Centre for Internet and Society

Open Data Hackathons are Great, but Address Privacy and License Concerns

sumandro — 2016-02-05T20:37:18Z

This is to cross-publish a blog post from DataMeet website regarding a letter shared with the organisers of Urban Hack 2015, Bangalore, in response to a set of privacy and license concerns identified and voiced during the hackathon by DataMeet members. Sumandro Chattapadhyay co-authored and co-signed the letter. The blog post is written by Nisha Thompson.

Hackathons are a source of confusion and frustration for us. DataMeet actively does not do them unless there is a very specific outcome the community wants like freeing a whole dataset or introducing open data to a new audience. We feel that they cause burn out, are not productive, and in general don't help create a healthy community of civic tech and open data enthusiasts.

That is not to say we feel others shouldn't do them, they are very good opportunities to spark discussion and introduce new audiences to problems in the social sector. DataKind and RHOK and numerous others host hackathons or variations of them regularly to stir the pot, bring new people into civic tech and they can be successful starts to long term connections and experiments. A lot of people in the DataMeet community participate and enjoy hackathons.

However, with great data access comes great responsibility. We always want to make sure that even if no output is achieved when a dataset is opened at least no harm should be done.

Last October an open data hackathon, Urban Hack, run by Hacker Earth, NASSCOM, XEROX, IBM and World Resource Institute India wanted to bring out open data and spark innovation in the transport and crime space by making datasets from Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation (BMTC) and the Bangalore City Police available to work with. A DataMeet member (Srinivas Kodali) was participating, he is a huge transport data enthusiast and wanted to take a look at what is being made available.

In the morning shortly after it started I received a call from him that there is a dataset that was made available that seems to be violating privacy and data security. We contacted the organizers and they took it down, later we realized it was quite a sensitive dataset and a few hundred people had already downloaded it. We were also distressed that they had not clarified ownership of data, license of data, and had linked to sources like Open Bangalore without specifying licensing, which violated the license.

The organizers were quite noted and had been involved with hackathons before so it was a little distressing to see these mistakes being made. We were concerned that the government partners (who had not participated in these types of events before) were also being exposed to poor practices. As smart cities initiatives take over the Indian urban space, we began to realize that this is a mistake that shouldn't happen again.

Along with Centre for Internet and Society and Random Hacks of Kindness we sent the organizers, Bangalore City Police and BMTC a letter about the breach in protocol. We wanted to make sure everyone was aware of the issues and that measures were taken to not repeat these mistakes.

You can see the letter here:

We are very proud of the DataMeet community and Srinivas for bringing this violation to the attention of the organizers. As people who participate in hackathons and other data events it is imperative that privacy and security are kept in mind at all times. In a space like India where a lot of these concepts are new to institutions, like the Government, it is essential that we are always using opportunities not only to showcase the power of open data but also good practices for protecting privacy and ensuring security.

Originally posted on DataMeet website: http://datameet.org/2016/02/02/to-hack-or-not-to-hack/.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/open-data-hackathons-are-great-but-address-privacy-and-license-concerns

Open Data and Land Ownership - Environment Scan

sumandro — 2018-02-12T10:37:48Z

The State of Open Data is an ambitious research project reflecting on 10 years of action on open data and providing a critical review of the current state of the open data movement across a range of issues and thematic areas. This environment scan represents the first step in gathering information to support a review of the state of open data with regard to land ownership, and in refining the focus of a chapter. The lead author for this chapter is Sumandro Chattapadhyay.

Comments and suggestions: Environment Scan (Google Drive)

State of Open Data: Join the Investigation!

State of Open Data on Twitter: @stateofopendata

Issues

[Gap] Land Ownership data is mostly closed

Land Ownership data ranks as the least likely data to be available in an open format and under open license (across the world) among the fifteen types of data tracked by Global Open Data Index developed by Open Knowledge International. Similarly, the latest Global Report of the Open Data Barometer initiative of World Wide Web Foundation finds Land Ownership to be the least open of different categories of data that are essential for ensuring government accountability – only 1% of countries surveyed were found to open up Land Ownership data as opposed to 10% of countries opening up Budget data, and 11% of countries opening up Election Results data (http://opendatabarometer.org/4thedition/report/#table7). Both these findings indicate that Land Ownership data is among the most closed categories of data that are needed globally for ensuring accountability and transparency, as well as for tracking shifts in the distribution of national wealth.

[Gap] Global paucity of reliable information about cross-border investments in and shifts in ownership of land

While initiatives like Land Matrix have spearheaded greater availability of open data about global cross-border investments in land and resulting shifts in ownership patterns, researchers have pointed out the limited accuracy and methodological reflexivity in the production of such data sets, and highlighted the possibility of them representing "an instance of 'false precision'". A recent article in Financial Times notes that “[t]here is plenty of debate over the accuracy of this [open-source data of agricultural land sales]. Official data sources vary widely from country to country, while land deals themselves are notoriously opaque and fluid. Media reports about the leasing or buying of land often lack clairity."

[Progress] Collaborative and incremental development of extensive and intensive monitoring of openness of land ownership data across countries

There are several recent examples of collaborative efforts to better collect, organise, and recognise open land ownership data, which indicate at a growing momentum to address this critical weak link in the global open data agenda. Key initiatives include the GODI Fellowship established by Cadasta Foundation and Open Knowledge International, a focus on Land Use and Productivity Data as part of the Agricultural Open Data Package of the International Open Data Charter, and the work of Land Portal in the Mekong region to develop a common land information vocabulary, especially in a region marked by "its disparate languages and range of national priorities [and] the need to communicate effectively about complex land issues across borders and between individuals with different skill sets".

