the United Nations or are we reforming the United Nations?

Youthful India

2006-05-30T03:27:00.000-07:00

As you walk into leading private Indian banks you cannot walk out without noticing the youthfulness. Walk into an Indian IT company or a management consultancy and you cannot help recognizing the young upwardly mobile. Watch the Indian news channels, the Indian soap operas or the advertisements and you feel young. The FM radio stations blare to the sound of youthful music with commentary by youthful RJ’s. Everyone around is young. The roads are full of the dashing bikes, sporty cars and shop displays that exude youthful energy. Everywhere you see the young and the country addressing the young.

7 out of ten Indian’s are under 30. That’s almost a billion, a sixth of the worlds population! A third of the working cohorts are under 30. That’s close to a 150 million! Each year 15-20 million youngsters enter the working cohorts promising to keep the youthful organizations young.
The markets, be they of votes, products or services, have not failed to notice the demographic pyramid. Politicians are appeasing the young votes, service providers the youth-savvy services and the products are now more hip and sporty. Even the President spares few opportunities to address the young.

India is an opportunity for reform, for innovation and for change. How does one make the nation grow up to missions critical to the current century and responsive to the next? How does one use the opportunity to introduce best practices in business and government? How does one build a nation of global citizens? How does one liberate a billion young minds to value purpose and character? How does one build this new society’s trust in itself?

What are the challenges governing a youthful nation?

A bank manager is increasingly unaware of procedures, processes or services. Mobile customers find increasing dissonance between the advertised and delivered service or product. Students discover their graduating seniors return to teach the concepts and skills. Younger teachers are imparting newer attitudes and different set of habits than the older mature teachers that existed earlier. Young playwrights, journalists and editors are wiping out generations of societal memory, attitudes and habits. The concept of coping is being radically redefined, as is the purpose of society or the institution and even life itself.

How will we make the institutional memory learn anew?

Can we invent technologies that will bring world best practices to the procedures, processes and services that the managers are forgetting? Can we create concept and skill-building communities spread across geographies to build global citizens? Can we define the habits and attitudes of a global citizen through exchange of contexts that promote different habits or attitudes? Can we teach the community to trust its citizens by altering the way they share information? What stories, poems and films can we usher in for the future? What will we teach to value by valuing it ourselves?

Financial institutions, mutual funds, medical services, construction industry, airlines- every sector is facing the crisis of experience. Each in turn has increased its exposure to un-quantified risks through the demographic change as well as a simultaneous rapid growth in demand as India moves into the “flat world”. Vote-banks have further driven this loss of experience as increasingly India fails to move its working cohorts through the aging process finding “business-sense” to replace entire offices with the new entrants into the working ages every year.

Can we teach our institutions to reinforce the individual’s focus on the institutions interest, not just self-interest? Can we allow the youthful democracy to evolve into a mature global nation? Can we discover the business sense in the balance between renewal and continuity?

Will the world wakeup to the opportunity to transform a sixth of its humanity to global citizenry, spread best practices and create good governance?

Extraordinary!

2006-04-27T14:03:00.000-07:00

It just takes that little extra to make the ordinary extraordinary!

When life gets thrown at us, a day at a time, we experience the ordinary. It takes a little extra to respond and make the lives of those around us experience the extra-ordinary.

Sometimes, however, life throws at us the extraordinary and it takes that little extra to rise up to the occasion and be extraordinary. Rising up to an unusual event, an unusual request or unusual people.

It is quite surprising how little that extra is; often makes you wonder why the world is not full of things extraordinary! Why do people around us shy from being extraordinary?

When you see the ordinary pedestrian crossing a road or when you keep your commitment to your project, people, agenda or tasks are you ordinary in your response? Or do you put in that little extra that makes you and the response extraordinary? When you visit google.com, msn.com, blog at blogger.com or wordpress.com or your local government’s portal do you experience the extraordinary? What makes apple an extraordinary experience over on PC?

