Centre for Internet and Society

e-Accessibility Policy Handbook for Persons with Disabilities (Russian Version)

praskrishna — 2012-04-26T10:04:08Z

The e-Accessibility Policy Handbook for Persons with Disabilities is based upon the online ITU-G3ict e-Accessibility Policy Toolkit for Persons with Disabilities (www.e-accessibilitytoolkit.org) which was released in February 2010. This is the Russian translation of the same.

The Toolkit and its companion handbook have contributions from more than 60 experts around the world on ICT accessibility and is a most valuable addition to policy makers and regulators, advocacy and research organisations and persons with disabilities on the implementation of the ICT dispositions of the CRPD.

The handbook is a joint publication of ITU, G3ict and the Centre for Internet and Society, in cooperation with The Hans Foundation. The book is compiled and edited by Nirmita Narasimhan. Preface by Dr. Hamadoun I. Toure, Secretary-General, International Telecommunication Union. Introduction by Dr. Sami Al-Basheer, Director, ITU-D. Foreword by Axel Leblois, Executive Director, G3ict.

UNIC Moscow (United Nations Information Centre - Moscow) has translated the English version of the kit to Russian. For more information on the translation initiative by UNIC Moscow, click here.

Download the Russian version here (PDF, 1045 kb)

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/accessibility/e-accessibility-kit-in-russian

Blocking online content: Google gets more requests than govt

praskrishna — 2011-11-03T10:45:25Z

Allowing a peek into what kind of information is requested to be blocked online and by who, the Department of Information Technology (DIT), in response to an RTI (Right to Information) query, has provided some intriguing details, says Pallavi Polanki in this article published in Firstpost.com on 2 November 2011.

DIT lists names of bureaucrats, police officers and one politician who requested blocking content online as well as the websites they identified.

In all, 68 individual items were requested to be blocked under the Information Technology (Procedure and Safeguards for Blocking Access of Information by Public) Rules 2009, to the DIT, which is the only authority mandated by the Information Technology Act 2000, to order blocking online content.

Speaking to Firstpost, Pranesh Prakash, programme manager at the Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore, who requested for the information under the RTI Act — and has posted it on a blog analysing the information received from DIT — said, "Information from a previous RTI application uncovered what all websites were officially blocked by the DIT, while this one uncovers what all website blocking requests the DIT received."

No prizes for guessing; pornographic sites topped the list of websites requested to be blocked. Mumbai’s Joint Commissioner of Police (Crime) listed 60 adult content sites in his request. However, the DIT doesn’t seem to have accepted the officer’s request. The sites remain accessible.

Haneef Ali, Andhra Pradesh State President of the Bharatiya Janata Minority Morcha, is the only politician on the list. He requested the blocking of a blogpost, the title of which translates to "insult against Islam".

Up to four requests were made for blocking of political content, two of which came from Tamil Nadu.

The secretary, Public (Law and Order) Department requested for the website tamil.net.in to be blocked and the principal secretary, IT Department, requested a blog to be shut down. Only the first request seems to have been accepted.

Also, in the line of political fire was a Wikipedia entry for Sukhbir Singh Badal. The principal secretary, IT Department, Punjab, requested the Wikipedia entry with the address ‘en.wikipedia.org/Wiki/Sukhbir Singh Badal’ to be blocked. However, Wikipedia does have an entry for the deputy chief minister of Punjab with a slightly tweaked address.

Not surprisingly, Mumbai’s Joint Commissioner of Police (Crime) wanted a YouTube video ( identified in Prakash’s blog as a video of Bal Thackeray’s speech) to be blocked. Click on the link and a message from YouTube reads: "This video has been removed because its content violated YouTube’s Terms of Service. Sorry about that."

A betting site betfair.com was sought to be shut down by a senior inspector from Mumbai’s cyber crime cell. No luck. The site remains up and running.

Finally, Maharashtra’s Commissioner sent in two requests: Both are running.

Now for the interesting part: Prakash states that the data provided by the government "seemingly conflicts with the data released by the likes of Google (via its Transparency Report)."

According to Google’s Transparency Report, released on 25 October, Google received requests for 358 individual items to be removed from its different services between January and June 2011. And 407 such requests were made in 2010.

Information provided by DIT, however, shows that only requests for 68 items (64 websites, one blog, and three specific web-pages) from eight separate requests were made to it. Of these, only three were for Google’s services (two for Blogger and one for YouTube), points out Prakash.

While only DIT has the authority to order blocks, Google data shows that requests to ‘remove content’ far outnumber the requests made to DIT, suggesting that Google is receiving these requests directly from law enforcement agencies.

"The only explanation for this is that an order to ‘block for access… or cause to be blocked for access by the public’ is taken to be different from an order for removal of content… That would mean that while blocking is regulated by the IT Act, forcible removal of content is not. Thus, it would seem that forcible removal of online content is happening without clear regulation or limits,"states Prakash. (emphasis added).

Prakash makes the case that when law enforcement agencies send requests to companies like Google to remove content they are "operating outside bounds set up by the Indian Penal Code and the Code of Criminal Procedure as also the Information Technology Act."

He adds that companies tend to comply with such ‘requests’ even when they are not under legal obligation to do so because it might appear to them to "violate their own terms of service (which generally include a wide clause about content being in accordance with all local laws), community guidelines."

"This way, the intention of Parliament in enacting Section 69A of the IT Act — to regulate government censorship of the Internet and bring it within the bounds laid down in the Constitution—is defeated," states Prakash.

This article has been republished from Firstpost.com. The original can be read here. You can read Firstpost’s continuing RTI coverage here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/blocking-content-google-gets-more-requests

Learn It Yourself

praskrishna — 2011-12-23T05:01:14Z

The peer-to-peer world of online learning encourages conversations and reciprocal learning, writes Nishant Shah in an article published in the Indian Express on 30 October 2011.

Technologies and learning have always had a close link. In the past, distance learning programmes of higher education through the postal service, remote education programmes using satellite TV and interactive learning projects using information and communication infrastructure, have all been deployed with varied results in promoting literacy and higher education. In the last two decades, the internet has also joined this technology ecology in trying to provide quality and affordable education to remotely located areas through “citizen service centres” envisioned to reach 6,40,000 Indian villages in the future.

These technology-based information outreach programmes expand the ability of traditional formal learning centres like universities, to cater to the needs of those who might not have access to learning resources. This vision of networked education relies on existing systems of centralised syllabus making, teacher-to-student information transfer, grade-based evaluation and accreditation systems, and a degree-centred approach to learning.

I was in New York last week, at an international summit on the future of learning, Mobility Shifts, organised by the New School, where more than 260 speakers from 21 countries discussed the possibility of learning beyond the bounds of the school and university system. Many discussions were around the declining public education system (with huge disinvestment moves from the government), privatisation of education, increasing tuition and fees, and the non-relevance of current education. However, along with this digital expansion of the traditional education system is an emerging trend that challenges the ways in which we understand education and learning – DIY Learning or Do It Yourself Learning.

DIY Learning is a product of the networked condition. It recognises that as more people get onto digital information networks, there is a possibility of producing peer-to-peer learning conditions, which do not have to follow our accepted models of learning and education.

We have seen the rise of various decentralised and democratised knowledge repositories like Wikipedia. The search based algorithms of search engines also take into consideration the idea that knowledge is personal. User generated content sites like eHow.com show that the individual learner is not merely a recipient of information and knowledge. Information seeking spaces like Quora have shown that knowledge-sharing communities can incite new conditions of learning. Our contexts, experiences, everyday practices, aspirations etc. equip us with valuable information, which not only shape how we learn but also what we find relevant to learn for ourselves. DIY Learning picks up on the idea that the infrastructure of education is not necessarily designed towards learning. Learning often happens outside the classrooms, in informal conversations.

Thus DIY Learning offers a new model of learning. It destabilises the established hierarchy of knowledge production and pedagogy and creates an each-one-teach-one model with a twist. Instead of a centralised board of curriculum designer who shape syllabi for the “average” student, you have the possibility of customised, highly individual, interest-based learning curricula where the student is a part of deciding what s/he wants to learn. DIY Learning doesn’t recognise the distinctions between teachers and students, but recognises them as “peers” within a network, encouraging conversations and reciprocal learning rather than information transfer based classroom models. Instead of mass-produced education that caters only to an imagined average, the DIY Learning model recognises that within the same student group, there are different rates and scales of learning, thus offering environments suited to the aptitude of the students.

Within the DIY Learning model, aspects of education, from the design of curriculum and learning methods, to grading and evaluation are geared towards individual preferences and aspirations.

Many people think of DIY Learning as an alternative to mainstream learning processes and structures. However, it is perhaps more fruitful to think of DIY Learning as a way of figuring out the problems that beset our traditional educational system. It allows us to rethink the relationships between learning, education, teaching and technologies. It recalibrates the space of the classroom and reconfigures the role of the teacher and the student.

