Centre for Internet and Society

Where's My Data? Submission for Knight News Challenge 2015

sumandro — 2015-10-05T15:00:16Z

We are very excited to be contribute to a join submission with DataMeet and Oorvani for the Knight News Challenge 2015. We are proposing "an application for users to search for locally-relevant data, discuss missing data, demand data, explore and respond to data demands by others, and start data crowd-sourcing exercises." Please go to the submission page and support our project. The text of the proposal is available below. It was prepared by Nisha Thompson of DataMeet, Meera K of Oorvani, and I. The 'Where's My Data' banner is created by Nisha using icons from the Noun Project.

Please support our project by visiting and 'applauding' it on the Knight News Challenge website: https://www.newschallenge.org/challenge/data/entries/where-s-my-data. You will have to log in to the website though, apologies for that.

Where's My Data? Search, Demand, and Collect Data

In one sentence, describe your idea as simply as possible.

An application for users to search for locally-relevant data, discuss missing data, demand data, explore and respond to data demands by others, and start data crowd-sourcing exercises.

Full Description

The proposed application aims to solve two key problems in accessing reliable data faced by citizens, journalists, and researchers. The first problem is knowing where a required data set can be found, and the second problem is collecting the required data set if it does not exist in the first place.

Many individual initiatives have been developed to collect specific data. For example, Powercuts (http://powercuts.in/) was a Ushahidi installation to crowd-source data using Twitter, Kiirti (http://www.kiirti.org/) was used to map complaints about auto drivers, IChangeMyCity (http://www.ichangemycity.com/) is a platform that collects general complaints from around Bangalore. However, these apps were either short lived because they could not sustain their one premise or they do not give insight into what people want to know and what data is important to them. Also, they often did not open up this data to be used by others, beyond visualisations offered on the sites.

Citizens have many questions regarding their urban surroundings - how much water is coming to the neighbourhood daily, where are the waste pick up trucks, what is the status of a road repairing process, etc, the answers require data that either is difficult to get or doesn't answer their query in the way they want. Journalists and researchers are also interested in collecting and analysing these same data sets. A one off platform for one issue won't properly represent the demand for information in modern day (data starved) India.

For example, a local residents’ group wanted to impress on their elected rep the seriousness of the incidence of a disease, as the local government was not taking concrete steps to manage the emerging epidemic. In the absence of official data on suspected cases of illness, this application could help them to reach out through e-mails and social media networks to do a quick survey on how many residents or their family members have got affected.

The application will not only make it easier to undertake such crowd-sourcing efforts, but also to share the data back and make it open for usage by others, including journalists and researchers.

We are already building an Urban Open Data Platform for Bengaluru, India. The application will allow searching this portal and any other such portal, especially if any is developed by the municipality. It will also pipe the crowd-sourced data to this Urban Open Data Platform.

This tool will reduce duplication of data gathering, gives data a longer shelf life and acts as a source of public data that feeds into a city-wide urban Open Data Portal under development by a consortium that we are part of.

How will the Application Work?

The application will allow the user to search for data across the data catalogues connected to the application.
If the data is not found, the user can post details about the required data, which other users in her/his networks can see and comment on. They can either point the person towards an existing data set, or support the need to collect the data being demanded.
When the user finds out that the data set s/he needs does not exist, the application will allow her/him to start a crowd-sourcing exercise, using various channels such as e-mails, social media posts, web-based questionnaires, etc.
For each of these channels, a separate plug-in will be developed so as to open up the software development process. For this project, we will focus on developing plug-ins for two channels: 1) questionnaires integrated with the Citizen Matters website, and 2) use tweets to collect replies using a unique hashtag.
User can share the crowd-sourcing request within her/his own social networks, or use one of the groups (say, the Citizen Matters group focusing on local journalism, or the DataMeet group focusing on open data enthusiasts in the city) to share their calls for data collection.