When you talk to a colleague, when you present an extraordinary request to an airline, a bank or your government do you get the ordinary?

If you are an HR professional who searches for talent, are you extraordinary? Can you see the extraordinary? Recognize it? If you are an accountant processing bills are you ordinary? Do you process the extraordinary? As a politician making possibilities happen for your constituency are you just ordinary? Do you feel the difference?

Do you like the world around to you to be ordinary? Respond ordinary? Why bother?

It takes ordinary response to be ordinary. That little extra makes you extra-ordinary.

After all nothing in life is ever mandatory. It is a choice. Your choice.

Coping with the Unknown

2006-03-21T06:37:00.000-08:00

Try a thought experiment.

Imagine yourself in a new world, one very different from the one you are familiar with. Where do you begin? How do you cope?

You have no mental model of this world, no image of how it works, no idea of what it offers or unfolds… Can you deal with the challenge? The stretch it means from the familiar comfort?

Sounds intimidating, but that is precisely what we have all done at least when we were born! Many of us live through such challenges many times over since that day we came on to the world that we grew so familiar with! Those of us who are more adventurous, or have simply retained our childhood ability to learn, actually seek out stretches from our comfort worlds, exploring the unknown.

As new-borns we explored the world we find ourselves in, experienced breathtaking stretches from the comfort of our mothers womb. Every act that resulted in a recognized repeat formed the basis of reinforcing our understanding, building a cause-effect model in our minds.

But how often have we looked at the very way we learn, the way we unlearn, and the way we form our mental models?

What if a Martian landed in your world, where should she begin? How will she cope?

Let’s simplify our thought experiment a bit. If our Martian found herself looking at a game of chess, what would be the learning? What would be the mental model of our world?

Oh, she may say, here is a world that is flat with pieces that move and disappear in almost a compounding pattern with every few moves a piece makes! Maybe they are collectively integrated in some way!

Then of course she notices the colors and talks of two species which seem to compete with each other for some invisible resource and declining their population with every few moves in search for the resource…

Perhaps as she grows more observant she notices 6 kinds of pieces, each with a different probability of disappearing in the next move. Yes, it is possible to bet, based on the rules of thumb, about which piece will disappear next.

Oh, there is a pattern about the disappearing piece; it is always replaced by a piece of the other color. As moves proceed the movements that cause replacement, or avoid replacement, seem most likely! So this seems to be some kind of a war dance? A battle?

But then each kind of piece seems to have a different movement pattern. Some move straight, a step at a time, others diagonally, yet others in more complex steps. Then there is a rhythm, first the white ones move, then the black. There is still a randomness about which one of the white or which one of the black will move.

Then she notices the two players who actually move the pieces! Now that is like god’s hand? Or are these two larger pieces? Are there larger ones? Looks like these two large pieces move things in a pattern and sometimes show some expression unlike the smaller pieces…

But then what is the purpose of these smaller or larger pieces? What would it be to survive in this world?

Do you have additional models our Martian visitor may have?

Is it any surprise that the ability of our Martian friend to cope with the chess world with different mental models is radically different? How can the Martian decide on the model that would make her most effective? Is there any other way? What makes the most effective model effective?

Like your Martian visitor, how do you make your stretch to cope with the new world unfolding today?

tags technorati : model, learning, success

Making a World Open to Possibilities

2006-03-07T16:48:00.000-08:00

Modeling, the process of generating models, alerts us to our mental-models.

Without modeling our mental-model is absolute. There can be no other way the world works, outcomes result, or change happens. Our world is closed of possibilities, choices and alternate designs that unfold alternate worlds.

The next best thing to modeling by ourselves is to have someone produce alternate models for us.

Either way, just as an outstanding artist is one who can paint the world as it could be, and not as it is, the outstanding modeler models the world as it could be, not as it is. Naturally, like the artist, or the designer, the modeler is open to a world of possibilities, an open world. The world is not a closed, deterministic space, but full of opportunities of what you can make it to be.