DIY Learning emphasises that merely building schools and universities is not enough to assure that learning happens. Learning happens through experiences, practice, conversations, internalisations and through making mistakes. DIY Learning offers these possibilities in an education universe that is constantly refusing to take risks, innovate and adapt to the needs of the present. By itself it might not be able to take on the roles and functions of the existing education systems. But it does warn us that we are preparing our students for our pasts rather than their futures. And the time to change is now.

The original story was published in the Indian Express, it can be read here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/learn-yourself

Facing up to Moral Hazard

praskrishna — 2011-10-26T12:50:08Z

Systems upholding the law and standards help navigate the grey areas of moral hazard and adverse selection writes Shyam Ponappa in this article published in the Business Standard on October 6, 2011.

Amid the general sense of an ailing socio-economic environment in the country, consider these situations:

Coal supplies for power generation are eight per cent short of generation capacity. Worse, nearly 42,000 Mw of additional generation capacity over the next five years is jeopardised because anticipated supplies are short by two-thirds of the requirement (100 million tonnes against demand for 313 million tonnes).

The rural employment guarantee scheme, well intentioned and with some reported successes (as in Melghat in Vidarbha), shows few tangible results while distorting farm labour practices and pricing. The reasons are many: inadequate design and supervision (mud roads that are washed away every year), no integration with agricultural programmes, palliatives that deny real infrastructure and support, like extension schemes that build on successes leveraging ICT, no skill development for alternative (self) employment, and so on.
The telecommunications sector is buffeted by scandal, the downward spiral of public sector operators BSNL and MTNL, and pressures of intense competition with constrained resources and regulations.

Leaving aside venality, a common thread is of laws and rules not upheld, slack standards, contracts not honoured, an absence of hard decisions and the requisite effort, and a degradation of mindsets. These are the grey areas of “moral hazard” on the one hand – where protection from the consequences of irresponsible actions induces irresponsibility – and of adverse or negative selection on the other, avoiding the best feasible choices for easier, inferior alternatives. They are widespread, and need assiduous effort to identify and set right with systems, even as criminality is dealt with by the legal system. Good people do not game situations for self-gain, but everyone faces the hazard in making choices. The importance of devising and upholding credible systems, standard operating procedures and laws that are seen to work through incentives and penalties is that these perceptions uphold the social contract and protect one from moral hazard.

Whatever the policies, they must have integrity and coherence; the hazard arises from not ensuring these conditions. The specific hazard is the change in behaviour for the worse. Absent this skein of expectations and constraints, there is no coherence to every individual’s uncoordinated wish list or gripes. This is the problem with well-intentioned social vigilantism, because it destroys the very fabric of order.

Down the Slippery Slope

The hazards in grey areas are manifested in several ways.

Abdication of responsibility by the government: The most prominent moral hazard may be the central government’s abdication of responsibility epitomised by the 2G scandal. A redeeming feature is that some alleged perpetrators are being prosecuted eventually — although how matters end will establish whether it is truly a redemption or a perpetuation of banditry with the state’s complicity (by abstaining from intervention). Similar scandals in mining and civil aviation are unravelling or are on the brink. It is these egregious developments added to the hassles in routine dealings with the government that have led to such public alienation.

There are also many errors of government omission or inaction, such as initiatives not taken in infrastructure, like stalled efforts at power supply reforms, including the state governments’ reluctance to address sustainable electricity tariffs, or not reducing the extent of administered pricing and taxes in petroleum products (or state governments imposing non-uniform sales tax), the deterioration in the railways, and so on.
Taking to the streets: Citizens who feel alienated can take to the streets when they are desperate or outraged. This seems to be the sentiment not only in the Arab spring, but also in varying degrees in established democracies in Europe, Israel and India. There are incipient signs even in America, with the amorphous “Occupy Wall Street” movement spreading from New York to other cities, protesting against various inequities.

When both government and citizens are irresponsible, chaos follows. In India, absence of governance is an extenuating circumstance for activism. But equally, there are indefensible lapses by citizens: the unwillingness to be disciplined, to outgrow the anti-colonial paradigm of railing against the government-as-imperial-ruler, of fasting and civil disobedience as acceptable forms of protest, of not subscribing to order, whether in traffic, respecting queues, or managing garbage and sanitation. Yet, reports of queuing by Delhi Metro users suggest that we can perform if we must — as do all the IT professionals delivering services to international markets. But for the most part, we rail against other people’s transgressions, while being unwilling to observe discipline ourselves.
Corporate chicanery: Apart from criminality such as in the mining and 2G scams, there is the grey area of bending the rules. Examples include the financial and operational performance of many real estate developers, or the poor automotive service quality that is an adjunct to the undeniably more refined automobiles themselves.
Media overreach: The advent of 24x7 news channels is a boon for choice and sourcing. Tragically, many have morphed into whipping up a frenzy rather than delivering solid news and balanced views, given the battle for viewership with a lowest-common-denominator bias for sensationalism.
Stalled government decisions: Government decisions in a number of areas were already stalled owing to problems in the approach to land acquisition, environmental effects, and in sectors such as nuclear energy. A combination of circumstances comprising all these and hyper-aggressive audits, a popular outcry stoked by frenzied media treatment relating to scams in land acquisition, 2G spectrum, and mines, has in effect created a gridlock, in which no forward-looking decisions seem possible, because of the risk of retribution for perceived missteps or errors of judgment, with hindsight.

The grey areas occupy the space between what we want – superior standards – and what we have, which is a slackness of systems because of widespread shoddiness in the practice of leadership and citizenship, with neither inspiring confidence in the other. The way out is conceptually simple, though difficult to execute: take responsibility, devise coherent systems and practices in all areas, with incentives and penalties applied impartially, and live by them.

Read the original article in the Business Standard here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/telecom/facing-up-to-moral-hazard

India’s vanishing fingerprints put UID in question

praskrishna — 2011-10-26T10:05:13Z

A curious situation has come to light at the UID (unique identity) enrolment centres. Call it the phenomenon of vanishing fingerprints. You see, our unique fingerprints don’t necessarily last a lifetime and they can be damaged or destroyed and, in some cases, even non-existent. And that is not the best scenario for the first-of-its-kind project that endeavours to create a unique identity for India’s billion-plus population based on fingerprints and iris scans (or biometric data).

To find out more, Firstpost visited five UID centres in the North West district, which incidentally has the highest enrolments (619,571 and counting) among Delhi’s nine districts since the show hit the road in February 2011, and one centre in North Delhi.

The officials at the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) will tell you that there is no overemphasising the importance of the quality of biometric data to the success of the super ambitious UID, now known as Aadhar project. If the quality of a person’s biometric data is poor, it automatically compromises the authentication of that data by him when he wants to access a service based on his UID.

So what happens when the data – fingerprints, for instance – are inherently unreliable on account of various biological and socio-economic reasons, some of which are especially relevant to the Indian context.

The UIDAI’s Committee on Biometrics in a December 2009 was rather forthright about its reservations on the fingerprint reliability. Titled Biometrics Design Standards For UID Applications (page 4, para 4), it stated, "….two factors however, raise uncertainty about the accuracy that can be achieved through fingerprints. First, retaining efficacy while scaling the database size from fifty million to a billion has not been adequately analysed. Second, fingerprint quality, the most important variable for determining de-duplication accuracy, has not been studied in depth in the Indian context." (Emphasis added).

The findings on the ground were revelatory. Operators and technical experts at the UID enrolment centres confirmed to Firstpost that they routinely came across cases where fingerprints had been damaged/destroyed/underdeveloped. And such cases, they said, were more common among senior citizens, those involved in manual labour (who handle rough objects, for instance) and children (mostly below 10 years of age).

Here is an example that Firstpost observed.

Batuli, 72, arrived at around noon at the Basti Vikas Kendra, now also a UID centre, in Mangol Puri to get herself a ‘smart card’ everyone has been talking about. (The 'Aadhar' brand name hasn’t caught on in these parts of Delhi, with everyone insisting on calling it the 'smart card'.)

The helpful operator with the fancy gadgets helps Batuli to her seat. After her photo is taken, Batuli is asked to place four fingers — one hand at a time — on a green-lit device. Right hand, then left hand.

She is, however, asked to repeat the exercise a second time for the left hand. The operator explains. "In some case, we have to scan the fingerprints and Iris multiple times. If it doesn’t pass the required quality percentage of 70 per cent (the quality is indicated in percentage terms on the computer screen that is connected to the fingerprint machine, see pic), we repeat the exercise up to four times."

Batuli’s hands are then wiped using a cloth and placed back on the device. The exercise is repeated a fourth and final time. But still the same result. 'Fail', declares the reading on the operator’s computer.

An operator at the next station, says, "In the case of senior citizens, Iris scans also sometime fail. It registers weakly when the retina is damaged."

(Enrolment centres are run by private companies on contracts given by registrars chosen by the UIDAI. Strategic Outsourcing is one such company and it runs many of centres in the North West and South West districts of Delhi.)

The project coordinator of the UID enrolment centre working out of the Destitute Welfare Trust, an NGO in Sultanpuri, too, confirmed that he was aware of the problem of damaged fingerprints and the challenge it posed in getting good quality fingerprint data.