Briefly Describe the Need that You're Trying to Address

A common cry in Indian cities is the lack of datasets required to understand issues, either at local or at national scales. This tool will be the place to voice demands, ask others about potential sources, or an easy way to create data sourcing activities.This will enable journalists, advocacy organisations, and researchers to search for data and help others to find the data they are looking for. It also records demands for non-existing data and helps take initiatives to collect such data.

What Progress have You Made so Far?

The team is already working on an Urban Open Data Platform, that will host public data, and a data catalog. We have already executed a few crowd-sourcing projects, and helped develop tools for journalists and researchers interested in civic issues.A data source search tool has been in development in the form of Open Data JSON <https://github.com/datameet/opendata.json>. A Bangalore focused data catalog has been in use for awhile as well and provides a base of data to use for people’s search <http://openbangalore.org>.

What would be a Successful Outcome for Your Project?

Success for this project means having a better understanding of what information is needed most by people and what data is required. We will gain detailed evidence regarding what kind of data people want. This entails a collection of questions, who is asking and from where, and what data gaps exist. The number of crowdsourcing projects initiated shows the intensity of the need, and how comfortable citizens are asking for data and proactively starting a data collection project.

Please List your Team Members and their Relevant Experience/Skills

Meera K, Oorvani Foundation, a media group who will provide editorial support to curate data, dissemination of data or queries, and audience reach. Nisha Thompson and Thejesh GN, from DataMeet, open data community, who will provide the technology and community aspects of the tool. Sumandro Chattapadhyay of the Centre for Internet and Society, will help planning the project and linking the effort with other Indian and global initiatives in open data and development.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/wheres-my-data-submission-for-knight-news-challenge-2015

IRC16 - Studying Internet in India - Poster

sumandro — 2015-10-07T10:24:46Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/CISRAW_IRC16_Poster01.png

Internet Researchers' Conference (IRC) 2016 - Studying Internet in India: Call for Sessions

sumandro — 2015-10-07T10:31:11Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/internet-researchers-conference-irc-2016-studying-internet-in-india-call-for-sessions

Internet Researchers' Conference (IRC) 2016 - Studying Internet in India: Call for Sessions (Extended to Nov 22)

sumandro — 2015-11-15T07:48:17Z

With great excitement, we are announcing the beginning of an annual conference series titled Internet Researchers' Conference (IRC), the first edition of which is to take place in Delhi during February 25-27, 2016 (yet to be confirmed). This first conference will focus on the theme of 'Studying Internet in India.' The word 'study' here is a shorthand for a range of tasks, from documentation and theory-building, to measurement and representation. We invite you to propose sessions for the conference by Sunday, November 22, 2015. Final sessions will be selected during December and announced by December 31, 2015. Below are the details about the conference series, as well instructions for proposing a session for the conference.

Call for Sessions document: Download (PDF)

Call for Sessions poster: Download (PNG)

Internet Researchers’ Conference

The last decades have seen a growing entanglement of our daily lives with the internet, not only as modes of communication but also as shared socio-politico-cultural spaces, and as objects of study. The emergence of new artifacts, conditions, and sites of power/knowledge with the prevalence of digital modes of communication, consumptions, production, distribution, and appropriation have expectedly attracted academic and non-academic explorers across disciplines, professions, and interests. Researchers across the domains of arts, humanities, and social sciences have attempted to understand life on the internet, or life after the internet, and the way digital technologies mediate various aspects of our being today. These attempts have in turn raised new questions around understanding of digital objects, online lives, and virtual networks, and have contributed to complicating disciplinary assumptions, methods, and boundaries.

The Researchers at Work (RAW) programme at the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) is very excited to invite you to take part in the first of a series of annual conferences for researchers (academic or otherwise) studying internet in India. These conferences will be called the Internet Researchers' Conference (IRC), with the abbreviation reminding us of an early protocol for text-based communication over internet. The first edition will be organised around the theme of ‘studying internet in India.’ The word study here is a shorthand for a range of tasks, from documentation and theory-building, to measurement and representation.

