Centre for Internet and Society

Events

sumandro — 2015-10-25T04:16:13Z

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

Publications

sumandro — 2015-10-25T03:49:47Z

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

Crowdsourcing Incidents of Communication Privacy Violation in India

sumandro — 2015-10-16T10:49:17Z

In the context of several ongoing threads of debates and policy discussions, we are initiating this effort to crowdsource incidents of violation of digital/online/telephonic privacy of persons and organisations in India. The full list of submitted incidents is publicly shared, under Creative Commons Attributions-ShareAlike 4.0 International license. Please contribute and share with your friends and colleagues.

Report an incident: http://goo.gl/forms/8Xcf0zcWZW

Collected incidents: http://bit.ly/privacy-violation-india (CC BY-SA 4.0)

You are welcome to cross-post this to your website or other online forum. Please provide attribution, and link back to this page. For any clarification, write to Sumandro Chattapadhyay, Research Director, CIS, at sumandro[at]cis-india[dot]org.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/crowdsourcing-incidents-of-communication-privacy-violation-in-india

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

sumandro — 2015-10-11T04:34:19Z

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

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

sumandro — 2015-10-07T19:11:01Z

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

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

sumandro — 2015-11-15T07:48:17Z

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

Call for Sessions document: Download (PDF)

Call for Sessions poster: Download (PNG)

Internet Researchers’ Conference

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

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

This conference series is founded on the following interests:

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

Studying Internet in India

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

The conference will specifically focus on the following questions:

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

Sessions

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

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

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

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

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

Writing Sprint

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

Final Round Table

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

IRC Reader

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

Proposing a Session

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

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

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

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

Selection of Sessions

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

Venue, Accommodation, and Travel

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

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

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

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

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

sumandro — 2015-10-07T10:31:11Z

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

Practice

sumandro — 2015-10-05T15:13:26Z

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

Learning

sumandro — 2015-10-05T14:55:54Z

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

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

sumandro — 2015-10-05T15:00:16Z

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

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

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

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

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

Full Description

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How will the Application Work?

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

Briefly Describe the Need that You're Trying to Address

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

What Progress have You Made so Far?

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

What would be a Successful Outcome for Your Project?

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

Please List your Team Members and their Relevant Experience/Skills

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

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

APU Grant Proposal 2015 - Isochrene

sumandro — 2015-10-01T05:53:20Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/apu-grant-proposal-2015-isochrene

International Open Data Charter: Comments by CIS

sumandro — 2015-09-08T11:01:01Z

The second meeting of Stewards of the International Open Data Charter is in progress in Santiago, Chile, where the revisions made to the Charter based on the comments received during the public consultation period that ended on July 31, 2015, are being re-discussed and finalised by the Stewards. Here we are sharing the comments submitted by us on the first public draft of the Charter published during the International Open Data Conference in Ottawa, Canada, in May 2015. The comments include those submitted by Sumandro and Sharath Chandra Ram.

The draft International Open Data Charter and all the submitted comments can be accessed here: http://opendatacharter.net/charter/

Comments on the Public Draft

Note: The text below contains excerpts from the public draft of the Charter, followed by submitted comments in bold.

1) The world is witnessing the growth of a global movement facilitated by technology and digital media and fuelled by information – one that contains enormous potential to create more accountable, efficient, responsive, and effective governments and businesses, and to spur economic growth.

The word ‘movement’ can perhaps be replaced by ‘transformation.’ ‘Movement’ tends to suggest some kind of unity of purpose or objective, which is not perhaps what is meant here. Also, is it possible to add ‘transparent’ to ‘accountable, efficient, responsive, and effective’?

Open data sit at the heart of this global movement.

Perhaps ‘transformation’ and not ‘movement’.

2) Building a more democratic, just, and prosperous society requires transparent, accountable governments that engage regularly and meaningfully with citizens. Accordingly, there is an ongoing effort to enable collaboration around key social challenges, to provide effective oversight of government activities, to support economic development through innovation, and to develop effective, efficient public policies and programmes.