Just like the designer of spacecrafts creates something that could be, not a copy of something that is out there, the outstanding modeler creates designs of systems. Like the designers of spacecrafts take on the responsibility of the flying the astronauts safely, the outstanding modelers need to “fly” safely millions who are affected by the systems they model.

Outstanding modeling is therefore agile to perspectives, perceptions and a world of alternate possibilities. Like a play that opens the artists to bring out alternate performances together, modeling opens up colleagues to build teams that can unfold a world of possibilities.

Modeling creates a role, a script, acts and organizes the play. It bounds the performances, the possibilities or unleashes them. It defines and shapes the system that will be influenced and designed and the real world that, as a consequence, will be altered.

The absence of modeling is anarchy; a failure of governance.

Like Maxwell’s daemon, a being allowing only fast-moving molecules in a container to pass in one direction, is a violation of the second law of thermodynamics, the absence of modeling is the very violation of civilization.

Our models or mental models are after all the bias and basis of the world we create. It is our means to live up to our responsibility to the millions who participate in the systems we design. It is our basis to identify our roles, play our scripts in the worlds we participate. If we have no way to model these, what else but anarchy can exist?

Do we have a shared mission to create civilization? What possibilities do you want to open up to your world today?

tags technorati : decision making, impact, global, leaders, impact, mission, model, modeling, scenario, planning, change, strategy, power, success, design,
possibility, team

The Technology of Change

2006-02-23T13:46:00.000-08:00

The use of lobbies, groups, political tools, consultants, the creation of consensus, negotiation of terms, participatory processes for decision making, documentation through white papers, use of models, and modeling all aim to increase our success as decision-makers, make us more effective.

Models
Of these models are mathematical representations of the process that drives change. Just as you do not have to be an architect to read the blueprint plan of a building, you do not always have to be a mathematician to see the blueprint of change described by a model.

The Power of Models
No wonder models have been used to document decisions; to justify decisions and provide auditable evidence. Models have created organizational legacy; they have documented knowledge and experience of the systems and processes that the organization encounters. They have helped us to bootstrap previous models and provide an advanced decision-making capability.

Models have also provided us with vehicles to share our basis of decision-making. Different stakeholders can have access to the model, although they may not have access to the decision-maker. Models have therefore helped to bridge perspectives, to create a backgrounder for negotiation, even a basis for policy.

Models have served the needs of those governing to create and contrast scenarios. They have helped serve as the basis to evolve policies or strategic intents. Models have helped the managers to clarify policy; to explore decision-possibilities within the policy space. They havehelped undertake performance appraisals, served as a means for designing indicators for reporting the state of the systems being managed.

The Opportunities for the Future
Like architectural blueprints, models support our reasoning needs but only few models may support our needs of feeling. There is also a huge variance in the ability of different models to serve our needs. Like the architectural blueprint, a model is often seen as a surrogate decision maker, a substitute to oneself.

Unlike team members who learn, adapt and work with the us, the model is usually a given; a pass-me-down. Unless we have modeled the model ourselves, the model works on purposes that may not be shared with us. To us these purposes may become cross-purposes, non-existent, “hard-coded” or undocumented. So while they capture knowledge and experience, models often fail to allow modification of the premises from which they draw conclusions and recommend decisions.

Technology of Change
However it is models that help us to look at designs of reality. The way things could be, not just the way they are. In this sense they are unique in their offering; unique as a technology of change. Offering the application of our knowledge of the driving forces of change to redesign change. In fact models provide the decision-maker the basis for the (re)design of the system or process.