[Progress] Success of the Access Land campaign in California, USA:

"Access Land is a coalition of 50+ organizations committed to increasing access to our public land through open data. This summer, both the Federal Government and California State Parks released reservation contracts that require open data and plans to engage third party partners – redefining how the public accesses their land forever. Unlocking park data empowers entrepreneurs of all backgrounds to build unique applications that better connect the public to their land. By reaching a wider and more diverse demographic, visitation to our parks will rise, boosting revenue and ensuring the future relevance and sustainability of our public land. Open data is the key to inspiring the next generation of park supporters."

[Progress] HM Land Registry, Government of UK, publishing Commercial and Corporate Ownership Data and Overseas Companies Ownership Data for free

On November 7, 2017, the land records authority of UK (HM Land Registry) started free sharing of two of its land ownership data sets: the Commercial and Corporate Ownership Data and Overseas Companies Ownership Data, which "contain more than 3 million rows of data and include the address, company’s name, price paid and country of incorporation along with other useful information." The decision is expected to "support growth in the property technology (PropTech) sector and among small and medium-sized enterprises."

Who?: Stakeholders, networks, community

Cadasta Foundation

"Develops and promotes the use of simple digital tools and technology to help partners efficiently document, analyze, store, and share critical land and resource rights information. By creating an accessible digital record of land, housing and resource rights, we help empower individuals, organizations, communities, and governments with the information they need to make data-driven decisions and put vulnerable communities and their needs on the map… Cadasta is dedicated to working in such settings to help partners use simple, low-cost, high-tech tools to efficiently and effectively document their land and resource rights — incrementally strengthening their rights to land. This documentation creates an evidence base and advocacy case for vulnerable communities’ claims to the land. Such documentation can make it less likely that communities will be displaced and can serve to support demands for compensation should communities be displaced. We use and create versatile digital tools for a myriad of purposes from certifying sustainable agricultural production to creating a digital land registry that secures land rights for millions of people."

"Cadasta Foundation is developing an open platform, informed by the Social Tenure Domain Model, for documenting land and resource rights. Through the development of an ecosystem of partners, technology and data, the platform is designed to allow the direct capture and documenting of land rights through a global open platform that is secure, cost effective and transparent. The foundation’s perspective is informed by years of experience working with formal land administration processes and national-level land information systems, as well as working with volunteered geographic information to develop robust and upto-date datasets. At Cadasta, the focus is twofold – providing the repository and tools necessary to document the rights of those left out of the formal system, while also serving as a portal for open datasets in land and other resources, such as extractives, forestry and agricultural investment concessions, where they exist."

Supported by the Department for International Development of Government of UK and the Omidyar Network

Website: http://cadasta.org/

Global Land Alliance

"The mission of Global Land Alliance is to enable the prosperity of people and places by advancing learning and practice to achieve land tenure security and the efficient, inclusive and sustainable use of land and natural resources. We aim to accelerate quality development by resolving land issues with new paradigms of participation and accountability… Global Land Alliance takes the traditional think tank model a step forward, not only producing new understanding and recommendations based on on-the-ground perspectives of citizens, community leaders and businesses, but also channeling those learnings toward practical implementation at scale. By scaling and speeding up resolution of land issues, we can scale up and speed up improved results in the big issues of our time: urbanization, food security, environmental sustainability and peace."

"PRIndex, the Global Property Rights Index, is a collaborative initiative between Global Land Alliance and the Overseas Development Institute to develop and roll out the first global measurement of peoples’ perceptions of their property rights. PRIndex is establishing a global and national-level baseline of perceptions of land tenure security. This baseline will provide the grounding for a global conversation and movement around securing the property rights of billions who currently lack them."

Supported by Inter-American Development Bank, Omidyar Network, Department for International Development of Government of UK, the World Bank, Overseas Development Initiative, and others

Website: http://www.globallandalliance.org/

Global Land Tool Network

"The Global Land Tool Network (GLTN) is an alliance of international partners committed to increasing access to land and tenure security for all, with a particular focus on the poor and women. The Network’s partners include international civil society organizations, research and training institutions, bilateral and multilateral organizations, and international professional bodies… GLTN develops, disseminates and implements pro-poor and gender-responsive land tools. These tools and approaches contribute to land reform, good land governance, inclusive land administration, sustainable land management, and functional land sector coordination."

"Throughout the world, land provides a primary source of income, food security, cultural identity and shelter. It also serves as a fundamental asset for the economic empowerment of the poor and provides a safety net in times of hardship. To enhance access to information and awareness by land and data community and the wider stakeholders around land indicators in the SDGs and related processes for their monitoring, GLTN in collaboration with Land Portal Foundation produced the Land and SDGs dashboard."

Facilitated by UN-Habitat; currently implementing programmes supported by Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Government of Norway, SIDA, Government of the Netherlands, and UN-Habitat

Website: https://gltn.net/home/

International Land Coalition

"A global alliance of civil society and intergovernmental organisations working together to put people at the centre of land governance. The shared goal of ILC's over 200 members is to realise land governance for and with people at the country level, responding to the needs and protecting the rights of women, men and communities who live on and from the land."

Supported by the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development of Government of Germany, EU, IFAD, Irish Aid, American Jewish World Service, Belgian Fund for Food Security, Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, SIDA, and others.

Website: http://www.landcoalition.org/

Land Matrix

"A global and independent land monitoring initiative. Our goal is to facilitate an open development community of citizens, researchers, policy-makers and technology specialists to promote transparency and accountability in decisions over land and investment... [The website functions as a] Global Observatory - an open tool for collecting and visualising information about large-scale land acquisitions."

Supported partly by the internal resources of the partner organisations, and partly by Oxfam, SDC, Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs, BMZ and European Commission; designed and developed by Sinnwerkstatt in partnership with Tactical Studios at Tactical Technology Collective.

