Centre for Internet & Society

Submitted Comments on the Telangana State Open Data Policy 2016

by Sumandro Chattapadhyay

Last month, the Information Technology, Electronics & Communications Department of the Government of Telangana released the first public draft of the Telangana State Open Data Policy 2016, and sought comments from various stakeholders in the state and outside. The draft policy not only aims to facilitate and provide a framework for proactive disclosure of data created by the state government agencies, but also identify the need for integrating such a mandate within the information systems operated by these agencies as well. CIS is grateful to be invited to submit its detailed comments on the same. The submission was drafted by Anubha Sinha and Sumandro Chattapadhyay.

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Open Data Charter Lead Stewards In-Person Meeting

by Prasad Krishna

Sunil Abraham participated remotely in this meeting which was held in Mexico on July 4 and 5, 2016. The event was organized by Open Data Charter.

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Submitted Comments on the 'Government Open Data Use License - India'

by Anubha Sinha

The public consultation process of the draft open data license to be used by Government of India has ended yesterday. Here we share the text of the submission by CIS. It was drafted by Anubha Sinha, Pranesh Prakash, and Sumandro Chattapadhyay.

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Public Consultation for the First Draft of 'Government Open Data Use License - India' Announced

by Anubha Sinha

The first public draft of the open data license to be used by Government of India was released by the Department of Legal Affairs earlier this week. Comments are invited from general public and stakeholders. These are to be submitted via the MyGov portal by July 25, 2016. CIS was a member of the committee constituted to develop the license concerned, and we contributed substantially to the drafting process.

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Comments on the National Geospatial Policy (Draft, V.1.0), 2016

by Sumandro Chattapadhyay

The Department of Science and Technology published the first public draft of the National Geospatial Policy (v.1.0) on May 05, 2016, and invited comments from the public. CIS submitted the following comments in response. The comments were authored by Adya Garg, Anubha Sinha, and Sumandro Chattapadhyay.

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Protecting the Territory, Killing the Map

by Sumandro Chattapadhyay

The politics of making and using maps in India has taken a sudden and complex turn with the publication of the draft Geospatial Information Regulation Bill, 2016. Contrary to the expectations arising out of several government schemes that are promoting the development of the new digital economy in India – from start-ups to the ongoing expansion of connectivity network – the Bill seems to be undoing various economic and humanitarian efforts, and other opportunities involving maps. This article by Sumandro Chattapadhyay and Adya Garg was published by The Wire on May 16, 2016.

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Legal Challenges to Mapping in India #1 - Laws, Policies, and Cases

by Adya Garg

Responding to the draft Geospatial Information Regulation Bill and the draft National Geospatial Policy made public recently, this post provides an overview of the present configuration of laws, policies, and guidelines that provides the legal framework in India for governance of creation and sharing of geospatial data in India. The post also studies these policies in action by describing the key legal cases around the creation and use of geospatial data. The next post of this series will document the reflections and opinions of the key geospatial industry actors in India, as well as the free and open source mapping community.

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Google, Apple and Microsoft may need licence for satellite mapping in India

by Prasad Krishna

Cold response from MNCs like Google to India's security concerns is seen as a prime reason for the proposed legislation to regulate mapping of the country, a move that critics call "return of the Licence Raj" and "digital nationalism".

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Monitoring Sustainable Development Goals in India: Availability and Openness of Data (Part II)

by Sumandro Chattapadhyay

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are an internationally agreed upon set of developmental targets to be achieved by 2030. There are 17 SDGs with 169 targets, and each target is mapped to one or more indicators as a measure of evaluation. In this and the next blog post, Kiran AB is documenting the availability and openness of data sets in India that are relevant for monitoring the targets under the SDGs. This post offers the findings for the last 10 Goals. The first 7 has already been discussed in the earlier post.

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Consultation on 'National Geospatial Policy' - Notes and Submission

by Anubha Sinha

The Department of Science and Technology, Government of India, has constituted a National Expert Committee for developing a draft National Geospatial Policy (NGP) to provide appropriate guidelines for collection, analysis, use, and distribution of geospatial information across India, and to assure data availability, accessibility and quality. A pre-drafting consultation meeting for the NGP was organised in Delhi on February 03, 2016. Ms. Anubha Sinha represented CIS at the meeting, and shares her notes.

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