Centre for Internet and Society

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

The Truman Show, in Kerala

praskrishna — 2011-09-23T13:42:56Z

A webcast now allows you to see the goings-on in the CMs office 24x7.The idea is to promote openness,but theres still some way to go for it to make a difference, writes Sankar Radhakrishnan in this article published in the Times of India on

Its a little past 7.30 on a Monday morning.A woman in a green sari is vigorously dusting a large glass-topped table stacked with files.She pauses for a moment to straighten the chair behind the desk,before continuing to clean the table.It is an early morning ritual that happens in offices across the country every working day.

What makes this dust-busting exercise different though is that it is happening in the office of the chief minister of Kerala and anyone in the world can view it by logging on to www.keralacm.gov.in. It was on July 1 this year that Keralas chief minister Oommen Chandy installed a webcam in his office so that everything that happens there can be seen by the public 24x7.The idea,he says,is to promote openness in government.It shows the world what goes on in my office and that I have nothing to hide, he adds.

There are actually two cameras,one that covers the chief ministers personal chamber and another that covers the office his personal staff work in.According to officials at the Centre For Development of Imaging Technology (C-DIT ),which operates the cameras,over 5,50,000 visitors had logged on to the video feed till August 29.

Since the webcam operates 24x7,the images keep streaming from the CMs office irrespective of whether he is in it or not.In fact,it produces so much footage that no steps have been taken so far to record and archive the images.

Sometimes,the video feed seems slightly voyeuristic.It does,for instance,feel a little odd to see the chief minister and his guests sit around the conference table in a corner of the room,sipping tea and nibbling on biscuits.It seems equally strange to see the cleaning lady at work apparently unaware of the fact that the world is her stage.

Chandy,though,is very aware that the webcam alone will not solve all problems,including those relating to corruption.However,he insists it is a symbol of the openness his United Democratic Front government brings to Kerala.

What happens when a confidential meeting takes place Is there anything that needs to be so confidential Chandy says.One reason the webcams do not have an audio feed is to maintain confidentiality and let people speak freely,he says.CPM leader and former Kerala finance minister TM Thomas Isaac,however,dismisses the webcam as a gimmick and a cosmetic change.He says it is meaningless for the government to talk of transparency when several of its ministers have serious corruption allegations against them.I dont see much coming out of this, he declares.

Raghavan Suresh,director,Public Affairs Centre,Bangalore,says this is the first time hes heard of an Indian politician installing a webcam in his office.It is a positive step, he adds.According to Suresh,the webcam may not eliminate corruption since it can happen outside the chief ministers office as well,but it is a measure of transparency that should be appreciated.

Sunil Abraham,executive director,Centre for Internet and Society,says the decision to install a webcam in the Kerala chief ministers office,though it is a token measure,is a good move.It brings in one level of disclosure as you get to know who his visitors are and who hangs around his office, he points out.

However,Abraham is disappointed that audio feeds are not available.An arrangement that caters to the publics need to hear what is being said in the chief ministers office,while allowing confidential discussions to remain secret,should be worked out,he believes.

I also hope it doesnt stay at the top of the pyramid but is extended to key ministries and departments, he says.

Chandy himself says having a webcam has been an interesting experience.I sometimes get calls from people viewing the webcam telling me that all the lights in my office are on even though Im not in the office.At other times,I get calls saying all the lights are off and it is not possible to see if the webcam is working, he says with a laugh.For the record,lights in the office are now dimmed when the chief minister steps out.And once he leaves for the day,a single light is usually left on so people know the webcam is working,say C-DIT officials.

The response to the webcast so far has mostly been positive,the chief minister says.The most encouraging news,perhaps,is that two of his cabinet colleagues want to install similar systems in their offices.Openness in governance,it seems,is just a webcam away at least in Kerala.

Read the original article published in the Times of India here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/truman-show-in-kerala

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

praskrishna — 2011-09-27T05:04:04Z

Concise Description:

In light of the impact of social media and other Internet tools in recent events in the Middle East and Africa, there is need to dialog on the lessons learned, and how the digital technologies, and the Internet in particular, are emerging as important tools for political change, and not just commerce, communications, and information exchange.