Website: http://landmatrix.org/en/

Land Portal Foundation

"Works to create a better information ecosystem for land governance through a platform based on cutting-edge linked and open data technologies. We help partners to create, curate and disseminate land governance data and information to become part of a more inclusive information landscape. Current information sources are often fragmented, represent a restricted set of perspectives, and are not structured, curated and licensed in ways that support maximum discovery, engagement and reuse."

The Foundation is hosted by University of Groningen, The Netherland; supported by the Department for International Development of Government of UK, International Land Coalition, and the Global Land Tool Network.

Website: https://landportal.org/

Open Land Contracts

"An online repository of publicly available contracts for large-scale land, agriculture, and forestry projects. The repository includes the full text of contracts; plain language summaries (also referred to as "annotations") of each contract’s key social, environmental, human rights, fiscal, and operational terms; and tools for searching and comparing contracts. Launched in October 2015, OpenLandContracts.org promotes greater transparency of land-based investments, facilitates a better understanding of the contracts that govern them, and provides useful tools for governments, communities, companies, and other stakeholders."

An initiative of the Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment (CCSI), a joint center of Columbia Law School and the Earth Institute at Columbia University, USA; supported by UKaid from the Department for International Development, Government of UK.

Website: http://www.openlandcontracts.org/

Radiant

"Radiant launched operations in August 2016 to answer the call for open access to geospatial data, with analytical tools for global development practitioners designed to improve decision-making, and to foster entrepreneurship worldwide. Radiant’s geospatial technology platform will permit users to illuminate earth, literally, to allow everywhere to be "seen"; to turn the telescopes back on human activity as we enter the Anthropocene period; and to give decision-makers a scientific window into understanding global activity better. Providing the global community with these tools and data can create powerful insights and accelerate greater catalytic, evidence-based support for change."

Supported by Omidyar Network and Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Website: https://radiant.earth/

Research and evidence

Cotula, Lorenzo, and Thierry Berger. 2017. Trends in global land use investment: Implications for legal empowerment. London, UK: IIED. Accessed from http://www.landcoalition.org/sites/default/files/documents/resources/12606iied.pdf

This report takes stock of trends in land use investments and legal empowerment responses, with a view to informing next steps for legal empowerment agendas. Drawing on a review of the available literature and global datasets, it discusses evolving patterns in land use investments, developments in investment frameworks, and implications for legal empowerment initiatives.

Ferris, Lindsay, Frank Pichel, and Neil Sorensen. 2016. Land Debate on Open Data and Land Governance. Cadasta Foundation and Land Portal. December. Accessed from https://landportal.org/pt/library/resources/report-debate-open-data-and-land-governance

Across most contexts, government data sources on land are largely inaccessible, from land administration data, such as parcel data and ownership information to land investments, contract data and even policy information. In considering data on property ownership specifically, the latest version of the Open Data Barometer shows only two countries, New Zealand and the United Kingdom, obtained a full 100% score on the topic of Land Ownership. When this land administration data is made available, it is commonly made public via a web portal rather than as open data. However, governments are not the sole sources of land data. For example, international organizations such as World Bank, the United Nations and numerous bi-lateral donor organizations publish land related data, while countless NGOs may participate in community mapping and policy analysis. Beyond EU Directives for geospatial datasets, common principles and processes are lacking for determining what data should be open, with often differing interpretations among EU Directives. Finally, questions of how to tackle privacy and security risks to vulnerable populations remain disputed, leading NGOs, governments and international institutions to dismiss open data entirely. However, with an ambitious 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, there is an increasing need to pool data resources toward solving global challenges -- while protecting the rights of vulnerable populations. In September 2016, Cadasta Foundation and the Land Portal Foundation teamed up to facilitate a conversation on these issues. Our aims were to better understand the current landscape, potential impacts as well as illustrate the unique challenges in opening land data in order to begin figuring out the solutions. Within the Land Portal platform, we heard the points of view of 26 participants from government land agencies, international institutions and NGOs. Throughout this report, we’ve summarized the main themes that surfaced throughout the three-week Land Debate.

Ferris, Lindsay. 2017. Outputs for the Cadasta GODI Fellowship. Links to four outputs accessed from https://blog.okfn.org/2017/06/09/what-data-do-we-need-the-story-of-the-cadasta-godi-fellowship/

Throughout the fellowship, Lindsay conducted interviews with land experts, NGOs and government officials as well as on-going desk research on the land data publication practices across different contexts. She established 4 key outputs: 1. Outlining the challenges of opening land ownership data… 2. Mapping the different types of land data and their availability… 3. Assessing the privacy and security risks of opening certain types of land data… 4. Identifying user needs and creating user personas for open land data… Throughout the GODI process, our aim is to advocate for datasets that different stakeholders actually need and that make sense within the context in which they are published. For example, one of the main challenges in land ownership is that data is not always recorded or gathered by the federal level, and is collect in cities and regions. One of the primary users of land ownership data are other government agencies. Having a grasp of this type of knowledge helped us better define the land ownership dataset for the GODI. Ultimately, we developed a thoughtful definition based on these reflections and recommendations.

Hogge, Becky. 2015. “HM Land Registry: The UK’s trading funds, and two futures for open data”. In Open Data: Six Stories About Impact in the UK. November. Omidyar Network. Pp. 17-24. Accessed from https://www.omidyar.com/sites/default/files/file_archive/insights/Open%20Data_Six%20Stories%20About%20Impact%20in%20the%20UK/OpenData_CaseStudies_Report_complete_DIGITAL_102715.pdf

HM Land Registry began a phased release of its data on property transactions – the Price Paid Dataset – in March 2012, and by November 2013 the entire historic record dating back to 1995 was released. The data provides much-needed transparency in a historically “murky” business, and is already being used extensively by some traditional players in the property market. Additionally, new players are consolidating around the field of proptech, developing digital tools to bring buying and selling property “out of the Stone Age”. Proptech startups attracted an estimated $1.4 billion in investment globally in 2014. PI Labs, an incubator for proptech startups, opened in London in late 2014.

