Centre for Internet and Society

Privacy and Surveillance Talk by Sunil Abraham

praskrishna — 2013-09-13T09:47:09Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/privacy-surveillance.pdf

Recap on Konkani Wikipedia Workshop

subha — 2013-09-12T10:22:44Z

Subhashish Panigrahi's blog post was published in Startup Goa Blog on September 9, 2013.

This workshop involved 38 students creating 43 new articles on Konkani Wikipedia which is in incubation. We’re hoping that these efforts will contribute towards bringing this 7 year old project out of incubation to a live Wikipedia project.

Before any language, Wikipedia shapes up as a live project where an incubation process is involved. A community of volunteers (known as Wikipedians) gradually grow to sustain this Wikipedia in incubation with active contribution.The Konkani Wikipedia incubator started way back in 2006. But because of many reasons it could not take off and is still in incubation. One of the major reasons has been the issue with multiple script usage. Because of the political and religious reasons Konkani has multiple writing and verbal standards and also written in multiple scripts; Devanagari and Roman (known as Romi as well) in Goa where Devanagari is the official script, Kannada in the Konkani speaking regions of Karnataka (Mangalore region primarily), Malayalam in Kerala (Kochin region) and in Perso-Arabic script by part of the Konkani speaking population. The largest script usage for Konkani is in Devanagari. Goa University is world’s first University to have a masters program in Konkani language where the writing standard is in Goan Konkani (Language code: Gom) which is written in Devanagari. During the interaction with the faculty members; Prof. Madhavi Sardesai and Head of the department Dr. Priyadarshini Tadkodar, it was found that the students were very enthusiastic to contribute to their language. The students were introduced to Konkani Wikipedia and they showed interest in taking part in a workshop to learn Wikipedia editing. This was the beginning of something new after a long time. Four out of thirty eight students volunteered to coordinate the workshop on the ground. They discussed about the workshop and the prerequisites; going through the list of articles on Konkani Wikipedia, writing a unique article by collecting resources and creating their usernames on Wikipedia before attending the workshop. All of the students including four coordinators came with at least 2 pages of written content before the workshop.

Day 1: Building the Blocks

It was 10 in the morning, a big LED panel in the audio visual room of the Krishnadas Shama State Central Library, Goa was displaying the word cloud containing words like Wikipedia, Openness, Education, Open Knowledge, Global Collaboration. Soon the room was filled with 20 MA students from the Konkani department of Goa University. Prior to the workshop there was an interaction with the students in the presence of the Head of the department Dr. Priyadarshini and Prof. Dr. Madhavi Sardesai and from the Konkani department. Four of the students Supriya Kankumbikar, Fr. Luis Gomes, Vaishali Parab and John Noronha volunteered to coordinate the workshop. With their help, a majority of students signed up and created their user accounts before the first workshop. Some roughwork went on to plan for a whole day workshop.

Introduce Yourself

To start with the first day, there was an “Adjective Name” activity. It was fun to know how people judge themselves with adjective. Then there was a discussion about articles students planned to write. Few of them were not sure if the articles like social issues and biography of a writer could fit into the Wikipedia framework.

Editing time

Article titles were decided and everyone was ready with their homework write ups and books for adding sources. The next big thing was typing in Devanagari. Only four to five of them knew typing. Students came forward to try out typing. There was a glow of triumph after they typed correctly using “Transliteration” layout. The editing session began. It worked well. Students managed to type with only a little typos.


Photo: Subhashish Panigrahi, CC-BY-SA 3.0

There was an activity break with a game called “Tumi Kashi Asat” (means How are you doing in Konkani). According to the game rules, the host has to make some body movements and ask “Tumi Kashi Asat” and bending forward. The participants have to move their body in the reverse way and answer “Ami bari ashat” (I’m doing good). This replaced the caffeine intake for the four days and kept all of us alive.

Rat and frog game

“Rat race” is a game where participants sit on chairs and one of them is made to stand in the center. The rat makes others run and replace each others seats and one among the participants becomes a rat. This rat race brought back the old childhood memories and for a moment everyone forgot their age. At the end of it students sat down to take a deep breath and were taught some of the basic wiki-codes (bold, Italics and adding references). Editing session went on until the rest of the day.

Day 2: Climbing Up the Ladder

The agenda for the day was to tell the students about the advanced options and ensure addition of more citations. Citations on Wikipedia are very essential for readers to validate the facts. But bringing this to the students who just had started typing in their language a day before was not that easy. The second day was spent giving small breaks during the editing session for small activities. Running, jumping and shouting fueled the students to be happy editors and not burdened. By the end of the first two days 22 students created 24 articles (About 42 pages of written content). Everyone clapped for their friends, they were welcomed into the Konkani Wikipedia community and were shown the facebook group they could join and be more connected before thanking and saying bye for the day with the promise of more fun for the next workshop.

Day 3: Fresh Batch, New Start


Photo: Subhashish Panigrahi, CC-BY-SA 3.0

16 new students from the MA course were welcomed. Four student-coordinators and one from the first batch of students joined the funday. The entire day was spent with lots of fun, creating articles and basic know how about Wiki-codes. Half the students in this batch knew typing in Devanagari Inscript. The students were then paired with those who knew Inscript and thanks to the Fedora Devanagari keyboard layout. All of the students created their first articles.

Day 4: No Need to Say Good Bye!

Seeing the newspaper coverage about the workshop featuring some of their friends was a delight for the new wikipedians after two long days. Few of them came forward to share their experience about the workshop and their vision for the Konkani language.

At the end of four days all of them bid farewell. These were the foundation days and the biggest editing rally Konkani Wikipedia Incubator has seen in the last seven years with this milestone that the students had created.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/start-up-goa-blog-september-10-2013-subhashish-panigrahi-recap-on-konkani-wikipedia-workshop

Selection of Programme Officer — Pilot Projects, CIS-A2K

nitika — 2013-10-30T06:07:24Z

The Centre for Internet & Society (CIS) opened applications for the post of Programme Officer, Pilot Projects for its Access to Knowledge (A2K) Programme on 17th April 2013. The vacancy and call for applications was shared on all Indian language mailing lists, city mailing lists as well as Village Pumps.

Last date of submitting applications was 30th April which was later extended for another week. By the first week of May we had received 35 applications.

First level of shortlisting
Applicants were given an assignment where they had to write at least one new article on their respective language Wikipedia projects (though we encouraged them to write more than one article if they liked). Asking them to write new articles on Wikipedia was a way to assess their seriousness and level of commitment towards this job. Applicants who failed to submit their written assignment were outright rejected in this level. Amongst the ones that did complete the assignment were assessed on the basis of their relevant work experience and skills that matched requirements of the job profile. CIS-A2K assessed these applicants on different parameters such as:

Exposure to digital domain
Exposure in community driven projects
Exposure of working with schools of performing arts or cultural departments
Prior experience of working in multi-cultural environment
Prior experience in program design and management
Exposure to Wikimedia projects and community
Technical work experience

In this level, 9 applicants were rejected due to failure of completing the assignment and 1 applicant pulled out. Out of the remaining 25 applicants, CIS-A2K shortlisted 15.

Second level of shortlisting
Vishnu and Nitika conducted one hour Skype interviews with each of the shortlisted candidates. CIS-A2K tried to assess candidates on their:

Understanding and passion for Wikimedia movement and projects

Level of understanding of the job profile

Level of understanding of open source, open access, open standards.

