Keep up with our on going work, banter and behind-the-scenes
Last month, we announced a shift in focus from building content and tools to actively driving reach and user adoption. We pursued this through:
Adding to our progress, our WhatsApp chatbot has transitioned from prototype to closed beta.
We met a senior bureaucrat and demoed our content and tools like Village Finder, Civic Compass, and Spashta, our Chatbot with an in-built Image Resizer customized for the Karnataka Government’s portal.
They were incredulous that such well-thought-out, polished tools were built entirely through pro bono efforts, and immediately introduced us to the third-party team responsible for the website.
When I explained that even simple text changes-without any UI or backend tweaks, could significantly improve the user experience, I was asked to prove the bugs existed and that instructions to users were unclear or missing.
Since I was dealing with the team directly responsible for the website, some resistance is natural. Still, I left the meeting more depleted and exhausted than at any point in the past year of building Zen Citizen. The demands of running a volunteer-driven initiative or unearthing obscure process details – essentially building a parallel system – are sometimes overwhelming, but they never came close to breaking me, like this attempt to directly ‘fix the problem’ did.
The tools we build are all open-source and I shared the links to the code, there’s been no response so far.
We were able to reach the Revenue Minister of Karnataka over email, and he responded positively, writing a note to his team to ‘strongly recommend’ they work with us to ‘bridge the last mile gap’ and ‘improve user access and interfacing’. There has not been any movement in the two weeks since; even with his endorsement, this journey won’t come easy – it’ll take persistence and tenacity to keep things moving.
Creating a parallel system is valuable , as our testimonials show (which reminds me, we even received a strange compliment on Reddit a couple of days ago – a reader called our work “God’s work”!).
However, to scale swiftly, we need to engage directly with the government. How could I do that while still protecting my energy? I needed a champion within the system.
I reached out to a bureaucrat who had encouraged me previously and now holds a new role in the Bangalore Development Authority. They’ve graciously agreed to partner with us. Our next steps involve defining the scope of this effort and bringing on volunteers to lead key areas like UX, tech, and content.
I simply showed up at the offices of The Hindu and The Indian Express late in the afternoon, catching reporters back at their desks. The Hindu was particularly interested, and we’re expecting coverage shortly 🙂
Adding to our progress, our Whatsapp conversational interface is in closed beta now. We’d love for you to try it out, so please get in touch, particularly if you need an Encumbrance Certificate in Karnataka! We’re feeling nervous anticipation about its reception.
On the academic collaboration front, in addition to UCSD and the Centre for the Study of Corruption at Sussex as I shared last month, we were also fortunate to receive a positive response from Stanford University. They met with us, and we’re exploring ways to collaborate. More on that soon 🙂
Hello! 🙂
Zen Citizen has reached a crucial juncture this month; with the launch of Spashta, our Gen AI chatbot, we are shifting focus from building content and tools to make government services more accessible, to actively driving awareness and user adoption. Up until now, we’ve primarily shared our work on r/bangalore.
Spashta, which means ‘clarity’ in multiple Indian languages, lives up to its name by capturing context and processing complex queries with empathy and accuracy. This tool also offers voice integration, supporting communication in both Kannada and English.
Crucially, Spashta takes the pressure off our volunteers, allowing them to focus on tasks beyond responding to citizen questions that come in through our website and forums like Reddit and Twitter. We’re currently piloting this for marriage registration services in Karnataka and are in the process of extending it to other government services we cover.
We’ve leveraged our core LLM to set up Spashta in multiple avatars:
We are grateful to K (Chennai) for writing the prompts that power our LLM, Arpit Chhikara (Bangalore) for their invaluable feedback on the bot’s responses, and Prabhat Raju (Bangalore) for producing Spashta’s video demo.
These versions were inexpensive to build in terms of both cost and time, and we’re excited to see which ones resonate most with our users.
You can see Spashta in action here
Alongside these efforts, we’re also taking steps to systematically measure the impact we’re having. We’ve reached out to academic departments specializing in the study of corruption, and we’re excited to be exploring potential collaborations with researchers from the Center for Corruption at the University of Sussex and the University of California, San Diego, who have both responded positively.
We’ve published an article offering a real-world example of how Zen Citizen empowers individuals to navigate bureaucratic hurdles. It tells the story of Mohan, who, following our advice, reluctantly filed an RTI query after his marriage registration application was rejected. Remarkably, his application was approved within just two weeks of filing the RTI. Even more remarkably, Mohan also welcomed a new baby boy on the very same day!