Raman, Bhuvaneswari, and Zainab Bawa. 2011. Citizens Participation and Technology Interventions in Government Programmes: The Case of Nemmadi Kendras in Bangalore. SIRCA Report. Janastu. Accessed from http://tgc.janastu.org/2011/06/raman-bawa/

Our findings on Nemmadi corroborates Benjamin et al (2005) suggestion that transparency of land information in contexts such as Bangalore can accentuate existing social and economic inequalities and can weaken the claims on land of relatively weaker groups in society. The reflection of the activist from Dalit Sangarsh Samithi quoted above draw attention to the fact that despite the apparent myth of uniform access to information, there are differences in terms of their ability to capture this information. Specifically, when it comes to land, it is not only about having information but also the power to displace / disposses current occupiers. Thus, power between different users affect their ability to capture this information to their advantage but more importantly, such visibility can pose new risks to the claims of relatively weaker groups. Proponents of data transparency fail to make the distinction between access to and the capture of information and the risk posed by opening up certain types of data. Based on our preliminary observations we suggest that there is need to differentiate between the types of data that is made public and the political economic context in which such information is made public. Our findings suggest the usefulness of further research on this aspect.

Events

International workshop on Open Land Data: Mobile Apps and Geo-services for Open Soil Data

Hosted by Tom Hengl and Rik van den Bosch (ISRIC – World Soil Information), and Jeff Herrick (U.S. Department of Agriculture – Agricultural Research Service, New Mexico State University), July 2-4, 2017, Wageningen University, the Netherlands, http://gsif.isric.org/doku.php/wiki:workshop_2017

Responsible Land Governance: Towards an Evidence Based Approach

Annual Word Bank Conference on Land and Poverty, Washington DC, USA, March 20-24, 2017, https://www.conftool.com/landandpoverty2017/index.php?page=browseSessions&form_session=555&presentations=show

Workshop on Open Data and Land Governance: Moving Towards an Information Ecosystem

Land Portal Foundation and Cadasta Foundation, March 20, 2017, OpenGov Hub, Washington DC, USA, https://landportal.org/event/2017/03/open-data-and-land-governance-moving-towards-information-ecosystem

Resources and funding

Department for International Development, Government of UK: Land Governance for Economic Development

"DFID will pursue actions globally to improve land rights protection to: help ensure women and men enjoy legally recognised, secure property and tenure rights. To Improve information and knowledge to facilitate the provision of clear, transparent land related information and knowledge, enabling rights to be identified, understood and protected. To improve private sector investment through the development and rollout of a standardized investment risk assessment methodology and implementation of best practice in land governance."

Website: https://devtracker.dfid.gov.uk/projects/GB-1-204252/

Omidyar Network – Property Rights

"We know why this matters: Strengthening rights to land, natural resources, and other assets empowers people to decide, based on their tacit and local knowledge, how best to use their assets. Add in increased decision-making authority with legal rights to benefit from valued uses of property, and you get improved incentives to invest in families, children, farms and businesses. It is worth underscoring that the poor – whether informal urban entrepreneurs or smallholder farmers – are by far the largest group of businesspeople in the world. And, as highlighted in the recent report Accelerating Entrepreneurship in Africa, improving property transfer procedures will strengthen business opportunities..."

Website: https://www.omidyar.com/investees?initiative=Property+Rights®ion=All&search=#filter and https://www.omidyar.com/blog/why-property-matters

World Bank – Land

"The World Bank is increasingly working to open land and geospatial datasets for acceleration of growth through businesses, and improving own source local revenue creation, location-based analysis and decision-making, urban management, climate change responses, and resilience… The World Bank recognizes that national land administration systems and spatial data infrastructure are fundamental to disaster risk reduction and response by the provision of historical repository of pre-disaster land use and occupancy, location-based information as well as a unified geospatial platform for planning, monitoring, and implementing responses… The World Bank is working on land tenure as well as land and geospatial infrastructure and systems in 48 countries, with a current investment of approximately $1 billion in commitments, impacting millions of land holders in Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe and Central Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East and North Africa."

Website: http://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/land#2

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/open-data-and-land-ownership-environment-scan

Open Data and Land Ownership

sumandro — 2019-05-22T11:32:18Z

In this chapter of the recently published volume on State of Open Data, Tim Davies and Sumandro Chattapadhyay discuss how the lessons from the land ownership field highlight the political nature of data, and illustrate the importance of politically aware interventions when creating open data standards, infrastructure, and ecosystems. State of Open Data, edited by Tim Davies, Stephen B. Walker, Mor Rubinstein, and Fernando Perini, is published by African Minds and International Development Research Centre, Canada.

State of Open Data: Website and Book (Open Access)

Chapter on Open Data and Land Ownership: Zenodo (PDF)

Key Points

- Global availability of land ownership and land deals data is patchy, but, when available, it has been used by individual citizens, entrepreneurs, civil society, and journalists.

- Over the last decade, a number of responsible data lessons have been learned. These lessons can provide guidance on how to balance transparency and privacy and on how to draw research conclusions from partial data.

- In spite of large donor investments in land registration systems, few resources are currently made available to enable open data related to these projects. There are untapped opportunities as a result.

- Lessons from the land ownership field highlight the political nature of data, and illustrate the importance of politically aware interventions when creating open data standards, infrastructure, and ecosystems.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/open-data-and-land-ownership

Open Data

sumandro — 2015-10-01T09:19:35Z

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

Open Access Dialogues - Report and Policy Recommendations

sumandro — 2015-12-22T06:52:58Z

The Open Access Dialogues were a series of global electronic debates facilitated by Eve Gray and Kelsey Wiens, in partnership with The African Commons Project (South Africa) and the Centre for Internet and Society (India), during November 2012 to March 2013. It was supported by the Institute of Development Studies, Sussex, and was hosted at WSIS Knowledge Communities Discussion Forum.