Clarity of thinking and communication skills

Ability to work with teams and communities

Experience / understanding of community mobilisation & outreach

Skills in project management

Comfort with working in unstructured environments

Ability to learn new things and approach unfamiliar situations

Personal passions and interests

On the basis of Skype conversations, CIS-A2K shortlisted 6 candidates out of 15 for the next level.

Third level of shortlisting
At this stage one more applicant pulled out and remaining 5 were called for personal interviews to our Bangalore office. All participants were requested to come prepared to present on the topic of 'Performing Arts and Wikipedia' for 10 mins. Each interview lasted for approximately an hour. Towards the closure of the day all participants were requested to gather where each one of them showcased their presentations. This further led to an interesting group discussion.

CIS-A2K had requested Wikimedia India to select someone from the Chapter who could be involved in the selection process and we're glad that Sowmyan Tirumurti, Executive Manager of Wikimedia Chapter could join us for a little while on the day of personal interviews.

Final Selection
Based on all the parameters and levels of interviews, CIS-A2K decided to extend the offer to Syed Muzammiluddin for the position of Programme Officer - Pilot Projects. Muzammil's experience, skills and interest matched our requirements the best and we look forward to a long and successful relationship with him.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/selection-of-programme-officer-pilot-projects-a2k

An Interview with Suresh Ramasubramanian

elonnai — 2013-09-06T09:37:47Z

Suresh Ramasubramanian is the ICS Quality Representative - IBM SmartCloud at IBM. We from the Centre for Internet and Society conducted an interview on cybersecurity and issues in the Cloud.

You have done a lot of work around cybersecurity and issues in the Cloud. Could you please tell us of your experience in these areas and the challenges facing them?
a. I have been involved in antispam activism from the late 1990s and have worked in ISP / messaging provider antispam teams since 2001. Since 2005, I expanded my focus to include general cyber security and privacy, having written white papers on spam and botnets for the OECD, ITU and UNDP/APDIP. More recently, have become a M3AAWG special advisor for capacity building and outreach in India.

In fact capacity building and outreach has been the focus of my career for a long time now. I have been putting relevant stakeholders from ISPs, government and civil society in India in touch with their counterparts around the world, and, at a small level, enabling an international exchange of ideas and information around antispam and security.

This was a challenge over a decade back when I was a newbie to antispam and it still is. People in India and other emerging economies, with some notable exceptions, are not part of the international communities that have grown in the area of cyber security and privacy.

There is a prevalent lack of knowledge in this area, which combined with gaps in local law and its enforcement. There is a tendency on the part of online criminals to target emerging and fast growing economies as a rich source of potential victims for various forms of online crime, and sometimes as a safe haven against prosecution.
In a recent public statement Google said "Cloud users have no legitimate expectation of privacy. Do you agree with this statement?
a. Let us put it this way. All email received by a cloud or other Internet service provider for its customers is automatically processed and data mined in one form or the other. At one level, this can be done for spam filtering and other security measures that are essential to maintain the security and stability of the service, and to protect users from being targeted by spam, malware and potential account compromises.

The actual intent of automated data mining and processing should be transparently provided to customers of a service, with a clearly defined privacy policy, and the deployment of such processing, and the “end use” to which data mined from this processing is put, are key to agreeing or disagreeing with such a statement.

It goes without saying that such processing must stay within the letter, scope and spirit of a company’s privacy policy, and must actually be structured to be respectful of user privacy.

Especially where mined data is used to provide user advertising or for any other commercial purpose (such as being aggregated and resold), strict adherence to a well written privacy policy and periodic review of this policy and its implementation to examine its compliance to laws in all countries that the company operates in are essential.

There is way too much noise in the media for me to usefully add any more to this issue and so I will restrict myself to the purely general comments above.
What ways can be privacy of an individual be compromised on the cloud? What can be done to prevent such instances of compromise?
a. All the recent headlines about companies mining their own users’ data, and yet more headlines about different countries deploying nationwide or even international lawful intercept and wiretap programs, aside, the single largest threat to individual privacy on the cloud is, and has been for years before the word “cloud” came into general use, the constant targeting of online users by online criminals with a variety of threats including scams, phish campaigns and data / account credential stealing malware.

Poor device security is another threat – one that becomes even more of a serious problem when the long talked about “internet of things” seems set to become reality, with cars, baby monitors, even Bluetooth enabled toilets, and more dangerously, critical national infrastructure such as power plants and water utilities becoming accessible over the Internet but still running software that is basically insecure and architected with assumptions that date back to an era when there was no conception or need to connect these to the Internet.

Someone in Bluetooth range with the appropriate android application being able to automatically flush your toilet and even download a list of the dates and times when you last used it is personally embarrassing. Having your bank account broken into because your computer got infected with a virus is even more damaging. Someone able to access a dam’s control panel over the internet and remotely trigger the dam’s gates to open can cause far more catastrophic damage.

The line between security and privacy, between normal business practice and unacceptable, even illegal behaviour, is sometimes quite thin and in a grey area that may be leveraged to the hilt for commercial and/or national security interests. However, scams, malware, exploits of insecure systems and similar threats are well on the wrong side of the “criminal” spectrum, and are a clear and present danger that cause far more than an embarrassing or personally damaging loss of privacy.
How is the jurisdiction of the data on the cloud determined?
This is a surprisingly thorny question. Normally, a company is based in a particular country and has an end user agreement / terms of service that makes its customers / users accept that country’s jurisdiction.

However, a cloud based provider that does business around the world may, in practice, have to comply to some extent at least, with that country’s local laws – at any rate, in respect to its users who are citizens of that country. And any cloud product sold to a local business or individual by a salesman from the vendor’s branch in the country would possibly fall under a contract executed in the country and therefore, subject to local law.

The level of compliance for data retention and disclosure in response to legal processes will possibly vary from country to country – ranging from flat refusals to cooperate (especially where any law enforcement request for data are for something that is quite legal in the country the cloud provider is based in) to actual compliance.

In practice this may also depend on what is at stake for the cloud vendor in complying or refusing to comply with local laws – regardless of what the terms of use policies or contract assert about jurisdiction. The number of users the cloud vendor has in the country, the extent of its local presence in the country, how vulnerable its resident employees and executives are to legal sanctions or punishment.

In the past, it has been observed that a practical balance [which may be based on business economics as much as it is based on a privacy assessment] may be struck by certain cloud vendors with a global presence, based on the critical mass of users it stands to gain or lose by complying with local law, and the risks it faces if it complies, or conversely, does not comply with local laws – so the decision may be to fight lawsuits or prosecutions on charges of breaking local data privacy laws or not complying with local law enforcement requests for handover of user data in court, or worst case, pulling out of the country altogether.
Currently, big cloud owners are US corps, yet US courts do not extend the same privacy rights to non US citizens. Is it possible for countries to use the cloud and still protect citizen data from being accessed by foreign governments? Do you think a "National Cloud" is a practical solution?
a. The “cloud” in this context is just “the internet”, and keeping local data local and within local jurisdiction is possible in theory at any rate. Peering can be used to keep local traffic local instead of having it do a roundtrip through a foreign country and back [where it might or might not be subject to another country’s intercept activities, no comment on that].