This proposed workshop, “Use of Digital Technologies for Civic Engagement and Political Change: Lessons Learned ” addresses the main theme of the Nairobi IGF, namely, “The Internet as a Catalyst for Change.” The proposed workshop is aimed at providing an opportunity for panelists and participants from around the world to share experiences about using digital technologies to shape civic engagement and political change.

Despite the increasing interest in the use of digital technologies for effecting change, we still lack insights into the relationships people in emerging information societies have with the technologies that are shaping their worlds. The discourse still posits the digital user as homogenized, young, middle class, Western, and (mostly) male. Furthermore, the stories about the transformative powers of the mostly young, Digital Natives often provide a monotonic, rather than varied, view of social change.

Against this background, the proposed workshop on seeks to tackle these knowledge gaps. It hopes to look beyond heroes and singular case-studies, and explore processes of change. It will also shed light on how technology serves as a catalyst for social change and political participation in the rapidly changing landscape of political action in the global South.

With panelists from Asia, Africa and Latin America, the workshop will discuss perspectives on how the Internet has been used by activists to increase citizen engagement and political change. Discussions will be focused on the following questions:

How can digital technologies help increase civic engagement, and influence political change, and do digital natives become agents of change?
What are the challenges to using digital technologies in effecting change?
How can the influence of digital technologies on political change, and the role of digital natives be enhanced?
What are the key lessons learned in using digital technologies for change, and what does the future hold?

Each of these questions will be discussed in turn by panelists, followed by brief question and answer sessions, contributions from remote participants, and finally, a wrap up by the moderator.

Which of the five broad IGF Themes or the Cross-Cutting Priorities does your workshop fall under?

Emerging Issues

Have you organized an IGF workshop before? No

If so, please provide the link to the report:

No link to this report

Provide the names and affiliations of the panellists you are planning to invite:

Nishant Shah (M) - Director Research at Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore, India
Nnenna Nwakanma (F) - Nnenna.org (West Africa)
Tarek Cheniti (M) - Consultant and Researcher on Internet and Democracy, Tunisia
Luiz Fernando Marrey Moncau (M), Policy activist and researcher, Brazil Center for Technology & Society, Brazil
Orky Okello (F) - Founder, Ushahidi, and Policy Manager for Google in Africa, Kenya.

Remote Moderators

Khaled Fattal - The Multilingual Internet Group, and Ankabooot Social Network

Fieke Jansen, Hivos

Provide the name of the organizer(s) of the workshop and their affiliation to various stakeholder groups:

Katim S. Touray (M) - Council Vice Chair, Free Software and Open Source Foundation for Africa (FOSSFA), Member, ICANN Board of Directors
Nishant Shah (M) - Director Research at Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore, India
Khaled Fattal (M) - The Multilingual Internet Group, and Ankabooot Social Network

Organization:Free Software and Open Source Foundation for Africa (FOSSFA)

Contact Person: Katim S. Touray
Workshop Number: 184

For details on the IGF website, click here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/events/digital-technologies-for-civic-engagement

The Impact of Regulation: FOSS and Enterprise

praskrishna — 2011-09-22T10:53:49Z

The workshop seeks to elaborate the impact of regulation, between Free and Open Source Software and Enterprise. It will look at the following key areas:

Education,
Software development,
Digital Content,
Empowering persons with disability,
FOSS for disaster preparedness etc.

If time allows, we will explore, if cloud computing is an open Source adjacent?

This lively discussion, is meant to bring into perspective the real picture in the market and broaden the minds of participants to realize the options available and come up with recommendations on what needs to be considered to have a fair playing ground, more especially for the developing countries.

Which of the five broad IGF Themes or the Cross-Cutting Priorities does your workshop fall under?

Access and Diversity

Have you organized an IGF workshop before? Yes

If so, please provide the link to the report:

http://www.intgovforum.org/cms/index.php/component/chronocontact/?%20chronoformname=Workshopsreports2009View&curr=1&wr=43

Provide the names and affiliations of the panellists you are planning to invite:

Mr.Samer Azmy- ICT Manager / Solution Integration Consultant, Huawei(Moderator)
Mr. Satish Babu -ICFOSS,India
Mr. Yves Miezan Ezo- Smile Training, Manager, (France)
Mr. Sunil Abraham,Executive Director, Center for Internet and Society, Bangalore, India
Mr. Evans Ikua- FOSS Certification Manager in the ict@innovation program
Dorothy Gordon- Director General, AITI-KACE
Ms. Judy Okite (Remote Moderator)