Perhaps insert ‘sustainable’ before ‘economic development’. In the second sentence, none of the action phrases (‘enable collaboration’ and ‘effective oversight’ and ‘innovation’ and ‘develop effective, efficient’) are speaking about either democracy or justice. The focus seems to be completely on effectiveness. Phrases like ‘transparent’, ‘accountable’, and ‘participatory’ should be introduced here.

Open data is essential to meeting these challenges.

The above point clarifies why ‘data is essential’ but not why ‘open data is essential’. The connection between democracy and justice on one hand, and open data on the other is not yet articulated clearly.

3) Effective access to data allows individuals and organisations to develop new insights and innovations that can generate social and economic benefits to improve the lives of people around the world, and help to improve the flow of information within and between countries. While governments collect a wide range of data, they do not always share these data in ways that are easily discoverable, useable, or understandable by the public.

Along with allowing ‘insights’ and ‘innovations’ to develop, can it also be highlighted that open data make decisions and processes transparent?

This is a missed opportunity.

I agree with above comments that it is perhaps better to articulate this not as ‘missed opportunity’ but to highlight this as the very ‘opportunity’ that the open data agenda is interested in capturing.

4) Today, many people expect to be able to access high quality information and services, including government data, when and how they want. Others see the opportunity presented by government data as one which can provide innovative policy solutions and support economic and social benefits for all members of society. We have arrived at a point at which people can use open data to generate value, insights, ideas, and services to create a better world for all.

This point may also mention that some people are interested in using government data to open up government decisions and processes and make them transparent, which is a necessary condition for making the government accountable.

6) Providing access to government data can drive sustainable and inclusive growth by empowering citizens, the media, civil society, and the private sector to identify gaps, and work toward better outcomes for public services in areas such as health, education, public safety, environmental protection, and governance. Open data can do this by:

Perhaps ‘democratic participation’ can be added after ‘sustainable and inclusive growth’. That is: ‘Providing access to government data can drive sustainable and inclusive growth, and democratic participation, by empowering citizens…’

7) Open government data can be used in innovative ways to create useful tools and products that help to navigate modern life more easily. Used in this way, open data are a catalyst for innovation in the private sector, supporting the creation of new markets, businesses, and jobs. These benefits can multiply as more private sector and civil society organisations adopt open data practices modelled by government and share their own data with the public.

The incentive for private sector and CSOs to open up data is not clear. Overall benefit may rise with them opening up data, but how does a private company / CSO benefit by opening up its data?

8) We, the adherents to the International Open Data Charter, agree that open data are an under-used resource with huge potential to encourage the building of stronger, more interconnected societies that better meet the needs of our citizens and allow innovation and prosperity to flourish.

Along with ‘stronger’ and ‘more interconnected’, please mention ‘more transparent’ and ‘more democratic’. Also it is not clear what is meant by ‘stronger’. ‘[B]etter meet the needs of our citizens’ does not necessarily suggest a more democratic or just society, but a more effective welfare distribution system. Please add ‘… and empower the citizens to ensure accountability of the government.’

9) We therefore agree to follow a set of principles that will be the foundation for access to, and the release and use of, open government data. These principles are:

Open Data by Default;
Quality and Quantity;
Accessible and Useable by All;
Engagement and Empowerment of Citizens;
Collaboration for Development and Innovation

Does it makes sense to remove the ‘Quantity and Quality’ point and merging it with ‘Accessible and Usable by All’? Data quantity and quality issues, along with those related to publication of data, can all logically follow under the topic of data access and use. For example, highly aggregated data published once a year without documentation is not really usable data.

10) We will develop an action plan in support of the implementation of the Charter and its Technical Annexes, and will update and renew the action plan at a minimum of every two years. We agree to commit the necessary resources to work within our political and legal frameworks to implement these principles in accordance with the technical best practices and timeframes set out in our action plan.

We (at CIS) strongly feel that the Charter should also prescribe that along with the national Action Plan, Open Data Citizen’s Charters are created for various levels and verticals of the government. This will clarify data publication responsibilities and targets at ministerial and sub-national (including city) governmental levels, and will allow for much more effective monitoring (national and international) of the Action Plan implementation process.