"The hands of children are very soft and in some cases fingerprints are not yet fully developed. Also, children tend to have sweaty hands and this can interfere with the quality of fingerprints. Extremely dry hands also pose problems. We have to often, wipe the hands or provide lotion to improve the quality of fingerprints," said a technical expert working with Strategic Outsourcing.

While the number of attempts, as prescribed by the UIDAI, to get a stronger finger print when the result reads 'fail' is four, operators report that sometimes attempts go up to 10 to 15. (The machine picks up the strongest impression of the attempts made). They say they didn’t anticipate such a problem and it was only when they started enrolments in January that they were confronted with such a scenario. “Now, of course, everybody knows about it."

'Everybody' implies those who are directly involved in collecting biometric data. An operator from another private company Smartchip working in a JJ (slum) colony in the North Delhi district of Model town, revealed similar problems on being probed. "A fingerprint strength of 70 percent or more is pass. About 10 per cent of the cases we get every day register the 'fail' reading. What can we do? In the case of stone cutters, for instance, the fingers are completely smooth, the fingerprints are completely wiped out."

So what are the implications of poor quality fingerprints for the UID project? The UIDAI admitted that it could provide challenges to authentication.

In an email response to Firstpost, Sujata Chaturvedi, UIDAI’s Deputy Director General for the Delhi region said, "It could provide some challenges in de-duplication although that has been mitigated to a large extent by the decision of the UIDAI to go in for iris an additional de-duplication factor… Also to be noted is the fact that normally not all fingers are equally de-graded. So UIDAI is evolving a protocol to inform the residents about their good quality fingerprints as part of the Aadhaar letter so that they are aware of the finger to use for authentication."

But not everyone is convinced. Sunil Abraham is the executive director of Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), which has written seven open letters to the Standing Committee on the Finance Branch (before which is the National Identification Authority of India Bill, 2010) asking the committee to consider their research on the UID project and change aspects of the Bill and the project.

The seventh letter sent last week, says Abraham, provides statistical analysis that demonstrates how the UID will never be able to create a unique database.

"In CIS’s seventh open letter to the finance committee, statistical analysis reveals that UIDAI tender specification is 1,000 times less accurate than it should be to have a reasonable chance of building a truly unique database. This analysis depends on high quality biometrics. With poor biometric quality the problem of de-duplication is compounded."

When UIDAI was asked what the percentage of the population enrolled (all India and Delhi) had recorded below-standard fingerprint quality, no specific data was forthcoming.

Chaturvedi wrote, "Currently the population with very poor quality fingerprints is a very small percentage. It must also be remembered that this population is scattered all over the country."

In India, even a small percentage translates to millions of people. "Small percentage could mean absolutely anything. Why can’t they be more specific? One percent in the Indian context is 12 million people," said Abraham.

On how the UIDAI was dealing with challenge of poor fingerprint quality, Chaturvedi said, "Even amongst the populace that has damaged/destroyed/underdeveloped fingerprints, chances are very high that they would have at least one good fingerprint that could be used for authentication. Second, UIDAI is also starting to actively develop iris authentication ecosystem. Fingerprint authentication and iris authentication could supplement each other to ensure a universal coverage."

She added that Aadhaar authentication will supplement and work in conjunction with existing authentication systems to strengthen the overall authentication rather than replace completely the existing authentication systems.

That begs the question, as Abraham puts it, "If the UIDAI is not going to replace existing forms of authentication it is not clear why the government is spending all this money on unproven biometric technology."

Chaturvedi, however, maintained that the initial PoC (proof of concept) study that was taken up in Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Jharkhand collected about 60,000 enrolments indicated that the biometric accuracy levels necessary for de-duplication of all residents of India are achievable.

"The PoC results also indicated the time needed for capture of biometrics in typical rural conditions is small enough to support large scale enrolment. Over and above the initial PoC, the UIDAI has currently completed over 5 crore enrolments for which Aadhaars have been generated. This experience reinforces the initial PoC results that the de-duplication accuracy is sufficient and sustainable to enrol the rest of the population."

The original article is written by Pallavi Polanki. It was published in Firstpost on October 24, 2011 and can be read here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/vanishing-fingerprints-put-uid-in-question

Sixth Annual Meeting of the Internet Governance Forum, Nairobi: A Summary

praskrishna — 2011-10-24T09:09:14Z

The sixth annual meeting of the Internet Governance Forum was held from 27 to 30 September 2011 at the United Nations Office in Nairobi, Kenya. Sunil Abraham participated in six workshops: Privacy, Security, and Access to Rights: A Technical and Policy Analyses, Use of Digital Technologies for Civic Engagement and Political Change: Lessons Learned and Way Forward, The Impact of Regulation: FOSS and Enterprise, Proprietary Influences in Free and Open Source Software: Lessons to Open and Universal Internet Standards, Access and Diversity of Broadband Internet Access and Putting Users First: How Can Privacy be Protected in Today’s Complex Mobile Ecosystem?

Privacy, Security, and Access to Rights: A Technical and Policy Analyses

Workshop No. 219
The workshop was moderated by Kim Pham, Expression Technologies, Civil Society (United States). The panel members included Carlos Affonso Pereira de Souza, Centro de Technologica e Socieda (Brazil), Christopher Soghoian, Indiana University (United States), Karen Reilly, Tor Project, Technical/Civil Society (United States) and Sunil Abraham, Centre for Internet and Society (India).
See the workshop details here

Use of Digital Technologies for Civic Engagement and Political Change: Lessons Learned and Way Forward

Workshop No. 184
The workshop was moderated by Katim S Touray Council Vice Chair, Free Software and Open Source Foundation for Africa and Member, ICANN Board of Directors. Fouad Bajwa of Gerry Morgan Foundation (Pakistan) was the remote moderator. Nnenna Nwakanma of Nnenna.org, Simeon Oriko of @TheKuyuProject &@StorySpaces, Wael Khalil, Activist and Sunil Abraham of the Centre for Internet & Society were the panel members. Nishant Shah from the Centre for Internet & Society participated remotely from Bangalore.
See the workshop details here
See the entire transcription here

The Impact of Regulation: FOSS and Enterprise

Workshop No. 211
The workshop was moderated by Dorothy Gordon, Director General, AITI-KACE, Judy Okite was the remote moderator. The panel members were Satish Babu, ICFOSS, India, Yves Miezan Ezo, Smile Training, Manager, (France), Sunil Abraham, Executive Director, Centre for Internet & Society, Bangalore, Evans Ikua, FOSS Certification Manager, ict@innovation program.
See the workshop details here
See the entire transcription here

Proprietary Influences in Free and Open Source Software: Lessons to Open and Universal Internet Standards

Workshop No. 201
The workshop was moderated by Alejandro Pisanty, Director General for Academic Computing Services of the National University of Mexico (UNAM), Mexico. Tracy Hackshaw, Computer Society of Trinadad and Tobago, Trinadad and Tobago, Venkatesh Hariharan, Head of Public Policy and Government Affairs at Google, India and Scott O Bradner, University Technology Security Officer, Harvard University, USA were the panel members.
See the workshop details here
See the entire transcription here

Access and Diversity of Broadband Internet Access

Workshop No. 113
The workshop was moderated by N Ravi Shanker, Addl Secy, Department of Information Technology, Ministry of Information Technology, Government of India (Chair). Abhishek Singh, Director, Department of Information Technology, Ministry of Information Technology, Government of India, Venkatesh Hariharan, Head of Public Policy and Government Relations, Google India and Sunil Abraham, Executive Director, The Centre for Internet and Society, India were the panel members.
See the workshop details here
See the entire transcription here

Putting users First: How can Privacy be Protected in Today’s Complex Mobile Ecosystem?

Workshop No. 75
This workshop was moderated by Ambassador David Gross, Partner, Wiley Rein LLP, Yiannis Theodorou, Regulatory Policy Manager, GSMA was the remote moderator. The panel members included Pat Walshe, Director of Privacy-GSMA), Jeff Brueggeman (Vice President-Publiy Policy AT&T), Patrick Ryan, Policy Counsel, Open Internet for Google Inc, Ms Juliana Rotich, Executive Director of Ushahidi Inc, Sunil Abraham, Executive Director, The Centre for Internet and Society (India) and Ian Brown, co-director of Oxford University's Information Security and Privacy Programme.
See the workshop details here
See the entire transcription here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/sixth-annual-meeting-igf

Ninth Workshop on Media Economics

praskrishna — 2011-11-28T09:12:24Z

The Higher School of Economics and the New Economic School have joined hands to organize the ninth workshop on media economics in Moscow on October 28 and 29, 2011. All events are scheduled to take place in Marriott Courtyard, a hotel in the centre of Moscow within 10-minute walking distance from the Kremlin, the Red Square, and the Bolshoi Theatre.