A national cloud demands local infrastructure including bandwidth, datacenters etc. that meet the international standards of most global cloud providers. It then requires cloud based sites that provide an equivalent level of service, functionality and quality to that provided by an international cloud vendor. And then after that, it has to have usable privacy policies and the country needs to have a privacy law and a sizeable amount of practical regulation to bolster the law, a well-defined path for reporting and redress of data breaches. There are a whole lot of other technical and process issues before having a national cloud becomes a reality, and even more before such a reality makes a palpable positive difference to user privacy.
What audit mechanisms of security and standards exist for Cloud Service Providers and Cloud Data Providers?
a. Plenty – some specific to the country and the industry sector / kind of data the cloud handles. The Cloud Security Alliance has been working for quite a while on CloudAudit, a framework developed as part of a cross industry effort to unify and automate Assertion, Assessment and Assurance of their infrastructure and service.

Different standards bodies and government agencies have all come out with their own sets of standards and best practices in this area (this article has a reasonable list - http://www.esecurityplanet.com/network-security/cloud-security-standards-what-youshould-know.html). Some standards you absolutely have to comply with for legal reasons.

Compliance reasons aside, a judicious mix of standards, and considerable amounts of adaptation in your process to make those standards work for you and play well together.

The standards all exist – what varies considerably, and is a major cause of data privacy breaches, are incomplete or ham handed implementations of existing standards, any attempt at “checkbox compliance” to simply implement a set of steps that lead to a required certification, and a lack of continuing initiative to keep the data privacy and securitymomentum going once these standards have been “achieved”, till it is time for the next audit at any rate.
What do you see as the big challenges for privacy in the cloud in the coming years?
a. Not very much more than the exact same challenges for privacy in the cloud over the past decade or more. The only difference is that any threat that existed before has always amplified itself because the complexity of systems and the level of technology and computing power available to implement security, and to attempt to breach security, is exponentially higher than ever before – and set to increase as we go further down the line.
Do you think encryption the answer to the private and public institutions snooping?
a. Encryption of data at rest and in transit is a key recommendation of any data privacy standard and cloud / enterprise security policy. Companies and users are strongly encouraged to deploy and use strong cryptography for personal protection. But to call it “the answer” is sort of like the tale of the blind men and the elephant.

There are multiple ways to circumvent encryption – social engineering to trick people into revealing data (which can be mitigated to some extent, or detected if it is tried on a large cross section of your userbase – it is something that security teams do have to watch for), or just plain coercion, which is much tougher to defend against.

As a very popular XKCD cartoon that has been shared around social media and has been cited in multiple security papers says -

“A crypto nerd’s imagination”

“His laptop’s encrypted. Let us build a million dollar cluster to crack it”
“No good! It is 4096 bit RSA”
“Blast, our evil plan is foiled”

“What would actually happen”
“His laptop’s encrypted. Drug him and hit him with this $5 wrench till he tells us the password”
“Got it”
Spam is now consistently used to get people to divulge their personal data or otherwise compromise a persons financial information and perpetuate illegal activity. Can spam be regulated? If so, how?
a. Spam has been regulated in several countries around the world. The USA has had laws against spam since 2003. So has Australia. Several other countries have laws that specifically target spam or use other statutes in their books to deal with crime (fraud, the sale of counterfeit goods, theft..) that happens to be carried out through the medium of spam.

The problems here are the usual problems that plague international enforcement of any law at all. Spammers (and worse online criminals including those that actively employ malware) tend to pick jurisdictions to operate in where there are no existing laws on their activities, and generally take the precaution not to target residents of the country that they live in. Others send spam but attempt to, in several cases successfully, skate around loopholes in their country’s antispam laws.

Still others fully exploit the anonymity that the Internet provides, with privately registered domain names, anonymizing proxy servers (when they are not using botnets of compromised machines), as well as a string of shell companies and complex international routing of revenue from their spam campaigns, to quickly take money offshore to a more permissible jurisdiction.

Their other advantage is that law enforcement and regulatory bodies are generally short staffed and heavily tasked, so that even a spammer who operates in the open may continue his activities for a very long time before someone manages to prosecute him.

Some antispam laws allow recipients of spam to sue the spammer in small claims courts – which, like regulatory action, has also previously led to judgements being handed out against spammers and their being fined or possibly imprisoned in case their spam has criminal aspects to it, attracting local computer crime laws rather than being mere violations of civil antispam laws.
There has been a lot of talk about the use of malware like FinFisher and its ability to compromise national security and individual security. Do you think regulation is needed for this type of malware - and if so what type - export controls? privacy regulation? Use control?
a. Malware used by nation states as a part of their surveillance activities is a problem. It is further a problem if such malware is used by nation states that are not even nominally democratic and that have long standing records of human rights violations.

Regulating or embargoing their sale is not going to help in such cases. One problem is that export controls on such software are not going to be particularly easy and countries that are on software export blacklists routinely manage to find newer and more creative ways to attempt to get around these and try to purchase embargoed software and computing equipment of all kinds.

Another problem is that such software is not produced just by legitimate vendors of lawful intercept gear. Criminals who write malware that is capable of, say, stealing personal data such as bank account credentials are perfectly capable of writing such software, and there is a thriving underground economy in the sale of malware and of “take” from malware such as personal data, credit cards and bank accounts where any rogue nation state can easily acquire products with an equivalent functionality.

This is going to apply even if legitimate vendors of such products are subject to strict regulations governing their sale and national laws exist regulating the use of such products. So while there is no reason not to regulate / provide judicial and regulatory oversight of their sale and intended use, it should not be seen as any kind of a solution to this problem.

User education in privacy and access to secure computing resources is probably going to be the bedrock of any initiative that looks to protect user privacy – a final backstop to any technical / legal or other measure that is taken to protect them.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/interview-with-suresh-ramasubramanian

Wikipedia Training in Telugu for Dr. B.R. Ambedkar Open University, Hyderabad

praskrishna — 2013-09-06T05:51:49Z

CIS-A2K is conducting a Wikipedia training programme in Telugu for the faculty of Dr. B.R.Ambedkar Open University (Dr. BRAOU) in Hyderabad on September 5 and 6, 2013.

This is done as part of the "ICT and eContent" workshop organized by the Centre for Staff Training and Development of Dr. BRAOU for their faculty. T. Vishnu Vardhan Program Director, CIS-A2K has been invited to teach a module on "Knowledge and Openness in the Digital Era" as part of which this Wikipedia training programme was also organized.

Details in Telugu originally published in the metapage on Wikipedia is reproduced below:

వికీపీడియా:శిక్షణ శిబిరం/హైదరాబాద్/హైదరాబాద్2

--14.139.86.130 05:32, 6 సెప్టెంబర్ 2013 (UTC)పరాంకుశం వెంకట రమణ==తేదీ - స్థలం== సెప్టెంబరు, 5 2013; డాక్టర్ బి.ఆర్. అంబేద్కర్ సార్వత్రిక విశ్వవిద్యాలయం

సమయం
పొ. 10.00 నుండి మ. 1.00 వరకు

నిర్వహణ సంస్థ/లు

CISA2K డాక్టర్ బి.ఆర్. అంబేద్కర్ సార్వత్రిక విశ్వవిద్యాలయం, హైదరబాద్ వారి సంస్థాగత భాగస్వామ్యంతో. ఈ శిబిరం Centre for Staff Training and Development (Dr. BRAOU) వారు 10 రోజులపాటు విశ్వవిద్యాలయం యొక్క ఉపాధ్యాయుల కొరకు నిర్వహించిన ‘ICT and e-Content Development’ Workshop లో భాగంగా నిర్వహించబడినది.