Provide the name of the organizer(s) of the workshop and their affiliation to various stakeholder groups:

Mr. Samer Azmy- FOSSFA(Pan-African)
Mr. Satish Babu -ICFOSS,(India)
Mr. Yves Miezan Ezo - Smile Training Centre(France)

Organization: FOSSFA, ICFOSS

Contact Person: Mr. Samer Azmy, Mr. Satish Babu

Workshop Number: 211

See the event details on the IGF website

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/foss-instrument-for-accessible-development

Putting Users First: How Can Privacy be Protected in Today’s Complex Mobile Ecosystem?

praskrishna — 2011-09-22T10:03:58Z

Traditional approaches to ‘online privacy’ are often based on ‘compliance’ with a patchwork of local laws (where they exist). However, as new mobile services, applications and data flows become increasingly global, geo-graphically-bound laws appear unable to keep pace. Self-regulation has an important role to play in ensuring that mobile users’ privacy is treated consistently irrespective of the location of companies, the technologies and business models involved. A key challenge for industry is (a) to identify mobile-friendly ways of helping users make informed decisions about their information and privacy; and (b) to ensure user privacy is respected and protected by those designing and building the services and applications of tomorrow.

The aim of this proposed workshop is to foster a constructive conversation around three key issues:

Are privacy challenges on the mobile platform different to the fixed-pc environment? [Particularly in the context of:
Location privacy
Behavioural Advertising
Applications and related services
To what extent is mobile users’ privacy protected across technological and legal boundaries?
What are different stakeholders doing, what can they do and what should they be doing to address these challenges?

Which of the five broad IGF Themes or the Cross-Cutting Priorities does your workshop fall under?

Security, Openness and Privacy

Have you organized an IGF workshop before? No

If so, please provide the link to the report:

No link to this report

Provide the names and affiliations of the panellists you are planning to invite:

The GSMA is working to address these privacy related challenges and is also committed to helping establish and shape a culture of privacy that respects and protects the privacy of users across the mobile ecosystem. Its work is coordinated through the GSMA Mobile Privacy Initiative. Through this Initiative the GSMA has been working closely with Industry stakeholders, Regulators, Governments and NGOs globally. For this workshop, we would propose to invite a panel of 7-8 participants (including the moderator) which could represent the following stakeholder categories:

A Representative from GSMA (Pat Walshe, Director of Privacy)
One mobile operator: Jeff Brueggeman (Vice President-Publiy Policy AT&T)
A rep from the online industry: (i) Patrick Ryan, Policy Counsel, Open Internet for Google Inc
A rep from an open source software developer: Ms Juliana Rotich, Executive Director of Ushahidi Inc

Two Civil Society/ NGO representatives:

Sunil Abraham, executive director, The Centre for Internet and Society (India)
An academic (Ian Brown, co-director of Oxford University's Information Security and Privacy Programme )

Panel Moderator: Ambassador David Gross, Partner, Wiley Rein LLP

Remote panel moderator: Yiannis Theodorou, Regulatory Policy Manager, GSMA

Provide the name of the organizer(s) of the workshop and their affiliation to various stakeholder groups:

Natasha Jackson: Head of Content, GSMA and Board member of the Family Online Safety Institute (FOSI)
Pat Walshe: Director of Privacy, GSMA, Member British Computer Society, International Association of Privacy Professionals

The GSMA and its members actively participated in previous IGF workshops. GSMA has proven expertise and capacity to organise multi-stakeholder workshops and conferences – including the Mobile World Congress, Mobile Asia Congress, Government Mobile Forum every year, attended by tens of thousands of delegates and also organised a roundtable on mobile privacy at the 32nd International Conference of Data Protection and Privacy Commissioners held in Israel in October 2010.

The GSMA represents the interests of the worldwide mobile communications industry. Spanning 219 countries, the GSMA unites nearly 800 of the world's mobile operators, as well as more than 200 companies in the broader mobile ecosystem, including handset makers, software companies, equipment providers, Internet companies, and media and entertainment organisations.