Workshop Program

Friday, October 28, 2011

8:00 a.m. Morning coffee

8:45 a.m. Opening remarks

Media markets - 1: Newspapers, Mergers, and Diversity

9:00 a.m. Michal MASIKA, University of Munich

"Free commuter newspapers and the market for paid-for daily newspapers"

Discussant: Sergey V. Popov, Higher School of Economics

9:40 a.m. Lapo FILISTRUCCHI, Tilburg University and University of Florence

Tobias J. Klein, Tilburg University

Thomas Michielsen, Tilburg University

"Merger Simulation in a Two-Sided Market: The Case of the Dutch Daily Newspapers"

Discussant: Lars Sørgard, Norwegian School of Economics

10:20 a.m. Lisa GEORGE, Hunter College, City University of New York

Felix Oberholzer-Gee, Harvard Business School

"Diversity in Local Television News"

Discussant: François Keslair, Paris School of Economics

11:00 a.m. Coffee break

Media markets and Internet - 1: Advertising and Search Engines

11:30 a.m. Alexandre de CORNIÈRE, Paris School of Economics

"Search advertising"

Discussant: Simon Anderson, University of Virginia

12:10 p.m. Alexander WHITE, Tsinghua University School of Economics and Management

Kamal Jain, Microsoft Research

"The Attention Economy of Search and Web Advertisement"

Discussant: Sergei Izmalkov, New Economic School

12:50 p.m. Lunch

Political Economy - 1: Media, Elites, and the Groups of Influence

2:00 p.m. Leopoldo FERGUSSON, Universidad de Los Andes

"Media Markets, Special Interests, and Voters"

Discussant: Alexei V. Zakharov, Higher School of Economics

2:40 p.m. David STRÖMBERG, IIES at Stockholm University

Ben Qin, IIES at Stockholm University

Yanhui Wu, USC Marshall School of Business

"Determinants of Media Capture in China"

Discussant: Maria Petrova, New Economic School

3:20 p.m. Daniel STONE, Oregon State University

"Media and Gridlock"

Discussant: Elena Panova, Academy of National Economy and Gaidar Institute

4:00 p.m. Coffee break

Media markets and Internet - 2: Internet Effects and Offline Media Markets

4:30 p.m. Joel WALDFOGEL, University of Minnesota

"Bye, Bye, Miss American Pie? The Supply of New Recorded Music since Napster"

Discussant: Ruben Enikolopov, New Economic School

5:10 p.m. Ignacio FRANCESCHELLI, Northwestern University

"When the Ink is Gone: The Impact of Internet on News Coverage"

Discussant: Ruben Durante, Sciences Po Paris

5:50 p.m. Adjourn

7:00 p.m. Dinner

Saturday October 29th

8:00 a.m. Morning Coffee

Media markets - 2: Interactions in Traditional and Digital Media Industry

9:00 a.m. Harald Nygård Bergh, Norwegian School of Economics

Hans Jarle KIND, Norwegian School of Economics

Bjørn-Atle Reme, Norwegian School of Economics

Lars Sørgard, Norwegian School of Economics

"Competition between Content Distributors in Two-Sided Markets"

Discussant: Guido Friebel, Goethe University Frankfurt

9:40 a.m. Larbi Alaoui, Universitat Pompeu Fabra

Fabrizio GERMANO, Universitat Pompeu Fabra

"Time Scarcity and the Market for News"

Discussant: Sergei Guriev, New Economic School

10:20 a.m. Coffee break

Political Economy - 2: Media Effects

10:50 a.m. Francesco Drago, University of Naples

Tommaso Nannicini, Bocconi University

Francesco SOBBRIO, IMT Lucca

"Newspapers, Local News and Electoral Politics"

Discussant: Ekaterina Zhuravskaya, Paris School of Economics

11:30 p.m. Julia CAGÉ, Harvard University

François Keslair, Paris School of Economics

"Trash Media and the Decline of Turnout: Theory and Evidence from Local Media Competition in France, 1944-2010"

Discussant: Francesco Sobbrio, IMT Lucca

12:10 p.m. Parallel events (choose your favorite):

Lunch - or -

Global New Media Policy

Roundtable (with refreshments, RSVP required, more details here)

Pedro MIZUKAMI, FGV Center for Technology and Society, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Sunil ABRAHAM, Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore, India

Bruce ETLING and Robert FARIS, Berkman Center for Internet and Society, Harvard University, United States

Marina ZHUNICH, Google Russia

Media markets - 3: Media Bias

2:00 p.m. Stefano DELLAVIGNA, UC Berkeley

Alec Kennedy, San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank

“Does Media Concentration Lead to Biased Coverage? Evidence from Movie Reviews”

Discussant: Joel Waldfogel, University of Minnesota

2:40 p.m. Matthias HEINZ, Goethe University Frankfurt

Guido Friebel, Goethe University Frankfurt

"Media bias against foreign owners: Downsizing"

Discussant: Olga Kuzmina, New Economic School

3:20 p.m. Break

Future Directions of Research in Media Economics

3:30 p.m. Roundtable

Simon ANDERSON, University of Virginia

Stefano DELLAVIGNA, UC Berkeley

Lisa GEORGE, Hunter College, City University of New York

David STRÖMBERG, IIES at Stockholm University

4:45 p.m. Farewell reception

The above agenda was published in Higher School of Economics website, click here.

VIDEO

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/media-economics-workshop

Growing Wikipedia: The India Chronicles

praskrishna — 2011-10-14T09:17:08Z

Tory Read, a professional researcher, writer and journalist was commissioned by the Wikimedia Foundation to create a vivid description of its work in India. This was done in the interest of transparency and to ensure that it captured lessons from this new approach. Tory travelled for a couple of weeks across Mumbai, Pune, Bangalore and some towns in Kerala — attending community meet-ups speaking with a host of individual community members in these cities. Tory has given a journalistic account and analysis, based on document review, interviews and observations conducted between November 2010 and June 2011, including 16 days in India in June 2011.The views expressed herein are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of Wikimedia Foundation.

Sunil Abraham, Executive Director of the Centre for Internet and Society has been quoted in this report. The following are some direct quotes extracted out from this report:

"Feuding and flaming is an integral part of free software culture.” “You can’t imagine a mailing list without flaming." [The Chapter and the Community Tangle, page 16]

"The crisis on the mailing list was ultimately a great thing.” “There was conflict, dozens of offline conversations, private and public negotiation and airing of views and doubts, followed by a public commitment to work together for a shared purpose." [Necessity Breeds Collaboration, page 19]

"The Foundation’s job is having meetings and growing and holding the consensus." "It should be creating situations in which trust is gained, and you do this through radical transparency and participation. The point of the Foundation’s work is to build the community." [For the Foundation, page 24]

Download the entire report here [PDF, 2.9 MB]

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/the-india-chronicles

Seventh Open Letter to the Finance Committee: A Note on the Deduplication of Unique Identifiers

praskrishna — 2011-11-22T07:28:11Z

Sahana Sarkar on behalf of the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) had sent in a Right to Information application on 30 June 2011 to Ashish Kumar, Central Public Information Officer, UIDAI. The UIDAI sent in its reply. Through the seventh open letter, Hans attempts to characterize in an abstract way the replies that CIS managed to elicit and makes some elementary observations. The UIDAI records one or more biometric signatures of those individuals to whom it assigns its unique identity or identifier ; and for convenience let us call this the process of registering an applicant. In the normal course of registration the signatures of an applicant will be compared to those already recorded; and the outcomes of this exercise of comparing suites of biometric signatures — fingerprints and iris-scans, say — may be regarded as the values of a binary variable:

With more than one signature, we have Y = 1 only when those of the applicant match the signatures in some other suite of such item by item; and Y = 0 then if at least one of his or her signatures fails to match any already recorded one.

Though the circumstance should be unlikely, a person who has already been registered may apply again to be registered: with fraudulent intent maybe: or simply because he or she has lost the document – some identity card, perhaps – which bears the identifier assigned to him or her by the UIDAI. And the possibilities here may be regarded as the values of a binary variable:

Though we are regarding X and Y as variables equally, and taking them for jointly distributed ones, there is an evident asymmetry between them. The exercise of trying to match a given suite of signatures to some set of other suites can be performed so long as the signatures remain available; but for a given applicant the values of X refer to events already past. Faced with an applicant of whom they may suppose no more than what he or she may disclose, the personnel of the UIDAI cannot directly estimate either of the two quantities:

We have p[X = 0] + p[X = 1] = 1 here, needless to say, so there is only one quantity that needs estimating. But it is worth emphasizing that even when an applicant declares himself to have been registered already— and has come, say, to have a lost card newly issued — the personnel of the UIDAI are obliged to remain agnostic about p[X = 1] : no matter how ready they are to believe him.[1]

That no individual should be assigned more than one identifier is an entirely evident desideratum: so the process of comparing the signatures of a fresh applicant to those already recorded must be a strict one. But the process of comparison should also make it very likely that, when a match of signatures does occur, the applicant is someone who has in fact been registered already. The chance that a genuinely new applicant’s signatures will match some already recorded suite should be very small: the proportion of such mistaken matches, among all matches, should be as low as possible. This proportion is usually denoted by p[X = 0 | Y = 1] : the conditional probability that X = 0 given that Y = 1 : the chance that, despite a match of signatures, the applicant has not in fact been registered already. The defining formula:

relates this conditional probability to the ‘absolute’ or ‘raw’ probabilities of the events [Y = 1] and [X = 0 and Y = 1] ; the second of which is sometimes said to be contained in the first.

