Projects
Citizen Engagement at Scale for Measuring Service Delivery
The Odisha Right to Public Services (ORTPS) Act establishes timely access to over 400 public services as a legal entitlement for every citizen. Delivered through digital systems, these services generate large volumes of administrative data and raise important questions about how citizens access and experience them in practice.
DPIC is working with the Centre for Modernising Government Initiative (CMGI) — the nodal agency for ORTPS — and the Committee for Administrative and Governance Reforms (CA&GR), constituted by the Government of Odisha to strengthen public service delivery, both anchored under the General Administration and Public Grievance Department. DPIC is supporting both bodies to measure citizen awareness of ORTPS services and evaluate scalable approaches for collecting citizen feedback.
Measuring Citizen Awareness at Scale
Knowing one’s rights is the first step to claiming them. Yet measuring awareness of public services across a large and diverse state remains challenging.
DPIC is conducting a citizen awareness and experience survey across ORTPS services through two parallel channels: a WhatsApp-based survey and outbound calls through a government call centre. The survey will help generate evidence on citizen awareness of ORTPS services, how citizens learn about them, and their experience in accessing public services.
Evaluating New Approaches to Citizen Engagement
Digital channels can reach large numbers of citizens quickly and at low cost, but they may not reach all groups equally. Call-centre outreach can provide broader coverage and richer engagement, but at higher cost and lower scale. Neither channel alone is sufficient — and the trade-offs between them have rarely been tested systematically in a public service context.
The survey is designed to compare these approaches systematically. By examining response rates, engagement quality, and reach across population groups, the project will generate evidence on how governments can engage citizens more effectively, equitably, and at scale. Understanding who each channel reaches, and the quality of engagement it enables, is as important as how many citizens it reaches.
The WhatsApp channel tests both text-based and voice-based interactions. This comparative design is also intended to inform the exploration of voice-enabled and AI-assisted citizen feedback systems. By examining who different channels reach, how citizens respond, and where barriers remain, the project seeks to generate evidence to support the responsible use of emerging technologies in citizen engagement.
Building Evidence for Better Service Delivery
In parallel, DPIC is working with CMGI and CA&GR to explore how administrative records generated through ORTPS can be used to better understand service delivery patterns across a set of critical services. As data become available, this work will complement citizen feedback findings and contribute to a broader evidence base on public service delivery.
Together, they are intended to give CMGI and CA&GR a clearer, more grounded picture of how ORTPS services are working — and where they are not.