The Frontier of Technology of Change
The big role models have to play in the next 20 years is to serve as a colleague with the ability to build consensus, create buy-in, provide participation, keep secret strategic and tactical scenarios, a colleague capable of rapid comparisons of scenarios in-context and on-call, a team-member bringing mission focus, a sounding-board. In fact models will be the essential blueprints and serve as an essential standard of openness and good governance practices in the years to come.

tags technorati : decision making, impact, global, leaders, impact, mission, models, modeling, scenario, planning, change, strategy, power, success, collaboration, disaster, policy, actors, actions, technology, dot-com, lobbies, sustainability, complexity, future, blueprint

7 Habits of Effective Decision Makers

2006-02-20T14:14:00.000-08:00

As a decision-maker what are your most critical habits?

Yes, we all have habits that alter our effectiveness as decision-makers. But which of our habits will help us become more effective? Which habits are becoming necessary in a increasingly complex decision space? Here is a selection of 7 habits that you will find with the most effective decision-makers.

Seek Participation
The most effective decision-makers seek to involve stakeholders in their decisions. As a habit they ensure enough buy-in into decisions. They seek include, not exclude.

The principle of inclusion seeks to carry people together towards a common interest. Good buy-in seeks to align everyone with recognition of a common purpose of being together.

In different ways the Japanese have excelled in this habit, as have the Chinese. In these cultures a decision “emerges” from the stakeholders or as that of the stakeholders. The habit of this decision-maker to seek buy-in facilitates the process but does not dominate it.

With globalization we may need to buy-in increasingly diverse stakeholders into decisions. With the diversity, geographic, cultural and economic discontinuity this is becoming an ever-complicated task. Naturally the habit of buy-in in such contexts poses greater challenges.

Ensure Impact
Without impact no decision can be effective.

However most decisions involve diverse people within and outside our organizations. Routinely we need to delegate decision-making. When decisions need to be delegated to staff the context and options need to be clearly explained or bounded. Usually we use a “policy” to ensure a common decision context for such groups.
The policy therefore acts as a means to bound decision-making. A policy usually creates impact merely by virtue of alignment of decisions. Naturally it may become important to attend to the development of a policy itself.

It is a habit of impact makers to ensure clarity and focus in policy itself.

Evolve Alibi or raisons d'être
Depending on our style of decision-making and our perceptions about the audit of decisions and responsibility of impact, we may seek either an alibi or a raisons d'être for our decisions.

Decision makers who work with feeling seek alibi of “right feeling” about decisions. Those who work with reasoning seek out a logic for arriving at the decision. Either way the decision makers habit to seek out alibi or raisons d'être ensure effective communication of the decision whenever it may be called for.

Both alibi and raisons d'être serve to provide a feedback on impact-ability, ego-gratification, belonging, success, and fulfillment. All of which are necessary for maintaining the effectiveness of the decision-maker.

Build in Audit Ability
Increasingly our decisions undergo audits or post-mortems and need to be clearly justified. Naturally we seek to have a means of justification, demonstration of impact or the value of the decision in comparison to other options.

The case of Enron, WorldCom, the Iraq war, the dot-com bust, the electricity breakdowns in the US and Canada are but some examples that have caught the public eye for a long time. Undoubtedly you have your own private set of experiences where decisions have been called to audit that may be at least as disturbing.

The habit of a good decision-maker therefore ensures justification will be possible. An audit trail will help recreate the compulsions of decision-making and help justify that which was done.

Understand the Roles of Different Actors
We grapple to impact our systems where multiple and diverse stakeholders, like us, attempt to do the same. Not all actors have the same role in any system. Naturally the options they have to impact the system are different. The interest they have in different outcomes may itself differ.

What are the roles of the different actors? What are the options before them?

Effective decision-makers have a habit to identify the role of all actors and the options open to them. This ensures they can be more effective in the participatory process, and eventually as decision makers.

Creating Maximal and Lasting Impact
Not all actors have the same leverage in any system. Who has the maximum impact? Who can have lasting impact? What are the indicators used by different actors to asses their impact?

What is our ability to impact or regulate the indicators that matter to the stakeholders in our system? Effective impact-makers have the habit of identifying the leverage points, or decisions that result in maximum or lasting impact, and regulating the behaviors of key indicators in the system.