Suppose that there have been N applicants thus far. It is usual to say N trials of X and Y have occurred; but only the outcomes for Y are known. Suppose that matches have been found some m times out of these N ; then N − m applicants will have been registered. With regard to these trials, set

Note that these numbers are not individually known; but as the specified events exhaust the possibilities, we have c 00 +c 01 +c 10 +c 11 = N ; and we do know that

The ratio m/N would be a reasonable estimate of p[Y = 1] ; and (N − m)/N a reasonable estimate of p[Y = 0] = 1 − p[Y = 1] likewise. The quantity we are seeking is p[X = 0 | Y = 1] however: of which the ratio c 01/m would be a natural estimate. But unless we have some sense of the relative magnitudes of c 01 and c 11 the quantity

could be anything between 0 and 1 now. To estimate the relative magnitudes of c 01 and c 11 in any direct way would be difficult, because one has no purchase on how likely the events [X = 0 & Y = 1] or [X = 1 & Y = 1] are. So p[X = 0 | Y = 1] must be estimated directly, it would seem; and we shall come back to the question.

The reply we have received from the UIDAI indicates that 2.59 × 107 registrations — or successful ‘enrolments’, as they have put it — had been effected by 17.08.2011;while the ‘enrolments rejected’ came to 2.005 × 103 they say. Enrolments were rejected when ‘residents were duplicates’: if we take this to mean that an applicant was refused registry on account of his signatures matching some suite of signatures already recorded, then we may suppose that

The False Positive Identification Rate, or FPIR, is defined in that reply as the ratio of the number of the number of false positive identification decisions to the total number of enrolment transactions by unenrolled individuals : if by “unenrolled individual” we understand an applicant of whom [X = 0] actually obtains, then in our notation we have

rather: which would be a natural estimate of p[X = 0 & Y = 1] now, and since

the ‘false postive identification rate’ thus construed could be bound, at least, if p[X = 0 | Y = 1] itself could be. At any rate, this latter proportion seems to be the most pertinent one here: p[X = 0 | Y = 1] is the conditional probability, of mistaken matches, that the UIDAI must strive to keep as low as possible.

The reply from the UIDAI defines a false negative identification as an incorrect decision of a biometric system that an applicant for a UID, making no attempt to avoid recognition, has not been previously enrolled in the system, when in fact they have. One is at a loss to understand how the personnel of the UIDAI are to determine when an applicant is making no attempt to avoid recognition. Putting that aside, the False Negative Identification Rate or FNIR would now appear to be p[X = 1 | Y = 0] : the probability that, despite his or her signatures not matching any already recorded suite, an applicant has in fact already been registered: and with our notation

now. But c 10 cannot be reliably estimated, again, because one has no purchase on how likely [X = 1 & Y = 0] is; and the conditional probability p[X = 1 | Y = 0] will have to be estimated or bound in some direct way as well.

The preceding paragraphs have asserted that, in order to estimate or effectively bound the identification rates being sought by the UIDAI, the conditional probabilities p[X = 0 | Y = 1] and p[X = 1 | Y = 0] will have to be addressed in some direct way: without any attempt to estimate the likelihoods of [X = 0 & Y = 1] and [X = 1 & Y = 0] by themselves, that is to say. There might be ways of reliably estimating these conditional probabilities; and the manufacturers of the devices that produce the signatures may have provided tight bounds on what they would be — when the devices are working properly, at least. But let us now consider how the UIDAI has elaborated on these rates.

Their reply to our second question states that the biometric service providers have to meet the following accuracy SLA’s for FPIR and FNIR:

The condition of ‘non-duplication’ in the requirement (P) implies that the FPIR is being understood now as the formula in (†) above computes it: as an estimate of the conditional probability p[Y = 1 |X = 0]: since one already knows that [X = 0] for each enrolment here. Such an estimate could be made if one had obtained a sample of suites of signatures from distinct individuals — where no two suites in the sample could have come from the same individual — and compared each suite to every other: the proportion of matches found would be an estimate of p[Y = 1 |X = 0] now.[2]

The ‘biometric service providers’ the UIDAI has contracted with are presumably able to perform such experiments accurately. But an estimate of p[Y = 1 |X = 0] will not, as we shall momentarily see, by itself readily yield a usable bound on p[X = 0 | Y = 1] : on the crucial likelihood that, despite his or her suite of signatures matching a suite already recorded, an applicant has not in fact been registered.

The condition “ONLY duplicate enrolments” in the requirement (N) implies that the FNIR is being understood as an estimate of the conditional probability p[Y = 0 |X = 1] now: as one already knows that [X = 1] for each enrolment here. The biometric service providers should be able to estimate this probability as well. The FNIR as (‡) construes it is an estimate of p[X = 1 | Y = 0] rather; but a usable bound for this likelihood is readily got from p[Y = 0 |X = 1] now, for we may surely expect p[X = 1] < p[Y = 0].

Let us see if the requirement (P) will yield any usable upper bound on the crucial likelihood p[X = 0 | Y = 1]: which, to note it again, is what the UIDAI must seek to minimise. Consider the consequences when the FPIR is understood as (P) envisages. Taken together with formula (1) above we have

If we are not willing to wager on any upper limit appreciably less than 1 for p[X = 0] , we obtain

now.[3] Unless one can reasonably suppose that the event [Y = 1] never occurs, one must grant that p[Y = 1] > 0 . We have

But this inequality yields a usable upper bound only when K < 3: only when K is 1 or 2 that is. In either case, only by supposing that p[Y = 1] > 10−2 will the accuracy mandated for the FPIR by the UIDAI yield a usable upper bound on p[X = 0 | Y = 1] . Since the UIDAI expects that p[Y = 1] < 10−2 surely, we must conclude now that the requirements it has imposed on its ‘biometric service providers’ will not help its personnel estimate an upper limit for the crucial likelihood that, despite his or her suite signatures matching some already recorded suite, an applicant for a UID has not in fact been registered already: which likelihood, to insist again, is what the UIDAI must seek to minimise.

The argument just made will seem perverse: but the calculation is perfectly general. Suppose an FPIR limit of 10−J is mandated; then, unless one is willing to wager an upper limit on p[X = 0] , one cannot get a usable upper bound on p[X = 0 | Y = 1] from this limit on the FPIR, used all by itself, unless one supposes that p[Y = 1] > 10−J+1.

To save writing, denote by L01 the crucial likelihood p[X = 0 | Y = 1] ; and suppose that is some desired upper bound on L01 now. Assume that the FPIR achieved by a service provider is an accurate estimate of p[Y = 1 |X = 0] ; then from (1) we get

Now [X = 0] should not be a rare event at all, and, conversely, [Y = 1] should be a rare event.[4] So one should be able to set some reasonable upper limit to the ratio p[Y = 1]/ p[X = 0] : but without attempting any precise estimate, at all, of either individual probability. One may reasonably expect, for instance, that no more than one in a thousand applicants for a uid will already have been registered; and when p[X = 1] < 10−3 we will have

from (3) above. This calculation can be repeated with any number m in place of 3 here, of course, provided p[X = 1] < 10−m and p[Y = 1] < 10−m are both likely; and it seems entirely reasonable, now, for the UIDAI to insist that its biometric service providers meet the requirement.

for some appropriate upper bound X on L01 . The considerations leading to (4) make it reasonable to insist on m _ 3 now; and recalling what L01 is — the crucial likelihood that, despite his or her signatures matching some already recorded suite of signatures, an applicant has not in fact been registered — the UIDAI will have to insist on some quite small bound X: for it would not want, too often, to refuse anyone a UID on account of a mistaken match of biometric signatures.[6]

It would be foolish to speculate on what the authorities regard as acceptable error here; but if the UIDAI is of a mind that such mistakes should happen less than one in a thousand times say, then, taking the minimal value of 3 for m in the suggested requirement (R), it should demand an FPIR less than 10−6 : a ‘false positive identification rate’ a thousand-fold less than the limit currently imposed.

[1]Should it seem entirely odd to talk of probability when one of the events in question — either [X = 0] or [X = 1] — will already have occurred, we may regard the probabilities we assign them as measures of our uncertainty only: but no practical question hinges on probabilities being understood ‘subjectively’ rather than ‘objectively’.

[2]It might be well to note, however, that the size of the sample must be manageable: for a sample of size K a total of K • (K − 1)/2 comparisons will have to be performed.

[3]Wagering an upper limit on p[X = 0] would require one to reasonably estimate the probability of finding already-registered individuals among applicants.

[4]The event [Y = 1] must be just as rare, one supposes, as [X = 0] is frequent.

[5]We are supposing, that is to say, that matches of biometic signatures are very rarely mistaken matches.