‘[A]t a minimum of every two years’ reads a bit unclear. Does it mean that the Action Plan should be renewed only after two years and not before, or that the Action Plan should be renewed every two years or before that?

11) We recognise that free access to, and the subsequent use of, government data are of significant value to society and the economy, and that government data should, therefore, be open by default.

Along with clarifying the scope of ‘government data,’ the idea of ‘open’ in the context of data needs a clear definition as an independent point. The document is getting into ‘open by default’ without clarifying what is ‘open’, including both necessary and sufficient conditions.

12) We acknowledge the need to promote the global development and adoption of tools and policies for the creation, use, and exchange of open data and information.

I agree with Mike Linksvayer. This is a great opportunity for the Charter to connect the open data agenda with the wider open agendas, especially that of free and open source softwares. It is very important that this point promotes ‘global development of free and open source tools’.

Extending the comment by Jose Subero, along with ‘tools’ and ‘policies’, it will be great to have a mention of ‘standards’ here, which is critical for ensuring ‘interoperability’ and thus ‘harmonisation’.

13) We recognise that the term ‘government data’ is meant in the widest sense possible. This could apply to data held by national, federal, and local governments, international government bodies, and other types of institutions in the wider public sector. This could also apply to data created for governments by external organisations, and data of significant benefit to the public which is held by external organisations and related to government programmes and services (e.g. data on extractives entities, data on transportation infrastructure, etc).

It is wonderful that the point promotes a wide understanding of ‘government data’ but at the same time it should also define a necessary core understanding of data, just to ensure that governments do not interpret this point too narrowly.

Further, a focus only on data created by public agencies can perhaps be too narrow (for the necessary/core understanding of ‘government data’). With public services delivered increasingly by private agencies and public-private-partnerships, it is crucial that ‘government data’ should explicitly include any data coming out of a process funded by public money (the process may be carried out by a public agency or not). This is an extremely important point from a developing country perspective.

14) We recognise that there is domestic and international legislation, in particular pertaining to security, privacy, confidentiality, intellectual property, and personally-identifiable and other sensitive information, which must be observed and/or updated where necessary.

From a developing country perspective, it is very important that the Charter does not keep this critical point dependent on domestic and international legislations. International legislation may not be very developed for all of the mentioned topics, and many countries may not have existing domestic legislations on these topics either. The Charter should mention an internationally acceptable list of concerns / criteria for not opening up data. The list may include the topics mentioned here, like privacy and national security. This need not be a list of sufficient criteria, but of necessary ones.

15) We will:

develop and adopt policies and practices to ensure that all government data is made open by default, as outlined in this Charter, while recognising that there are legitimate reasons why some data cannot be released;

'Administrative reforms’ are most often crucial to make government data ‘open by default, and the same should be mentioned along with ‘policies’ and ‘practices’.

provide clear justifications as to why certain data cannot be released;

This is a great point. Perhaps it can be added that all government agencies should produce a list of all data assets maintained by them, point out the ones that cannot be made open, and provide clear justification as to why those cannot be released. This comment pre-empts 19.1. Perhaps this point about providing justification for not releasing data can be merged with 19.1.

develop the leadership, management, oversight, and internal communication policies necessary to enable this transition to a culture of openness.

Along with ‘leadership, management, oversight, and internal communication’, is it possible to add ‘incentives’? This is often overlooked in implementing open data policies.

16) We recognise that governments and other public sector organisations hold vast amounts of information that may be of interest to citizens, and that it may take time to identify data for release or publication.

17) We also recognise the importance of consulting with citizens, other governments, non-governmental organisations, and other open data users, to identify which data to prioritise for release and/or improvement.

18) We agree, however, that governments’ primary responsibility should be to release data in a timely manner, without undue delay.

Points 16-18 seem to suggest that the ‘quantity and quality’ issue is mostly one of prioritisation. This can be misleading. This is perhaps the ‘quantity’ issue, but not at all the ‘quality’ issue.

