(Pic - Kiran Bedi with Holly of PBS)
Critics never tire of praising Kiran Bedi, an ex super cop and present day social activist. Recently when she got passed over for the top cop position at New Delhi, Ms Bedi promptly handed over her resignation and, kid you not, set out to jump on the web 2.0 bandwagon. (Albeit a rickety one though).
How Did She Do That
By collaborating with an NGO in launching a website called Safer India www.saferindia.com. (Hindu reported the site to be getting almost 100, 000 hits a day). SaferIndia plans to play footsie in assisting common Indians lodge complaints with the concerned police department.
Purpose
The modus operandi is supposed to eliminate obstruction of justice by those lazy pot bellied cops who would otherwise snub the concerned citizen from filing the complaint through contemporary mechanisms. Lack of motivation among the general public in physically going to to the local thana is another factor.
The Process
Standard web procedure of users registering with their email IDs, at the completion of which, an email is sent out to them. They can then log on and file a report. After successfully filing the complaint, they take a print out for “following up with the authorities”, as the website puts it. The onus of filing correct information lies with the complainant.
The webmaster on his/her part takes responsible in pushing the filed report to the concerned police department.
Points To Ponder
By and large, noble thoughts and intentions. But while browsing around the website and going beyond the home page, one thought that constantly came to my mind; tacky.
The design is haphazard. Out of nowhere, suddenly you see these two Goggle adsense sky scrappers abut in. Makes you think the designer is still living in dark ages by disregarding simple site optimization tactics like ad blending.
The site also mentions that SaferIndia will “forward the complaint electronically” to the said police department, and a copy of the same would be mailed to the complainant. You can’t help but wonder about the exact role the site is playing. Is it simply that of hitting the forward button? Why not cut the chase and let the users email directly to their police departments?
The site is full of disclaimers, though I don’t blame them for covering their ass. They also warn of taking action through all “legal means possible” if you start to fool around with the service.
The Site’s About Us
Besides Kiran Bedi and few other social activists, retired IPS officers, advocates etc., the only technical man-on-board I could make out was Naveen Varshney (Could barely read the last name, so pardon me if I got it wrong).
[Update - Mr Varshneya has replied to us in the comments section. We at TechBanyan welcome healthy criticism and positive feedback. We will continually strive to meet the high expectations of our readers].
Suggestions For The Website
While Ms Bedi is at it, why not give her a few suggestions. Might help her make the user experience better.
Blog
How about having a blog section where she can give updates on a weekly/fortnightly basis. (TSA, challenged only by the IRS in reputation, has one and they are an instant hit with the American travelers). SaferIndia users can give comments and feedback to her on how to optimize this whole process. After all thats what web 2.0 is all about!
Reports
Reports help in benchmarking and are extremely essential to measure the record for success or failure. Perhaps it may or may not be a good idea to make public the complaints but at least the web site can tell us how many complaints were filed, how many were resolved, how many still pending etc. in a given period of time. Reporting would also help bring transparency to this whole exercise.
These are some of the suggestions I can think of right off the top of my head. Let us know if you can think of something else.
India considers itself to be at the forefront of IT revolution. So it definitely makes sense for the government to harness this tool to stream line the process and make the lives of its citizens better. Hopefully we will see Government initiate similar projects soon.
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Updates:
We thank Mr. Varshneya for shedding light on some of the concerns raised in the article above. (See Comments Section)
- Regarding the ‘haphazard design’ statement, our grouse is not with showing Google ads but the manner and format it has been displayed in. One way to improve and optimize it would be to blend the colors of the ad with the site colors so that it doesn’t stand out and create a disconnect with the background.
- Regarding the complaints being forwarded electronically to the concerned police departments, our real concern here is what is the standard procedure going to be in such cases. It would be impractical to expect Dr. Bedi to run from pillar to post all over the country fighting for every case. Besides forwarding them to the concerned police station, perhaps the site can also elaborate on how it will go about ensuring filed complaints will be acted upon or what will be the benchmarks for escalation.
March 1st, 2008 at 1:44 am
great idea!!!
March 17th, 2008 at 3:39 am
Dear Tarun,
great review, however, before writing, you should have contacted us. Here are some points which will help you bite your words.
a) saferindia.com does not use even 99% of the web 2.0 features which we have. visit http://www.whitelibra.com and http://www.campusyogi.com to see innovation.
b) we spent 3 weeks disabiling the features so that we could meet Dr. bedi requirement for phase one. I was not too happy but seeing the sentivities of the subject and readiness of indian public, we agreed.
c)Yes, design is crappy and google ads look rather vulger, however, entire project is done by us without any money… do you know one MNC, which commits itself to that extent??and we are just 15 people company struggling to come up.
d) we at MM are not designing house and that is one expertise we are buying now. hence it is nice to comment, but look at utility.
yes, you can always go to website of police and you can be sure, you will go to your grave without being replied..Dr. Bedi office is chasing police every day to get them to listen
besides, saferindia.com i suppose to be self sustinable project and our idea was social entreprenuership where we could attract best of the talent to run it and founding team is discussing it for next version launch.
hope next time, you go deeper into the subject..
March 17th, 2008 at 6:32 am
Naveen,
I welcome your feedback and am glad you took time out to reply us here.
Like I mentioned initially in the review, SaferIndia is indeed a noble idea and I doff my hat to Dr. Bedi and her team for envisioning and executing it.
The statistics reported by Hindu leave no shred of doubt about the success of the site and how much it was appreciated by the Indian public.
However, I stand by my take that the team could have done better justice to the design and optimization. Perhaps it could be a top priority in the next phase.
I believe one of my comments in the article was too personal and scathing. I apologize if it caused any grief. I am going to take it off.
Keep us updated about your plans and keep checking TechBanyan for more reviews.
Best Regards,
Tarun
April 22nd, 2008 at 2:16 am
Tarun,
I appriciate your editing. Hopefully soon new version shall come LIVE but again that is Dr. Bedi’s call. I will keep you posted. In the mean time, I like to invite you to http://www.whitelibra.com which is complete consumer redressal platform and on this platform, I would really appriciate any review. It has already started creating ripples in corporate world and compliants are just pouring in for redressal.
May 12th, 2008 at 2:09 am
respected
Mam
Goodafternoon
How are you mam.I want talk to you. Please tell me your office and mobile numbers.I consult about my carrer.
Thaking you
Yours
faithfully
Mandavi Mishra
Ph. 09350737065
Inderpuri
New delhi-12
house no.Wz 247 A Ground flour
Near post office.
June 30th, 2008 at 8:39 am
Respected madam,
Kindly Give me the correct web addres of
seferindia.com