Archive for the ‘Announcements’ Category

Vote Report India at Netsquared Microsoft Mobile Challenge for Development

Friday, May 15th, 2009

I had mentioned yesterday that we will soon relaunch Vote Report India as a platform to crowd-source the performance monitoring of our elected members of parliament.

We have submitted Vote Report India to the Netsquared Microsoft Mobile Challenge for Development. The winners win up to $15000 and an opportunity to be showcased at the N2Y4 Mobile Conference.

I would urge you to take out five minutes from your time to have a look at the Vote Report India application and leave a positive comment that can help us win.

Here is a short summary of our Netsquared Microsoft Mobile Challenge for Development application –

WHAT: Vote Report India is a collaborative platform to enable Indian citizens to track election irregularities and monitor the performance of elected officials at national, state and local levels.

Users contribute direct SMS, email, Twitter and web reports and the Ushahidi-based platform aggregates them on an interactive map, and distributes them via RSS and email/ SMS alerts.

WHO: Vote Report India is a non-partisan all-volunteer collaboration between software developers, designers, academics, and other professionals to bring transparency to the Indian political process.

Vote Report India is built on the Ushahidi and Swift platforms and managed by eMoksha, a non-profit organization that aims to enable stronger democracies through increased citizen awareness and engagement.

WHY: With more than 700 million voters, India is the world’s largest democracy. However, it is far from being an ideal democracy.

The same controversies surround every election in India: the illegal use of government resources for campaigning, incidences of divisive and inflammatory rhetoric in campaign speeches, populist promises that are impossible to fulfill, allegations of violence and intimidation against voters, incomplete voter lists and malfunctioning voting machines. Even more seriously, more than 1000 candidates contesting in the 2009 Lok Sabha elections, or 15-20% of the total number of candidates, had criminal background. To make matters worse, the urban middle class complains about corrupt politicians, but doesn’t step out to contest elections or to even cast its vote.

So, Vote Report India aims to do two things at the same time: build civic engagement amongst India’s youth and increase transparency and accountability in the Indian political process.

One way to do it is to crowd-source the monitoring of the political process in India. Given that there are more than 400 million mobile users in India, compared to 50 million internet users, SMS becomes an integral part of this crowdsourcing process.

The Ushahidi platform allows Vote Report India to have a large reach via SMS and provide a rich interactive experience to web users at the same time.

WHERE: Vote Report India aims to increase transparency in the Indian political process at national, state and local levels.

WHEN: Vote Report India was started in April 2009 to track election irregularities in the 2009 Indian Lok Sabha elections. Going forward, Vote Report India will create micro-sites to enable Indian citizens to track election irregularities for all upcoming national, state and local elections. Vote Report India will also enable Indian citizens to monitor the performance of elected officials at national, state and local levels on a regular basis.

EXPECTED IMPACT: By crowd-sourcing the monitoring of the political process in India, Vote Report India aims to build civic engagement amongst India’s youth and increase transparency and accountability in the Indian political process.

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The Report Card on Vote Report India Version 1.0

Friday, May 15th, 2009

Vote Report India Banner

The 2009 Indian Lok Sabha elections have come to an end and so has version 1.0 of Vote Report India.

We have had our successes and failures and I have talked about some of them before.

I think we did a lot of things well –

- We were able to get the website up within a week, thank to some great work by the Ushahidi and eMoksha teams.

- We were able to build a number of important relationship, with civil society organizations (like Jaago Re/ One Billion Voters, National Network for India, Liberty Institute, Citizens for Justice and Peace, and Women’s Political Forum), traditional media organizations (like Al Jazeera) and new media organizations (like Global Voices, Indipepal, Desipundit, BlogAdda, NGO Post and Digital Democracy). In fact, our partnerships page looks like a literal who’s who of the important players working on the Indian elections.

- We were able to generate a lot of buzz for Vote Report India, on blogs, on Twitter, and in mainstream media within a very short time.

- We have been able to build a vibrant Vote Report India community that has been active in supporting us on both the technical and outreach side.

Here are some things that have not gone well –

- We haven’t been able to establish a relationship with any big Indian media organizations on one hand, and National election Watch and the Election Commission on the other hand, in spite of some serious discussions.