నిర్వాహకులు

విష్ణు (చర్చ)

--Elkasudharani (చర్చ) 05:37, 6 సెప్టెంబర్ 2013 (UTC)==Dr.BRAOU లోని కార్యక్రమ సంధానకర్తలు==

ఘంటా చక్రపాణి (డైరెక్టర్, Centre for Staff Training and Development, డాక్టర్ బి.ఆర్. అంబేద్కర్ సార్వత్రిక విశ్వవిద్యాలయం)

--14.139.86.130 05:35, 6 సెప్టెంబర్ 2013 (UTC)

శిక్షణ శిబిరానికి హజరైన సభ్యులు

--Pallavisudheer (చర్చ) 05:31, 6 సెప్టెంబర్ 2013 (UTC)

సరోజ --Drgsaroja (చర్చ) 05:27, 6 సెప్టెంబర్ 2013 (UTC)
--Rajani nellutla (చర్చ) 05:29, 6 సెప్టెంబర్ 2013 (UTC)
--Kiranmayi.ys (చర్చ) 05:30, 6 సెప్టెంబర్ 2013 (UTC)
--Vasuvaddanam (చర్చ) 05:31, 6 సెప్టెంబర్ 2013 (UTC)

--Gpushpa (చర్చ) 05:32, 6 సెప్టెంబర్ 2013 (UTC) --Drgsaroja (చర్చ) 05:34, 6 సెప్టెంబర్ 2013 (UTC)

--Boju srinivas (చర్చ) 05:36, 6 సెప్టెంబర్ 2013 (UTC)
--Shridhevie (చర్చ) 05:37, 6 సెప్టెంబర్ 2013 (UTC)

పై వరసలో పేరు చేర్చండి లేక సంతకం చేయండి>

--[[--14.139.86.130 05:35, 6 సెప్టెంబర్ 2013 (UTC)]]
--Elkasudharani (చర్చ) 05:37, 6 సెప్టెంబర్ 2013 (UTC)
--Pvramana24 (చర్చ) 05:37, 6 సెప్టెంబర్ 2013 (UTC)

నివేదిక

చిత్రమాలిక

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/events/wikipedia-training-in-telugu-for-b-r-ambedkar-open-university

UNESCO Global Report

praskrishna — 2013-09-04T06:53:18Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/unesco-global-report

Workshop on e-Content Development

praskrishna — 2013-09-04T05:49:28Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/e-content-development

Train the Trainer — Four-day long Residential Training Workshop in Bangalore

praskrishna — 2015-09-27T09:59:00Z

Train the Trainer is a four-day long residential training workshop to enable Indian Wikipedia community members conduct outreach sessions effectively and independently. It is being conducted by the CIS-A2K team in Bangalore in the first week of October.

See the event on the Wikipedia page here. Please note that the exact dates for this event hasn't been finalized. We will let you know once it is done. See the Snippets from Wikimedia Train the Trainer here.

Why CIS-A2K is conducting this Program?

Based on an internal needs assessment exercise undertaken by CIS-A2K, it has been realized that:

bulk of the Indian population does not know about the existence of Indic Wikipedias and sister projects.
there is a lot of potential to do outreach in India but it is hampered by community member's lack of time, lack of availability of support material and/or ability to do outreach.
though many Indic Wikipedia community members have desire to undertake offline outreach they seldom receive support and guidance.
there is a need to further build the capacity of interested community members to conduct effective outreach sessions.

Thus through this program, the CIS-A2K programme wants to support and enable community members who are interested to conduct Wikipedia outreach sessions in their own cities/languages and to spread the word about the Indic Wikipedias.

Overview of the programme

CIS-A2K is organising a 4 day Train the Trainer Program in Bangalore. The program will include:

3 day sessions with interactive training run by professional consultants on how to conduct outreach in an effective manner – training on presentation skills, audience engagement, public speaking etc. It will include mock presentations, with video recording for feedback.
4th day will be a field trip aiming to train the participants on how to organise an effective photothon; in addition, participants will also add pictures from the field trip to Wikimedia Commons for enhancing and improving articles on Indian language Wikipedias.

Selection Criterion

CIS-A2K will conduct this program for approximately 20-25 interested community members from different Indian language communities. We want to make sure that there is equal participation from each language community. The CIS-A2K will use below mentioned parameters for selecting candidates.

CIS-A2K's evaluation of Train the Trainer Program Application Form.
Motivation of the candidate to be a part of the program.
The applicant should have made minimum 200 edits on their respective Indian language Wikipedia.
The applicant should have created at least 5 new articles of start class (as defined by their language community) on their respective Indian language Wikipedia.
The applicant should have conducted at least 1 outreach session before the end of application date and shared the report with the community (via mailing list, village pump, event page, etc.)

Candidates' Deliverable

There are certain deliverables that CIS-A2K expects out of selected candidates. These are:

Take lead in translating outreach documents (including presentations, banners, FAQs, handouts) in their respective language and share it with their respective communities.
Organise at least 2 outreach sessions per month in their respective cities, for a minimum of 6 continuous months and share the report with the community (via mailing list, village pump, event page, etc.).
Take lead in organising at least 1 community meet up in their respective cities, where they would give a small talk/presentation about their experience in the Train the Trainer Program and share ideas and tips they picked from the program with their language community members.
Write a 1500-word report sharing their Train the Trainer Program experience with large emphasis on their learnings and take-aways to be shared with all Indian communities.

What's in it for you?

Get general training and presentation skills which you can apply not only during Wikipedia workshops, but also during delivering personal and professional talks.
Receive detailed feedback about your presentation and training skills from professional consultants.
Help design a training program that serves Wikimedia community in the long term.
Share your skills with others.
Meet fellow Wikimedia editors and have fun.

Dates	Number of days	Details
30th August to 13th September 2013	14 Days	CIS-A2K accepts applications.
13th September to 16th September 2013	3 Days	CIS-A2K evaluates the applications and shares details of selected candidates.
16th September to 23th September 2013	7 Days	CIS-A2K co-ordinates with selected candidates to finalize their travel plans, make reservations etc.
1st week of October 2013	4 Days	CIS-A2K organises Train the trainer Program.

Call for Participation

CIS-A2K is calling for applications for it's Train the Trainer Program. If you'd like to be part of this program please make sure that you meet the selection criterion and fill in the Train the Trainer Program Application Form by 13th September, 2013.

FAQ

What is train the trainer program?
Train the trainer is a 4 day program organised by CIS-A2K to build capacity and enable community members to conduct outreach sessions independently or with minimal support to introduce Wikipedia to prospective editors in their respective Indian languages. Participants will be trained on various aspects such as presenting with impact, engaging with the audience, significance of body language, outreach follow ups etc. Program will also include groups discussions on ideas, learnings, challenges faced during outreach sessions.
When will train the trainer program run?
Train the trainer program will take place in Bangalore for 4 continuous days in the 1st week of October 2013. Exact details of dates and venue will be communicated shortly.
Who can take part in the program?
The event is open to all Wikimedia volunteers from India who can and want to support outreach events in the coming year.
How can I apply?
Please fill in Train the Trainer Program Application Form.
Who will take care of my travel and accommodation?
CIS-A2K has a budget for Community Development and the team will be able to cover your travel and accommodation.
What will be the timings each day?
The timings of the program will be 9.00am to 7.30pm everyday with sufficient time for lunch, dinner, tea breaks and fun sessions.
Where will I eat?
Light breakfast and lunch will be provided; together with social dinner. Arrangements will also be made for tea and coffee.
What is expected out of me?

