ctrl.altered.mind

The Government of India has recently set up an online grievance forum with the intention of opening up a more direct line of communication with citizens, who can use this tool to highlight problems faced when dealing with Government officials and/or departments. Avenues that immediately come to mind include (but are certainly not limited to) the Passport Office, Electricity Board, BSNL/MTNL, and the Railways.

Submissions to the forum may not be falling on blind eyes after all, if unconfirmed anecdotal evidence making the rounds on many online message boards and by email, is to be believed. It talks about a certain CSC employee in Faridabad who used the forum to log a complaint about the local municipal corporation digging up newly paved roads to install cables - an annoyance most of us in India have had to deal with. Apparently, this was successful, as the BSNL and the Faridabad Municipal Corporation were served a show-cause notice soon after. While it is not clear if the online forum played a vital role in bringing the two departments in sync with each other, it is definitely a tool that more of us can make use of.

Unfortunately, the website (as with most other government-controlled websites in India) suffers a great deal in the aesthetics department (I doubt that any sense of design even exists for the persons in charge of getting websites implemented). With a heterogenous mix of poorly selected html design elements and colors, spending too much time browsing the site can drive one to poke their eyeballs with a fork, in disgust. Alright, dramatic effects aside, I guess a complete redesign of the site (with a hint to derive some inspiration from other functional and spartanly designed administrative websites around the world) would be my choice for a grievance to be filed on the forum. Let’s see how that goes.

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 23rd, 2007 at 11:07 am and is filed under Digital Lifestyles, Ideas, India.