- We haven’t been able to integrate the Swift functionality into Vote Report India (aggregating feeds from multiple sources and crowdsourcing the tagging etc.) on our original timelines.

- We haven’t been able to get users to submit reports in large numbers. We have a little more than 200 reports in the system, which isn’t bad. However, we would have needed many more reports to capture the complexity of the 2009 Indian elections.

- The voter turnout in all four phases has been low, putting a question mark on the effectiveness of all digital civil society campaigns like Vote Report India.

Here are some lessons from Vote Report India version 1.0 –

- It’s still difficult to build a grassroots movement in India exclusively on the internet. Even online campaigns need to be supported by mainstream media for reach and SMS for the feedback loop. We had SMS, but we didn’t have the resources to advertise on mainstream media.

- In a country like India, which has a free and noisy news eco-system, transparency initiatives like Vote Report India need to not only get original reports from users but also aggregate reports from mainstream media.

- Transparency, in terms of availability of information in a usable format, is not a big enough incentive for Indian users. Users expected Vote Report India to closeloop the issues and give them feedback, and we were not set up to do that.

On the whole, I think that we did quite well, given our time and resource constraints.

Our biggest achievement, I think, was being able to build a vibrant community around Vote Report India and we are grateful for your contribution to the project.

As I said, this was only version 1.0 of Vote Report India. We will take a short break and then relaunch Vote Report India as a platform to crowd-source the performance monitoring of our elected members of parliament, using the Ushahidi/ Swift engines. We will move the present homepage to 2009.votereport.in and start new pages like 2014.votereport.in for new elections, including local assembly elections.

Selvam and I, along with the other members of the core team, will continue to devote a substantial part of our time to Vote Report India. We are looking to expand our team, so do write to us at votereportindia@gmail.com, if you would like to become involved in a significant way.

Once again, thank you for helping Vote Report India make a small difference to the 2009 Indian elections.

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Talk on Vote Report India at NetSquared DC

Monday, May 11th, 2009

I’ll be giving a talk on Vote Report India at NetSquared DC on Tuesday, May 19th.

Vote Report India is a collaborative citizen-driven election monitoring platform for the 2009 Indian Lok Sabha elections, built on the Ushahidi platform. I’ll talk about the story behind the project, reflect on how well the project has worked, and share some thoughts on the future of the project.

I’ll also talk about how political parties, civil society organizations and corporates are using digital media in the 2009 Indian Lok Sabha elections.

When: Tuesday, May 19, 2009 7:00 PM

Where: Affinity Lab, 2451 18th St, NW 2nd Floor, Washington DC 20009

The NetSquared DC events are free and great food, wine and conversations are (usually) guaranteed. You can RSVP for the event here.

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Vote Ki Vaat Mat Lagne Do

Thursday, April 23rd, 2009

I am delighted that the wonderfully talented folks at The Comic Project have designed a poster for Vote Report India –

Vote Report India Poster by The Comic project

I absolutely love the tag line: “Vote Ki Vaat Mat Lagne Do” (Mumbai-speak for “Don’t Let Them Screw Around With the Vote”).

Please feel free to share the poster on blogs and social networks.

Here are some other election-related posters you must check out at The Comic Project — Shoe Dodging, Congress Poster, BJP Poster, Third Front Poster.

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Video: An Introduction to Vote Report India

Tuesday, April 21st, 2009

Here’s a short video in which I talk about the idea behind Vote Report India, the nice buzz we have generated in the two weeks we have been live, and the challenges and delights of working with a team of 35 volunteers spread across three continents.

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Ten Days Into Vote Report India

Thursday, April 16th, 2009

Ten days into Vote Report India, it’s time for a long overdue update on what’s happening behind the scene and under the hood.

Technology/ Design

The tech team is hard at work to fix all the bugs and introduce new features. You should see some significant changes on the front page in a couple of days. Having said that, we are aware that we have a long list of bugs and an even longer wish list on the Open Tech Projects page on the project wiki. If you have found a bug that’s not listed on that page, or want to suggest a new feature, please add it there directly or write an email to Selvam (selvam.velmurugan@gmail.com). We can also do with half a dozen extra hands on the design/ coding side, so if you want to help, or know someone who does, write to Selvam (selvam.velmurugan@gmail.com) immediately.