Each selected candidate will be given some pre-work. You're expected to come with completed pre-work.
Take lead in translating outreach documents (including presentations, banners, FAQs, handouts) in their respective language and share it with their respective communities.
Post the program, organize at least 2 outreach sessions per month in your respective cities, for a minimum of 6 continuous months and share the report with the community (via mailing list, village pump, event page, etc.).
Post the program, take lead in organising at least 1 community meet up in your respective cities, where you would give a small talk/presentation about your experience in the Train the Trainer Program and share ideas and tips you picked from the program with your language community members.
Write a 1500-word report sharing your Train the Trainer Program experience with large emphasis on learnings and take-aways to be shared with all Indian communities.

Contact

For any further queries please mail at a2k@cis-india.org

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/events/train-the-trainer

Syllabus: “Policy and regulation conducive to rapid ICT sector growth in Myanmar: An introductory course”

praskrishna — 2013-10-24T03:56:31Z

A five-day course is being offered by LIRNEasia in collaboration with Myanmar ICT Development Organization, with support from the Open Society Foundation and the International Development Research Centre of Canada in Myanmar from September 28 to October 5, 2013.

Sunil Abraham will be supporting Prof. Samarajiva on the last optional day of this course in Yangon. Read about the Introductory course on “Policy and regulation conducive to rapid ICT sector growth in Myanmar”

Goal

To enable members of Myanmar civil-society groups (including academics and those from the media) to marshal available research and evidence for effective participation in policy and regulatory processes, thereby improving policy processes and helping achieve the government’s objective of providing ICT access to all.

Outcomes

The objective of the course is to produce discerning and knowledgeable consumers of research who are able to engage in an informed manner in ICT policy and regulatory processes in Myanmar. The course will benefit those working in government and operators as well.

At the end of the course attendees will:

Have an understanding of telecom policy and regulatory processes
Be able to find and assess relevant research & evidence
Be able to summarize the research in a coherent and comprehensive manner
Have the necessary tools to improve their communication skills

- Have some understanding of how media functions and how to effectively interact with media

Assignments

Participants will be formed into teams on Day1. Each group will work on an assignment that addresses both substantive and procedural aspects of law, policy and regulation. Teams will be assigned topic areas that are being developed into regulations under the new Act. They will have to make presentations on what the desirable provisions should be. We will emphasize the procedural aspects as well as the substantive. Disciplined and focused team presentations, preferably using slides, are required.

It is necessary to use the Internet for the assignments. All who have laptops are encouraged to bring them. Arrangements will be made for Internet connectivity at the hotel.

Tentative topic areas

Licensing and authorization regulations
Essential facilities and anti-competitive practices
Universal service policy
Price and quality regulation
Independence of regulatory agency

Course schedule

	Day 1 (September 28)	Day 2 (September 29)	Day 3 (September 30)	Day4 (October 1)	Day 5 (October 2) (optional)
09:00-10:30	S1 Introduction to course: What have been the results of reform & rationale for regulation. Rohan Samarajiva (RS)	S5 Regulatory legitimacy, including procedural legitimacy (RS)	S10 Challenges of monitoring complex license commitments (HG)	S14 How does the Internet work? (TBA)	S16 Internet governance The big picture. Sunil Abraham (SA)
10:30-11:00	Break	Break	Break	Break
11:00-12:00	S2 Interrogating supply-side indicators & research based on them. Helani Galpaya (HG)	S6 Current status of telecom law and policy in Myanmar (RS)	S11 How evidence is used in policy & regulation (panel discussion, KS, RS	S15 The art of media interaction (RS)	S17 Economic & technical interface with telecom industry (RS)
12:00-13:00	S3 Finding information on the web. Roshanthi Lucas Gunaratne (RLG)	S7 Presenting evidence in slides & written submissions (HG)	S12 Essential facilities and anti-competitive practices (RS)	A3 Mock public hearing (RS & panel)	S18 How Internet is governed within India (SA)
13:00-14:00	Lunch	Lunch	Lunch	Lunch
14:00-15:00	A1 Group formation; Assignment explained (HG and RLG)	S8 Licensing and authorization (RS)	A2 Midpoint check on assignment/group work (HG and RLG)	A4 Mock public hearing & critique (RS & panel)	S19 Content regulation (TBA)
15:00-15:30	Break	Break	Break
15:30-17:00	S4 Demand-side research (RS)	S9 Price and quality regulation (RS & HG)	S13 Universal service subsidies: Theory & practice (RS & KS)	Reflection on the course	S20 Surveillance & privacy (SA & RS)
17:00	Group work	Group work	Group work
19:00	Welcome dinner Speaker: TBA

Faculty

Sunil Abraham is the Executive Director of CIS. He is also a social entrepreneur and Free Software advocate. He founded Mahiti in 1998 which aims to reduce the cost and complexity of Information and Communication Technology for the Voluntary Sector by using Free Software. Today, Mahiti employs more than 50 engineers and Sunil continues to serve on the board as a board member. Sunil was elected an Ashoka fellow in 1999 to 'explore the democratic potential of the Internet' and was granted a Sarai FLOSS fellowship in 2003. Between June 2004 and June 2007, he managed the International Open Source Network, a project of the UNDP's Asia-Pacific Development Information Programme serving 42 countries in the Asia-Pacific region. Between September 2007 and June 2008, he also managed ENRAP, an electronic network of International Fund for Agricultural Development projects in the Asia-Pacific facilitated and co-funded by International Development Research Centre, Canada.

Helani Galpaya is LIRNEasia’s Chief Executive Officer. Helani leads LIRNEasia’s 2012-2014 IDRC funded research on improving customer life cycle management practices in the delivery of electricity and e-government services using ICTs. She recently completed an assessment of how the poor in Bangladesh and Sri Lanka use telecenters to access government services. For UNCTAD and GTZ she authored a report on how government procurement practices can be used to promote a country’s ICT sector and for the World Bank/InfoDev Broadband Toolkit, a report on broadband strategies in Sri Lanka. She has been an invited speaker at various international forums on topics ranging from m-Government to ICT indicators to communicating research to policy makers. Prior to LIRNEasia, Helani worked at the ICT Agency of Sri Lanka, implementing the World-Bank funded e-Sri Lanka initiative. Prior to her return to Sri Lanka, she worked in the United States at Booz & Co., Marengo Research, Citibank, and Merrill Lynch. Helani holds a Masters in Technology and Policy from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a Bachelor’s in Computer Science from Mount Holyoke College, USA.

Roshanthi Lucas Gunaratne is a Research Manager at LIRNEasia and is currently managing the Ford Foundation Funded project on Giving Broadband Access to the Poor in India. She is also contributing to the IDRC Customer Lifecycle Management Practices Project by conducting research on customer lifecycle management practices in telecommunication sector in Bangladesh. Before joining LIRNEasia, Roshanthi worked at the Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, Geneva, Switzerland as a Strategic Information Officer. She contributed to the process of defining the Global Fund Key Performance Indicators, and also worked on improving the performance measurements of their grants. Prior to that, she worked as a telecom project manager at Dialog Telecom, and Suntel Ltd in Sri Lanka. As Suntel she managed the design and implementation of corporate customer projects. She holds a MBA from the Judge Business School, University of Cambridge, UK and a BSc. Eng (Hons) specializing in Electronics and Telecommunication from the University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka.

