When should I trust what I see myself?

Seeing a problem yourself matters. It does not automatically tell you its cause, how often it happens elsewhere or which official is responsible.

The right response is not to dismiss firsthand experience in favour of a dashboard. It is to state what the observation establishes, then look for the evidence needed for the next claim.

A hypothetical clinic example

You visit a clinic twice during what you believe are its operating hours and find it closed. You can document the two visits, the displayed hours and what you observed.

That does not, by itself, establish that every clinic in the district was closed, that this clinic is always closed or that a named official ordered it shut. Each of those is a further claim.

Ask for the service schedule, any closure notice and the responsible authority's explanation. Check whether the published hours were current. Preserve uncertainty where you cannot establish a detail.

An average does not erase a local failure

Suppose a hypothetical district dashboard reports a high service-delivery rate. That could coexist with a genuine failure at your clinic. The measures may concern different units or periods, and an aggregate does not describe every individual case.

Conversely, two visits do not establish a district-wide rate. You would need an appropriate method and wider evidence for that question.

Write an observation log

Record the date, time, location, expected service and basis for that expectation. Describe what you directly observed and what someone else told you in separate fields.

Keep original photographs or recordings where lawful and safe. Do not stage evidence, alter its meaning or remove context that materially changes the interpretation. A caption should not claim more precision than you can support.

For an existing official record relevant to the problem, a properly directed information request can complement observation. DoPT's RTI guide distinguishes obtaining existing information from requiring an authority to create a new answer. 1

Stay within safe limits

You do not need to confront staff, enter restricted premises, expose other people's private information or put yourself in danger to make an observation count. A factual written record can be useful without becoming a public confrontation.

The strongest account joins observation and documents while keeping their limits visible: “This happened on these dates; this record says this; the explanation for the difference remains unresolved.”