Hello 🙂 

Every phase of “I can’t do this anymore.” inevitably gives way to optimism; usually after meeting someone working in the same space whose sincerity, ambition, and grasp of what Zen Citizen is trying to achieve, leave me feeling that the road ahead will be a little less difficult.

This month proved no different. Read on. 🙂

Overhauling the Possession Certificate Process for BDA Sites: Why This Month Felt So Exhausting

This month’s exhaustion came from spending weeks trying to build an evidence base for improving the Possession Certificate service on Seva Sindhu. Despite numerous attempts to understand processes and obtain data from departments allied to the BDA, tangible progress is elusive. 

A letter from a senior bureaucrat opens the door, but you still have to squeeze through a narrow opening. You push and wriggle your way through – only to find another door with an equally narrow opening.

When the data does arrive, it’s often incomplete or comes as a raw dump without a data dictionary or field mapping. Questions pass through multiple layers before reaching the right people, and follow-up questions travel the same path all over again. When I ask process-related questions, the standard response is, “We don’t know,” or “We’re only the implementers. The product owners are in Delhi.” That’s a fair answer, but I’m often disappointed by the lack of curiosity, or even an attempt to point me in the right direction.

Another Dept. declined to engage with me directly, even though my questions were about the process and did not involve any confidential information. They insist on routing the discussion through BDA’s new IT lead, with whom we are yet to build rapport. The previous point of contact had been a champion of our work. Changes like this mean constantly rebuilding relationships, providing context, and explaining that our only agenda is to make Govt. services more accessible – there is no business model, no intention of pulling anyone down or other hidden motive.

I remind myself that this is not a reflection of the individuals; they’re working within the incentives and constraints of the system. These protocols exist for a reason, and the onus is on me to adapt to them.

Reasons for Optimism

These three conversations restored my energy:

• An experienced eGovernance technologist who understands Govt. systems at a granular level and can shape Govt. digital product road maps. One highlight of our meeting was a demo of the Unified Land Management System (ULMS), a platform that integrates fragmented property systems. We’re now exploring how Zen Citizen can support ULMS adoption at the BDA while also advancing the integration of the Kaveri Village Finder and Kaveri Image Resizer into the Kaveri platform.
• An entrepreneur and nonprofit founder who built a similar initiative to improve access to welfare schemes and has deep experience navigating bureaucracy. He suggested advocating for a fortnightly review or reporting cadence, creating a structured forum to discuss issues and identify solutions.
• A Karnataka Administrative Services (KAS) officer who played a key role in instituting Seva Sindhu and reminded me why this work is worth persevering with.

An Unexpected Invitation from the Dept. of Stamps and Registration

This month, Zen Citizen was invited to address a group of M.Sc. Data Science interns from Chanakya University by the Dept. of Stamps and Registration. The objective of the session was to help students conduct effective interviews with both citizens and Govt. stakeholders to identify areas for improving service delivery.

The invitation came as a surprise because we’d been trying to engage with the Department for over a year and a half with little movement. Our request has been simple: host the Kaveri Village Finder and Kaveri Image Resizer – two volunteer-built tools that have received excellent feedback, on a separate page of the portal. 

The session couldn’t have gone better. We received overwhelmingly positive anonymous feedback from both the students and the Department, and students chose a straight two-hour-and-fifteen-minute discussion and refused offers for a 10 min break.

Knowing that the Dept. values our work enough to invite us encourages us to keep pursuing efforts to collaborate with them.

Appendix: Sources of Testimonials Featured in the Header Image

• Reddit comment on the Kaveri Marriage Registration Guide.
• Contact form submission from a user of the Kaveri Image Resizer.