Rajat Kathuria, PhD

Rohan Samarajiva, PhD, is founding Chair of LIRNEasia, an ICT policy and regulation think tank active across emerging Asian and Pacific economies. He was Team Leader at the Sri Lanka Ministry for Economic Reform, Science and Technology (2002-04) responsible for infrastructure reforms, including participation in the design of the USD 83 million e-Sri Lanka Initiative. He was Director General of Telecommunications in Sri Lanka (1998-99), a founder director of the ICT Agency of Sri Lanka (2003-05), Honorary Professor at the University of Moratuwa in Sri Lanka (2003-04), Visiting Professor of Economics of Infrastructures at the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands (2000-03) and Associate Professor of Communication and Public Policy at the Ohio State University in the US (1987-2000). Dr. Samarajiva was also Policy Advisor to the Ministry of Post and Telecom in Bangladesh (2007-09).

Koesmarihati Sugondo

Resource Material

infodev, ICT regulation toolkit. http://www.ictregulationtoolkit.org/en/Index.html

infoDev. Broadband strategies toolkit. http://broadbandtoolkit.org/en/toolkit/contents

infoDev (2011). Tenth anniversary telecom regulation handbook. http://www.infodev.org/En/Publication.1057.html

ITU (2011). The role of ICT in advancing growth in least developed countries: Trends, challenges and opportunities. Geneva: ITU. http://www.itu.int/ITU-D/ldc/turkey/docs/The_Role_of_ICT_in_Advancing_Growth_in_LDCs_Trends_Challenges_and_Opportunities.pdf

Samarajiva, Rohan (2000). The role of competition in institutional reform of telecommunications: Lessons from Sri Lanka, Telecommunications Policy, 24(8/9): 699-717. http://www.comunica.org/samarajiva.html

Samarajiva, Rohan (2002). Why regulate?, chapter 2 of Effective regulation: Trends in Telecommunication Reform 2002. Geneva: International Telecommunication Union.

Samarajiva, Rohan (2006). Preconditions for effective deployment of wireless technologies for development in the Asia-Pacific, Information Technology and International Development, 3(2): 57-71. http://itidjournal.org/itid/article/view/224/94

Samarajiva, Rohan & Zainudeen, Ayesha (2008). ICT infrastructure in emerging Asia: Policy and regulatory roadblocks, New Delhi & Ottawa: Sage & IDRC http://www.idrc.ca/en/ev-117916-201-1-DO_TOPIC.html

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/policy-and-regulation-conducive-to-rapid-ict-growth-in-myanmar

Gmail ban looms for Indian gov't workers

praskrishna — 2013-09-19T07:19:11Z

Government workers in India will soon be banned from using Google’s Gmail service for official communication in a move said to be in response to revelations of widespread cyberspying by the US, a national paper reported.

Beatrice Thomas's blog post was published in Arabian Business.com on September 1, 2013. Sunil Abraham is quoted.

Two weeks after Dubai announced a ban on private emails by Government staff, a senior official in India’s Ministry of Communications and Information Technology said the crackdown would apply to 500,000 government employees, according to The Times of India.

They would be banned from using providers such as Gmail, which had servers based in the US, and instead asked to stick to the official email service provided by India's National Informatics Centre.

"Gmail data of Indian users resides in other countries as the servers are located outside," J Satyanarayana, secretary in the Department of Electronics and Information Technology, told the Times.

“Currently, we are looking to address this in the Government domain, where there are large amounts of critical data.”

The move comes in the wake of revelations by former US National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden that the US government had direct access to large amounts of personal data on the internet such as emails and chat messages from companies such as Google, Facebook and Apple through a program called PRISM.

The Times said several senior government officials in India, including ministers of state for communications and IT, Milind Deora and Kruparani Killi, had their Gmail IDs listed in government portals as their official email.

However, IT Minister Kapil Sibal said last week there had been no evidence of the US accessing internet data from India.

The newspaper quoted a senior official in the IT Department saying Gmail was preferred by employees because, compared to official email services, it was easy to set up.

Sibal said the new policy would require all government officials living abroad to use NIC servers that were directly linked to a server in India while accessing government email services.

Sunil Abraham, executive director of Bangalore-based research firm Centre for Internet and Society, said he agreed with the ban.

“After Snowden’s revelations, we can never be sure to what extent foreign governments are intercepting government emails," he told the Times.

It emerged last month that Dubai government employees had been banned from sending and receiving private emails at work, including the use of independent email providers such as Hotmail, Yahoo! and Gmail.

The new regulations announced by Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President, Prime Minister and ruler of Dubai, specifically referred to religious and political communication as well as messages relating to charitable causes.

Workers are also not allowed to open unsolicited mail, spam or emails that contain viruses, or alter the date, time, source of destination information on an email.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/arabian-business-september-1-2013-beatrice-thomas-gmail-ban-looms-for-indian-govt-workers

UNESCO Global Report: Opening New Avenues for Empowerment

nirmita — 2013-09-04T07:21:56Z

We prepared a report on higher education for persons with disabilities in the Asia-Pacific region for UNESCO some time back. The report has been compiled into a global report. Nirmita Narasimhan was the project coordinator from the Centre for Internet and Society.

Preface

(by Irina Bokova, Director General of UNESCO)

Over one billion people – approximately 15 percent of the world’s population – live with some form of disability. Facing a wide range of barriers, including access to information, education, health care and a lack of job opportunities, persons living with disabilities struggle every day to be integrated into society.

This is unacceptable, and UNESCO is taking a stand. To tackle these challenges, UNESCO has led a number of initiatives, including the 2013 Global Report, to empower persons with disabilities thanks to information and communication technologies. Our position is clear – information and communication technologies, along with associative technologies, can widen access to information and knowledge, so they must accessible to all.

Building on the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, the Global Report addresses strong recommendations to all stakeholders – from decision-makers to educators, civil society and industry – on how concretely to advance the rights of people living with disabilities. These recommendations draw on extensive research and consultations. Studies launched in five regions have allowed UNESCO to understand more clearly the conditions and challenges faced by persons with disabilities around the world.

To empower persons with disabilities is to empower societies as a whole – but this calls for the right policies and legislation to make information and knowledge more accessible through information and communication technologies. It calls also for applying accessibility standards to the development of content, product and services. The successful application of such technologies can make classrooms more inclusive, physical environments more accessible, teaching and learning content and techniques more in tune with learners’ needs. We need the commitment of all Government and stakeholders to make this a reality for all persons living with disabilities. To build the inclusive knowledge societies we need for the century ahead, we cannot leave anyone aside. We must do everything to replace exclusion and discrimination with inclusion and empowerment – for this, we must harness the full power of information and communication technologies. This is our shared commitment, and this Global Report will help us move forward.

