Knight Challenge entry- EQ Connect
How to make data work for citizens &
the Community
Sep 2015
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© 2015 Enterprise Quotient Analytics LLP
Contents
1.
Introduction .......................................................................................................................................... 3
2.
Problem Statement ............................................................................................................................... 3
3.
Current Scenario ................................................................................................................................... 4
E-Governance ............................................................................................................................................ 4
Transportation .......................................................................................................................................... 6
Community Connect ................................................................................................................................. 6
4.
Nature of Interactions........................................................................................................................... 7
Registration ............................................................................................................................................... 7
Updating.................................................................................................................................................... 7
Community Network................................................................................................................................. 7
Public Transport ........................................................................................................................................ 7
5.
Solution outline ..................................................................................................................................... 8
User Registration ...................................................................................................................................... 8
Governance Gateways .............................................................................................................................. 9
Transport Planning .................................................................................................................................. 10
Community Connect ............................................................................................................................... 12
Car Pool via Network .............................................................................................................................. 14
6.
Tasks & Timeline ................................................................................................................................. 16
7.
Conclusion ........................................................................................................................................... 17
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1. Introduction
We are Enterprise Quotient advisors, founded by a group of Partners, who have
specialised experience in the realm of Data & Analytics with 30 years of total
experience, as well as an application to citizen initiatives with Government, to
make a perceptible difference in promoting citizen connect. We are presently
laying down the foundation for an Open Source Citizen platform titled “EQ
Connect” – which is based on using IT, Data & Analytics to bring citizens closer
to the Community (C-C platforms) and Government systems (G-C platforms).
2. Problem Statement
Our goal is to make Data work better for individuals & communities. We want to
expand on this theme, taking the illustration of Citizen Interactions with
Government institutions (“G-C”) and Citizen Interactions with Citizens (“C-C”).
This can be applied to any geography where the underlying Government
application is enabled via IT systems, and has an interface or API to connect
with users.
Countries like the U.S. have a unified system which is based upon a single
unique Identifier assigned to an individual, namely the Social Security Number
(SSN). The U.K. also has a similar concept of a National Insurance Number,
which is applicable for a lot of interactions, but not as strictly applied as the
SSN. India stands out as an example of a country, which uses myriad
Identification numbers, each specific for each Department.
The second part of the Proposal deals with Citizen Interactions with the
community that they live in. When a person wants to get in and connect with
like-minded people to initiate Community causes (e.g. Citizen Activism, Runners
club, Hobbies clubs etc.), they are often left scrambling. The proposals describes
the creation of a Community- oriented platform, which taps into the existing
social media platforms to get the relevant interests of each person, yet providing
the versatility to create ways for citizens to reach out to others, without invasion
of the individual’s privacy.
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3. Current Scenario
For the purposes of illustration, we will outline the most complex scenarionamely India, where there is an existence of multiple forms of Identifications
and wholly separate systems specific to those.
A typical resident of India interacts with the following systems for illustration,
each of which come under a separate jurisdiction:
E-Governance
There are multiple Government departments that address various distinct
Heads. These are largely de-synchronised departments with individual workflows to connect with citizens.

Unique Identifier (UID)
Biometric system introduced in the last few years, which is being facilitated to
provide a fool-proof method to render subsidy to weaker economic sections,
ensuring the benefits of the subsidy only go to the person concerned.

Permanent Account Number (PAN)
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The key Identifier for an individual to make any financial transactions, namely,
opening a bank account, credit card, trading account, invest in property etc.

Voter Card Number (EPIC)
The user identification provided by the Election Commission of India, serves as
the primary key in the preparation of citizen electoral rolls for all elections.

Passport Number
The Passport number is the code assigned by the Ministry of External Affairs
(MEA) to any individual, who wishes to go abroad.

Drivers License (DL)
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This is a State object, and is required for driving a motor vehicle on Indian
roads, as well as in the context of buying a vehicle.

Registrar Services
These are associated with certification of key events linked to an individual,
namely Birth, Death, Marriage, Change of Name etc.

