Thanks to Thej for referring me to this earlier. I've set up one Pune-specific project as a pilot, with a lot of one-on-one help from one of their developers. Figured out the workings in the process. Potential to do lots here. Please see forwarded email below. And share with Puneri colleagues if you find it cool!
-- Cheers, Nikhil +91-966-583-1250 Pune, India Self-designed learner at Swaraj University <http://www.swarajuniversity.org> http://nikhilsheth.blogspot.in ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Nikhil VJ <nikhil...@gmail.com> Date: Wed, Oct 21, 2015 at 6:41 PM Subject: 1-minute Crowdsourced project : Localizing Pune's Budget To: Hi Friends, *[quickie for potential volunteers]* Are you familiar with Pune? Please contribute a few minutes and also forward this to friends and relatives! Warning, can get addictive. *http://crowdcrafting.org/project/localpunebudget* <http://crowdcrafting.org/project/localpunebudget> *[explanation follows.. warning : slightly technical]* As part of our (CEE's) ongoing work on participatory governance, I recently brought together all the expenditures mentioned in Pune's Budget book (by taking only the 2015-16 amount allocation and dropping all the myriad other columns which keep changing from section to section): [image: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/18YpZsoC_m9w8KTWqsJaFv0D7ik5ZjJif9OiajGLID90/edit?pli=1#gid=142312120] <https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/18YpZsoC_m9w8KTWqsJaFv0D7ik5ZjJif9OiajGLID90/edit?pli=1#gid=142312120> You can download a copy for your use here: Simplified and Combined Expenditures, Pune 2015-16 Budget Book <https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/18YpZsoC_m9w8KTWqsJaFv0D7ik5ZjJif9OiajGLID90/edit?pli=1#gid=142312120> (note: don't jump at the total.. many repetitions are there as sections and sub-sections are mixed in here, along with transfers from Revenue to Capital which become double entries) And that led to a finding: Out of 9,614 budget items listed, about 1,997 do not have any ward number or whole-city marking alloted. In the "ward" column, that is. Though many of these are very clearly belonging to a specific ward when you read the budget item. It would be great if we could assign the the proper ward numbers to these works : we would then have a more accurate picture about the public investment made in various wards of Pune. *Meanwhile, in a mailing list far far away...* While headbanging on polling booth locations data (too messed up, dude!), I was referred to a platform called "*Crowdcrafting*" wherein one can crowdsource tasks for science and civic hacking purposes. It's different from regular survey forms in this way : - Form: Exact same question asked to 1000 people, 1000 responses to one question. Many to one. - Crowdcrafting : 1000 different questions (of similar structure but different content) split among 1000 people (or more if you use redundancy feature), each chipping in a little bit. 1000 separate Q-A pairs obtained at end of exercise. Each to each. Kind of like how we used to leak the question paper before exams with very little time on hand and each one would figure out one... [whoops! censored! you never saw this! look away!] So the task of finding the missing wards, became a great pilot project to try out and learn how to use this platform. With a lot of one-on-one help from one of the website's developers (basically got him to write the main code and then did cosmetic adjustments), I was able to get a project up and running. So, if you'd like to check it out, click below: <http://crowdcrafting.org/project/localpunebudget/> Click the image or here to be taken to the project page. <http://crowdcrafting.org/project/localpunebudget/> On hitting "Contribute", you will be taken to a super-comfortable interface, in which all relevant information is loaded up for you.. all you have to do is type the correct number, and press Enter. As soon as you do that, the next item will load for you automatically. Screenshot: There's more details in the page and even a map embedded below so you can figure out which ward a particular area comes under. USP of this method is that we can eke out one contribuion in as little as a minute : it's made really simple and easy for the contributor, and so we can maximize the number of contributors. Next steps, maybe a few weeks down the line: I'll try to make a simplified walkthrough that should help one to set up their crowdsourcing project here. Will share it when made. There's a lot of possbilities here, like geo-tagging, transcripting scanned docs, recognizing plant species, etc. If you can put your stuff and accompanying data in an excel file, then you can use this. I'm also wondering if we can use this for transcripting / translation of books / films. But the platform isn't a point-and-click one.. while things get very easy for the citizen contributor, for the project creator there's some amount of coding needed, so we need to systemize things and give a good explanation. Your feedback would be most appreciated. If you're interested in trying this out for another project, let's connect! (at slow pace, kindly note) Oh, and we do need those ward numbers filled in soon. Are you familiar with Pune? Please contribute just a few minutes and also forward this to friends and relatives! Warning, can get addictive. *http://crowdcrafting.org/project/localpunebudget* <http://crowdcrafting.org/project/localpunebudget> -- Cheers, Nikhil +91-966-583-1250 Pune, India Self-designed learner at Swaraj University <http://www.swarajuniversity.org> http://nikhilsheth.blogspot.in -- Datameet is a community of Data Science enthusiasts in India. 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