Towards a Vibrant Knowledge Society

Towards a Vibrant Knowledge Society: A stakeholder audit of the Karnataka Jnana Aayoga

Shweta Gaur, Nivedita Kashyap, Meena Nair, R Suresh
Public Affairs Centre: Bangalore (2011)

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This book captures a unique experiment that involved an performance audit of a quasi-governmental department by a civil society organization, with the former opening its doors to the latter for a self-critique exercise. 

The Karnataka Jnana Aayoga (KJA) is a high powered Commission that was constituted in 2008 by the government of Karnataka under the aegis of the Chief Minister’s Office. The mandate of the KJA is to transform the state of Karnataka into a knowledge society by formulating and submitting recommendations to the government that would lead to achieving this objective. The KJA is also the only commission of its kind in India that has worked with multiple government departments to support the implementation of these recommendations. 

Having completed three years of their work, KJA felt the need to assess their work and chart out an action plan for their next phase of work. Public Affairs Centre (PAC), an independent non-for-profit think tank, well known for implementing Citizen Report Cards (CRCs) to assess quality of service delivery, was invited to carry out this audit. PAC adopted a stakeholder approach for conducting this audit and used various methods including workshops, interviews and brainstorming sessions for the same. 

 This book takes the reader through the process of this audit along with the conclusions and recommendations that PAC arrived at, for KJA to be able to achieve its vision.