We’ve reached out to the Revenue Department of Karnataka to collaborate on getting timely clarifications. Our goal for Phase 1 of Zen Citizen is to complete coverage of all services offered on the Kaveri portal, ensuring a solid foundation with one department in one state before measuring its impact and extending to more departments and states.
Wish us luck as we roll out our awareness efforts for Zen Citizen this month!
You may have seen the prototype Anup built to help citizens identify the right offices for essential services like electricity, water, ward offices, and police stations for their area. Abhik, Priti, Nishit, and Renee scaled this early version into a full-fledged tool. Please give it a spin and share your feedback!
This was a cross-continental effort across India, the UK, and the US. We’ve shared what worked, and what didn’t, while pulling off this remote volunteer collaboration here.
This month, we set up a more structured working relationship with the Government in Karnataka to collaborate on documenting processes more clearly. It’s not a formal partnership, but we’ve mutually agreed to support each other’s efforts.
We kicked things off with a guide on obtaining a certified copy.
We’re now working together on confronting the heartland of petty corruption: property registrations. Stay tuned.
We received a response to our RTI request seeking data on reasons for rejection of Sakala appeals – these are appeals Karnataka citizens can file if government services aren’t delivered within the guaranteed time frame.
Our goal was to identify which services have the highest rejection rates and understand why appeals are getting rejected. That insight would help us spot common pain points and develop practical workarounds to include in our service guides.
The response came within the 30-day deadline. Unfortunately, the data we received is incomplete, so we’ve filed a first appeal. For instance, when we looked into rejected appeals for Encumbrance Certificates, the “reason for rejection” field was left completely blank. There’s also no clarity on why an appeal was marked as “closed”; was the service eventually provided, or was the appeal dismissed?
That said, the Additional Director for the Sakala Mission, Ms. Pallavi Akurathi, has been responsive and helpful. We’re currently working with her team to get a more complete dataset.
This month, we put together a few articles to better articulate our philosophy:
Principled Challengers. We also serve ‘Resigned Pragmatists’ and ‘Cost Conscious Resisters’ – (We need more simple and conversational labels! :D)
The administrative burden of registration does not seem worth the effort
No, we don’t need a selfie of you outside your Taj Mahal
Candor matters; Commitments shift, Just keep us posted; Assume good intent; We’ll check in, but contributions must be self-driven
This month, we received a powerful testimonial from @Nitin2183 that reaffirms the value we’re creating. Grateful to the team for making this possible. I’d reached out to this user to thank them for following us on Twitter, and got this in return.
Incidentally, our X account has since been suspended for no clear reason, and it looks like an uphill battle to get it reinstated.
When we started Zen Citizen, our goal was to help at least 50-100 people; a small way of contributing to society. But as the idea gained momentum through dedicated volunteers, encouraging messages, and even a proactive grant from Dr. Malpani, we feel inspired to aim higher. Beyond writing guides, building tools, and answering service-related questions, we are now thinking about scale and long-term impact.
We’re working with a government team to push for better user experience on their websites. The need for improvement is clear—a senior bureaucrat even remarked, “This site is so unintuitive, I might have to hire a middleman to navigate it!” Although many government employees understand the value of good UX, their focus on quickly deploying minimum viable products often means UX is treated as a luxury. The prevailing attitude tends to be, “Let the user also do some work and figure it out.” Our goal is to help them make a stronger case for UX improvements. We’re very excited about this collaboration!
Another major step in this direction is our plan to launch a more intuitive, scalable, open-source website by the end of April. It will include a robust content management system to support well-structured guides, and a framework adaptable for other states in India and even other countries. This vision took shape thanks to Priti, our volunteer from London, who stepped up to lead our website efforts. We expect the re-hauled website to be ready by the end April ‘25.
This is a significant effort, but we’re taking this route because, while we focus on quick hacks and ‘band-aids’ to make government websites more accessible (since addressing core issues is beyond our influence and meaningful change takes time), we want our own platform to have a strong foundation for the future.
We filed an RTI to obtain data on Sakala-related delays, grievances, rejected applications, and the actual text of rejection responses. This will help us identify which services need detailed guides and pinpoint key pain points that require workarounds.
This month, we expanded our website content with the following additions:
Our second highlight is the success of our UX outreach! Priti, based in London, has generously offered to lead our website efforts. Nathan, based in the US, is helping us redesign our content guides to make them more visually engaging. Meanwhile, Cassie from Singapore is helping us present version 2 of Civic Compass. Thank you for joining us, Nathan, Cassie & Priti!
Onward & Upward!