19) We will:

...
release high-quality open data that are timely, comprehensive, and accurate in accordance with prioritisation that is informed by public requests. To the extent possible, data will be released in their original, unmodified form and at the finest level of granularity available, and will also be linked to any visualisations or analyses created based on the data, as well as any relevant guidance or documentation;

Please add ‘human- and machine-readable’ along with ‘timely, comprehensive, and accurate’.

Put ‘, and’ between ‘, and accurate’ and ‘in accordance’.

‘Relevant guidance or documentation’ should be mentioned before, and not after, ‘visualisations or analyses’.

ensure that accompanying documentation is written in clear, plain language, so that it can be easily understood by all;

Add that the documentation should be ‘comprehensive’, along with being written in plain language.

make sure that data are fully described, and that data users have sufficient information to understand their source, strengths, weaknesses, and any analytical limitations;

Regarding ‘Full description of data’ — Aggregate data must be accompanied by low level raw data along with details of analytical methods used to arrive at figures. This allows for verification as well as alternate views and detection of statistical anomalies.

ensure that open datasets include consistent core metadata, and are made available in human- and machine-readable formats under an open and unrestrictive licence;

Is this the necessary definition of ‘open data’? If so, it should be much higher up.

allow users to provide feedback, and continue to make revisions to ensure the quality of the data is improved as needed; and

This point should clarify if it is talking about making revisions of the data itself (its content), or how it is being published (its form), or both?

apply consistent information lifecycle management practices, and ensure historical copies of datasets are preserved, archived, and kept accessible as long as they retain value.

The ‘as long as they retain value’ part seems vague. Who is going to take this decision about value? Is it possible to rephrase this as ‘as long as they are demanded by data users’?

21) We recognise that open data should be made available free of charge in order to encourage their widest possible use.

Maybe ‘government data’ and not ‘open data’ (open data already means it is available gratis). Also, along with ‘free of charge’ maybe add ‘under open license’, as that is a critical requirement for ‘widest possible use.’

22) We recognise that when open data are released, they should be made available without bureaucratic or administrative barriers, such as mandatory user registration, which can deter people from accessing the data.

I strongly believe that this point should be removed. Registration of the data user can also be very useful for the government agencies to track demand and actual usage of their datasets. Instead of the government agencies doing such kind of tracking as a background process, it is much better if the data usage monitoring of all users is done transparently. Along with perhaps a public dashboard of data usages of the users of an open data portal. As long as the registration barrier does not involve an approval process by the government agency, it can be allowed.

A more general point should be added as part of this principle, regarding no-discrimination (or approval process) among data users interested in accessing and using of open government data.

23) We will:

release data in open formats and free of charge to ensure that the data are available to the widest range of users to find, access, and use them. In many cases, this will include providing data in multiple formats, so that they can be processed by computers and used by people; and

Please add ‘open license’ along with ‘open formats’ and ‘free of charge’.

24) We recognise that the release of open data strengthens our public and democratic institutions, encourages better development, implementation, and assessment of policies to meet the needs of our citizens, and enables more meaningful, better informed engagement between governments and citizens.

Perhaps add ‘, and makes them transparent’ after ‘strengthens our public and democratic institutions’. Please also add ‘monitoring’ along with ‘development, implementation, and assessment’.

25) We will:

implement oversight and review processes to report regularly on the progress and impact of our open data initiatives;

The functioning of these ‘oversight and review processes’ must be open and transparent themselves. The reporting should be public.

engage with community and civil society representatives working in the domain of transparency and accountability to determine what data they need to effectively hold governments to account; encourage the use of open data to develop innovative, evidence-based policy solutions that benefit all members of society, as well as empower marginalised groups; and

This must also include a point regarding the government proactively seeking data demands from citizens, CSOs, academics, and the private sector.

‘as well as empower marginalised groups’ is too vague. Perhaps it can be made into a separate point, and qualified with what kinds of empowerment is needed – from demanding data, to accessing and using data, to be aware of the data collected from such groups by the government agencies.

be transparent about our own data collection, standards, and publishing processes, by documenting all of these related processes online.

