Sometimes things stall. Sometimes they move, but don’t quite land. This month was different: things both moved and landed 🙂 There were challenges, but we’re getting a better grip on handling them, helped in no small part by having a strong champion in the BDA.

On to the specifics now 🙂

BDA: eAuction portal update

We’ve long maintained that the true proof of success would be BDA maintaining the eAuction portal independently. Transitioning ownership and operation to BDA has come with immense challenges. It would have been easy to step away from the project, especially since recognition from BDA and applause from the media had already come our way. But our satisfaction comes from knowing we helped deliver sustained change, and so we persisted.

Site Migration

One of the steps toward transitioning ownership was to migrate the site eauctions.bdakarnataka.in to BDA’s own server. Until now, it had been hosted on one of our volunteers’ servers. Getting this done took weeks of almost daily follow-ups with BDA’s website vendor. It was a stark reminder that even with the top bureaucrat at BDA championing the effort, the path is far from easy, and we cannot expect this journey to ever be simple.

Data Automation Tool

The next step is to ensure the site is updated for subsequent auctions. We are automating as much of the process as possible to make it easier for BDA staff to adapt to the change in workflow. To support this, we created a tool that automatically formats the information we receive from two different teams in BDA into a standardized Excel sheet. The BDA team simply has to upload this sheet for the new auction details to appear on the site. You can test the tool using these sample files. This is v2 pending a few improvements and we are grateful to our volunteer Saif Bhabhrawala for building it.

Standard Operating Procedure (SOP)

We now have a v2 of the SOP after discussions with the Finance team. Thanks to Dr. Shane Gowda from BDA for helping us with v1.

We also reviewed the Terms & Conditions against the rules governing the eAuctions to confirm they were aligned, and finalized edits where there were mismatches. Our point of contact for this effort, Ms. Nandini PM has been a strong ally, and we are confident the new process will be adopted! 

BDA: Tool to identify authorized vs unauthorized layouts

We created a tool to identify BDA-allotted, approved, and unauthorised layouts. While this may seem like fundamental data, a complete map did not exist for BDA until we built it for them. 

The simplicity of the result belies the amount of work that went into making it possible. Beyond gathering information from multiple departments, we also generated the geo-coordinates from scratch for the approved and unauthorized layouts.

We have been fortunate to have someone with not just technical skills but also domain expertise and commitment in Priyanshu Khound. We are deeply grateful to Chandru for building the UI. Our gratitude also to Shashank Palur and Saikrishna Dammalapati for their support in building the solution. 

Seva Sindhu: A Small Step Toward Something Big

We had an encouraging meeting with the head of Seva Sindhu, Ms. Aparna Ramesh. We suggested making simple text changes across the portal – which houses around 800 services – to make the instructions and form fields easier to understand. The potential of this collaboration cannot be overstated! 

We are starting with the form for obtaining a Death Certificate. We hope this will make the process a little easier for grieving relatives. 

Prototype of GovBridge – Revamping Government Website UI Without Changing the Underlying Code

Until now, we’ve tried to make Govt. websites easier to use by writing detailed guides and building tools that improve the experience around them. Now we’re exploring something that can more directly impact the citizen experience – a browser plugin we are calling GovBridge that changes the UI of Govt. websites without changing the underlying code. Here is a quick demo our volunteer Preethi JC built that simplifies the login process for Seva Sindhu.

Browser plugins are not new, so we’re somewhat baffled that they haven’t been used to simplify government websites yet. It seems like a natural fit for this problem.

BDA eKhata Guide – A Detour 

We invested significant time in researching the eKhata process for BDA and had multiple meetings with Revenue Officers. Unfortunately, whether BDA should provide eKhata is currently under legal consideration, so we have had to pause work. The nature of work demands we stay flexible and shift priorities quickly, and this is one example of that. 🙂 

Encouragement from our readers

More Praise for ‘Kaveri Village Finder’ tool

“No words to thank you! I was clueless and your tool helped me to identify the district, taluka and hobli details” Link

“Update: I managed to get the information from the revenue classification section of the civic compass tool. I am now legally married 🙂 Thanks a lot guys!!!” Link

Onward and Upward! 🙂