Organization:GSM Association

Contact Person: Yiannis Theodorou, Regulatory Policy Manager, GSMA

Workshop Number: 75

See the event details on the IGF website.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/how-can-privacy-be-protected

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

praskrishna — 2011-09-22T09:28:56Z

Privacy and security are often presented as zero-sum outcomes with respect to issues affecting Internet governance. This dichotomous treatment often results in policy outcomes that directly limit access and rights. The meanings of privacy and security, however, are not used uniformly and often vary with the regards to the issue at hand (i.e. financial crimes, copyright enforcement) as well as cultural and political context.

This workshop aims to explore the nuances in the relationship between privacy and security through a series of technical demonstrations alongside policy analyses from different regions to determine how rights and access can be best protected.

The Workshop Agenda is as follows:

Introduction - Workshop Agenda, Issues, and Panelists (5 minutes)
Regional Perspectives - Cultural and Policy Understandings of Privacy and Security, and the implications for access and rights (20 min)
Technical Perspectives - Designing privacy and security through technology (20 min)
Policy Opportunities and Challenges (10 min)
Question and Answer (30 min)

Which of the five broad IGF Themes or the Cross-Cutting Priorities does your workshop fall under?

Security, Openness and Privacy

Have you organized an IGF workshop before? No

If so, please provide the link to the report:

No link to this report

Provide the names and affiliations of the panellists you are planning to invite:
Invited Panelists:

Karen Reilly, Tor Project (United States)
Carlos Affonso Pereira de Souza, Centro de Technologica e Socieda (Brazil)
Smari McCarthy, International Modern Media Initiative (Iceland)
Christopher Soghoian, Indiana University (United States)
Bob Pepper, Cisco (United States)*
Sunil Abraham (India)

Remote Moderator:

Cameran Ashraf, University of California, Los Angeles

Provide the name of the organizer(s) of the workshop and their affiliation to various stakeholder groups:

Kim Pham, Expression Technologies, Civil Society
Karen Reilly, Tor Project, Technical/Civil Society

Organization: Expression Technologies

Contact Person: Kim Pham

See the event details on the IGF website

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/privacy-security-access-to-rights

Archives and Access

praskrishna — 2015-04-17T11:06:20Z

The monograph by Aparna Balachandran and Rochelle Pinto, is a material history of the Internet archives. It examines the role of the archivist and the changing relationship between the state and private archives for looking at the politics of subversion, preservation and value of archiving. By examining the Tamil Nadu and Goa state archives, along with the larger public and state archives in the country, the monograph looks at the materiality of archiving, the ambitions and aspirations of an archive, and why it is necessary to preserve archives, not as historical artefacts but as living interactive spaces of memory and remembrance. The findings have direct implications on various government and market impulses to digitise archives and show a clear link between opening up archives and other knowledge sources for breathing life into local and alternative histories.

Download the Monograph

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/histories-of-the-internet/blogs/archives-and-access/archives-and-access

Digital (Alter)Natives with a Cause? — Book Review by Maarten van den Berg

praskrishna — 2015-05-15T11:30:47Z

‘Digital (Alter)Natives with a cause?’ is a collection of four books with essays published by the Centre for Internet and Society in Bangalore, India, and the Dutch NGO Hivos. 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.

Digital Natives

The publication is the outcome of a programme initiated by the two organizations to investigate the potentials for social change and political participation in emerging societies through the use of internet and communication technologies (ICTs). The programme is particularly interested in the strategic use of ICTs among young people, those who are born and have grown up with ‘things digital’ – hence, the ‘digital natives’, a term coined by Marc Prensky in 2001.

But in the preface of the collection and the introduction to the first book, entitled ‘To Be’, the editors Nishant Shah and Fieke Jansen are quick to stress that by naming digital natives, they do not want to exclude any position whether defined by age, gender, class, language or location. Still, ‘we continue with the name’, they say, ‘because we believe that replacing this name with another is only going to be an epistemic change which tries to disown the earlier legacies and baggage that the name carries’. I am not quite sure what that means. I take it they just like the hashtag #DigitalNatives – and I can’t blame them.

Testimonies

So who are these digital natives or how have they become? The booklet ‘D:coding Digital Natives’ portrays some of them. For instance, there is Frank Odaongkara from Uganda. He says that already in primary school he had the feeling that computers would change his life. Now Facebook is his homepage, and he has 1000 ebooks on his laptop, of which he’s read 350 already. Or there is Leandra Flor from the Philippines who says she became more dynamic and in touch with her surroundings because of the ‘wonders of technology in communication’. She has built her social life around it.