This conference series is founded on the following interests:

Creating discussion spaces for researchers studying internet in India and in other comparable regions.
Foregrounding the multiplicity, hierarchies, tensions, and urgencies of the digital sites and users in India.
Accounting for the various layers, conceptual and material, of experiences and usages of internet and networked digital media in India.
Exploring and practicing new modes of research and documentation necessitated by new (digital) forms of objects of power/knowledge.

Studying Internet in India

The inaugural conference will be held in Delhi (to be confirmed) on February 25-27, 2015. It will comprise of discussion and workshop sessions taking place during the first two days, and a writing sprint and a final round table taking place during the third day.

The conference will specifically focus on the following questions:

How do we conceptualise, as an intellectual and political task, the mediation and transformation of social, cultural, political, and economic processes, forces, and sites through internet and digital media technologies in contemporary India?
How do we frame and explore the experiences and usages of internet and digital media technologies in India within its specific historical-material contexts shaped by traditional hierarchies of knowledge, colonial systems of communication, post-independence initiatives in nation-wide technologies of governance, a rapidly growing telecommunication market, and informal circuits of media production and consumption, among others?
What tools and methods are made available by arts, humanities, social science, and technical disciplines to study internet in India; how and where do they fail to meet the purpose; what revisions and fresh tool building are becoming necessary; and how should the usage of such tools and methods be taught?
Given the global techno-economic contours of the internet, and the starkly hierarchical and segmented experiences and usages of the same in India, how do we begin to use the internet as a space for academic and creative practice and intervention?

Sessions

The conference will not be organised around papers but sessions. Each session will be one and half hour long. Potential participants may propose sessions that largely engage with one of the questions listed above.

Each proposed session must have at least two, and preferably three, co-leaders, who will drive the session, and prepare a session document after the conference. The proposed session can either involve a discussion, or a workshop.

In a discussion session, the co-leaders may present their works (not necessarily of the academic kind), or invite others to present their works, on a specific theme, which will be followed by a discussion, as structured by the co-leaders.

In a workshop session, the co-leaders will engage the participants to undertake individual or collaborative work in response to a series of questions, challenges, or provocations offered by the co-leaders at the beginning of the session. The proposed work may involve writing, searching, copying, building, etc., but not speaking.

Both the kinds of sessions are open to presentations and collaborations in the textual format or in other formats, including but not limited to code-based works and multimedia installations.

Writing Sprint

At the writing sprint, on the third day morning, all the participants will collaboratively put together the first draft of a handbook on tools and methods of studying Internet in India. It will be created as an online, open access, multilingual, and editable (wiki-like) book, and will be meant for extensive usage and augmentation by students, researchers, and others.

Final Round Table

This will take place after the lunch on the third day to wrap-up the conversations (and propose new initiatives, hopefully) emerging during the previous days of the conference, to make plans for follow-up works (including the first IRC Reader), and to speculate about the shape of the next year’s conference.

IRC Reader

The IRC Reader will be produced as documentation of the conversations and activities at the conference. The Reader, obviously, will have the same theme as the conference, and will largely comprise of the session documentation (not necessarily textual) prepared by the co-leaders of the session concerned. Once all the session documentation is shared by the co-leaders and is temporarily published online, all the participants will be invited to share their comments, which will all be part of the final Reader of the conference.

Proposing a Session

To propose a session, each team of two/three co-leaders will have to submit the following documents:

The name of the session: It should be created as a hashtag, as in #BlackLivesMatter, or #RefugeesWelcome.
A plan of the proposed session that should clarify its context, the key questions/challenges/provocations for the session, and how they connect to any one of the four questions listed above. Write no more than one page.
If it is a discussion session: Mention what will be presented at the session, and who will present it. Share the abstracts of the papers to be presented (if any). Each abstract should not be longer than 300 words.
If it is a workshop session: Mention what you expect the participants to do during the session, and how the co-leaders will support them through the work. Write no more than one page.
Three readings, or objects, or software that you expect the participants to know about before taking part in the session.
CVs of all the co-leaders of the session.

