Attended the idemocracy camp at Cognizant(CTS), AVS Suntech plaza today. The barcamp was initiated by Mr Selvam of emoksha coincidentally a CEG passout and a senior! The whole idea was to develop a loose technical standard for e-civic websites that would gain popularity in the days to come.  That was data can be shared and interchangable. The meeting saw Alok & Gautam from the Akshara Foundation (mind boggling effort of working with 1400 schools reaching a million government school children) and from Threshold technologies Hyderabad, the guys behind AP 2009 (Prashant and Bharat).

The advantages of Open Street maps compared to Google maps and Map my India was also discussed. emoksha.org initiatives were discussed. It seems that there is a burst of technocrats into this techno-social space in the recent months. Maybe something that started with the US elections. Considering the amount of civiv data available out there, there sure can be performance metrics that you can see in the days to come!

Another thought was that technical mozarts build their code with such great involvement that they assume that if its going  to be good its going to be adopted as a standard, which is most probably incorrect! The need for a technical lobby group or filed selling group and advocacy group is very necessary. This is true with OSM.

But one thought that lingered, was that though the metrics of information now available has increased phenomenally, whether this is serving the purpose we finally want it to on the ground remains something to be pondered upon! But as long as the average citizen is considered sensible, the maths is right!

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