Making Voices Heard: Using Multimedia to Give Evaluation a Cutting Edge

This article describes an evaluation of public services using Citizen Report Cards, as well as the use of multimedia techniques to disseminate evaluation results in Bangalore, India. The report cards are a tool developed by Public Affairs Centre (PAC) as a way to conduct independent and objective evaluations of the performance of public services based on direct feedback from the citizens who use them. The Report Cards make use of multimedia techniques that provide policymakers with evaluation information that compels them to action.

According to Balakrishnan, sustainable improvement depends on a real push from the people who value public services the most "the users themselves." In the early 1990's, the idea of Citizen Report Cards developed in response to the frustration of citizens who were fed up with poor urban services. This initiative used multimedia (videos, photographs, and presentations of quantitative and qualitative data in computer slide shows) to share evaluation findings. The findings reflect the “voice” of citizens, who included in their report comparisons of different agencies. According to

Balakrishnan, service providers responded quickly to this kind of evaluation.

Part of the success in using the Report Cards, according to Balakrishnan, is the way the results of
the evaluations were disseminated Also important was the way the dynamic multimedia presentations accentuated variations in quality and gaps in service. Simple visual presentations were crafted for public
audiences, and videos were designed to hear and see the actual beneficiaries (or victims) of the service-delivery system.

According to Balakrishnan, this initiative is being shared across India and other countries, in Africa, Asia, Europe, and South America. Balakrishnan describes one challenge brought by this advance as the subsequent need to provide guidance about the amount and type of hard work over time required to achieve these outcomes. PAC is described as now working on a set of web-based tools and learning products to better respond to the many calls for assistance to initiate Citizen Report Cards.