Reporting Incidents

We had close to 30 reports during the first phase of the elections, including some direct SMS and email reports. This is a little disappointing, but not really unexpected. The key, then, is to seed the system by manually entering reports ourselves. The easiest way to do it is from the Newsrack dashboard that Subramanya has especially created for us. Our reports team is already working on entering these news reports, but we can use help from half a dozen more hands. If you want to help, or know someone who does, or have a confusion about the reporting process that isn’t addressed on the reporting guide, write to Dipti (dipti.thuse@gmail.com) immediately.

Organization

We have reached out to National Election Watch and the Election Commission to involve them in the project. We are also speaking to some prominent people to form an advisory board for Vote Report India. We are still reaching out to civil society organizations to form more partnerships. If you have any suggestions on partnerships, please contact Satchit (satchitbalsari@gmail.com) immediately .

Buzz/ Promotion

In the short time we have been around, almost 70 blog posts have linked to us, as per Technorati. We also have a series of news stories and interviews lined up. I’ll update these stories in the press room as they appear. If you know any journalists or bloggers, please point them to the press room and ask them to do a story.

Also, do join the Vote Report India community at Twitter (@votereportindia), Facebook, Orkut, SMSGupShup or Google Groups and subscribe to our blog. If you have a blog or a website, please consider writing about Vote Report India and displaying our banners (200X200 and 150X150) on your blog or website.For details and clarifications, contact me (gauravonomics@gmail.com).

We have also tied up with several online partners for cross-promotion. These partnerships include Al Jazeera, LiveJournal, Global Voices, Indipepal, Desipundit, BlogAdda and NGO Post. Some of them have already put up our logos and feeds, some of them will do so today.

In Summary

In summary, we have had an exciting ten days on Vote Report India, and the excitement is only going to become more intense over the course of the elections.

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Vote Report India: Citizen-Powered Election Monitoring

Monday, April 6th, 2009

Welcome to Vote Report India, a collaborative citizen-powered election monitoring platform for the 2009 Indian general elections.

The world’s largest democracy, India, goes to election starting April 16, 2009. The month long general elections to the 15th Lok Sabha will be held in five phases on April 16, April 22, April 23, April 30, May 7 and May 13, and the results will be announced on May 16.

This is an important election for India, in the context of a series of terrorist attacks last year that shook up the country, and a worldwide financial crisis that threatens to derail its strong economic growth. However, as India’s 714 million voters elect their 543 representatives, we are sure to see the usual controversies that surround general elections in India: the illegal use of government resources for campaigning, incidences of divisive and inflammatory rhetoric in campaign speeches, and allegations of violence, intimidation and other irregularities during the elections.

Vote Report India will partner with citizens’ networks, human rights organizations, and journalists to contribute direct SMS, email and web reports on violations of the Election Commission’s Model Code of Conduct (PDF). It will then aggregate these direct reports with news reports, blog posts, photos, videos and tweets related to the elections from all relevant sources, in one place, on an interactive map. The interactive map will allow tracking the irregularities in the campaigns leading up to the elections, the voting experience on the day of the elections, and the results themselves.

At one level, Vote Report India will serve as a critical initiative aimed at nurturing transparency and accountability in the Indian election process. At another level, the platform will provide the most complete picture of public opinion in India during the elections.

Vote Report India is a non-partisan all-volunteer collaboration between software developers, designers, academics, and other professionals to bring transparency to the 2009 Indian elections.

Vote Report India is powered by two path-breaking non-profit open-source projects — Ushahidi and SwiftRiver — and managed by eMoksha. Ushahidi is an award-winning platform that crowd-sources crisis information. SwiftRiver is a platform that makes sense of multiple sources of information in a fast-changing crisis situation. eMoksha is a non-profit organization that aims to enable stronger democracies through increased citizen awareness and engagement.

Interested? Know more about our core team and our partners, see the FAQ and the reporting guide, and get involved. We need all the help we can get.

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