Forward

(by HE Mr. Miguel Angel Estrella, UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador)

Communication and information are essential for the development of people and societies. It is thanks to the networks of connections which are established freely between individuals that a society is able to advance, as well as the personal development of individuals which makes it possible to increase the collective benefit of all those who form a society. In light of this, special attention should be paid and necessary products and services should be created for persons with disabilities. The more totalitarian and repressive societies are, the more restricted access to information and knowledge is, as well as the application of rights to self-expression and opinion. In addition, special services and attention for the common good of society are limited. However, when a society is free and respectful of human rights, individuals have more solidarity, are open to work together and share information. As a consequence of this free exchange of information and knowledge, it should be possible to build a more inclusive society which can fully participate in the social, cultural and economic life, intellectually and culturally rich, and where people with different
abilities, can take full advantage of Information and Communication Technologies.

Access to information and knowledge allows humans to contribute to social development where he or she can make better choices, and to share the richness with those around them. The conditions, special capacities and abilities of each individual to learn should never be an obstacle or an impediment to their individual development. On the contrary, it is the duty of all authorities to establish an enabling environment and provide special services to those who require them, keeping people with disabilities in mind. Such an inclusive society ensures that each person is valued as an equal human being.

I, therefore, warmly welcome UNESCO’s publication titled “Opening New Avenues for Empowerment: ICTs to Access Information and Knowledge for Persons with Disabilities” which not only makes a major contribution to our understanding of disability, but also highlights technological advancement and shares good practices that have already changed the lives of people with disabilities. The publication also makes concrete recommendations for action at the local, national and international levels, targeting policy and decision makers, educators, IT&T industry, civil society and certainly persons with disabilities, which, I hope, will receive your deserved attention!

Acknowledgements

This Global Report, Opening New Avenues for Empowerment: ICTs to Access Information and Knowledge for Persons with Disabilities, has been commissioned by the UNESCO Communication and Information Sector. It is a result of collaborative action among many researchers, public and private organizations, governmental bodies and civil society, and appreciation is extended to each of them.

The Report is based on the findings of five UNESCO regional studies carried out with the help of the following institutions and coordinating authors:

Africa: Mr Raymond Lang, Dr., the Leonard Cheshire Disability and Inclusive Development Centre, University College, London (UK);

Arab Region and North Africa: Mr Mohamed Jemni, Professor of ICT and Educational Technologies, Head of Research Laboratory UTIC, University of Tunis (Tunisia);

Asia Pacific: Ms Nirmita Narasimhan, Project Coordinator, Centre for Internet and Society (India);

Eastern Europe and Central Asia: International Consulting Agency- Mezhvuzkonsalt (Russian Federation);

South America, Central America and Mexico and the Caribbean: Ms Pilar Samaniego (South America);
Ms Sanna-Mari Laitamo and Ms Estela Valerio (Central America and Mexico); and Ms Cristina Francisco (The Caribbean).

The principal author of this global report is Mr Michael Blakemore, Emeritus Professor of Geography at the University of Durham (UK), who is a UK’s Bologna Expert (Higher Education Reform and Innovation) with the European Commission.

The overall preparation of the world report, regional studies and coordination of the project were ensured by Ms Irmgarda Kasinskaite-Buddeberg and Mr Davide Storti from UNESCO’s Communication and Information Sector.

UNESCO thanks the GAATES Foundation for its contributions and advice to the preparation of this report, particularly Ms Cynthia Waddell and Ms Betty Dion. Thanks also to Mr Jonathan Avila from SSB Bart Group

UNESCO wishes to acknowledge the many individual contributors, experts, and advocates, who assisted in the gathering of survey data and in the preparation of the regional studies.

All those contributing their expertise and time to the peer review also deserve recognition. They include: Axel Leblois (G3ict), Luis Gallegos (Ambassador of Ecuador to the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland), David Andrés Rojas M. and Vanessa Ramirez (The Trust of America, TRUST ), Shadi Abou-Zahra (W3C/WAI), Bernhard Heinser (DAISY Consortium), Jan A. Monsbakken and Uma Tuli (Rehabilitation International, RI), Karsten Gerloff (Free Software Foundation Europe), Brian Nitz (Oracle), Kiran Kaja (Adobe), Katim S. Touray (Free Software Foundation for Africa), Sophie Gautier and Charles-H. Schulz (LibreOffice), Luiz M. Alves dos Santos (European Commission, EC), Arnoud van Wijk (Real-Time Task Force), Reinhard Weissinger (International Organization for Standardization, ISO), Kenneth Eklindh (UNESCO), Simon Ball (JISC TechDis).

The global summary report was edited by Ms Alison McKelvey.

Click to read the full report here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/opening-new-avenues-for-empowerment

Konkani Wikipedia Advances in 4 Days — From 90 Articles to 130 Articles!

nitika — 2013-09-03T10:37:15Z

There has been a rise of article contributions to the Konkani Wikipedia in a span of 4 days following a 4 day programme organized by the CIS-A2K team for M.A. students from the Konkani Department, Goa University at the Central State Library, Goa from August 21 to 24, 2013. Nitika Tandon and Subhashish Panigrahi conducted the event.

The original details posted on the meta page can be viewed here.

Introduction

There are 30 lakh Konkani speakers spread across the Konkani belt of Goa, Karnataka, Kerala, Maharashtra. Only a few are aware of the existence of an open source project, Konkani Wikipedia, that can help them preserve their language and culture. The project has been in incubation since its inception in 2006 and had 90 articles till last week — an incomparable number in English Wikipedia, which has 4.3 million articles. However, CIS-A2K teams effort in Goa to strengthen Konkani Wikipedia project and community has finally started to show some tangible results. As a follow up to the early workshops and orientations we organized this latest programme to help the students make themselves familiar in editing and contributing articles to Konkani Wikipedia.

We started the event with a demonstration on the basics of editing the Wikipedia followed by a brief discussion about Konkani Wikipedia and the editing session. Besides these we had fun activities and wiki quiz.

Highlights of the Workshop

A total of 38 students from the Konkani Department took part in this workshop. Forty-three new articles were created and added to Konkani Wikipedia in the 4-day event.
During the first couple of days, 22 students generated 42 pages of print material and in the last two days, 16 students generated 56 pages of printed material.
A total of 987 edits were made and 41 references were added on Konkani Wikipedia.
The students added a total of 3,90,040 bytes of data; an average of 10KB data was added by each student.
Students wrote articles on varied topics such as Goan folk dances, eminent personalities, festivals, folk music, proverbs, food items, theater, etc.