This should be part of point 19.

26) We recognise the importance of diversity in stimulating creativity and innovation. The more citizens, governments, civil society, and the private sector use open data, the greater the social and economic benefits that will be generated. This is true for government, commercial, and non-commercial uses.

The diversity point is almost already made with points 20-21 – widest possible users lead to widest possible use.

28) We will:

...
engage with civil society, the private sector, and academic representatives to determine what data they need to generate social and economic value;

This is also covered under the Principle 3.

provide training programs, tools, and guidelines designed to ensure government employees are capable of using open data effectively in policy development processes;

This should be part of Principle 1.

encourage non-governmental organisations to open up data created and collected by them in order to move toward a richer open data ecosystem with multiple sources of open data;

I agree with ABS. Why not ‘non-governmental organisations and the private sector’?

Also the document shifts back and forth between ‘civil society organisations’ and ‘non-governmental organisations’. If both mean the same in this document, then it should use only one.

General Comments on the Charter

1. Why not merge the Principle 4 and 5 so as to describe an overall situation of engagement and collaboration. The ends can be commercial acts or towards democratic practices, but the existing principles do not make much a difference between the two types of acts.

2. Further, can a new principle be added at the end that would address the implementation process of the Action Plan? Specifically, it should clarify how the implementation itself be an open process, with not only the Action Plan but annual reports regarding the status of implementation. This principle may connect to the work being done by the Implementation WG.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/international-open-data-charter-comments-by-cis

Blog

sumandro — 2015-08-30T06:52:42Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog

Research

sumandro — 2019-12-30T17:39:31Z

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

Workshop on Open Data for Human Development - Sessions Report

sumandro — 2015-08-28T08:16:09Z

CIS facilitated a workshop on open data policy and tools for government officials from Sikkim, Meghalaya, and Tripura, and those from Bhutan and Maldives, in June 2015. The workshop was co-facilitated with Akvo, DataMeet, and Mapbox, and was supported by International Centre for Human Development of UNDP India. Here we share the workshop report and other related documents. The report is written by Sumandro, along with Amitangshu Acharya of Akvo.

Day 01, June 03, 2015

The first day of the workshop began with Mr. Prem Das Rai, Honourable MP, Loksabha, Sikkim, briefly addressing the participants. He contextualised the workshop against the background of technological changes and emerging opportunities of governance through effective usages of data. Dr. A.K. Shiva Kumar, Director of the International Centre for Human Development (IC4HD), UNDP India, welcomed the participants and initiated a panel discussion on data, ICTs and governance. The panel had three speakers: Mr. Srivatsa Krishna, IAS and Secretary, Department of Information Technology, Biotechnology, and Science and Technology, Government of Karnataka; Dr. B. Gangaiah, Additional Director General, Centre for Good Governance, Hyderabad; and Sunil Abraham, Executive Director, the Centre for Internet and Society, Bengaluru and Delhi.

Mr. Krishna spoke about the strategies adopted in setting up IT and ITES clusters in Cyberabad, Andhra Pradesh and in Bengaluru, Karnataka. He noted that tax cuts and accelerated land allocation are key to incentivising the private sector to set up IT and ITES units. Another major concern is that of ensuring supply of good quality IT workers. He also emphasised on the need for governments to build effective public facing electronic services - either in the form of Nemmadi Kendras, where people can physically go to access various government services, or in the form of mobile applications that bring different civic services into one digital interface, like Bangalore One and Karnataka Mobile One.

Dr. Gangaiah gave an extensive overview of the idea and applications of open data in the contexts of governance and development. He noted that government data (in India) often suffers from criticisms related to quality, as well as the lack of availability of the same in public domain. The key problems, he identified, for opening up government data in India are that most often the data is collected by a government agency for a very specific purpose, and the steps required to ensure wider circulation and use of the same is not taken (such as lack of documentation and interoperability of data); and that the government agencies most often consider the collected data as a source of power, and hence as something to be retained and not disclosed in full details. The slides from Dr. Gangaiah’s presentation can be accessed here.