What emerges from these testimonies, what many of the digital natives share is the sense of empowerment. They feel empowered by ICTs to connect to others, to learn something, to engage with the world and build social lives. Contrary perhaps to the aspirations of the editors, I do find that the digital natives in emerging societies portrayed in the publication tend to come from relatively well-to-do families. The digital divide is still very real, when it comes to access to ICTs and their life-changing potentials.

Personal > political

That digital natives feel empowered by ICTs to build a social life does of course not necessarily entail that they bring about social change or pursue political goals. But one thing can lead to the other, even accidentally. Take the story of Manal Hassan, an Egyptian woman who found herself trapped in Saudi Arabia when her family went to live there. She started a blog to write about her problem and got in contact with other Egyptian bloggers and digital activists. Women rights organizations adopted her cause, a lawyer took up her case, and she made news in the mainstream media. She had become a political actor.

There are more such stories in the publication. In the digital age, it seems, social change has gone viral. Digital natives can become political actors by sheer coincidence. I believe there is an important lesson to learn from that for sociologists and political scientists. We have to come to terms with the serendipity of collective action.

Digital methodology

For social scientists, there is more to be learned from the publication. In the introduction to the essays brought together in the chapter ‘To Think’ the editors pose that the rise and spread of digital and online technologies elicit new methods of understanding and research. And they are quite right. In the essay ‘Digital methods to study digital natives with a cause’, Esther Weltevrede uses Twitter as a platform to study digital natives and their practices. And because the retweet is a practice adopted by digital natives to forward, or give voice to a message, she proposes that for the researcher the retweet becomes a way to quantify those messages that have ‘pass-along value’.

Mob rule 2.0

As many of the authors are themselves digital natives and activists of sorts, most of them cannot hide their excitement about the opportunities that ICTs afford. But there is some room for skepticism too. Thus, essayist Yi Ping Zou rightly observes that ‘the newly imagined communities that we call digital natives […] may not be all progressive, liberal and striving to make a change for the better’. In her contribution she warns us for ‘mob rule 2.0’ as the very digital technologies that allow us ‘to create processes of change for a just and equitable world’ are also technologies that ‘enable massively regressive and vigilante acts that exercise a mob-based notion of justice’.

That vision thing

And as is the case with any form of collective action, digitally mediated or not, there is the question of purpose. In an essay that compares the youth-led ‘revolution’ of 1968 and the Arab Spring of 2011, David Sasaki observes that both are essentially anti-establishment movements and that, so far, the latter has prioritized the removal of the current political class without offering a concrete vision of what ought to come next. As far as this author is concerned, the digital natives have yet to develop a vision of their own future – and the future of their governments.

I believe that we should not expect from today’s youth what yesterday’s young ones did not accomplish. Let us consider the digital natives and the technologies they employ for what they do, not for what they ought to be doing. And after reading some of the testimonies of digital natives in this publication, I cannot but conclude – as Eddie Avila does in the last book – that what brings them together is “a vision that the everyday technologies in their lives can help them make changes in their immediate environments”. Such is not a vision about politics writ large. It is about change at the personal level, the ability to connect and engage with others, and, from there, the possibility to act collectively – and give it a larger direction.

'Digital (Alter)Natives with a cause?', Nishant Shah and Fieke Jansen (eds), is available for download in four parts at the website of the Hivos Knowledge Programme.

The review by Maarten van den Berg was published in "The Broker" on September 19, 2011. Please click here to read the original review.

About the author

A political scientist by training (University of Amsterdam, York University, Canada), Maarten van den Berg is senior editor of The Broker,an independent magazine on globalization and development. Before he joined The Broker in 2011, Maarten worked as a communication and knowledgement professional for a variety of international organizations, and still has his own consultancy, RISQ. After work, Maarten loves to cook and shares in the care of his son Titus.

Photo credit main picture: Postcard 'Digital Natives' designed by Jonathan Remulla.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/book-review-digital-alternatives

Planning Commission, Census 2011 and India Post using social media to understand people's pulse better

praskrishna — 2011-09-21T08:07:43Z

Even as the Centre is drawing up guidelines to encourage government bodies to use social media, a handful of entities are showing how they can use Facebook, Twitter and more to connect with citizens better.