Creating Rapid Decisions
Given the pressures from lobbies, political instruments and even time (perhaps the most dangerous of them all!), the ability to make quick decisions means a lot to an effective decision-maker as well as for the success of our missions themselves

Many systems have becoming increasingly slower to respond to our decisions. At the time many systems can remain agreeable without intervention for increasingly smaller times. Effective decision makers therefore have the habit of rapid decision-making.

Even as they may hope to speed the systems responses to our decisions or struggle with making the system remain agreeable longer on autopilot, they seek to be quick to make decisions.

The Effective 7
In a global and competitive environment that selects for the best decision-makers, decision-makers are only increasingly under pressure for successful decision-making. Thus critical habits to of a decision-maker:

Develop policy rapidly,
Find points of maximal and lasting impact,
Recognize the role of different actors and actions,
Ensure impact,
Insure buy-in through participation,
Provide an alibi or raisons d'être, and
Provide a means for justification and audit.

tags technorati : decision making, impact, global, leaders, impact, mission, model, modeling, scenario, planning, change, strategy, power, success, collaboration, disaster, policy, actors, actions, enron, dot-com, lobbies, sustainability, complexity, response, respite

Sustaining Amidst Challenges of Growing Complexity

2006-02-16T12:16:00.000-08:00

Inspired by Nandan Nilekani to look at the "Flat World", Thomas Friedman has described some of the complex changes that have altered the nature of the world as we knew it.

Both individual and participatory decision-making has become increasingly complex as our decision contexts have become increasingly more complex as the world moved into what is Friedman describes as a third phase of globalization.

In this phase individuals across the world enter into relationships and drive opportunity and impact. Unlike the previous 200 years where globalization was driven by industry for markets and labor, this phase creates far greater number of linkages across distant geographies and is driven by greater diversity of events, purposes and actors. This also throws up newer combinations of systems that co-exist and result in yet un-experienced worlds for the us as decision-makers.

As a consequence of the increasingly complex systems, we experience an increase in the time it takes for the system to respond to our decisions (Response Time). This radically alters their ability to impact and be effective. Dramatic examples are seen in time it took for our systems to respond to the Tsunami warnings, control of the SARS outbreak or it is taking to implement the UN Millennium Goals. In everyday life have you noticed the time it takes to have your post to the electronic or print media to become visible? That is the time the system took to respond.

Simultaneously the time the acceptable conditions will last in the system without intervention becomes smaller and smaller (Respite Time). Altering the time the acceptable condition can last without intervention requires greater effort, teamwork and understanding on part of the different stakeholders and decision-makers. Dramatic examples are seen in the smaller and smaller time that our societies are able to maintain themselves free from poverty, hunger, homelessness, unemployment and disease. Or in our day-to-day experience the smaller and smaller time that the media is able to maintain relevance without active intervention.

Given these changes and complexity, it is natural that the positions taken up by different stakeholders and the interests of the different actors in a system are increasingly out of context and often threatening for different stakeholders. Decision negotiations are usually a bigger nightmare than before. The decision context is therefore saddled with an increased diversity of normative and prescriptive conflicts.

Those of us with a cognitive approach using “utility functions” or weighted comparisons or other logical methods to arrive at decisions can increasingly find our premises to be conflicting or part of conflicting contexts. For example the weight given to the environmental concerns, poverty, equity, globalization or free trade in different countries may not follow a consistent pattern. Or demographic concerns and therefore resource requirements, production and delivery logics tend to be completely different.

Those of us with a strong affective approach are often likely to find our contexts largely lacking for feeling or often get mixed messages. For example in the absence of physical proximity we may find it virtually impossible to understand the hugely different “feeling” of colleagues or stakeholders across the oceans or cultures. The arrogance, humility, anger, despair, concern, indifference or compassion of our colleagues may seem out of place.
Whatever our actual style on the cognitive-affective continuum, the changed contexts pose considerable challenges.

