2 years after launch, CM’s data dashboard goes offline

In 2017, Karnataka became the second state after Andhra Pradesh to have a public data dashboard showing progress of various government programmes and projects.

Now, the Pratibimba dashboard has been quietly taken down by the BS Yediyurappa administration.

Pratibimba was a web-based dashboard that showed progress achieved under various government programmes — physical and financial — against targets and deadlines. It was modeled after Andhra Pradesh’s CM Office Real-Time Executive (CORE) dashboard.

The dashboard, launched when Congress’ Siddaramaiah was the chief minister, generated reports and measured performance on key programmes and budgetary promises. This, authorities said, made departments more accountable and efficient.

A key feature of Pratibimba was the time delay feature, which showed how far behind a project was from its completion. The dashboard predicted time delay going by the previous pace of expenditure for a particular project.

Pratibimba remained in use even after the Congress lost the May 2018 polls, which resulted in the Congress-JD(S) coalition coming to power. The then chief minister HD Kumaraswamy embraced the dashboard, which continued to be updated on the 10th of every month to reflect government performance.

However, in early August when the BJP came to power, the dashboard was taken down. “It was a political decision,” a senior IAS officer aware of the issue said.

At present, some of Karnataka’s flagship welfare schemes such as Anna Bhagya (free rice), Ksheera Bhagya (milk for schoolchildren), Krishi Bhagya (helping farmers conserve water) among others were launched when the Congress was in power. “So, politically, the CM would rather have some of his own schemes showcased,” the officer surmised.

The CMO, however, said a new version of Pratibimba was in the works. The second phase of Pratibimba will be launched in a few months, sources said.

The new version will have district-wise performance across departments, programmes and projects, an integrated solution to bring all systems and applications of various departments onto a single platform and feedback mechanism for citizens that will come directly to the CMO for action.

Also, the dashboard will eventually provide star rating for programmes and projects from 1-5 on the basis of performance across parametres.

“The CMO is anchoring the Pratibimba dashboard, but we have been roped in for help and we have had a couple of meetings already,” Additional Chief Secretary (e-Governance) Rajeev Chawla said.