Report: Download (PDF)

Policy Recommendations (as below): Download (PDF)

Is Open Access Only for Rich Countries?

Authors: Eve Gray, Sumandro Chattapadhyay, Kelsey Wiens and Alistair Scott

It is not unusual for analysis of research systems in the developing world to provide startlingly low figures for the participation of developing countries in world research. For example, the Times of India last October cited a report that claimed that India produced only 3.5% of the world’s research – a shocking statistic, the newspaper commented. The commonly accepted figure for Africa’s contribution is even worse, at 0.3%. In reality, these figures do not reflect at all the size and shape of the national research systems in these count ries nor their productivity. Rather, they are a measure of how many journal articles are published in journals in the global North and particularly in journals in the Thomson Reuters ISI indices.

The developing world has been badly served by the scholarly publishing system inherited from the 20th century. The commercialization and consolidation of scholarly publishing over the last 60 years has progressively put the publication of the bulk of the world’s research in the hands of a small number of giant co rporations, in an environment characterized by very high and continuously escalating subscription charges, putting access to the world’s research out of the reach of most developing countries. If Harvard complains, as it did recently, that it cannot afford the subscriptions to the major journals, then what could be said for universities in Africa or India?

To add to this, the impact of the dominant systems for measuring the quality and impact of global research have a perverse effect in the developing world, consigning its research to the periphery and categorizing it as of ‘local’ interest rather than being ‘global’, or ‘international’ in its importance.

Global Open Access Policy

Global Open access policy moved forward decisively from late 2011 to early 2013, with UNESCO’s launch of its Open Access to Scientific Information Programme [1] and the World Bank’s launch of its Open Knowledge Platform [2]. At national and regional levels, the Finch Group Report in the United Kingdom [3], the White House Memorandum on Access to Federally Funded Research [4] in the US A and the announcement of the open access provisions of the Horizon 2020 Framework for Research and Innovation [5] in the European Union all marked a global move to entrench open access to publicly funded research. These policies commit political weight and financial support to policy implementation, based on an understanding of the contribution that OA can make to innovation and thus to social and economic development across the world. In the face of these developments, the developing countries, which currently tend to have fragmented OA and research communication policies, face the risk of falling even further behind in finding their place in global and locally relevant research production.

What these events have added to the policy debate about open access over the last year is not only the recognition of the need for government - level logistical and financial support for open research communication, but also a widening of the mandate for open access. Early formulations of open access policy focused on opening up ‘the peer reviewed journal literature’, as the founding document on Open Access, the Budapest Open Access initiative, defined it in 2002 [6]. The principle was that these publications should be freely available to readers, to read, to download and data-mine.. It is this approach that largely informs the UNESCO’s Policy Guidelines for the Development and Promotion of Open Access (2012) [7]. The World Bank policy, on the other hand, takes a broader view of open access, applying a Creative Commons CC-BY licence to the work that it commissions, thus allowing for reuse and repurposing of content in order to reach the widest possible audience and have the maximum development impact [8].

Open Access Dialogues

A number of policy issues emerged from the Open Access Dialogues (OAD), facilitated by Eve Gray, The African Commons Project and the Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore, India, in late 2012 and early 2013 with participants from South Africa, India and Latin America. The overriding policy outcome was an expressed desire to expand the concept of open access to include other kinds of openness, such as open education and open development and to expand beyond journal articles in leveraging the benefits of openness in developing countries, as well as involving outside - university knowledge producers and distributors in the OA agenda. O ver - reliance on the ISI Impact Factor was also a key aspect of the present OA system that came in for criticism , leading to demands for the formulation of research reward systems that are better aligned with national and institutional research strategies and development of alternative metrics for evaluating research success.

The discuss ion took place on the UNESCO/WSIS Knowledge Communities discussion forum, where a total of 19 discussants, excluding the core team, took part. Additionally, the OAD Facebook page was ‘liked’ by 116 people (as of 1 March 2013), with the most common age grou p being 25 - 34 and the gender bias being towards female users at 60%. Two (one hour - long) Twitter discussions were also organised, which attracted 83 unique users in total, who shared 530 tweets using the #developOA hashtag.

Strategic Issues and Policy Recommendations

Beyond the Impact Factor

The ISI Impact Factor (IF) remains the dominant measure for research evaluation and determining academic rewards and promotions in the Anglophone world and beyond. The discussants identified the extreme preference for publication in ('closed') journals with high Impact Factors (IF) as a central obstacle to effective research communication aligned with national and regional goals. Of particular concern was the role this system has had in aligning developing country research activities with academic interests in the universities of the global North, and thus di verting developed country research away from local challenges and opportunities. This model also renders invisible much of the research that is actually produced that addresses local/national/regional concerns. Another concern was bibliographic malpractices including bias against citing works from developing country scholars and work published in non - 'prestigious' journals. Strong argument s were made for the use of article-level metrics as opposed to journal - level impact measurement . Studies were suggested to argue that article-level impact increases with OA journals.

Policy recommendations:

Replacing reliance on bibliometric s and journal-level citation indexes with article-level metrics and emerging alternative metrics that take into consideration the circulation and usage of knowledge beyond higher education institutes.
Developing education policies and guidelines to evaluate res earch and researchers in their specific contexts of relevance and impact, and aligning academic rewards with national, regional and local development strategies.

Uneven Geographies and the Need for Sustainable Models

Attention was drawn to the unfortunate lack of awareness about the nature and potential of OA across developing countries, even in scholarly communities. Simultaneously, the discussants highlighted several success stories of OA journals in developing countries, though mostly from science disciplines. Thus the developing world experiences an uneven geography of OA awareness and adoption, where the OA agenda is being pursued successfully by specific scholarly communities but not translating into widespread support across the higher academia landscape nor into coherent national policy development.