Like the world, which has shrunk with globalization, the computers have shrunk from occupying a building to a palm. The computer has extended its reach from itself to a local area network to wide area networks and the internet. It has therefore made it possible for distant actors, purposes and events now have omnipresence and even amplification. This makes it possible for rapid shifts of dominance of messages, purposes and actors. It is not unusual to be subject to many conflicting blogs, emails, feeds every day.

Naturally the traditional structure of organizations, departments and divisions are rarely as stable or insulated as in the past. Teams, even virtual teams form, perform and reform around missions rapidly across the world.

In view of this altered context of decision-making, how have our challenges to manage change altered?

I can see that firstly there is an increased need to deal with the variety amplification or cope with complexity. This means we need ways in which we can deal with the huge increase in information that we are subject to. We need ways to hold our world together, to reduce the complexity of the world we are a part of.

Secondly there is a greater need to deal with timing, especially if we are concerned about the sustainability of the systems we are a part of. We need ways to quicken the pace at which the system can respond to our inputs. We need ways to increase the time the system can auto-pilot without disaster.

How can we cope with these altered contexts and be effective in sustaining the systems we are a part of?

Suggested Links

1. Thomas Friedman, The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005

Decision Making in a Connected World

2006-02-11T08:38:00.000-08:00

The most compelling concern for us as decision-makers is about our impact. Whether it concerns the maintenance of service levels and economic growth in an ageing Europe, the outsourcing of services from the USA, employment security for half of the Indian population who happen to be under 25 years of age, peace in the middle east, allocating of the development aid by the UN, off shoring manufacturing to China, the trading of commodities, bilateral trade negotiations based on comparative advantage, or mergers and acquisitions across industry segments, we as decision-makers are paranoid about impact.

Our biggest challenge: knowing if the decisions we drive are indeed the driving force of change that creates the impact we desire.

Reports, analysis and studies document the impact of many a decision-maker, including our own. The Profit-and Loss statements of businesses, the GDP databases for nations, the Asset statements of individuals, organizations or even nations, unemployment numbers, the economic growth rates, the carbon levels or global temperatures all reflect the effectiveness of different decision-makers. As individual decision-makers, as an organization of decision-makers or as a nation or globe of decision-makers our effectiveness is documented by the State of the World, World Development Indicators, Fortune 500 lists, Worlds wealthiest, the most influential, the most powerful or most successful list.

It is well known that only a small fraction of individuals, organizations and nations retain their rankings in such lists from year to year . The history of such lists underlines the changes in impact the decision-makers have relative to one another. The records of impact highlight the statutory warning: such documents of performance present a history of performance, not a guarantee of the future.

Our performance results from the our understanding of the “system” and “required” interventions; it results from our agility to alter the scope and purpose of our systems and interventions. This understanding of the system and interventions makes up our “mental model” . An array of these mental models helps us to navigate to success. These mental models change and evolve; even co-exist in multiple versions.

These mental models are too many; they interfere with one another, produce too many complexities. Their paradoxes, incompleteness, exclusions, variations and inherent prejudices make them impossible, even embarrassing, to share. These models make up our very identity; they create the power to bring about change. They display our agility. They demonstrate our mission focus and display our strategic depth. They help create impact.

The remarkable work in the disciplines of mathematics, computer and information sciences, economics, systems, operations research, biology and chaos have yielded thousands of models, and even meta models that have helped many a decision-maker, perhaps also you, to enhance their own mental models. Increasingly decision-makers have learnt to articulate their mental models using the methods of formal modelling. Strategic planning, collaboration, transfer of technology, business of process reengineering, even automation and web-application have used these models to drive mission success.

What are the possible roles modelling can play over the next decade in helping us to enhance our performance in the changing contexts of decision making?

