by Digital India Initiative Continues to Bridge Gap Between Vision and Reality One Form at a Time
The App That Needs More Documents Than the Process It Replaces
The Ministry of Consumer Affairs launched its new GrievanceEase mobile application on Monday in a ceremony attended by the Minister, three secretaries, and a technology partner representative who spoke for eleven minutes about the transformative potential of digital governance in language borrowed from a similar speech he delivered at the launch of three previous government applications that are still technically operational and nobody uses. GrievanceEase allows citizens to file consumer complaints without visiting a government office in person, a capability that the Ministry described as ‘revolutionary’ and that is available upon completion of a registration process requiring the submission of Aadhaar number, PAN card, mobile number (verified by OTP that arrives in three to eight minutes depending on network conditions that are outside the app’s control), email address, date of birth, state of residence, district of residence, PIN code, category of complaint from a dropdown list of forty-seven categories that does not include the user’s specific complaint, a description of the complaint in under two hundred words in a text field that accepts two hundred and seven characters, upload of supporting document in PDF format under two megabytes (the scanner app most users have produces files of four to eight megabytes), and a CAPTCHA that the Ministry’s accessibility team has confirmed is ‘challenging for older users.’
‘The app will save citizens enormous time,’ said Minister Pralhad Joshi. ‘Previously they had to come to our office. Now they can do it from their phone.’ A journalist asked about the seventeen-step registration process. The Minister said that security requires verification and that the seventeen steps protect citizens’ data.
Citizen Feedback
Mumbai resident Sunita Patel, fifty-three, attempted to file a complaint about a defective refrigerator on Tuesday. ‘I spent forty minutes on registration,’ she said. ‘The OTP came after six minutes. My complaint category does not exist in the dropdown. I selected ‘Electronic Goods – Other.’ The upload rejected my document because it was 2.3 MB. I compressed it. The compressed version was blurry and they may not accept it. I submitted anyway. I have received no acknowledgment. Previously I would have gone to the office. It would have taken two hours. I would have a receipt. I am not sure this is faster.’
Indian government services information at The Hindu. Comedy: The Daily Mash.
SOURCE: http://prat.UK
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