Country: India

Organization: International Transparency and Accountability Network

Idea: To establish a model for communication and collaboration between individuals in organizations, so that the absence or inaction of an individual does not reflect on the performance of the organization and put the community and citizens to hardships and difficulties.

The organization must get integrated into one entity for speedy performance and ensuring 100% customer satisfaction.

This is invariably the case with Government organizations, local bodies, NGOs, and other service organizations, where bureaucracy and red tapism plays havoc with the lives of citizens leading to nepotism and corruption, resulting in an uneven playing field, increasing the divides and perpetrating poverty in the developing world.

How do you do it: e-Administration helps to create the structure, of any organization, irrespective of size. This would help in the work-flow management.

The communications are digitised and processed electronically.

All communications can be tracked by the individual and all superiors in the vertical hierarchy. There can be no forgotten or missing communications. Automatic reminders and alerts including escalation are planned.

The tool has been developed using the latest web technologies and open source tools such as Java, Struts framework with 3-tier architecture (presentation layer of JSP and JSTL), JBOSS, PostgreSQL as back-end, all running on Linux.

The tool has been implemented in Government organizations wth reasonable success.

Innovation: There is a mind set, particularly among Government employees that they are the masters and not servants of society. They feel they are obligated to please only their bosses.

To obviate the problems of citizens, speed-up decision making, avoid absolute dependence on individuals and make the system work, is a herculean task in Government organizations - particularly in the developing world.

e-Administration, was touted as an empowerment tool for every subordinate employee - as a tool, to eliminate the dependence on going and hanging around superiors offices for clearing files and at the same time empowering superiors to monitor the work of subordinates and pull-up delayed files for prompt action and service to citizens.

Impact: The e-Administation tool has been well received by younger generation employees, as it creates a feeling of empowerment, instils a sense of belonging and ownership of their work in them.

The senior officals and bureaucrats feel comfortable to monitor all pending cases and pull-up delayed cases. This makes them feel empowered to act as bosses, which is missing in a manual system, as they are dependent on the subordinates to put-up files.

The citizens, particularly the deprived, the illiterate, the women folk and senior citizens feel empowered to egt information on their petitions and complaints under the Right to information Act.

Transparency and Accountability help both parties to bridge the divide and eliminate middle men.

Ethical Action: In the manual system, grievance redressal used to take months and years, as files used to take weeks and months to move fromd desk to desk. Even registering a public grievance and getting a complaint registration number was difficult and people had to be bribed.

In the electronic system, a citizen can file a public grievance from any internet kiosk and get the complaint number online.

The e-Administration complaint tracking system can forward the complaint directly to the concerned section electronically and monitor the response and citizen satisfaction.

A summary status of complaints filed and grievances redressed can be seen all the way right upto the Chief Minister of the State starting from the lowest level.

Replication: e-Administration tool has been developed following the Tottenham system of office administration, that is generally followed in government organizations in india. The tool is developed using open source tools, struts framework with modular design, version control, for plug and play of any module, for quick scalability both vertically and horizontally.

The tool has been implemented in Government organizations over the last 24 months and has been quickly replicated in other customized applications for local governments.

The Graphic user interface is very user friendly and can be operated even by computer illiterate. Even a 5th class pass person is operating the tool to scan letters and attach to the system in Government organizations.

Sustainability: The basic tool is offered free, as an open source. However users pay a nominal charge for the installation, training, hand holding and customization. thus it is a win-win situation for both.

It is not the question of sustainability in the short term, but sustainability in the long-term that is important. as long as the Governments have the need to render better service at lower cost and citizens demand more and more services at their door steps, the need to adopt latest ICt practices take prominence and there is a spirit of healthy competition among government departments in introducing innovative ideas and solutions to keep the citizens happy.

More services can be added in due corse of time to improve the basket of sevices.

Position in the Ethics Mosaic of Solutions:

Factor: Values extremism

Principle: Enabling self-permission to change oneself or one'