The Planning Commission, Census 2011, department of posts, and the ministry of external affairs have, over the past year, established a functional and active presence on social media: from inviting suggestions to answering questions, from creating awareness to initiating debates. "It is inevitable because the government should go where the people are," says Sunil Abraham, executive director at the Centre for Internet and Society, a policy research organisation.

For the past six months, Gopi Kumar Bulusu, the CEO of Sankhya Technologies, an IT products company in Visakhapatnam, has been a regular contributor on the plan panel's Facebook page for the upcoming 12th Plan. "It gives you an opportunity to talk economics and contribute based on the knowledge you have," says Bulusu, a serial blogger. Arun Maira, member, Planning Commission, says its Facebook page, set up in February, works as a sounding board for ideas that emerge from offline consultations held by its 160 working groups. "The reach of Facebook is immense but the richness of communication is not much," says Maira. "It gives you a sense of the crowd but you don't expect great nuggets of advice." Yet, the Commission intends to make this engagement an ongoing one. "We want to create a new way of planning that's not episodic," says Maira.

The article by Vikas Kumar was published in the Economic Times on September 20, 2011. The original story can be read here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/using-social-media-to-understand-peoples-pulse

Open Spectrum for Development in the Context of the Digital Migration

praskrishna — 2011-10-13T01:14:26Z

Concise Description:

While the communication technologies that use the radio spectrum continue to develop at a brisk pace, our general approach to regulating the spectrum has not changed much since the 1930s when the spectrum was regulated to a very high degree in order to assure that interference between signals would not occur. For this reason, frequencies are assigned for specific uses and overseen quite closely by national regulators as well as an international system of governance. However, as technology rapidly changes, approaches to managing the spectrum should change as well.

Around the world, countries are migrating their broadcast systems –in particular, television- from analogue transmitters and receivers to digital ones. Digital broadcasting utilises the spectrum more efficiently, generally allowing for more channels in the space where one analogue channel could exist. This provides opportunity for other uses of the freed spectrum.

This digital migration creates the opportunity for improving how spectrum can be used and regulated. In particular, for expanding internet access. For this opportunity to realise, new means should be built into all spectrum allocation regimes. Open spectrum is one approach to spectrum management that would allow various users to utilise parts of the spectrum that are available. Sharing the spectrum in such a way would create a “spectrum commons” and would require a simple set of rules for communicating with one another and making decisions. But even if some frequencies are set aside as commons, more transparent and clear ways to regulate the spectrum being used by all stakeholders -including broadcasters, mobile companies and the military- need to be set.

This workshop will be aimed at identifying current practices that are contributing to build the spectrum commons, as well as debating different perspectives on policy and regulatory issues involved in spectrum management and its impacts on development.

In this workshop we will explore alternative regulatory frameworks in different contexts and regions, considering how technological developments can shape the future of spectrum-based communication. Considering, in particular, the opportunities brought by the transition to digital broadcasting systems.

Which of the five broad IGF Themes or the Cross-Cutting Priorities does your workshop fall under?

Emerging Issues

Have you organized an IGF workshop before? Yes

If so, please provide the link to the report:

http://www.intgovforum.org/cms/component/chronocontact/?chronoformname=WSProposalsReports2010View&wspid=110

Provide the names and affiliations of the panellists you are planning to invite:

Moderator:

- Claire Sibthorpe, Maple Consulting Services, UK

Panelists:

Steve Song, Village Telco, South Africa
Muriuki Mureithi, Researcher, Summit Strategies ltd, Kenya
Carlos Afonso, Instituto NUPEF, Brazil
Willie Currie, Independent Communications Authority of South Africa, South Africa
Giacomo Mazzone, European Broadcasting Union, Switzerland
Sascha Meinrath, New America Foundation, USA
Paul Mitchell, Microsoft Corporation, USA

Remote moderator:

Henrik Almström, APC, South Africa

Provide the name of the organizer(s) of the workshop and their affiliation to various stakeholder groups:

Association for Progressive Communications (APC) (civil society)

KictaNet (multistakeholder network)

Balancing Act (private sector)

Centre for Internet and Society (civil society)

Organization:Association for Progressive Communications

Contact Person: Pablo Accuosto

Workshop Number 121

See the background paper here

See the details on IGF website here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/events/open-spectrum-for-development-in-the-context-of-the-digital-migration

The Power of Information: New Technologies for Philanthropy and Development

praskrishna — 2011-09-23T11:16:18Z

The Indigo Trust working with The Institute for Philanthropy and The Omidyar Network will be hosting a conference: “The Power of Information: New Technologies for Philanthropy and Development” on September 15th 2011. The conference, which will be held in central London will be invitation only.