We understand that finding co-leaders for a session you have in mind might be difficult in certain cases. One possible way for you to find co-leaders is by sharing your session idea on the researchers@cis-india.org mailing list. Alternatively, you may keep an eye on the list to see what potential topics are being discussed. If you are facing any difficulty subscribing to the mailing list, please write to raw@cis-india.org.

All session proposals must be submitted by Sunday, November 22 (extended), 2015, via email sent to raw@cis-india.org.

Selection of Sessions

All proposed sessions, along with related documents, will be published online by November 30. All co-leaders of proposed sessions will be invited to vote for 8 sessions before December 15. The sessions with maximum votes will be selected for the conference, and the list of such sessions will be published on December 31, 2015.

Venue, Accommodation, and Travel

The conference is most likely to take place in Delhi on February 25-27, 2016. The place, dates, and venue will be confirmed by December 31, 2015.

The conference organiser(s) will cover all costs related to accommodation and hospitality during the conference.

Unfortunately, we are not sure if we will be able to pay for travel expenses of the participants. We will confirm this by December 31, 2015.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/irc16-call

Strategic Issues Emerging from Open Access Dialogues - Final Report

sumandro — 2015-10-11T04:39:10Z

A series of discussions - on the Chat Literacy forum of ELDIS and on Twitter - was organised during November 2012 to March 2013 to identify the global challenges in 'Navigating the Complexities of Open Access'. The discussions were facilitated by Eve Gray and Kelsey Wiens, in partnership with The African Commons Project (South Africa) and the Centre for Internet and Society (India), through support from the Institute of Development Studies, Sussex. On behalf of CIS, Sumandro Chattapadhyay co-coordinated and contributed to these discussions.

The final report of the Open Access Dialogues was published by the Institute of Development Studies, Sussex, and can be accessed here.

A sub-report summarising the experiences and arguments expressed by the Indian participants in the Dialogues was prepared by Sumandro, which can be read below or downloaded here.

Strategic issues emerging from the comments of Indian participants

1. Lacking OA awareness, even among scholarly communities

Many, if not all, commentators emphasised the unfortunate lack of awareness about the notion and possibilities of Open Access across India, including among the scholarly and/or higher education related communities. Often the notion of Open Access is quite familiar, especially among scholars, but without a clear understanding of its benefits and how to make one's scholarly works openly accessible.

2. Uneven geography of OA success stories

The above point must be read along with strong success stories emerging from Indian OA journals, mostly from science disciplines. A recent study reveals that 970 Indian OA journals are included in the 'Journals Citation Report 2011' (science), and the Impact Factors of these journals are on the rise. This indicates towards a very uneven geography of OA awareness and adoption in India, with the OA agenda being pursued successfully by specific scholarly communities but not translating into widespread support across the higher academia landscape.

3. Global businesses of scholarly works and complicity of Indian researchers

The role of global businesses of scholarly works in impending the Open Access agenda in the India was mentioned by most of the commentators. The publication, and especially distribution, of publicly funded research is dominated by global publication houses. Additionally, the complicity of Indian researchers in reinforcing the culture of exclusive and 'prestigious' journals published by global publishers is also well understood and criticised.

4. Citation Indexes as necessary evil

While the discussants argued against an over-emphasis on Impact Factors in judging a quality and success of journals, especially for IF being biased against new journals, and thus against newly started OA journals. At the same time, measurement of citations remains a crucial way of understanding readership and impact of scholarly works. There was a strong recommendation of article-level metrics as opposed to journal-level ones. Studies were suggested to argue that article-level impact increases with OA journals. Another concern is bibliographic malpractices, including biases against citing works from Indian (or, developing world) scholars and against citing works published in non-'prestigious' journals.