Utility Services
Not so much related to the Individual, rather, the Utility services availed by the
Individual on account of where they stay. These include:
o
o
o
Water (usually Govt)
Electricity (usually Govt)
Phone related (Private/ Govt)
Transportation
Many cities offer various forms of Public Transportation to provide services for
the residents, including Bus, Train (Suburban), Metro. Information pertaining to
these services is available publicly as well as through Database or API exposed
interfaces. However, the challenge lies in integrating these to provide a unified
Transport solution (TFL London is an exception which provides the unified
service, but it also runs the Metro & Buses network!).
Community Connect
There are two forms of citizen connect, namely:

Social Media Platforms
There are well established platforms that are actively used by the community
today. However, the focus is more on the individual. The differentiating factor
for the proposed Platform is its primary focus on promoting community outreach without compromising the individual privacy of the netizens.

Mailing Groups
These operate via subscription based user email groups, however, the entry
for these is usually restricted. This is maintained to protect privacy, since the
email of a sender in a group is exposed. Limitation is that it becomes hard for
a new entrant to “get into the community”.
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4. Nature of Interactions
A typical resident has various forms of interactions with the systems, which can
be broadly classified into C-C (Citizen to Citizen) & G-C (Government to Citizen)
interactions. We have highlighted a few suggestive interactions to describe these
use cases, but by no means, not the comprehensive list.
Registration
This is usually a one-time service, required at the time of entering into a new
system, or when associated with any life cycle events, e.g. Birth, Marriage,
Purchase of Property etc.
Updating
This is required when the individual has a change in a particular data point.
Common illustration of that in India is the registration of Address change
(relevant authorities need to be notified via a formal update request).
Community Network
Very often, there is a need to collaborate with like-minded members in the
community to partner on community out-reach initiatives. In the context of
India, the biggest challenge that the citizens have to deal with is the existence
of a big opaque system that is often inaccessible to the citizens who comprise
the system. These out-reach initiatives bring people closer.
Public Transport
Planning for an optimal transport route to get from your source area to your
destination area can be streamlined using a live database of Transport schedules
(e.g. Bus, Suburban Rail, Metro etc.).
In the current global state of affairs, all urban planners are realising the
limitation of private vehicle based systems of transportation, as well as the
adverse carbon foot-print that is accompanied by excessive dependence on
private transport. Even countries like the USA have dedicated car-pool (XOV)
lanes, that provides incentives to vehicles where individuals are sharing the ride.
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5. Solution outline
The “EQ Connect” solution will be founded on an Open Source IT platform that
integrates a user with various other platforms- leveraging on already existing
systems, platforms & gateways. The Analytics platform then helps to build
integration services, using Data and models to create citizen services to better
utilise data & systems to integrate better with the Community as well as
Government. These will be modelled on the Open Source framework to enable
the community to add further modules/ interactions to strengthen it.
We have indicated the broad solution outline as listed below, which caters to a
couple of use cases for C-C and G-C interactions.
User Registration
The user will have a one-time registration of their personal attributes.
This will include specification of the personal details through a secure platform,
namely, Name, Age, Sex, Address, Mobile, Email ID etc.
Authorisation of the Mobile number and Email address will be mandatory.
New User Creation
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User Profile Updation
Governance Gateways
The user will have the ability to update information to specific Government
systems, using the proprietary gateways opened by those Government agencies.
It simplifies the user interaction to use a single unified view, from where the
user can update their details to all the bodies (instead of having to know which
website or application to visit for the existing multitude of Government body).
These will rely on the existing IT platforms that already exist with these
Agencies, merely delegating requests that would have normally originated from
the agency websites instead from the centralised EQ platform.
Step 1 (Create the gateways to Govt agencies)
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Step 2 (Using the authenticated gateways to Govt agencies)
Transport Planning
This utility basically tracks down your From (with appropriate defaults, e.g.
From defaults to your Home address & To defaults to your Work address in the
morning, vice-versa in evening) and To co-ordinates and creates an optimal
transport plan using public transport, including:
-
Suburban Rail
Metro
Bus Route
In order to come up with optimised route plan for the citizen, the Platform taps
into the underlying Systems and Database/ data sources for each of the
disparate Transport providers, which could be Suburban Rail, Bus Corporation &
The Metro Rail operator. In the modern day, the data about the schedules, stops
& frequencies are available via data sources & APIs, sometimes, even rendered
with live updates.
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Public Transport Utility Systems Overview
Public Transport Planner Screen
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Community Connect
The platform can be built in various ways. Users entering into the “EQ-Connect”
platform will feed in their personal details, including their address. However,
users can also choose to link themselves in our platform using the Facebook,
Google+ or other social media platforms. This would allow hand-shake with
these platforms thus borrowing information pertaining to the likes & interests of
the individuals enrolled on the platform, thus creating better synergy.
Once authenticated using the social media platforms, there are programming
languages that have APIs (Application Program Interface) that allow to
programmatically connect to the user’s interests using a software programming
interface, e.g. the R Facebook API.
Web Services to connect with Facebook App
The key differentiator is the ability to create Initiatives using the Community
network, and being able to tap into the network, without exposing any of the
private data for any of the members of the community.
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An interactive Dashboard utility helps the citizen tracks the suggested
Initiatives that may be relevant to him / her- in order of perceived match of the
area of interest of the said Initiative to the interests of the same. The citizen
then has the flexibility to add himself/ herself to the causes that are of interest.
Those initiatives get tagged to the citizen and will then be classified as “My
Chosen Initiatives”.
If these are flagged as events (one-time or recurring), they get added to the
calendar, with the ability to have reminders setup ahead of the event.
User privacy is not compromised: citizens in the community cannot directly view
contact details for like-minded users, enrolled for the same Initiative. Citizen
mode of outreach to other citizens will be through the out-reach Initiative. One
can choose not to subscribe to text/ email alerts, if they so desire.
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Car Pool via Network
The concept of car pooling is not unique. Many cities in the World have a
concept of XOV lanes, which favour vehicles which have more than “x” persons
in the car. These have had a significant footprint in terms of providing incentives
to users who car-pool. The same concept is proposed to be rolled out in many
Indian cities. Not with-standing that, many residents are quite happy to car pool
to save the cost and effort on a running basis, not to mention, contributing to an
overall sustainability solution for Urban transport.
What is unique about the proposition is the ability to provide specific preferences
on the car-pooling experience:





Restrict to Members who are 1st level connect (or nth level connect) vs
Unrestricted in terms of car sharing/ riding arrangement
Restrict to Members of the same sex only
Choose to be Driver in car-pool initiating ride or sharing party
Amount to be pooled for shared ride (in pro-rated amounts of distance &
users pooling ride)
Provide desired time of pick-up, with acceptable thresholds of wait time &
destination management (OK to go part distance & move on from there)
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Car Pool screen (Views for Ride Create/ Ride Share)
Level
0
Level
1
Level
2
Christina
Sabrina
Samuel
....
Tom
Peter
Tracy
....
Mom
Dad
Hierarchy Levels (Connect Levels in citizen relationship tree)
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6. Tasks & Timeline
Outlined below are the tasks & timelines. The overall time-frame for this project
is expected to be approximately 6 months.
There will be two aspects to the solution:
 Construction of an Open Source IT platform
 Engineering a Data/ Analytics solution to enable the platform
01-Jan 21-Jan 10-Feb 01-Mar 21-Mar 10-Apr 30-Apr 20-May 09-Jun 29-Jun 19-Jul
Solution Concept
HLD/ ULD Design
GUI Screens
Back-end IT Components
Database Modelling
Integration Services
Transport Models
Route planning
Car Pool Application
Network Development
Network Synergy App
Testing/ QA
Deployment
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7. Conclusion
We believe that the current age of Information Technology (IT) and high speed
data connectivity, as well as the availability of robust Analytics platforms to
process huge amounts of data, brings a paradigm shift to the way Data can
make a difference to the lives of Individuals & the community that they live in.
Our endeavour is to create a Citizen connect platform, that enables G-C and C-C
interactions, leveraging already existing IT/ Data platforms & integrating them
into one common gateway for the citizen.
We have used an example of a relatively complex system of India (yet, one that
is enabled using I.T. systems) & using that as a case study of how data can be
utilised using Mobile/Web-based applications to make ergonomic use cases for
facilitating interactions with Government. It is also notable that the proposed
solution is reflective of the current state of the systems that already exist with
the various agencies. It makes no presumptions about the ability of the existing
I.T. frameworks to either upgrade or integrate.
We believe that this Open Source framework is designed to be scalable, and will
be built in such a way that it can be customised/ engineered to fit to the specific
requirements of various geographies, as well as cater to new modules (citizen
interactions) by allowing the community to build on it.
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