Pitroda Seeks to Put Govt Information in Public Domain

Pitroda Seeks to Put Govt Information in Public Domain is a Mint news report by Surabhi Agarwal and Kirthi Rao published on 26 September 2012. The piece covers India’s first-ever government press conference held on Twitter, in which Sam Pitroda, adviser to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on public information infrastructure and innovations, argued for placing government information in the public domain as a means of fostering openness and democratic empowerment. Sunil Abraham cautions that one government official being available on Twitter for a fixed period does not make up for the broader absence of government on social media.

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Article Details

📰 Published in:: Mint
📅 Date:: 26 September 2012
👤 Authors:: Surabhi Agarwal, Kirthi Rao
📄 Type:: News Report
📰 Newspaper Link:: Read Online

Full Text

New Delhi: In the first-ever Indian government press conference on Twitter, Sam Pitroda, adviser to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on public information infrastructure and innovations, championed the cause of putting government information in the public domain to usher in openness and empowerment.

"In India, we have the Right to Information (Act) but the information is locked up in files," he said in a video that was uploaded on YouTube before the conference started. Pitroda said the government has various plans to build robust information infrastructure on a scale that has never been done before.

"I firmly believe that information is the fourth pillar of democracy along with (the) legislature, executive and judiciary," he tweeted as opening remarks during the press conference titled "Democratization of information".

Sunil Abraham, executive director of Bangalore-based research organization Centre for Internet and Society, said too much shouldn't be read into Pitroda holding a press conference on Twitter. One government bureaucrat available on Twitter for a fixed period doesn't make up for the non-existence of the government on social media, he said. "They (government) should be available all the time."

The department of electronics and information technology recently issued guidelines for government agencies on improved engagement with citizens through social media. Tuesday's press conference may spark a trend of more such engagements on social media platforms by government agencies.

Pitroda said that the public information infrastructure (PII) will include a national knowledge network that will connect 1,500 nodes for universities, colleges, research labs and libraries along with connecting 250,000 panchayats in the country through fibre optics. The information network will be operational in the next two years, Pitroda said in the YouTube video.

The government's open data platform (http://www.data.gov.in), the beta site for which was launched some time ago, will provide access to government data and documents, he said.

Even though the government's battles with the Internet continue over issues of regulation, which have often been construed as censorship, an increasing number of political leaders and agencies have been using the route to get their message across.

Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi has sought to engage with people through video chat on Google+ Hangout. West Bengal chief minister and Trinamool Congress (TMC) chief Mamata Banerjee has been using Facebook to make public her views on recent economic and political developments.

The Prime Minister's Office (PMO) has also been communicating over Twitter in the recent past. The authorities have sought to block accounts that style themselves as belonging to the Prime Minister. Account holders have said that some of these are satirical in nature.

Context and Background

This article was published on 26 September 2012, a moment when the UPA government’s relationship with the internet was notably contradictory. On one hand, the government had recently faced intense criticism over internet censorship — Section 66A of the IT Act was being used to arrest individuals for social media posts, and court-ordered website blocks had drawn widespread condemnation. On the other, individual politicians and agencies were beginning to recognise social media as a direct channel to citizens, bypassing traditional press intermediaries. Pitroda’s Twitter press conference sat squarely in this second current: it was a deliberate, visible signal that the government was attempting to modernise its public communications posture.

Sunil Abraham’s comment in the article highlights a structural issue in early government engagement with digital platforms. Occasional appearances by officials on social media did not yet amount to a systematic presence or institutional policy for online communication. His observation that government actors should be available continuously rather than episodically reflects the broader transition underway at the time from traditional broadcast-style communication to persistent digital interaction with citizens.

The article’s closing paragraphs sketch a broader political landscape in which social media engagement was already becoming a competitive electoral and communications tool. Narendra Modi’s use of Google+ Hangouts for video chats with citizens was a notably early example of a politician using a technology platform in a structured, direct way — one that would look prescient in retrospect given his party’s subsequent mastery of social media campaigning in the 2014 general election. The reference to authorities seeking to block satirical Twitter accounts impersonating the Prime Minister adds a sharp irony to the piece: the same government that was holding Twitter press conferences to signal openness was simultaneously attempting to suppress unwanted Twitter voices.