5. Open Access must not only be about access to journals

A strongly expressed opinion was that the OA agenda must move beyond journal publications. The journal-centric approach emphasises the supply side of knowledge but fails to appreciate the demand of knowledge, especially in a country like India where primary and secondary education remain vital challenges. Further, even within higher academic circles, OA agenda must expand into other forms of scholarly works beyond journal essays, such as primary data and other research materials, especially since all such forms are also produced by public funds. Open Access to 'gray literature' (produced by private and non-profit research organisations) is also crucial, as much policy-making tends to be shaped by such works.

6. Open Access and the consumers of knowledge

The commentators emphasised the nature of OA to knowledge as a public good. The OA agenda must address the consumers of knowledge outside the university system, and especially across socio-economic classes. While open university education and participation in MOOC-models of learning are on the rise in India, there is a threat that this digital-centric approach reinforced existing digital divides in access to knowledge.

Policy Suggestions

1.'Mainstreaming' the OA agenda: Instead of locating OA as a separate agenda, it will be useful to 'mainstream' it within larger development/research related funding initiatives by making OA publications of research outcomes a necessary grants condition.

2.OA as the entry point to a broader 'open' agenda: The OA agenda can build upon its existing institutional and governmental acceptance and implementation to promote a broader 'open' agenda, including open sharing of research data, open formats for and sharing of bibliographic data etc.

3.Moving the OA discussion and knowledge organisation beyond higher education communities: Addressing non-university circuits of learning, of both institutional (primary and secondary education) and non-institutional (informal learning groups around MOOC courses) varieties, is a crucial challenge for the OA agenda in the developing world. Another crucial community of potential OA supporters would be the non-governmental and non-profit organisations working in the field of education in particular, and development in general.

4.Removing policy biases against Open Access journals in academic administration: Combined global and local efforts remains important to reshape national academic administration policies to stop discrimination against OA publication of scholarly works, such as higher academic benefit for publication in closed 'prestigious' journals.

5.Encouraging and supporting scholarly communities (often with a disciplinary and/or thematic common ground) to undertake OA knowledge production: Promoting the OA agenda must also adopt a bottom-up strategy in the developing world, and this would require capacity and community building exercises involving local and global scholarly colleagues and enthusiasts gathered around thematic and/or disciplinary focii, as well as institutional and governmental recognition and support.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/strategic-issues-emerging-from-open-access-dialogues-final-report

Sumandro C - Open Access Dialogues - Strategic Issues Emerging from the Comments of Indian Participants

sumandro — 2015-10-11T04:34:19Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/sumandro-c-open-access-dialogues-2013

Catalina Alzate - Speech Bubbles

sumandro — 2019-10-10T07:53:31Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/CatalinaAlzate.jpg

CIS-DWRU - APC-FIRN - Domestic Work in the Gig Economy - Concept Note

sumandro — 2019-11-14T07:05:52Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/cis-dwru-apc-firn-domestic-work-in-the-gig-economy-concept-note

Sequoia India’s Designathon 2016

sumandro — 2016-09-17T13:39:12Z

Along with their annual hackathon, Sequoia India organised a designathon in Bangalore on September 10-11, 2016. The participants picked one of three tracks - gamification, information visualisation, and smart acceleration - and developed an interface design or clickable prototype or a demo video. Sumandro Chattapadhyay was invited to participate as a mentor for the information visualisation track.

URL: http://www.sequoiahack.com/sequoia-design/

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/sequoia-india-designathon-2016

Big Data

sumandro — 2016-09-22T07:20:29Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/big-data

Workshop on 'Privacy after Big Data' (Delhi, November 12)

sumandro — 2016-11-12T10:14:52Z

The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) and the Sarai programme, CSDS, invite you to a workshop on 'Privacy after Big Data: What Changes? What should Change?' on Saturday, November 12. This workshop aims to build a dialogue around some of the key government-led big data initiatives in India and elsewhere that are contributing significant new challenges and concerns to the ongoing debates on the right to privacy. It is an open event. Please register to participate.

Invitation note and agenda: Download (PDF)

Venue and RSVP

Venue: Centre for the Study of Developing Societies 29, Rajpur Road, Civil Lines, Delhi 110054.