The role played by the global commercial businesses of scholarly works in impeding the Open Access agenda in developing countries was mentioned by most of the commentators. Simultaneously, the complicity of developing country academics in reinforcing the culture of 'prestigious' journals published by global publishers was also criticized. The increasing embracing of Author Processing Charges (APC), the discussants feared, will further entrench this uneven geography of OA adoption and research visibility. This issue is crucial since it is generating a sense of cynicism about OA as yet another incarnation of commercial exploitation of scholarship that advantages the rich countries. The use of fee waivers was criticised for being only an exceptional measure that serves to reinforce exclusion of researchers outside of or new to the dominant scholarly publishing system. There is a need, it was argued, to develop a sustainable business model that is functional in making knowledge circulate in ways that are useful to society, and not solely driven by profit-making needs of publishers.

Policy recommendations:

Promoting a bottom-up strategy for OA adoption in the developing world by focusing on capacity and community building exercises. This could involve scholarly colleagues and advocates gathered around thematic and/or disciplinary forums, facilitated by institutional and governmental recognition and support.
Linking the issue of OA to academic works to the structural problems in developing country academics, adopting a wide-ranging and systematic approach to research capacitation. There is a need to promote OA through curriculum development, knowledge dissemination, training and advocacy, engaging actors ranging from senior administrators to young scholars.
Addressing and involving non-university circuits of learning, of both institutional (primary and secondary education) and non-institutional (informal learning groups around MOOC courses) varieties, and also non-governmental organisations working o n education in particular, and development in general.

A Broader Vision for Open Access

A number of discussants argued for a broader mandate for OA than the traditional journal focus. There were two aspects to this recommendation: firstly, OA should align with other forms of ‘open’ agendas , such as open science, open education and open development, and secondly, OA policies should support distribution and re - usage of a wider range of research outputs. Thus the scope of OA needs to be broadened to focus on the needs of potential consumers of research findings rather than only on the scholar-to-scholar discourse that journals constitute. This wider agenda could include research data, multimedia, 'grey literature ’ such as research and briefing papers, and policy papers. In the context of developing countries, it was argued that 'translations' of research for communities outside academia were important, especially ' recognizing the importance of publishing in a format that most appropriately meets the information and knowledge needs of those who can use the research to improve society's development', as a leading public health academic argued in the OA dialogue.

This broader vision of OA challenges the conventional hierarchy of basic research over applied research, proposing that OA can provide a communicative continuum between scholar - to - scholar discourse, teaching and learning needs, and the mobilization of research for development.

Policy recommendations:

Build on the present governmental acceptance of the OA agenda by strategically using it as an entry point to promote the broader 'open' agenda, including open sharing of research data, bibliographic data, policy papers etc.
Recognize, support and reward OA initiatives and systems that facilitate sharing of a wide range of academic outputs, from journals, books and other scholarly publications to development - focused research outputs targeted at communities outside of higher academia.
Financial and logistical support for the creation and maintenance of websites, repositories, archives and other (offline/outreach) initiatives aimed at hosting and sharing a wide-range of academic outputs, including data and multimedia, and mandating licences that allow for re-use of scholarly materials ( such as CC-BY), for development and educational needs.
A comprehensive (national and international) institutional policy approach, ensuring a central role for research communication in universities and research institutes and for integrated administrative, technology and skills infrastructure to support these roles.

Notes

[1] See: http://www.unesco.org/new/en/communication-and-information/access-to-knowledge/open-access-to-scientific-information/

[2] See: https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/

[3] The Finch Report: http://www.res earchinfonet.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Finch-Group-report-executive-summary-FINAL-VERSION.pdf

[4] The White House Open Access Memorandum: https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/response/increasing-public-access-results-scientific-research

[5] http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-12-790_en.htm

[6] http://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/openaccess/read

[7] http://www.unesco.org/new/en/communication-and-information/resources/publications-and-communication-materials/publications/full-list/policy-guidelines-for-the-development-and-promotion-of-open-access/

[8] http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/NEWS/0,,contentMDK:23164491~pagePK:64257043~piPK:437376~theSitePK:4607,00.html

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

Open Access

sumandro — 2015-11-16T13:18:23Z

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

On World Water Day - Open Data for Water Resources

sumandro — 2019-01-28T14:41:51Z

Lack of open data for researchers and activists is a key barrier against ensuring access to water and planning for sustainable management of water resources. In a collaboration between DataMeet and CIS, supported by Arghyam, we are exploring the early steps for making open data and tools to plan for water resources accessible to all. To celebrate the World Water Day 2018, we are sharing what we have been working on in the past few months - a paper on open data for water studies in India, and a web app to make open water data easily explorable and usable. Craig Dsouza led this collaboration, and authored this post.

Project Blog: Open Water Data for Integrated Water Science (External)

Open Water Data Paper - Datasets for Water Studies in India Blog - Summary: Read (External)

Open Water Data Paper - Datasets for Water Studies in India Blog - Full Paper: Read (PDF)

Open Water Data Web App: View (External)

Open Water Data Web App - Tech Stack: Read (External)

Open Water Data Web App - Precipitation Data: Read (External)

The 22nd of March is celebrated internationally as World Water Day. Water is so tightly intertwined in every aspect of our lives that one can only scratch the surface in understanding this resource. Besides directly giving us life, it is a key non-renewable shared resource that dictates whether and how societies can grow and prosper. It has shaped the way civilization arose - on riverbanks and coastal lands. Adequate water of good quality can make or break a child’s early growth. Water available at the right time in the monsoon could shape a family’s fortunes for an entire year.