The conference will explore the ways in which innovative developments in information and computer technology can aid development, improve service delivery, enhance communication and enable critical information to reach the most excluded communities in the developing world.

This conference will enable philanthropists and the donor community to gain an insight into the ways in which the emerging field of Information Computer Technology for Development (ICT4D) has the potential to enhance interventions in all sectors across the developed and developing world.

The conference will include an opportunity to meet with donors already funding in the field and to break out into the following sector specific break-out panels, where philanthropists and practitioners can explore how ICT can enhance their current work:

Transparency, Accountability and Democracy
Health
Finance and Rural Development
Youth empowerment and education
Human Rights
Fostering Innovation and Enterprise

We are delighted to announce that Jimmy Wales, Founder of Wikipedia will be our special dinner speaker.

Richard Allan (Facebook) is our morning Keynote Speaker.

Confirmed speakers include:

Amy Sample Ward (Independent)
Anna Kydd (SHM Foundation)
Ashifi Gogo (Sproxil)
Bill Zimmerman (ActivSpaces – AfriLabs – VC4Africa)
Bosun Tijani (Co-creation hub)
Chris Locke (GSMA)
David Edelstein (Grameen Foundation)
Erica Hagen (Map Kibera)
Erik Hersman (Ushahidi/ihub)
Francesca Perrin (Indigo Trust)
Gustav Praekelt (Praekelt Foundation)
Ida Jooste (Internews)
John Kipchumbah (Sodnet)
Jon Gosier (HiveColab)
Ken Banks (FrontlineSMS)
Laura Walker Hudson (FrontlineSMS)
Loren Treisman (Indigo Trust)
Marjan Besuijen (Hivos)
Martin Tisne (Transparency and Accountability Initiative)
Matt Berg (Millennium Villages)
Owen Barder (Aid Info)
Patrick Meier (Crisis Mappers/Ushahidi)
Philip Thigo (Sodnet)
Rodrigo Baggio (CDI Brazil)
Rose Goslinga (Syngenta)
Rose Shuman (Question Box)
Sameer Padania (Macroscope)
Stephanie Hankey (Tactical Tech)
Stephen King (Omidyar)
Su Kahambu (iCow)
Sunil Abraham (Centre for Internet and Society)
Susan Kariuki (Youth Agenda)
Tom Steinberg (mySociety)
Uju Ofomata (One World)
William Perrin (Indigo Trust)

There will also be a video message by Pierre Omidyar, Founder of eBay.

About the Omidyar Network

Omidyar Network is a philanthropic investment firm dedicated to harnessing the power of markets to create opportunity for people to improve their lives. Established in 2004 by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar and his wife Pam, the organization invests in and helps scale innovative organizations to catalyze economic and social change. To date, Omidyar Network has committed more than $383 million to for-profit companies and nonprofit organizations that foster economic advancement and encourage individual participation across multiple investment areas, including microfinance, entrepreneurship, property rights, consumer Internet, mobile technology and government transparency. To learn more about Omidyar Network, please visit www.omidyar.com.

About The Institute for Philanthropy

Established in 2000, the Institute for Philanthropy is one of the world’s leading organisations providing international donor education; its staff brings more than 50 years of experience at the highest level in strategic philanthropy. With offices in London and New York, we work closely with a global network of wealthy individuals and families, and in partnership with private companies, trusts, foundations and schools. We work to increase effective philanthropy in the United Kingdom and internationally. We do this by (1) providing donor education; (2) building donor networks; and (3) raising the awareness and understanding of philanthropy.

This was announced on the Indigo Trust website on 15 September 2011, the original can be read here.

Sunil Abraham participated in this event, a video of his speech is now available on YouTube.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/power-of-information