Location on Google Maps: https://www.google.com/maps/place/CSDS/@28.677775,77.2162523,17z/.

Registration: Complete this form.

Concept Note

In this age of big data, discussions about privacy are intertwined with the use of technology and the data deluge. Though big data possesses enormous value for driving innovation and contributing to productivity and efficiency, privacy concerns have gained significance in the dialogue around regulated use of data and the means by which individual privacy might be compromised through means such as surveillance, or protected. The tremendous opportunities big data creates in varied sectors ranges from financial technology, governance, education, health, welfare schemes, smart cities to name a few.

With the UID (“Aadhaar”) project re-animating the Right to Privacy debate in India, and the financial technology ecosystem growing rapidly, striking a balance between benefits of big data and privacy concerns is a critical policy question that demands public dialogue and research to inform an evidence based decision.

Also, with the advent of potential big data initiatives like the ambitious Smart Cities Mission under the Digital India Scheme, which would rely on harvesting large data sets and the use of analytics in city subsystems to make public utilities and services efficient, the tasks of ensuring data security on one hand and protecting individual privacy on the other become harder.

As key privacy principles are at loggerheads with big data activities, it is important to consider privacy as an embedded component in the processes, systems and projects, rather than being considered as an afterthought. These examples highlight the current state of discourse around data protection and privacy in India and the shapes they are likely to take in near future.

This workshop aims to build a dialogue around some of the key government-led big data initiatives in India and elsewhere that are contributing significant new challenges and concerns to the ongoing debates on the right to privacy.

Agenda

09:00-09:30 Tea and Coffee

09:30-10:00 Introduction

Mr. Amber Sinha and Mr. Sandeep Mertia
This session will introduce the topic of the workshop in the context of the ongoing works at CIS and Sarai.

10:00-11:00 From Privacy Bill(s) to ‘Habeas Data’

Dr. Usha Ramanathan and Mr. Vipul Kharbanda
This session will present a brief history of the privacy bill(s) in India and end with reflections on ‘habeas data’ as a lens for thinking and actualising privacy after big data.

11:00-11:30 Tea and Coffee

11:30-12:30 Digital ID, Data Protection, and Exclusion

Ms. Amelia Andersdotter and Mr. Srikanth Lakshmanan
This session will discuss national centralised digital ID systems, often operating at a cross-functional scale, and highlight its implications for discussions on data protection, welfare governance, and exclusion from public and private services.

12:30-13:30 Digital Money and Financial Inclusion

Dr. Anupam Saraph and Ms. Astha Kapoor
This session will focus on the rise of digital banking and online payments as core instruments of financial inclusion in India, especially in the context of the Jan Dhan Yojana and UPI, and reflect on the concerns around privacy and financial data.

13:30-14:30 Lunch

14:30-15:30 Big Data and Mass Surveillance

Dr. Anja Kovacs and Mr. Matthew Rice
This session will reflect on the rise of mass communication surveillance across the world, and the evolving challenges of regulating il/legal surveillance by government agencies.

15:30-16:15 Privacy is (a) Right

Mr. Apar Gupta and Ms. Kritika Bhardwaj
This brief session is to share initial ideas and strategies for articulating and actualising a constitutional right to privacy in India.

16:15-16:30 Tea and Coffee

16:30-17:30 Round Table

An open discussion session to conclude the workshop.

Speakers

Mr. Amber Sinha

Amber works on issues surrounding privacy, big data, and cyber security. He is interested in the impact of emerging technologies like artificial intelligence and learning algorithms on existing legal frameworks, and how they need to evolve in response. Amber studied humanities and law at National Law School of India University, Bangalore.

E-mail: amber at cis-india dot org.

Twitter: @ambersinha07.

Ms. Amelia Andersdotter

Amelia Andersdotter has been a Member of the European Parliament. She works on practical implications of data protection laws and consumer information security in Sweden, and digital rights in the Europe in general. Presently she is residing in Bangalore, where she is a visiting scholar with Centre for Internet and Society. She holds a BSc in Mathematics.

