Hello! 🙂
This has been another good month! 🙂
We worked with Seva Sindhu and BDA to simplify the Possession Certificate application process, and unexpectedly ended up re-designing the service itself; while reviewing BDA’s upcoming RTI portal, we successfully pushed for more citizen-centric design decisions; finally, while documenting government procedures, we discovered that processes are not always clear even to officials themselves – this strangely makes us hopeful as it is something that is relatively easy to fix. Details below.
Breaking the cycle of “This is how it’s always been”
We recently began working with Seva Sindhu, the portal that hosts around 850 applications for the Government of Karnataka, on improving the text for the BDA Possession Certificate application for flats. We thought this would be a relatively safe, low-friction place to begin; not redesigning the UX or touching the backend, but just rewriting questions so they are easier for citizens to understand.
To our surprise, the official responsible for issuing the Possession Certificate, whom we had reached out to for reviewing the proposed changes, pointed out that many of the questions were unnecessary, and the entire application could be reduced to just four questions! He also proposed making the Possession Certificate bilingual, since it is currently available only in Kannada.
If this works, we would effectively be redesigning the service and setting a precedent. “This is how the form has always been” won’t hold the same power anymore!
Bringing Citizen-Centric Design to BDA’s RTI Portal
The Karnataka Government’s RTI portal is quite unwieldy, so much that we had to write a detailed guide to help citizens navigate its quirks. So when BDA decided to create its own RTI portal to simplify the process, they asked Zen Citizen to review it.
We found a critical usability concern and shared our feedback that the BDA gracefully acknowledged and addressed.
The new portal required citizens to identify and select the correct Public Information Officer (PIO – the officer responsible for providing the requested information) from a list of officers handling different zones and divisions, such as Finance or Engineering. The intention here was to make the process more efficient by having citizens select the PIO in the very first step, instead of routing the request through the PRO first. On the state government portal, the citizen simply selects BDA, after which the request goes to the PRO, who may or may not route it in a timely manner to the correct PIO. However, in doing so, they were also passing the burden of identifying and selecting the correct PIO onto the citizen.
We suggested that they strengthen the internal workflow to ensure that the PRO assigns the RTI to the correct PIO in a timely manner, rather than making citizens go through a list of staff members and their job descriptions to identify the right person. Since filing RTIs creates a certain administrative burden, we also recommended that the portal encourage citizens on the home page to first try the helpline before proceeding with an RTI.
This felt like a clear example of why training in citizen-centric thinking is so important. For many government officials, thinking from the citizen’s point of view does not come naturally; it has to be consciously taught and reinforced.
Turns out the officials are confused too
While documenting a couple of government services, we discovered that the procedures were not always clear even among the officials themselves.
For example, while writing a guide on applying for eKhata, we brought together four Revenue Officers from different zones to collectively understand and document the process, only to find that the procedures were being interpreted differently. Similarly, while writing a guide on property tax payment, we found conflicting information on whether tax could be paid offline. The online services team insisted that offline payment was allowed only when the property type changed from vacant land to building, while the Finance team reliably informed us that citizens could pay offline in any circumstance.
This lack of clarity even within the department was surprising, and we realized it makes citizens even more vulnerable to misinformation, repeated office visits, and ultimately even bribe demands. Strangely, this also makes us hopeful, because it can be fixed!
When good faith is contagious
When citizens see the Govt. genuinely working to improve processes, people naturally come together to help where they can!
Citizens have been reporting a property-tax portal bug on X for a long time now. Their property is not linked to their mobile number, and they are unable to find the property using the search tool to link it manually. We did an audit of the property tax portal and brought this and several other issues to the attention of the relevant BDA officials. We even had a joint discussion with their vendor, but were unable to get this issue prioritized. The fact that citizens should not have to struggle to pay property tax, something that directly benefits the government’s coffers, did not seem to be reason enough for them to prioritize the fix.
We shared a workaround for the issue on X, asking citizens to write to the helpline with the required property details. What happened after that was quite heartwarming. BDA Apartment Owners Forum, who have also been appreciative of BDA leadership’s efforts to reform their systems, consulted with us to create a poster and a letter template to help citizens file grievances more easily. More details here
Onward & Upward! 🙂