Mr. Abraham’s presentation highlighted several areas of concern when deploying data-driven techniques and solutions for human development challenges. He described how the current phase of open data discussions by central and state governments in India represent the third phase of ‘openness’ in governance in India. While the first phase focused on usage of Free/Libre Open Source Softwares in building electronic governance applications and information systems, the second phase involved embracing of open software standards and formats across government information systems and IT solutions. It is very important to note that with the third phase of openness focusing on opening up of data and information, both of these earlier foci of free and open source softwares, and open standards and interoperability are returning as complementary components to ensure seamless publication of open government data. However, he argued, when deploying data-driven techniques and solutions for human development challenges, it is imperative to remember three things: 1) collection of data is a time- and effort-consuming task, and hence must be optimised so as to not to take away time and effort from actual developmental interventions, 2) bad quality of development data is a structural problem, often emanating from the data being not useful to the person actually collecting it, and 3) availability of data does not automatically change or open up the process of decision-making.

The second session of the day started with a detailed presentation by Mr. T. Samdup, Joint Director, Department of Information Technology, Government of Sikkim, on the context, the making, and the salient features of the Sikkim Open Data Acquisition and Accessibility Policy (SODAAP), 2014. He explained that the Policy mandates setting up of an online state data portal that will host all data sets generated by various agencies of the Government of Sikkim, and making such data available, subject to concerns of privacy and security, across all state government agencies and the citizens in general. The key needs driving this Policy have been that for availability of accurate and timely data on various aspects of human development in the state, as well as for reducing expenses and confusions due to duplication of data collection efforts. The slides from Mr. Samdup’s presentation can be accessed here.

The presentation by Mr. Samdup was followed by one by Mr. Sumandro Chattapadhyay of the Centre for Internet and Society on an initial set of questions and concerns that should be addressed by the implementation plan of the SODAAP. He took a detailed look at the four objectives mentioned in the Policy document, and discussed what tasks, decisions, and deliberations are needed to achieve each of those. In conclusion, he listed a set of core components of the implementation process that must also be discussed in the implementation plan document, namely: 1) governance and oversight structure for implementation, 2) incentivising government personnel for opening up data across departments, including financial support for the same, 3) metadata, documentation of data collection process, and implementing unique identifiers, and 4) developing processes of sharing of data between the Union and the state government, especially in reference to national Management Information Systems. The slides from Mr. Chattapadhyay’s presentation can be accessed here.

These presentations were followed by a general discussion on various aspects of the SODAAP and the challenges to be overcome during its implementation. This session provided a general introduction to the SODAAP, especially for workshop participants who are not from Sikkim, and also set up the key questions to be discussed and answered while preparing the first draft of the SODAAP implementation plan.

After the second session ended, the participants were asked to individually write down the key challenges they identify for the implementation process of SODAAP. These responses were compiled by Sumandro and made available as a reference document for the implementation plan. The chart below summarises these responses.

In the third session of the day, Joy Ghosh and Amitangshu Acharya of Akvo talked about the challenges of collecting structured born-digital data from the grassroots level, and how using mobile-based applications, like Akvo FLOW, can address such challenges. Akvo FLOW runs on all Android-based smartphones, and allows ground level development workers to directly feed data into the phone, as well as collect related materials like GPS location and photographs, based upon a form that is centrally designed and downloaded into their phones by the development workers. The data is then kept in the phone till it is sent back to the main server, where data coming from all different surveyors using the same form is shown on a map-based interface for easy navigation of the data across space and time. In this session, Mr. Acharya first introduced the participants to the issues around digital data collection, touching upon issues of ethics, capacity, prioritisation of data collection process along with tools. Mr. Ghosh then took over to describe the functioning of the tool, and then distributed several smartphones, pre-loaded with Akvo FLOW, among the participants for an applied data collection exercise where the participants walked around the NIAS campus and collected data using the FLOW interface. They returned to see their data mapped and analysed on the online dashboard. Their presentation can be accessed here.