[6]A small _ is consistent with supposing that p[X = 1] and p[Y = 1] are commensurate probabilites. If p[X = 0 | Y = 1] < 10−3 for instance, then p[X = 1 | Y = 1] _ (103 − 1)/103 ; one may suppose, that is, that [X = 1] will be the case 999 out of a 1000 times that [Y = 1] obtains; and, of course, to suppose that [X = 1] will be appreciably more frquent than [Y = 1] is to grant that biometric signatures will fail appreciably often to distinguish individuals.

See the RTI application of 30/06/2011 [PDF, 15 kb].

Download the Seventh Open Letter here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/de-duplication-of-unique-identifiers

Can Innovation Solve the Grand Challenges of Indian Society?

praskrishna — 2011-10-07T12:45:10Z

It’s nearly time again for Design Public the event, a high-level conclave on design, innovation, and the public interest. Our up-coming event will be in Bangalore on the 14th of October, and will be held at the National Gallery of Modern Art, which is housed in a century-old Manikyavelu mansion, which was once the property of the Mysore royal family.

Aditya Dev Sood (Center for Knowledge Societies )
Sunil Abraham (Center for Internet and Society)
Harsh Shrivastava (National Planning Commission)
Zackery Denfield (Pacific Northwest College of Art)
Aditya Mishra (Headstart Foundation)
Sudhir Krishnaswamy (CLPR)
Naresh Narasimhan (VA Group)
Amit Garg (MXV Consulting)
Samar Halankar (MINT)
Rajeev Chandrashekhar (Member of Parliament)
Mahesh Murthy (Pinstorm)
Rohini Nilekani (Arghyam Foundation)
Ramesh Ramanathan (Janaagraha)
Reto Wettach (Interaction Design Studios Berlin)
Shiv Vishwanathan (Sociologist of Science)
Rishekesha T. Krishnan (IIM, Bangalore)
M. P. Ranjan (Design for India)
H. P. Khincha (Karnataka State Innovation Council)

Participation by arrangement only. Interested? designpublic@cks.in +91.9343787505

For more information, click here

Download the brochure here [PDF, 388 kb]

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/innovation-and-public-interest

Design!publiC - II

praskrishna — 2011-10-13T07:00:43Z

The Centre for Internet and Society in partnership with the Center for Knowledge Societies, Venkataramanan Associates, Center for Law and Policy Research, Headstart Foundation, Chaia Innovation Accelerator, MXV Consulting, Mint Newspaper and Confederation of Indian Industry is organising the second edition of Design Public on October 14, 2011 at the National Gallery of Modern Art in Bangalore. There will be a series of pre-conference research outings on October 13, for which participants may register in advance.

Innovation and the Public Interest

Design Public is a series of conversations about whether and how Innovation can serve the Public Interest.

At our inaugural event, in New Delhi on March 18th earlier this year, we focused on the question of whether innovation in governance is needed and how it can be achieved. An excellent overview of the event can be found in a Mint Newspaper article by Aparna Piramal Raje. While we discovered wide agreement in principle as to the need for innovation in India, there was much uncertainty about how government systems relate to innovation, and some doubt as to whether governments are in fact capable of innovation. At our upcoming event, we aim to widen the ambit of the discussion, to ask how innovation serves the public interest, thereby opening up the question of innovation to the social sector, to corporations, to venture capitalists, designers, students, academics and more.

Following Schumpeter, we understand innovation to be a fundamental part of modern economic and social life -- in fact the very source of the momentum that drives us forward into the future. However, we have also found that innovation need not be limited to entrepreneurs in the private sector, but can also be accomplished, in various ways, in government, in the public sector, and by social and developmental agencies. Moreover, if the specific components of innovation can be identified and learned, it would be possible for many more organizations and individuals to successfully drive beneficial social and technical change.

If the term Innovation describes the business or economic dimension of the forward movement of society under capitalism, then the immanent, cognitive or mental aspect of this forward movement can be captured by the term Design. It is the multivariate, parallel, sometimes collaborative process of finding solutions to problems that have no obvious and available answer. Whereas the language of design gained prominence in the Industrial Age as a means for the rendering of surfaces and finishes for the more effective marketing of consumer products (posters and toasters), the concept has far wider application in the present. Design and Innovation are by definition the strategies through which the most intractable, complex, and multivariate challenges encountered by individuals or groups.

At our event, therefore, we seek to articulate exactly how these strategies can be brought to bear on the Grand Challenges facing our society, in areas such as:

Complete and Effective Healthcare for Mothers and Children
Increased Use and Acceptance for Toilets
Broad-based Higher Education
Participatory and Responsive Civic Administration

Over the course of the day-long event, we will consider different approaches and paradigms of innovation and how they may be applicable to these grand challenges. We will break out into sessions in order to apply these perspectives and approaches to specific challenge areas. At the end of the day we will seek to expand the circle of innovation in order establish new ways of collaborating and sharing knowledge such that we are able to accelerate and intensify the application of innovation to addressing these and other grand challenges facing the public.

Panchayat meeting on Village Sanitation in Khera village, Budaun District, UP

Agenda

09.00 Word of Welcome and Mutual Introductions
10.00 Innovation and the Indian Corporation

- Samar Halankar, Hindustan Times (moderator)

- Anil Narayan Sondur, TATA Elxsi

- Harish Bijoor, HB Consults

- Ekta Ohri, Center for Knowledge Societies (respondent)

11.00 Is Innovation in the Public and Social Sectors Possible?

- Sunil Abraham, Center for Internet and Society (moderator)

- Rohini Nilekani, Arghyam Foundation

- Ramesh Ramanathan, Janaagraha

- Ashwin Mahesh, Mapunity

- Sneha Raman, Center for Knowledge Societies (respondent)

12.00 The Challenge of Start Up Innovation

- Amit Garg, MXV Consulting (moderator)

- Mahesh Murthy, Pinstorm

- Zackery Denfeld, Pacific Northwest College of Art

- Naresh Narasimhan, VA Group

- Aditya Dev Sood, Center for Knowledge Societies (respondent)

13.00 Lunch: Regional Cuisines of Karnataka prepared with Local Ingredients
14.00 The Theory and Practice of Innovation
- Aditya Dev Sood, Center for Knowledge Societies (moderator)
- Reto Wettach, Interaction Design Studios Berlin
- Shiv Vishwanathan, Sociologist of Science
- M. P. Ranjan, Design for India
15.00 Grand Challenge Breakout Sessions
A: Online Higher Education
Moderator: Sunil Abraham, Center for Internet and Society
Innovation Expert: Sneha Raman, Center for Knowledge Societies
Domain Expert: Udhay Shankar, Intel
B: Quality Maternal and Child Healthcare
Moderator: Jayna Kothari, Center for Law and Policy Research
Innovation Expert: Shehla Hussain, Center for Knowledge
Societies
Domain Expert: Lakshmi Menon, G.E. Healthcare
C: Toilet-training for All!
Moderator: Sudhir Krishnaswamy, Center for Law and Policy Research
Innovation Expert: Namrata Mehta, Center for Knowledge Societies
Domain Expert: Sunita Nadhamuni, Arghyam
Tea Served During Breakout Sessions
16.30 Reports Back from Breakouts
17.30 Conclusion: Planning and Policy for Innovation and the Grand Challenges of Society
- Sudhir Krishnaswamy, Center for Law and Policy Research (moderator)
- Harsh Shrivastava, National Planning Commission
- Anant Shah, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
- Jamuna Ramakrishna, Hivos Foundation
- Dilini Wijeweera, LIRNEasia
- Gaurav Gupta, Dalberg
- Riku Mäkelä, Finnode

Individual Participation

In order to make each voice count, entry to the conclave will be by arrangement only. Others who are truly interested, should please drop us a few lines on how they would like to contribute and we will be glad to get back in touch. There are no registration fees. However, we would like to see participants take their own initiative in covering their own travel costs and making their own arrangements for stay so far as possible. If specific needs are perceived, please communicate them to the organizers. If you are interested in participating in this conversation on innovation, design thinking, and the public interest please contact Anand Vijayan at anand@cks.in.

Institutional Participation

Confederations of industry, associations of management, departments of government and diverse development sector and civil society organizations are invited to express their interest in supporting this event.

Organizers

Center for Knowledge Societies (CKS)
Center for Internet and Society (CIS)
Venkatramanan Associates (VA)
Center for Law and Policy Research (CLPR)
Headstart Foundation (HF)
Chaia Innovation Accelerator (ChIA)
MXV Consulting (MXV)
Mint Newspaper (MN)
Confederation of Indian Industry (CII)

For participation: contact Anand Vijayan, Innovation Planning, CKS
For media: contact Ayesha Vemuri, Innovation Research, CKS (ayesha@cks.in)

For more info, click here [PDF, 496 kb]

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/events/design-public-in-bangalore

Making a difference, online and offline

praskrishna — 2011-09-28T07:09:35Z

A new collection examines how technology and issues of connectivity are shaping the lives of ‘digital natives’—and how the Net can influence social change, writes Gopal Sathe in an article published in LiveMint on September 27, 2011.

The Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore, and The Hague, Netherlands-based Hivos Knowledge Programme recently launched a four- book collection, Digital AlterNatives with a Cause?, edited by Nishant Shah and Fieke Jansen. Jansen is the knowledge officer for the Digital AlterNatives with a Cause? Programme at Hivos. In the book, researchers look at the identities, networks, actions and role of the “digital” generation. The researchers talked to people identified as “digital natives” about the way in which the Internet has shaped the way they interact with the world. We spoke to Nishant Shah, co-founder and director-research for the Centre for Internet and Society, about the collection. Edited excerpts:

The research this book talks about is based mostly in other countries, such as Chile, Taiwan and South Africa. How does this connect to the situation in India?

The researchers looked at young people’s use of digital technologies to make changes in their immediate environments within the information landscape of the “Global South” (countries with low to medium rankings in the human development index). We were interested in looking at macro structures that would help us understand what is happening globally.

We did not impose our frameworks and concepts on the communities we were working with. Hence, we did not have the expected discussions of digital divides and digital access. What they found interesting across locations was the question of connectivity and dis-connectivity. In the ubiquitous, unforgetting world of the Internet, we leave traces all the time. This incessant connectivity can come with its own pressures, problems and repercussions, and hence there were discussions around “right to disconnect”, “right to be forgotten” and “right to be non-digital”.

In the early 1990s, there were people who did not have phones, could not make national and international phone calls and had poor communication infrastructure—that changed in less than 10 years. Instead of focusing on access and infrastructure, it became more important to look at the ways in which they shape people’s usage, behaviour, engagement with technology, and with their larger physical realities.

When we consider the “digital landscape” of India, whom are we really discussing?

Popular definitions—somebody who is born with technologies, who did not have to make a transition to digital—are inadequate to account for the realities we experience every day. We made a more inclusive identity, which gets inflected by questions of age, sex, location, class and politics, et al.

The way we understand a digital native now is somebody whose life has been significantly restructured because of their relationship with digital technologies and their ability to see the potentials of change in these technologies. Just having access to digital technologies is not enough. Their purposes, causes, ambitions, intentions are what is going to change the way they use technologies. People are not “born digital” but they “become digital” and the processes of becoming digital are more complex than merely getting access.

New devices and cheaper connections have granted access to a huge number of people—what impact has this had on people’s choices?

The “natives” belong to different communities, families and regions. They are influenced by the cultural practices in their everyday life. They depend on different structures of work for their economic survival. They live in differently marked political regimes—from the extreme liberal to the highly authoritarian. Their ways of thinking and engagement, influenced by their practices online, change the larger realities within which they live. For example, digital natives who are used to the peer-to-peer processes of knowledge production online are already changing the ways in which classroom learning is happening in schools around the country.

At the same time, the larger structures of education, literacy, economic choices, cultural productions like TV and cinema, all influence the content and expectations from the Internet as well. What really matters is how the capacities and capabilities of one medium, the digital, for example, influence and are influenced by the experiences and knowledge in the other—the physical, for instance.

Would the addition of more Indian-language content on the Internet make a difference to the digital landscape in India? Would it spur greater engagement and therefore have a bigger impact? Is this what’s holding back technologies like telemedicine and distance education?

There are many user-generated content platforms like Wikipedia and other blogging platforms like WordPress that are promoting the localization of content. It is good that we are offering some resistance to the very quick “Englification” of the online world. But with the current flow of globalization, there is no denying the fact that English is a language with the highest currency and that in our physical realities, it is getting a stronghold in our everyday practices.

The Internet is a tool, a process, a technology but not a solution. The mere presence of the Internet is not going to lead to social change. Just introducing the Internet to existing structures is only going to lead to a more flawed model of development.

For example, telemedicine has exciting possibilities but the basic problem of healthcare is not the unavailability of medical resources. What is missing is a universal health Bill to make it affordable to all.

This is why in this book, we pay specific attention to how and why people engage in processes of change. We have been trying to address the questions of how people see themselves as agents of social change and what are the ways in which digital and Internet technologies enable them to make changes in their immediate environments.

Digital AlterNatives with a Cause? is available as a free download at http://www.cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/dnbook.

Read the original story published in LiveMint here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/making-difference-online-offline

Internet Governance Forum: Participate Remotely

praskrishna — 2011-09-27T05:09:56Z

The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) invites you to attend the sixth annual meeting of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) as a remote participant from Bangalore. The IGF is being held in Nairobi from 27-30 September 2011. CIS has been registered as a remote IGF hub. This will allow many of us who are unable to attend the IGF in person. You can follow the discussion, watch the web cast of the event, follow real-time closed captioning and participate live (via text or video) that will be answered by panelists in the IGF.

The IGF is a multi-stakeholder forum that addresses public policy issues related to key elements of Internet governance. The overall theme of the meeting will be ‘Internet as a Catalyst for Change: Access, Development, Freedoms and Innovation'. The various themes are as follows:

Internet Governance for Development
Emerging Issues
Managing Critical Internet Resources
Security, Openness and Privacy
Access and Diversity
Taking Stock and the Way Forward

Sunil Abraham, Executive Director of the Centre for Internet and Society, will be participating in the following workshops:

Shyam Ponappa, Fellow at the Centre for Internet and Society, will be presenting remotely for the following workshop:

Open Spectrum for Development in the Context of the Digital Migration

Nishant Shah, Director Research at Centre for Internet and Society, has organized the following workshop:

Use of Digital Technologies for Civic Engagement and Political Change: Lessons Learned and Way Forward

We are not limited to following specific workshops. Please follow the link for more information on workshops of your interest, program details and the schedule:

http://www.intgovforum.org/cms/schedule-a-programme-2011

Participation is free. However, we would be grateful if you could confirm your attendance by emailing Natasha Vaz “natasha@cis-india.org or Tom Dane at “tjdane@gmail.com”. We hope you will join us to watch the web cast and contribute your own insights on the various workshops.

Looking forward to welcoming you at the workshops!

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/events/igf-remote-participation

Netizen's Guide to the Internet Governance Forum

praskrishna — 2011-09-26T08:59:57Z

The Internet Governance Forum is a multi-stakeholder forum where people from all over the world - from government, industry, the technical community and civil society - come together to discuss the Internet's future. The Sixth Annual meeting officially kicks off on Tuesday morning in Nairobi, Kenya. A number of pre-meetings will be held all day on Monday.

The IGF is set up for remote participation, so you do not need to be in Kenya physically to follow the discussions or to ask questions and make your views known. Before the start of each day, IGF staff will post remote participation links for each conference room so that you can participate remotely through the conference's WEBEX system. (Click here to see if your computer is compatible with their system.)

The Monday pre-meetings: Several interesting and important meetings will be held on Monday and four of them are open to everybody on the Internet. Two of them have made their schedules publicly available and promoted them:

The Association for Progressive Communications meeting on access as a right. (10am-6pm Kenya time). Why attend? Click here for the invitation flyer and click here for the full run-down of the day's discussions. Also see APC's briefing paper on priorities for this year's IGF and other short papers on key IGF discussion themes. The final panel of the day, a Roundtable on the State of Internet Rights (17:15-18:15 local time) will be held jointly with the next group. A guest blogger from APC will be reporting from the meeting here on GVA later this week.
Global Internet Governance Academic Network (Giganet) annual symposium. (also approximately 10am-6pm) Many of the papers or abstracts are available for download. See for instance Arresting the decline of multi-stakeholderism in Internet governance by Jeremy Malcolm; The legality of internet blackouts in times of crisis. An assessment at the intersection of human rights law, humanitarian law and internet governance principles by Matthias Ketteman; and Upholding online anonymity in Internet governance. Affordances, ethical frameworks, and regulatory practices by Robert Bodle.

The main conference: So many sessions, which ones to join? At any given time, several different meetings, workshops, and plenary sessions are held concurrently. The IGF organizers have posted the schedule as a rather unweildy Excel file here. Fortunately, other participants have taken the time to post the schedule in more digestible formats. The Diplo Foundation's e-Diplomacy project has an online list of sessions and schedule. The indefatigable Tim Davies has also created a social media page aggregating all tweets, blogs and photos posted by participants. The official hashtag, by the way, is #IGF11.

If you want to get involved with a global community of people working for Internet users' rights whose work extends throughout the year, be sure to join one or more of the “dynamic coalitions.” Examples include the Internet Rights and Principles Coalition (meeting on Tuesday from 11-12:30 Kenya time) and the Freedom of Expression Coalition (Wednesday 4:30-6pm).

Many participating organizations have posted lists of the workshops they are organizing or participating in on their websites. Those interested in sessions related to activism, human rights and free expression on the Internet may want to check out session listings by the APC (scroll down below the jump), the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Global Network Initiative, and the Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore, among others.