URL: https://dataskydd.net.

Twitter: @teirdes.

Dr. Anja Kovacs

Dr. Anja Kovacs directs the Internet Democracy Project in Delhi, India, which works for an Internet that supports free speech, democracy and social justice in India and beyond. Anja’s research and advocacy focuses especially on questions regarding freedom of expression, cybersecurity and the architecture of Internet governance. She has been a member of the of the Investment Committee of the Digital Defenders Partnership and of the Steering Committee of Best Bits, a global network of civil society members. She has also worked as an international consultant on Internet issues, including for the Independent Commission on Multilateralism, the United Nations Development Programme Asia Pacific and the UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression, Mr. Frank La Rue, as well as having been a Fellow at the Centre for Internet and Society in Bangalore, India.

Internet Democracy Project: https://internetdemocracy.in.

Twitter: @anjakovacs.

Dr. Anupam Saraph

Anupam Saraph has extensively researched India's UID number that has been widely regarded as the game changer in development programs. It has come to be linked with both public and private databases and become the requirement for access to entitlements, benefits, services and rights. Dr. Saraph, who has the design of at least two identification programs to his credit has researched the UID’s functional creep since its inception.

He has been dissecting the myths of what the UID is or is not. He has also tracked the consequences of its linkages on databases that protect national security, sovereignty, democratic status and the entire banking and money system in India. He has also highlighted the implications of its use for targeted delivery of cash subsidies from the Consolidated Fund of India. He has written and lectured widely about the devastating impact of the UID number on development programs, national security and the governability of India.

As a Professor of Systems, Governance and Decision Sciences, Environmental Systems and Business he mentors students and teaches systems, information systems, environmental systems and sustainable development at universities in Europe, Asia and the Americas. He has worked with the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Rijksuniversitiet Groningen, RIVM, University of Edinburgh, Resource Use Institute, Systems Research Institute among others. Dr. Saraph has had the unique distinction of being India’s only person who has held the only office of a City CIO in India, in a PPP arrangement with government, industry and himself. He has also been the first e-governance Advisor to a State government. Dr. Saraph has held CxO and ministerial level positions and serves as an independent director on the boards of Public and Private Sector companies and NGOs. He is also the President of the Nagrik Chetna Manch, an NGO charged with the mission to bring accountability in governance.

Dr. Saraph is also actively engaged in civil society where he participates in several environmental, resource and nature conservation initiatives, has authored draft legislations for river and natural resource conservation, right to good governance and has contributed to governance, election and democratic reforms. Dr. Saraph is a regular columnist in newspapers and writes on issues of governance, future design, technology and education from a systems perspective.

As a future designer and recognized as a global expert on complex systems he helps individuals and organisations understand and design the future of their worlds. Together they address the toughest challenges, accomplish missions and achieve business goals. He also supports building capacity to address the challenges of today as well as to build future designs through teams and effective leadership. Since the eighties Dr. Saraph has modeled complex systems of cities, countries, regions and even the planet. His models have been awarded internationally and even placed in 10-year permanent exhibitions.

Dr Saraph works with business and government executives, civil society leaders, politicians, generals, civil servants, police, trade unionists, community activists, United Nations and ASEAN officials, judges, writers, media, architects, designers, technologists, scientists, entrepreneurs, board members and business leaders of small, mid and large single and trans-national companies, religious leaders and artists across a dozen countries and various industry sectors to help them and their organisations succeed in their missions. He advises the World Economic Forum through its Global Agenda Council for Complex Systems and the Club of Rome, Indian National Association as a founder life member.

Dr Saraph holds a PhD in designing sustainable systems from the faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences of the Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, the Netherlands.

Website: http://anupam.saraph.in.

Twitter: @anupamsaraph.

Mr. Apar Gupta

Apar Gupta practices law in Delhi. He is also one of the co-founders of the Internet Freedom Foundation. His work and writing on public interest issues can be accessed at his personal website www.apargupta.com.

