C. Richter

Citizen sensors or extreme publics? Transparency and accountability interventions on the mobile geoweb

Transparency and Accountability (T&A) interventions are emergent social technologies in middle and low-income countries. They bring together citizen sensors, mobile communications, geo-browsers and social organization to raise public awareness on the extent of governance deficits, and monitor governments (in)action. Due to their novelty, almost all we know about the effectiveness of T&A interventions comes from gray literature. Can citizen sensors radically increase the transparency of the state, or are changes brought about by T&A interventions more likely to be incremental? We review the literature on transparency policies and describe their drivers, characteristics and supply–demand dynamics. We discuss promising cases of T&A interventions in East Africa, the empirical focus of an on-going collaborative research program. We conclude that the effect of T&A interventions is more likely to be incremental and mediated by existing organizations and professional users who populate the space between the state and citizens. Two elements at the interface between supply and demand seem rather crucial for designers of T&A interventions: accountability-relevant data and extreme publics.

Practices of Legibility Making in Indian Cities: Property Mapping Through Geographic Information Systems and Slum Listing in Government Schemes

Property mapping through use of geographic information systems (GIS) and slum listing are practices of official knowledge production in government improvement schemes in Indian cities. Our comparative analysis of these two practices is in concert with recent amplifications of Scotts analytical scheme around the notion of legibility making. In both cases knowledge production in practice encounters an “amorphous state.” Government representatives and interests frequently intermingle with non-governmental representatives and interests. This influences knowledge production in practice with different implications for government scheme implementation and participation in urban governance. We find that slum listing supports scheme implementation better than GIS property mapping. The latter seeks to translate the notion of a clear delineation between state and non-state into organizational and technical design for legibility making. It stops short of reaching larger aims of the scheme and comes to focus on the problem of incomplete knowledge and mechanisms of self-referential monitoring. The more organic practice of slum listing involves dispersed paper and desktop technologies and relies on traditional sites of knowledge production in the city. It is adjusted to and enacted by an amorphous state. The official knowledge produced is temporary in nature, and as such allows for incremental and partially reversible scheme implementation. Slum listing retains channels of negotiation with city administration and politicians, which are vital for poorer sections of the urban populace. Our study is relevant to policy and future research, because as of 2012 the new national slum improvement scheme requires implementation of GIS also for slum data collection and management. The question is, whether the new scheme will run into similar problems as GIS property mapping or whether it puts at risk existing channels of negotiation.

From Base Map to Inductive Mapping—Three Cases of GIS Implementation in Cities of Karnataka, India

This article discusses different forms of GIS implementation within the changing sociotechnical environment over the past 20 years based on three cases from the southwestern Indian state of Karnataka. The cases address land and property administration as well as the water provision domains of urban governance. The research approach is qualitative and sociotechnical in nature as it seeks to explore the interrelations between geo-technologies deployed, intra- and interorganizational relations within the case projects, as well as political implications for urban governance during and in response to geo-technology implementation. A general trend in GIS implementation is discerned from an emphasis on permanent database construction to real-time data streaming from diverse sources giving rise to inductive forms of mapping. Inductive mapping caters to possible and anticipated data uses rather than predetermined uses and questions, which in turn shape new actor constellations involved in problem framing and decision making in urban governance.

The power of smart solutions : Knowledge, citizenship and the datafication of Bangalore’s water supply

While plans to develop “smart cities” are gathering pace across the world, we know little about the ways in which the discourses of datafication, smartness, and big data play out in material contexts of urban development, including utility and resource management. In this paper, we explore this intersection in the case of Bangalore’s water supply, where IBM in alliance with the Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board (BWSSB) is implementing a water-flow sensor network and geographic database system under the label of “big data for water supply.” We illustrate how the BWSSB-IBM approach narrows down the complex field of water provision to a question of water in- and out-flow measurements and the monitoring of BWSSB ground personnel. In theoretical terms, we discuss the ways in which these processes constitute both particular claims to knowledge, and the redefinition of citizenship as consumption.