Hi! 🙂

This month, we strengthened our work with Karnataka’s Praja Seva Department, where our marriage certificate fixes got a yes; secured a BDA order protecting our volunteers’ e-auctions work; and joined Citizen Matters at eGov Foundation’s workshop on grievances and AI.

75 minutes with the Principal Secretary and team, a call to the IG of Stamps & Registration, and a yes

On 30 October, we presented our marriage certificate findings to the Principal Secretary of Praja Seva and team, including Sakala, EDCS (Seva Sindhu), technical and business analyst teams. We recommended three quick fixes:

• Anywhere Registration: register a marriage at any Sub-Registrar Office in the revenue district, as you already can with property.
• A full Sakala timeline: count the time from application to certificate delivery.Pay the Rs 25 fee at submission: so the timeline starts the day you apply.

The Principal Secretary called the IG of Stamps & Registration during the meeting and confirmed these can be done.

Next, we’re working out how to be part of putting them in place, not just handing over a report.

Protecting our volunteers’ work: BDA makes the e-auctions portal mandatory

The BDA Commissioner has issued a written order: no e-auction can go ahead unless our e-auctions portal is updated with the latest auction information. The portal had stopped being updated for the last couple of auctions, after the GIS vendor set up a near-copy on its own server and BDA’s link was pointed there. To keep our volunteers’ work in use, we raised it with the Commissioner. BDA’s old auction page will now also point to our portal, eauctions.bdakarnataka.in, so there is just one source.

It’s a reminder of how much effort it takes to keep volunteer work relevant.

Invited alongside Citizen Matters, by eGov Foundation, to rethink grievance redress in the age of AI

eGov Foundation invited us, alongside Citizen Matters, to its workshop “Rethinking Citizen Participation”, on grievance redress in the age of AI. We started from first principles: what is a grievance? India’s national grievance portal, CPGRAMS, doesn’t define one, so people file requests for a birth certificate or for information as “grievances”. It sparked a good conversation, and it was a chance to meet others working in this space. We’ll see what comes of it in practice.

More soon 🙂