Day 02, June 04, 2015

The second day started with two consecutive presentations by Mr. Thejesh GN of DataMeet, and Mr. Sivaram Ramachandran of Mapbox on the tools and techniques for working with statistical data and with geospatial data, respectively. The former presentation took the participants through the stages of working with statistical data: from collecting and finding data, to cleaning and validating, and finally analysing the data. Various free and open source tools for each of these stages were also discussed in brief, such as PDF Tables and Tabula for converting PDF tables to spreadsheets, Open Refine for cleaning data, and RAW and DataWrapper for generating web-based dynamic charts. The latter presentation explored the various ways in which geospatial data can be used to inform and support decision-making, and the tools that can be used to render and present geospatial data in forms that are accessible for decision-makers within government and also for individual users. Mr. Ramachandran presented the various free and open source tools available for working with geospatial data, such as Mapbox Studio, Quantum GIS, and Leaflet JS. He also gave a brief introduction to OpenStreetMap, the wiki-like user-contributed global map data platform. Both the presentations can be accessed here and here, respectively. After this session, the participants were divided into two groups. One group engaged further with tools and techniques of working with statistical and geospatial data. The second group took part in a series of exercises to identify and document the current data flows and bottlenecks thereof across several key departments of Government of Sikkim.

The group engaging in applications of various software tools for working with statistical and geospatial data was facilitated by Mr. Thejesh and Mr. Ramachandran. This group worked with a sample statistical data set, taking it across the stages of finding, cleaning, analysing, and visualising as discussed earlier. The participants used the online version of Tableau to create dynamic charts. Afterwards, they were introduced to various methods of contributing and downloading data from the OpenStreetMap, including directly adding data points through the online editor named iD. The participants went out in the NIAS campus to collect geospatial data about various natural and human-made features of the campus, such as trees, pathways, etc.

The second group working on documenting data flows and identifying bottlenecks was facilitated by Mr. Chattapadhyay, Mr. Acharya, and Ms. Rajashi Mukherjee from Akvo. The group was further divided into department-wise teams, one each for the Department of Health, the Department of Economic Statistics, Monitoring, and Evaluation (DESME), the Human Resource Development Department (HRDD), and representatives from Gram Panchayat Units. The exercise began with each of the teams discussing and drawing the flow of data for one of the major data set maintained by the agency concerned. The data flows were drawn by identifying key moments of its processing (such as primary collection, verification, digitisation, analysis, storage, reporting, etc.), the actors involved in that moment, the tools and data formats relevant for each moment, and which agency finally stores and uses the data. Once these processes were described on paper, the next part of the exercise focused on identifying which challenges exist at which part of these data flows. This was followed up by a ranking of all these challenges, in terms of how critically they affect the ability of the agency concerned to use and share the final data. All the teams worked separately, and conversed with the facilitators as needed, to develop the data flow diagrams and identify the key challenges.

The major common challenges noted by these teams were: 1) delays in collection, verification, and digitisation of data, 2) inability of state government agencies to access data collected as part of centrally-funded welfare schemes, and 3) parallel systems of data collection employed by different departments leading to duplication of efforts and data.

Several interesting insights came through in this exercise. For example, data related to education is collected both by the HRDD, and the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyaan (SSA). However, SSA data is not shared with the HRDD. Also, the HRDD publishes all its data, including the name of students, on their website, making it publicly available. One of the data challenges identified by the HRDD was their difficulty in tracking if scholarship money is reaching the suitable students. When a student moves from one school to another, the records do not get updated easily. This leads to different schools continuing to receive funds for the same scholarship. Aligning school records is important to prevent such leakages.

After these two grouped exercises, all the participants gathered back so that the data flows diagrams and identification of key challenges documented by departmental teams could be presented to the entire group. Each team presented their data flow diagram, and discussed challenges and opportunities. This created a context for different departments to discuss what kind of data they often needed from each other, and how there was neither a platform for inter-departmental discussion on such issues, nor systems that facilitate the same. There was an agreement that an open data platform could address this issue to a great extent. The discussion also highlighted that the most significant data collecting government agency in Sikkim is DESME, however, it does not publish any data in machine-readable formats, and does not even have a website.