Unfortunately given the development trajectory of the last century, we have struggled to strike a balance and use water in a sustainable manner. Far too many face the ill effects of this misuse. The challenge with water lies in its nature as a common pool resource, which means that it belongs to everyone. Water is for everyone to benefit from and conversely it is no individual’s responsibility to manage and to ensure its sustainability. While some laws and policies exist to ensure sustainable use of water its fluid (pun intended) and ephemeral nature make those laws very hard to enforce. No one knows for sure how much water lies under the ground and above the surface, we only have estimates. Moreover even these estimates lie in the hands of a few. The Government of India is by far the largest entity that collects data on water across the country. Management of this resource however requires that these data points and the capacity to monitor should be decentralized. The 73rd amendment recognises this by placing the authority to plan and implement local works such as watershed management and drinking water provision under the purview of Panchayats.

To address this shortcoming Datameet and CIS in collaboration have taken first steps with a project to ensure that data and tools to plan for water resources are accessible to all. The strategy within this project has been to seek alternative data sources for water, other than government data much of which still isn’t open data. Two alternatives that have emerged are remote sensing open data and crowdsourced community data. A paper put together by the team highlights the numerous sources available for datasets such as rainfall, soil moisture, groundwater levels, reservoir storages, river flows, and water demand including domestic and agricultural water. Besides the paper the team has also put together a first iteration of a web app which seeks to provide these datasets in an easy to use intuitive and interactive format to users in the area of water planning and management. The first dataset available here is CHIRPS: a high resolution daily rainfall dataset for the whole of India.

The plans for this project in the future include making available more datasets (crop maps and Evapotranspiration) and features to access them. In addition to this the goal is also to improve our understanding of the usability of remote sensing water data with efforts to calibrate it with ground observations. A key element of these plans is to develop these resources in collaboration with end users of the data so that the tools are developed with their concerns in mind. We welcome ideas, queries, feedback, and partnerships - do contact us at pune@datameet.org.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/on-world-water-day-open-data-for-water-resources

Odia Wikipedia Projects

sumandro — 2015-12-15T08:48:19Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/odia-wikipedia

Nirmita Narasimhan - Resume

sumandro — 2017-04-28T01:19:36Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/accessibility/files/nirmita-narasimhan-resume

Networked Expressions

sumandro — 2015-08-28T06:21:21Z

Networked expressions refer to our daily practices, habits and experiences of self-articulations in and through digital media, online spaces and virtual networks. This cluster is configured to focus our studies on the networked lives of human, non-human, and cyborg being in the digital era; the questions of expressions of body, sexuality, gender, caste, class, abilities, religion, and power as mediated by digital conditions and virtual contexts; the practices of art, representation, instrumental communication, and self-making through digital artifacts, interfaces, technologies, and networks. We are especially interested in foregrounding the networked technologies that shape the socio-material context of such expressions. Also, this cluster is specifically driven by applied and curatorial works.

Projects

Maps for Making Change (2009-2010)
Habits of Living: Global Networks, Local Affects (2012)
Interface Intimacies (ongoing)

Publications

Material Cyborgs; Asserted Boundaries by Nishant Shah
Silicon Plateau Vol. 01 edited by Marialaura Ghidini and Tara Kelton (forthcoming)

Network Economies

sumandro — 2016-07-08T13:46:02Z

This cluster responds to the range of transformation and restructuring of the economy emerging with, and emergent with, the proliferation of internet and internet-mediated transactions. The term 'network,' in this case, refers to the following: 1) the connectivity (network) infrastructures that underlie and make possible this economy, 2) the economic power and implications of the 'network effect,' and 3) the assemblage of digital and non-digital components and actors that make possible the functioning of such economies. The issues we are interested in include but are not limited to 'sharing economy' and peer-to-peer transactions; digital labour, electronic commerce, and platform economies; digital money and mobile-based banking; and automation, robotics, and 'industry 4.0.'

NETmundial: Tracking Multistakeholder across Contributions

sumandro — 2014-04-25T09:53:37Z

This set of analysis of the contributions submitted to NETmundial 2014 is part of the effort by the Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore, India, to enable productive discussions of the critical internet governance issues at the meeting and elsewhere.

Created by Sumandro using Google Charts.
Google Terms of Use and Data Policy.
Data compiled by Sumandro and Jyoti.
Download the data .

This scatter plot shows the number of times the word *multistakeholder* (including *multi-stakeholder* and *multistakeholderism*) appears across contributions submitted to NETmundial.

X axis (horizontal) gives the serial number of contributions and Y axis (vertical) gives the number of times the word appears on a contribution.

Click on the types of organisation below the chart to highlight the corresponding organisations on the chart.

The Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore, India, is a non-profit research organization that works on policy issues relating to freedom of expression, privacy, accessibility for persons with disabilities, access to knowledge and IPR reform, and openness, and engages in academic research on digital natives and digital humanities.

The visualisations are done by Sumandro Chattapadhyay, based on data compilation and analysis by Jyoti Panday, and with data entry suport from Chandrasekhar.

Built on Bootstrap by Sumandro

All code, content and data is co-owned by the author(s) and Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore, India, and shared under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 India license.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/net-mundial-tracking-multi-stakeholder-across-contributions

NETmundial - Word Clouds of Contributions by Types of Organisation

sumandro — 2014-04-25T09:51:51Z

Created by Sumandro using R.
Download the R code .
Download the data.

These word clouds show the hundred most frequently appearing words in the aggregated contribution text of each type of organisations.

The size of the words in these diagrams refer to their frequency of appearance. A larger size refers to higher frequency of appearance. The colour of the words have been differentiated to group the words according to their freuqency of appearance. The color hierarchy is as follows: Green, Pink, Blue, Red.

