In its two years of existence, it’s the campaigns promoted by the government that have fared well on the platform
Forty-five per cent of all discussion posts on the MyGov platform — a social network built around governance issues — were about Smart Cities.
The platform, launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in July 2014, functions under the aegis of the Union Communications and Information Technology Ministry.
At present, MyGov has around 35 lakh registered users. In the two years of its existence, there have been 582 discussions posts on the platform, garnering around 34 lakh comments.
There are three major elements in getting traction on the platform, Gaurav Dwivedi, CEO of MyGov, told The Hindu.
First, promotion of the said campaign by the Ministry concerned. Second, the attractiveness of the subject to the citizen. Third, the willingness of citizens to devote time to the campaign and share their thoughts and ideas.
For instance, only 10 posts got more than a lakh comments, all asking for suggestions from citizens for drafting the ‘Smart City proposal’ for their cities. Posts on Bhopal, Kanpur, Allahabad, Indore and Jhansi gathered more than 1.5 lakh suggestions as comments.
“For the 98 shortlisted smart cities, there was a component of citizen feedback and engagement in the selection criteria for the next round. Plus, there were marks for quality of citizen engagement,” Mr. Dwivedi said. In places where municipal commissioners were more tech savvy, more traffic and engagement was observed, he added.
Forty-eight posts on MyGov platform were setup to identify 50 public buildings (in each city) that were frequently used by persons with disabilities and should be converted into fully accessible buildings. But this crowdsourcing campaign, launched by the Department of Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities, received a lacklustre response. Only the post for the city of Bhopal got over 800 comments. 40 posts concerning other cities got fewer than 10 comments.
....