This data flow and bottleneck exercise made it very clear that there are several data production and collection processes in place in Sikkim, and also systems that are digesting, processing, and reporting data. Hence, implementing the open data policy will need to negotiate with such complexity.

In the final session of the day, Dr. Shiban Ganju made a presentation on applications of open data in healthcare. His talk focused on how converting medical information about a patient being stored at various locations to a combined and shareable Electronic Health Record can save the patient as well as the medical practitioners from duplication of medical tests, easier mobility from one medical institute to another, and a clearer macro-level understanding of key public health indicators. Dr. Ganju discussed the open health data initiatives in the United States, in the United Kingdom, and in Sweden, before discussing the challenges faced in implementing interoperable standards for open health data in India. The slides from Dr. Ganju’s presentation can be accessed here.

Day 03, June 05, 2015

The final day started with a set of presentations from Mr. Garab Dorji, Deputy Chief IT Officer, Office of the Prime Minister, Thimphu, Bhutan of the Government of Bhutan, Mr. Birendra Tiwari, Senior Informatic Officer, Department of Information Technology, Government of Meghalaya, and Mr. Milan Chhetri of Melli Dara Paiyong Gram Panchayat Unit, Sikkim, on various technological solutions being explored, implemented, and practiced by the respective governments and administrative units.

Mr. Milan Chhetri’s presentation was on the operationalisation of Cyber Villages in Sikkim, which had been initiated in 2013 with support from the Honourable Chief Minister of Sikkim, Pawan Kumar Chamling. Cyber Villages aim to address digital divide, by empowering local village units with handheld data devices to collect data from every household and connect the same to a real time dashboard. All village related data is expected to be available in one place. At the same time as part of e-governance initiative, SMS based updates on Government programmes and services will be sent to all villagers. Mr. Chhetri ended his presentation with a short promotional video of the concept, which is embedded below.

The second session of the day started with a presentation from Mr. D. P. Misra, National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy - Programme Management Unit (NDSAP-PMU), National Informatics Centre, Government of India. The presentation focused on the process of implementation of the National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy approved by the Government of India in 2012. Mr. Misra has played a key role in the NDSAP-PMU that was trusted with development of the national open government data platform of India and in setting up the procedures and standards for publication of government data by various central and state government agencies through that Platform. His talk described the technical solutions designed by the NDSAP-PMU to make data accessible for the end-users in various file formats, to make visualisation of available data easy, and to make it possible for users to comment upon existing data and to request for data that is unavailable at the moment. Further, he emphasised the need for outreach initiatives by the government so as to build awareness and activities around the available open government data. The slides from Mr. Misra’s presentation can be accessed here.

The presentation by Mr. Misra was followed by a group exercise where various teams, self-selected by the participants, worked on different sections of the SODAAP implementation plan to put together ideas and plans for the first draft of the document. Five groups were formed and each of them worked on a separate section of the implementation plan: 1) Governance Framework and Budgetary Support, 2) Data Inventory and Negative List, 3) Data Acquisition and Open Standards, 4) Data Publication Process, Licenses, and Timeframes, and 5) Awareness, Capacity, and Demand of Data. The initial section titled ‘Introduction to the Policy and its Principles’ was put together by Vashistha Iyer on the basis of the SODAAP document. The technical section on the ‘Sikkim Open Data Portal’ was left out of this drafting exercise, as it was decided that the representatives of the Department of Information Technology will prepare this section on the basis of their interactions with the NDSAP-PMU later in June.

The drafting session was followed by presentations by each team working on a separate section, and quick feedbacks from all the participants. These drafts, along with the feedbacks, have been compiled together by Mr. Chattapadhyay, and is shared with the officials from the Government of Sikkim for their further discussion and eventual finalisation of the SODAAP implementation plan document.

The workshop ended with a round of final words and sharing of learning by the participants, and a vote of thanks on the behalf of the organisers.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/workshop-on-open-data-for-human-development-2015-06-report