Twitter: @aparatbar.

Ms. Astha Kapoor

Astha Kapoor is a public policy strategy consultant working on financial inclusion and digital payments. Currently, she is working with MicroSave. Her tasks involve a focus on government to people (G2P) payments - and her work spans strategy, advisory and evaluation with the DBT Mission, Office of the Chief Economic Advisor, NITI Aayog and ministries pertaining to food, fuel and fertilizer. She recently designed a pilot to digitize uptake of fertilizers in Krishna district, and evaluated the newly introduced coupon system in the Public Distribution System in Bengaluru.

Twitter: @kapoorastha.

Ms. Kritika Bhardwaj

Kritika Bhardwaj works as a Programme Officer at the Centre for Communication Governance (CCG), National Law University, Delhi. Her main areas of research are privacy and data protection. At CCG, she has written about the privacy implications of several contemporary issues such as Aadhaar (India's unique identification project), cloud computing and the right to be forgotten. A lawyer by training, Kritika has a keen interest in information law and human rights law.

Centre for Communication Governance, NLU Delhi: http://ccgdelhi.org.

Twitter: @Kritika12.

Mr. Matthew Rice

Matthew Rice is an Advocacy Officer at Privacy International working across the organisation engaging with international partners and strengthening their capacity on communications surveillance issues. He has previously worked at Privacy International as a consultant building the Surveillance Industry Index, the largest publicly available database on the private surveillance sector ever assembled. Matthew graduated from University of Aberdeen with an LLB (Hons.) and also has an MA in Human Rights from University College London.

Privacy International: https://privacyinternational.org.

Twitter: @mattr3.

Mr. Sandeep Mertia

Sandeep Mertia is a Research Associate at The Sarai Programme, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi. He is an ICT engineer by training with research interests in Science & Technology Studies, Software Studies and Anthropology. He is conducting an ethnographic study of emerging modes of data-driven knowledge production in the social sector.

Sarai: http://sarai.net.

Twitter: @SandeepMertia.

Academia: https://daiict.academia.edu/SandeepMertia.

Mr. Srikanth Lakshmanan

Srikanth is a software professional with interests in Internet, follower of Internet policy discussions, volunteers for multiple online campaigns related to Internet. He is also fascinated by FOSS, opendata, localization, Wikipedia, maps, public transit, civic tech and occasionally contributes to them.

Site: http://www.srik.me.

Twitter: @logic.

Mr. Vipul Kharbanda

Vipul Kharbanda is a consultant with the Center for Internet and Society, Bangalore. After finishing his BA.LLB.(Hons.) from National Law School of India University in Bangalore, he worked for India’s largest corporate law firm for two and a half years in their Mumbai office for two years working primarily on the financing of various infrastructure projects such as Power Plants, Roads, Airports, etc. Since quitting his corporate law job, Vipul has been working as the Associate Editor in a legal publishing house which has been publishing legal books and journals for the last 90 years in India. He has also been involved with the Center for Internet and Society as a Consultant working primarily on issues related to privacy and surveillance.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/events/privacy-after-big-data-delhi-nov-12-2016

Publications

sumandro — 2015-10-25T03:49:47Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/publications

Amutha Arunachalam

sumandro — 2017-05-03T12:37:36Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/files/amutha-arunachalam

Meeting on Proactive Disclosure and Personal Data (Delhi, May 13, 5:30 pm)

sumandro — 2017-05-13T04:32:41Z

CIS is organising an informal discussion on topics related to proactive disclosure and personal data thrown up by the recently published report by Amber Sinha and Srinivas Kodali titled "Information Security Practices of Aadhaar (or lack thereof)". Please join us at 5:30 pm today, May 13, at the CIS office.

Read the report: PDF

Location

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/events/meeting-on-proactive-disclosure-and-personal-data-delhi-may-13

AadhaarInfoSecReportCover

sumandro — 2017-05-19T01:25:23Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/files/aadhaarinfosecreportcover