What will be the difficulties that need to be addressed, the technologies that need to be strengthened, and learning that needs to be accomplished to enable modelling of change to play a pivotal role in driving impact and be accessible to the decision-maker?

Suggested Links

1. Conversation with Arie de Geus Every Institute is a Living System
2. Kenneth Craik The Nature of Explanation
3. Johnson-Laird, P Mental Models

tags technorati : decision making, impact, global, leaders, impact, mission, model, modeling, scenario, planning, change, strategy, power, success, collaboration

Engaging Actors to Sustain a System

2006-02-03T09:45:00.000-08:00

Pointing out that there is nobody who really acts as a global trustee, Klaus Schwab, Founder of the WEF, asked Bill Clinton what institutions can be developed for the 21st century in order to be really capable to be respond to global challenges?

As Bill Clinton pointed out, the profound need for responding to global challenges calls for an engagement of actors who influence the global systems that confront the challenges.

All institutions engage actors; those that sustain impact and therefore the system they are a part of, have a remarkable skill at engaging all actors that make up the system they attempt to influence. It is little wonder to see that the most lasting impacts have involved partnership to a common vision or even a common goal of all the actors within a system.

Examples of such remarkable successes that may add to your own repertoire of examples include the interventions of the Gates Foundation in Mozambique, the intervention of the Rotary International in Polio eradication, or even the ubiquitous presence of information technology in our lives.

Unless such profound engagement is accomplished, the diverse aspirations of different actors within the system makes results snap back or even oscillate from impact state to previous state as dominance of actors shifts. The remarkable buffering to change through such a homeostasis or Le Chatleier’s principle, makes it difficult to sustain impact and therefore even a system.

The first principle of sustainable action draws from this wisdom, recognizing that actors within a system drive homeostasis, equilibrium or status-quo. Sustained impact requires engagement of all actors within the system.

Underlying the very sustainability of the system itself is the relationship between its constituents: the actors. If they do not engage in shared goals or have vastly diverse goals it is likely that they will crumble the basis of their relationship; the system itself. Thus, for example, if buyers and sellers in a market system refuse to share a goal of trading, the market cannot be sustained.

We are all part of hundreds of systems: our family, community, learning systems, market systems (skill markets, commodity markets..), banking systems (as borrowers or even lenders..), the ecosystem; unless we follow the first principle of sustainable action, we erode the very sustainability of the system itself.

In larger than system timescales, this appears as the transience of systems; their coming to being and falling. Systems are born, they arise and they fall and disappear. But the first principle prevails...

Making Sustainability Happen

2006-01-30T11:34:00.000-08:00

James Lovelock, the independent inventor and father of the Gaia hypothesis created quite an impact across the world with his latest article on the earth's morbid fever.

While we may continue to debate about Gaia or global warming, the story of climate change highlights two important fundamental action principles about ensuring sustainability of a system.

The first principle is that of the homeostatic nature of sustainability: To use Lovelock's example, by failing to see that the Earth regulates its climate and composition, we have blundered into trying to do it ourselves, acting as if we were in charge. In any system that we try to sustain we fail to recognize the actors, all those who contribute to the balancing of the system, to homeostasis. Naturally, we end up making interventions as if we were the only ones in charge and our interventions can happen in isolation. How many solutions to problems around us identify the actors within a system? How many solutions align these actors to ensure they will sustain the system?

The second principle is that of keeping the respite time larger than the response time: Again to use Lovelock's example, the time before the earth catches the morbid fever (respite time) is small in comparison to the time in which we can get the various actors to act to regulate the global climate (response time), assuming they can! How many of the systems we are a part of are attentive to the respite time? How many interventions for making a system sustainable actually ensure quicker response times? How many solutions work to enhance the respite time?

The challenge before anyone trying to ensure sustainability of any system is to ensure that intervention does not violate these two fundamental principles. Our responses, our designs, our policies, our decisions that use these two action principles will decide whether we are able to sustain the systems dear to us.