Kieren McCarthy of dot-nxt has also created a handy practical guide to this year's IGF, with his top session picks. He observes that while the opening session on Tuesday afternoon has “far, far too many speakers,” it will nonetheless be interesting “given all that is happening in the Internet governance world.” No doubt, speeches from Hamadoun Toure (ITU), Neelie Kroes (EC), Janis Karklins (UNESCO), Larry Strickling (US), Rod Beckstrom (ICANN) and Vint Cerf (Google) not be uniform in their visions for the Internet's future.

For those interested in truly doing their homework on the IGF and the current global impasse over Internet governance, see Jeremy Malcolm's post on IGF Watch: Where to develop Internet policy: ITU, G8, OECD or an empowered IGF? Also see his previous posts on twists and turns of the IGF's five-year history.

Written by Rebecca MacKinnon, the story was published in Global Voices Advocacy on 26 September 2011. The original can be read here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/netizen-guide-to-igf

September 2011 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2012-07-30T06:34:19Z

Greetings from the Centre for Internet and Society! In this issue we are pleased to present you the latest updates about our research, upcoming events, and news and media coverage that happened in the month of September 2011.

Researchers@Work

RAW is a multidisciplinary research initiative. CIS believes that in order to understand the contemporary concerns in the field of Internet and society, it is necessary to produce local and contextual accounts of the interaction between the Internet and socio-cultural and geo-political structures. To build original research base, the RAW programme has been collaborating with different organizations and individuals in order to focus on its two year thematic of Histories of the Internets in India. Five monographs were recently launched at a workshop, Locating Internets: Histories of the Internet(s) in India — Research Training and Curriculum held in Ahmedabad from 19 to 22 August 2011.

Re:Wiring Bodies by Asha Achuthan
The Last Cultural Mile by Ashish Rajadhyaksha
Porn: Law, Video, Technology by Namita A Malhotra
Archives and Access by Aparna Balachandran and Rochelle Pinto
Internet, Society and Space in Indian Cities by Pratyush Shankar

Digital Natives with a Cause?

Digital Natives with a Cause? is a knowledge programme initiated by CIS, India and Hivos, Netherlands. It is a research inquiry that seeks to look at the changing landscape of social change and political participation and the role that young people play through digital and Internet technologies, in emerging information societies. Consolidating knowledge from Asia, Africa and Latin America, it builds a global network of knowledge partners who want to critically engage with the dominant discourse on youth, technology and social change, in order to look at the alternative practices and ideas in the Global South. It also aims at building new ecologies that amplify and augment the interventions and actions of the digitally young as they shape our futures.

Featured Publication

Digital AlterNatives with a Cause? - This collaboratively produced collective, edited by Nishant Shah and Fieke Jansen, asks critical and pertinent questions about theory and practice around ‘digital revolutions’ in a post MENA (Middle East - North Africa) world. It works with multiple vocabularies and frameworks and produces dialogues and conversations between digital natives, academic and research scholars, practitioners, development agencies and corporate structures to examine the nature and practice of digital natives in emerging contexts from the Global South.

Book Review

Digital (Alter)Natives with a Cause? — Book Review by Maarten van den Berg - The books come in a beautifully designed cassette and are accompanied by a funky yellow package in the shape of a floppy disk containing the booklet ‘D:coding Digital Natives’, a corresponding DVD, and a pack of postcards portraying the evolution of writing - in the sentence ‘I love you’, written with a goose feather in 1734, to the character set ‘i<3u’ entered on a mobile device in 2011, writes Maarten van den Berg. The review was published in "The Broker" on 19 September 2011.

Event Organised

Digital AlterNatives book launch – CIS and Hivos launched this book at the Museum for Communication, Hague on 16 September 2011.

Accessibility

Estimates of the percentage of the world's population that is disabled vary considerably. But what is certain is that if we count functional disability, then a large proportion of the world's population is disabled in one way or another. At CIS we work to ensure that the digital technologies, which empower disabled people and provide them with independence, are allowed to do so in practice and by the law. To this end, we support web accessibility guidelines, and change in copyright laws that currently disempower the persons with disabilities.

Event Participated

Stakeholders Meeting of the USOF on Facilitating ICT Access to Persons with Disabilities in Rural Areas, on 7 September 2011. Nirmita Narasimhan made a presentation.

Access to Knowledge

Access to Knowledge is a campaign to promote the fundamental principles of justice, freedom, and economic development. It deals with issues like copyrights, patents, and trademarks, which are an important part of the digital landscape. CIS believes that access to knowledge and culture is essential, and such access promotes creativity and innovation, and helps bridge the differences between the developing and developed worlds in a positive manner. Towards this end, CIS is campaigning for an international treaty on copyright exceptions for print-challenged people, advocating against laws (such as the PUPFIP Bill) that privatize public-funded knowledge, call for the WIPO Broadcast Treaty to be restricted to broadcast, question the demonization of 'pirates', and support endeavours that explore and question the current copyright regime.

New Blog Entries

Copyright Amendment Bill in Parliament by Nirmita Narasimhan, 30 August 2011.
Photocopying the past by Sunil Abraham in the Indian Express, 2 September 2011.
Calling Out the BSA on Its BS by Pranesh Prakash, 9 September 2011.

Internet Governance

Internet technologies have fundamentally questioned the notion of governance, not only at the level of administration but also at the level of mechanisms of control, regulation and shaping of the individual. e-Governance initiatives, in combination with other regimes of surveillance, control and censorship, are redefining what it means to be a citizen, a subject, and an individual. We look at questions of governance — at the micro level of the individual and the private (family, relationships, community structures, etc.) as well as the level of governmentality — at the macro level of nation state, citizenship, market economies, and the public (spaces of consumption, work, leisure, political engagement, etc.) under the umbrella of digital governance.

New Blog Entry

Understanding the Right to Information by Elonnai Hickok, 28 September 2011.

Events Organised

Using the Internet as a Tool for Political Change: Lessons Learned and Way Forward, IGF, Nairobi, 27 September 2011.

Telecom

The growth in telecommunications in India has been impressive. While the potential for growth and returns exist, a range of issues need to be addressed for this potential to be realized. One aspect is more extensive rural coverage and the second aspect is a countrywide access to broadband which is low at about eight million subscriptions. Both require effective and efficient use of networks and resources, including spectrum. It is imperative to resolve these issues in the common interest of users and service providers.

Articles by Shyam Ponappa

Shyam Ponappa is a Distinguished Fellow at CIS. He writes regularly on Telecom issues in the Business Standard and these articles are mirrored on the CIS website.

Reviving Growth, published in the Business Standard on 1 September 2011.

Event Organised

Open Spectrum for Development in the Context of the Digital Migration, IGF, Nairobi, 29 September 2011.

Miscellaneous

Film Screening

Screening of Partners in Crime, Vikalp@Smriti Nandan along with CIS screened the film and followed it with a discussion with the director of the film, Paromita Vohra, Smriti Nandan Cultural Centre, 9 September 2011.
Prime Security: The Mathematics of RSA Encryption, a one-day workshop with Rohit Gupta, a leading Mathematician.

News & Media Coverage

India's social media "spring" masks forgotten protests [Alistair Scrutton in Reuters, 25 August 2011].
Social media holds the key to Hazare's campaign success [Alistair Scrutton in NEWS.scotsman.com, 26 August 2011].
Digital divide: Why Irom Sharmila can’t do an Anna [FirstPost.Ideas, 25 August 2011].
When revolutions go viral [Times of India (Crescent Edition), 27 August 2011].
IBSA Seminar on Global Internet Governance, organised by the Brazilian Ministry of External Relations, with support from the Brazilian Internet Steering Committee (CGI.br) and the Center for Technology & Society (CTS/FGV) and governmental and non- governmental actors from India, Brazil and South Africa, 1 to 2 September 2011, Fundacao Getulio Vargas (FGV) - Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Pranesh Prakash participated in this event.
Copyrights Amendment Bill to Be Tabled in Indian Parliament – Parallel Import provisions have Been Removed [Mike Palmedo in infojustice.org, 5 September 2011]
The Power of Information: New Technologies for Philanthropy and Development [Indigo Trust, 15 September 2011]. Sunil Abraham participated in this event. A video of his speech is now available on YouTube.
Planning Commission, Census 2011 and India Post using social media to understand people's pulse better [Vikas Kumar in the Economic Times, 20 September 2011]
The Impact of Regulation: FOSS and Enterprise, organised by FOSSFA and ICFOSS, IGF, Nairobi, 28 September 2011.
Privacy, Security, and Access to Rights: A Technical and Policy Analyses, organised by Expression Technologies, IGF, Nairobi, 29 September 2011.
Putting Users First: How Can Privacy be Protected in Today’s Complex Mobile Ecosystem?, organised by GSM Association, 29 September 2011.
The Truman Show, in Kerala [Times of India, posted on CIS website on 23 September 2011].
Making a difference, online and offline [LiveMint, 27 September 2011].

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CIS is grateful to Kusuma Trust which was founded by Anurag Dikshit and Soma Pujari, philanthropists of Indian origin, for its core funding and support for most of its projects.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/september-2011-bulletin