Skip to main content

Fun with Documents: Transparency in Government


The link above is to a PDF file of the original papers showing the boundaries of the plot exactly behind "The Rainbow School" plot and the school's plot itself. They correspond to those "Kadi Stones" shown in the previous video. You can see the little dots on the lines right above the word "Village Boundary" that show the placement of the stones. You can see corresponding marks on the last page, the most recent boundary marks for the school's plot. (I asked for a re-draw of the plot last January, just to be sure we were all squared up.)

It is so very cool to have a window into this typically windowless paperwork system. You see, we currently have a claim against these very clear boundary marks.

However, the credit for the first e-mailed document I ever received from the Indian government goes to the District Rural Development Agency, the best run district office in Ranga Reddy. They all have computers! IMAGINE! Nearly paperless, DRDA is a spunky office free from the heavy weight of dusty paper stacks on top of full file cabinets. There are no tired-eyed clerks constantly overrun with paper to shuffle, yet not enough file folders to hold them in any kind of order.

Srinivas would just love it. Here he is again, for old times sake.
For a good look at the future of Indian civil service work, please see www.esevaonline.com

E-seva creates the opportunities for public services, like paying an electric bill or registering a birth, to be delivered in simple computer kiosk-based, customer-friendly, bureaucrat-sanity-saving form. Of course, literacy is a help here.

The focus on schools just seems to come up all the time.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

MobilesForGood: EDU

Together with the students, parents, and teaching team, we did it. Ten years of the Rainbow Primary School. Our school is a government-funded, local-language (Telugu) school that serves 230 children every day absolutely free. We celebrated by opening  an after-school center last month with the best education NGO in the world, Pratham. For the past five years, I've worked on research projects and helped NGOs that have an interest in developing mobile tools for learning. Globally, there are three populations of students that need to close the education gap. 1. 52 million children globally not in school at all. Most are out of school for one or more of these reasons: conflict/no public services (fragile state), lack of legal papers, migrants, or they are female. Migration is a big issue in our area around the Rainbow School. 2. 200 million children globally are in school, but suffer from poor in-class teaching. These students cannot read at grade level. The most common reason...

"A" Grade

Our partner, Kalpana, reports exams are over. This year, the Rainbow School won "A" grade for student performance up from "B" grade in 2009. CONGRATULATIONS TEAM!! HUGE WIN! This means that the team is providing high quality teaching in a very sustainable way. Congratulations teachers! Congratulations Vijaya Madam! And thanks to all the partners, the Rainbow School is very lucky to have wonderful, wonderful partner organizations like WIM, Lion's Club, and the Naandi Foundation. Here are some of the students, taking part of their exams in the courtyard, back in 2009. Next steps: Compete with the local budget private schools, win best government primary school in the state, and English + Telugu instruction

Gray Matters Capital and the Rockdale Foundation

While all is very well at the Rainbow School, I'll pause to highlight a "sister organization" supporting budget private schools in India. Gray Matters Capital and the Rockdale Foundation have an annual symposium in Hyderabad, called "Enterprising Schools." Buddies of mine from here in Palo Alto, the Hewlett Foundation and IDEO, are heading out there next week. More info is on www.enterprisingschools.com My IDEO fellas organized a whole list of very low-cost teaching aide ideas to present at the symposium. Ideas like using old newpapers to teach literacy. They put the list up on the website under "STEAL THIS IDEA" - click here for the list! (in pdf form) BEST WISHES for a successful symposium, I miss you all in Hyderabad!