Social Cops for better Decision Making

Information is key for everything. It makes the world run easily. In order to make better decisions proper information is important. Social cops is started for this purpose by Varun Banka and Prukalpa Sankar. They track down and collect information regarding several parameters in society like quality of public infrastructure, adherence to drugs, access to medical care, teacher attendance in public schools etc. This helps government and nonprofit organizations to make better informed decisions about various things.

They use mobile and software infrastructure to turn human beings into sources of valuable data on unmonitored parameters. They process millions of discrete data points to get information which is not available at other places. These information is later supplied to governments, corporate heads, policy makers, and even nonprofits so that they can understand where to focus on.

They use various method to collect data. These include crowdsourcing where people use their mobile application to send feedback about their surroundings and other things they find. People send reports of bad infrastructure like non-working street lamps among other things.

They use surveys in several areas to monitor untracked parameters like teacher attendance on a real time basis. They also use dial-an-answer surveys to find information on topics like preventive healthcare.