Yearly Archives: 2014




Government Records Branch of North Carolina: Contains detailed formats, guidelines and other information on public records and its management that is useful for RTI activists.


Articles Questioning Aadhaar: A collection of articles that are critical of the Unique ID Project, as the very name of the website suggests.

Articles on the UID Project: A collection of articles that are largely critical of the Unique ID Project.

The Hindu : Opinion / Op-Ed : Unique facility, or recipe for trouble?: Article by Jean Dr


UIDAI’s not-so-‘clean’ partners and their tainted executives: Argues that one of the contractors has a long-line of ex-CIA officials, including George Tenet. Questions if surveillance information should be available to private companies, and to foreign ones at that.

Aadhaar software locked in with



A Unique Identity Bill by Usha Ramanathan: Elaborates Human Rights, Civil Liberty and technological criticisms advanced on the UID Project and argues that the bill introduced in the Parliament of India on UID does not address the concerns that have been raised.

Not all that unique by Reetika Khera: UID has limited scope for reducing corruption, even if it works as intended; but as things stand. Development and reduction of corruption are used as a smokescreen for what is mainly a project driven by security establishment and corporate interests, argues the author.

Corruption & Integrity Improvement Initiatives in Developing Countries: A book on corruption and anti-corruption initiatives by UNDP with case studies from different countries, along with a discussion of anti-corruption initiatives.


Helping Countries Combat Corruption: The Role of the World Bank: A World Bank publication outlining the measures advocated by the bank to combat corruption in bank funded projects, and in countries supported by the Bank overall.

iGovernment Working Papers – University of Manchester: Working papers on information technology for the government, produced at the University of Manchester.

“Mobile Vigeye” Complaint system by CVC India: A mobile application developed by the Central Vigilance Commissioner of India through which individuals can submit complaints to the commission. The application includes a facility for the user to record audio, video and also write notes in order to submit complaints. Sounds like an interesting application that could be put to imaginative use by citizens from whom bribes are demanded.


Open data catalogue: A spreadsheet containing links to websites around the world providing open government data.


Google SMS Channels: An SMS based newsletter service where subscribers can opt in to receive SMS messages and free messages can be sent by the publishers of these lists. This can be a great tool to use for those involved in monitoring of village level expenditure, etc.


Access Info Europe: Access Info is a leading organization working to promote the right to information. This website provides a good source of information on policy and legal challenges to access to information in Europe.

Project Open Data: Project Open Data is an online collection of code, best practices, and case studies developed to help agencies adopt the framework presented in the White House memorandum on open data policy. The website has a very useful set of tools, policies, challenges and other materials for those working on open data policies