Centre for Internet & Society

This post documents the overlap of CIS India's work with the nine pillars of the Digital India campaign. The list reflects work completed/underway as of September 2015.

Broadband Highways

  1. National Fibre Optics Network: Studying the implementation BBNL and promoting shared backhall infrastructure.
  2. Net Neutrality: Made submissions to the TRAI consultation, DoT Panel and testified before the Parliamentary Standing Committee on IT.
  3. Internet Governance: Engaging with WSIS processes and the ICANN; participating in internet governance consultations.

Universal Access to Mobile Connectivity

  1. CIS advises the deployment of shared spectrum test beds in IIT Hyderabad and IIT Delhi, supported by DEITY (Budget: INR 47.6 lakhs).
  2. Text to Speech engine for 12 Indic languages using FOSS (Budget: INR 1.8 crores).
  3. CIS serves on the High level committee for the National Electronic Accessibility Policy.

Public Internet Access Programme

  1. Advising the Task-force constituted by the Delhi government for the roll out of Delhi Public WiFi.

e-Governance: Reforming Government through Technology

  1. Policy, technical and mathematical research on UID.
  2. Conducting case studies on public sector Big Data initiatives in India (Budget: 80K USD), and designing a research network for multi-year project on Big data in the global south (estimated total budget: 2M USD).
  3. Privacy textbook featuring 50 court cases and 50 laws/policies, citizen’s draft of the privacy bill; domain specific briefs; multi stakeholder roundtables (Budget: 220K Pounds).

e-Kranti  Electronic Delivery of Services

  1. Voluntarily advising implementation of the CCTNS project for Karnataka.
  2. Submitted comments on Information Technology (Electronic Service Deliverables) Rules, 2011.

Electronics Manufacturing

  1. Pervasive Technologies Project: This is a 430K CAD research project aimed at increasing indigenous manufacturing of mobile devices in India and China.
  2. National IP Policy and Strategy: CIS has submitted comments to the DIPP on IP reform, in sync with the Make in India campaign.

Information for All

  1. Participation in and research around WIPO negotiations and meetings in support of Indian negotiators aimed at reforming Indian IP.
  2. Submitted comments to the CSIR, DBT-DST and ICAR on development of Open Access policy.
  3. Indic Wikipedia programme: Creating content and engaging with community for six Indic wikipedias (Budget: 200K USD per annum).
  4. Augmenting, supporting, and capacity building for supply and demand of open (government) data in India (Budget: 500K for 2 years).

IT for Jobs

  1. FOSS in curriculum: Encouraged the introduction of FOSS in university curriculum through RTI requests and outreach programmes.
  2. IP reform of product development: Studying the impact of IP on mobile applications development in India.
  3. Undertaking research and analysis of technology incubators in India.
  4. Hosting and facilitating work of several startups, a continuing collaborative process.

Early Harvest Programme

Completed work on Open Educational Resources (OERs) through Wikipedia programmes, providing functioning of NMEICT and other steps.

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