While creating these word clouds, certain common English words (like, 'the' and 'and') and obvious words for the contributions (like, 'internet' and 'governance') have been ommitted. The full list of ommitted words have been documented in the R code used to generate the diagrams.

Built on Bootstrap by Sumandro.

All code, content and data is co-owned by the author(s) and Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore, India, and shared under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 India license.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/net-mundial-word-clouds-of-contributions-by-types-of-organisation

NETmundial - Which Governments Have Not Submitted Contributions to NETmundial?

sumandro — 2014-04-25T09:47:53Z

Created by Sumandro using Datamaps.

The map shows (in *green*) all the countries from where no government agency has submitted any contribution to NETmundial. Governments of the countries appearing in *white* have contributed to the NETmundial process.

Inter-governmental and international bodies that have submitted contributions to NETmundial -- such as OECD and UNESCO -- have not been considered while creating the above map.

To see the map of all the countries from where there have been no contributions (by any kinds of organisation) to NETmundial, click here.

The visualisations are done by Sumandro Chattapadhyay, based on data compilation and analysis by Jyoti Panday, and with data entry support from Chandrasekhar.

Built on Bootstrap by Sumandro.

All code, content and data is co-owned by the author(s) and Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore, India, and shared under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 India license.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/net-mundial-which-governments-have-not-contributed-to-net-mundial

NETmundial - Which Countries Have Not Submitted Contributions to NETmundial?

sumandro — 2014-04-25T09:40:03Z

Created by Sumandro using Datamaps.

The map shows (in *green*) all the countries from where no contributions (by any kinds of organisation) have been submitted to NETmundial. Countries appearing in *white* are those from where contributions have been submitted.

Organisations that have indicated (in their submitted contribution) that they are either 'global' or 'international' organisations with headquarter in a specific country(ies), or a coalition of several organisations from different countries, have not been considered while making the above map. Such organisations (not considered while making this map) include African ICT/IG Stakeholders, Association for Progressive Communications, Best Bits, Just Net Coalition, OECD, etc.

To see the map of all the countries from where the respective governments have not submitted any contributions to NETmundial, click here.

The visualisations are done by Sumandro Chattapadhyay, based on data compilation and analysis by Jyoti Pandey, and with data entry suport from Chandrasekhar.

Built on Bootstrap by Sumandro

All code, content and data is co-owned by the author(s) and Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore, India, and shared under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 India license.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/net-mundial-which-countries-have-not-contributed-to-net-mundial

Centre for Internet and Society

Open Data Hackathons are Great, but Address Privacy and License Concerns

Open Data and Land Ownership - Environment Scan

Comments and suggestions: Environment Scan (Google Drive)

State of Open Data: Join the Investigation!

State of Open Data on Twitter: @stateofopendata

Issues

[Gap] Land Ownership data is mostly closed

[Gap] Global paucity of reliable information about cross-border investments in and shifts in ownership of land

[Progress] Collaborative and incremental development of extensive and intensive monitoring of openness of land ownership data across countries

[Progress] Success of the Access Land campaign in California, USA:

[Progress] HM Land Registry, Government of UK, publishing Commercial and Corporate Ownership Data and Overseas Companies Ownership Data for free

Who?: Stakeholders, networks, community

Cadasta Foundation

Global Land Alliance

Global Land Tool Network

International Land Coalition

Land Matrix

Land Portal Foundation

Open Land Contracts

Radiant

Research and evidence

Events

International workshop on Open Land Data: Mobile Apps and Geo-services for Open Soil Data

Responsible Land Governance: Towards an Evidence Based Approach

Workshop on Open Data and Land Governance: Moving Towards an Information Ecosystem

Resources and funding

Department for International Development, Government of UK: Land Governance for Economic Development

Omidyar Network – Property Rights

World Bank – Land

Open Data and Land Ownership

State of Open Data: Website and Book (Open Access)

Chapter on Open Data and Land Ownership: Zenodo (PDF)

Key Points

- Global availability of land ownership and land deals data is patchy, but, when available, it has been used by individual citizens, entrepreneurs, civil society, and journalists.

- Over the last decade, a number of responsible data lessons have been learned. These lessons can provide guidance on how to balance transparency and privacy and on how to draw research conclusions from partial data.

- In spite of large donor investments in land registration systems, few resources are currently made available to enable open data related to these projects. There are untapped opportunities as a result.

- Lessons from the land ownership field highlight the political nature of data, and illustrate the importance of politically aware interventions when creating open data standards, infrastructure, and ecosystems.

Open Data

Open Access Dialogues - Report and Policy Recommendations

Report: Download (PDF)

Policy Recommendations (as below): Download (PDF)

Is Open Access Only for Rich Countries?

Global Open Access Policy

Open Access Dialogues

Strategic Issues and Policy Recommendations

Beyond the Impact Factor

Uneven Geographies and the Need for Sustainable Models

A Broader Vision for Open Access

Notes

Open Access

On World Water Day - Open Data for Water Resources

Project Blog: Open Water Data for Integrated Water Science (External)

Open Water Data Paper - Datasets for Water Studies in India Blog - Summary: Read (External)

Open Water Data Paper - Datasets for Water Studies in India Blog - Full Paper: Read (PDF)

Open Water Data Web App: View (External)

Open Water Data Web App - Tech Stack: Read (External)

Open Water Data Web App - Precipitation Data: Read (External)

Odia Wikipedia Projects

Nirmita Narasimhan - Resume

Networked Expressions

Projects

Publications

Recent Posts

Network Economies

Recent Posts

NETmundial: Tracking *Multistakeholder* across Contributions

NETmundial - Word Clouds of Contributions by Types of Organisation

NETmundial - Which Governments Have Not Submitted Contributions to NETmundial?

NETmundial - Which Countries Have Not Submitted Contributions to NETmundial?

NETmundial: Tracking Multistakeholder across Contributions