Vivek Srinivasan

About Vivek Srinivasan

I work with the Program on Liberation Technology at Stanford University. Before this, I worked with the Right to Food Campaign and other rights based campaigns in India. To learn more, click here.

Technology for Transparency Network |: A collection of projects that use technology for promoting transparency. The case studies can be accessed by the country.

Public Database Indexing Guidelines: North Carolina is mandated by law to maintain an index of all electronic public records with description of available data. This is a guideline prepared by the State government to prepare an index of the databases

Crisis and Interaction Design: Presentation on the use of Crowd-sourcing information and tips on designing a good system.

I paid a bribe: The innovative crowd sourcing platform by Janaagraha to crowd source reports on demands for bribes in India. The website has inspired many such initatives internationally.

Edward Tufte and Graphics Press: Edward Tufte is a well known political scientist who specialises in communicating information in creative ways using data visualization.

This We Know: Explore U.S. Government Data About Your Community: Collates data from various US Government databases and presents them at the community level that can be searched by zip code.

Sunlight Foundation: The foundation is, “a nonpartisan nonprofit that advocates for open government globally and uses technology to make government more accountable to all. We do so by creating tools, open data, policy recommendations, journalism and grant opportunities to dramatically expand access to vital government information to create accountability of our public officials”. The website is a great source of information on open data policy, political financing and a range of other topics in the intersection of technology and transparency.

Climate Collaboratorium: Seeks to use the collective intelligence of people to develop a plan on climate change. It’s a project of center for collective intelligence at MIT.

School Report Cards: NUPA’s school monitoring system that has recent school level data for more than 1.2 million schools in India.

MyNeta – Candidate Affidavits for Elections in India: Information on all Members of Parliaments of India based on the affidavits they file with the election commission. Visitors are permitted to point out inconsistencies between the given information and the case on the ground.

Think You Know What Ushahidi Is? Think Again | iRevolution: Article on the Ushahidi platform, what it is and how it could be used by Patrick Meiyer. Comments to the article are worth reading.

Bus Routes.in: Website providing information on bus routes in Madras using information on routes gathered by crowd sourcing.

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.

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.

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.

Journal of E-Government: It is “a new professional journal focusing on the application and practice of e-government in its broadest sense

“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.

Sunshine Review: Sunshine Review is a non-profit organization dedicated to state and local government transparency in the United States. The Sunshine Review wiki collects and shares transparency information and uses a 10-point Transparency Checklist to evaluate the content of every state and more than 5,000 local government websites.

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.

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.