Pictured above: Participants at the Konkani Wiki editing workshop in Goa University. Picture credit: Subhashish Panigrahi

Articles and Participants

Phase 1 (Day 1 and Day 2)

1	धालो	Varsha Kavlekar
2	केळशीची फमाद दर्यादेग	Mona Rodrigues
3	देखणी	Fernandes Sandra
4	गोयच्यों परबो	Komal Dhuri
5	जागर्	Cliffa Fernandes
6	गोंयचे पारंपारीक वेवसाय	Abigail Dias
7	गोंयचें मुखेल जेवण	Effa Dias
8	चवथ	Shanta Gaundalkar
9	कुंकळ्ळेची चळवळ	Dias Neves
10	राणेचे बंड	Fay Fernandes
11	रविंद्र केळेकार	Gaurisha Phal Desai
12	गोंयचे पारंपारीक खेळ	Safira Ferns
13	शणै गोयबाब	Pratima Fal Desai
14	मांडो	Anisha Gad
15	संगीत	Santoshi Kole
16	म्हणी,ओपारी	Pooja Kavlekar
17	मोसिन्योर दाल्गाद- जीण आनी वावर	Sukhada Daikar
18	कोंकणी तियात्राचीं कांतारां	Konknni mogi 24
19	कोंकणी लोककाणयो, कोंकणी सिनेमा	Supriya Kankumbikar
20	गोवा कोंकणी अकादेमी, कोंकणी भाशा मंडळ	Vaishali Parab
21	कोंकणी नाटक	Darshan Kandolkar
22	विश्व कोंकणी केंद्र	John Noronha

Phase 2 (Day 3 and Day 4)

1	गोंयचें लोक नाच	Pooja Tople
2	गोंयची जातीय वेवस्था, गोंय मुक्ती उपरान्तचो इतिहास	Priyanka Kudaskar
3	दिवाळी,शिरगांवची जात्रा	Pritam Barve
4	गोंयची लोकगितां	Rusita Paryekar
5	हिंदूच्या सणपरबांचें जिन्नस	Gauri Prabhugaonkar
6	लोकवादय़ा	Suma Parab Gaonkarr
7	गाराणें	Darshana Mandrekar
8	तुळशीलग्न	Heefza
9	बारसो	Nikita Prabhu
10	कोंकणी कथा	Marizma Mascarenhas
11	गोंयचीं क्रिस्तावांचीं काजारां	Linette Saldanha
12	बेबींक	Frania Pereira
13	तियात्र	Rhakee Santos
14	गोंयचे तियात्रिस्त	Pereira Goreti
15	कुळबी समाजाच्यो परबो	Rubiya Komarpant
16	कोंकणीतलें पयलें बरप	Savidha Talekar

Media Coverage

Wikipedia writes a new script (by Joyce Dias, The Goan, August 24, 2013)
Konkani Wikipedia makes headway (by Diana Fernandes, OHeraldO, August 24, 2013)

Learnings

Pre-course work : Participants were asked to do pre-course work before the actual event. This included creating Wikipedia usernames, selecting articles they wanted to edit, writing their articles in Konkani on a piece of paper and get their references too. Students were also given few pages of Wikipedia literature to read beforehand. Students did all their pre-course work with a lot of dedication and efficiency confirming their passion and interest to contribute to Wikipedia. The pre-course also helped students to come prepared and focused for the workshop.

Limiting number of participants: We limited the number of participants to a total of 40 and further divided in two different groups with about 20 students in each. The first batch came for 2 consecutive days and the second batch came for the last two consecutive days of the event. By limiting the number of participants we were able to give individual attention to each student and closely monitor their on wiki performance.

Longer duration workshop: Fourteen hours of training was given to each batch. It was spread over 2 days. We had sufficient time to break down the entire workshop into different sections (theoretical and practical) that could be easily followed by the participants. Those 14 hours gave us enough time to cover most of the important topics (such as teaching typing, adding reference, adding headers, wiki markup, talk page protocol, etc.) at as comfortable pace.

Bite size chunks: The workshop was divided into different sections to give them bite size information only. Each theoretical section was followed by a practical section. For example, the first section involved teaching typing in Devanagari and then participants were given enough time to type their articles in Devanagari. In the second section we taught them how to add headers and then the participants were given sometime to add only headers to their articles. This was followed by a third section where we taught them how to add references and then giving them time to add their references. We made sure that we didn't overwhelm the students with a lot of information in one go and broke it down into simpler pieces.

Energizers : Seven continuous hours of editing Wikipedia would have really tired the students and made them disinterested as well. To keep their energy and motivation level high, after fixed intervals we played some energizer games with them.

Student co-ordinators: A total of 4 students were selected (2 from each batch) to act as student co-ordinators. These co-ordinators acted as a communication bridge between A2K members and the participants. For example, these co-ordinators would help students take a unanimous decision about what are the next dates for a follow up session, what timings would work for everyone, etc.

Varied sources of information: We used different sources and means to educate students about Wikipedia and Wikipedia editing. We definitely didn't want it to be a 14-hour long discourse and hence used different tools such as (Netha's, Poongothai's, Sriket and Noopur's, and Ganesh's videos talking about their personal experiences in the Wikipedia world), along with handouts, presentations, cheat sheets for typing, etc. We also invited Harriet for a video conference to speak with students in Konkani and share with them some inspirational stories.

Challenges

Most students didn't know typing in Devanagari and had to be taught during the workshops. It took them a little while to practice and get comfortable with the typing tool.
We wanted to make sure that along with quantity, students are also producing good quality articles. Non-existance of active Konkani Wikipedia editors makes it a little tough to keep control on the quality. Hence, we reached out to Madhavi Sardesai and Priyadarshani Tadkodkar professors from the Konkani Department at Goa University to assess the quality and ask students to make required changes.
Since Konkani Wikipedia is in incubation students had to do some additional work such as:
- Browse through incubator.wikimedia.org to find about Konkani Wikipedia. Many wanted to know why Konkani Wikipedia doesn't have an independent link just as en.wikipedia.org.
- Add Category:Wp/gom to every new article that was created. Many found this as extra work.
- Searching for existing articles on incubation was difficult for participants.
During the workshop all students added huge amount of information but only a handful of them continued editing once they left the computer lab. This brings us to our all time biggest challenge: How do we keep their motivation and interest levels high for them to continue writing on Wikipedia beyond these workshops?


Seen above: Konkani Wikipedia editing session in progress. Picture credit: Subhashish Panigrahi

Acknowledgements

This event and future events at Goa University would not have been possible without the committed support CIS-A2K has got from the Goa University and Wikipedians. CIS-A2K is very thankful to Dr. Satish Shetye (Vice-Chancellor, Goa University) — for seeing the significance of growing open knowledge movement in Goa and Konkani and encouraging Konkani Wikipedia activities at GU. Thanks are due to the GU faculty, specifically Prof. Alito Sequeira; Prof. Madhavi Sardesai; Prof. Priyadarshini Tadkodkar; and Dr. Gopa Kumar. Wikipedians Harriet Vidyasagar and Frederick Nooronha. Last but not the least the enthusiastic students of Goa University who are integral to this event.


				Konkani Wikipedia editor Frania Pereira speaks about her editing experience on Konkani Wikipedia. (by Subhashish Panigrahi, CC-BY-SA 3.0)

What's Next?

A2K team is organizing a follow-up session with the same set of students on Sept 6 and 7, 2013. This session will aim to clear any confusions/doubts that participants may have about Wikipedia editing and also to give them a brief about Wikimedia Commons. In this session, students will also decide how they would want to continue with this project with an aim to bring Konkani Wikipedia as a live project.

Additional Info:

Konkani Department, Goa University: http://bit.ly/14S87Ci
Central State Library, Goa: http://bit.ly/1dzHmao
Konkani Wikipedia: http://bit.ly/1dGOFOL

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/konkani-wikipedia-advances-in-four-days

Konkani Wikipedia — Climbing up the Indian Language Ladder?

subha — 2013-10-25T07:16:30Z

Konkani as a language has seen geographical, political and religious conflicts. Being the official language of Goa and spoken widely in the Indian states of Karnataka, Kerala and Maharashtra it is still trying to strengthen its base. Recently CIS-A2K in collaboration with Goa University organized a four-day workshop for MA, Konkani language students. This workshop involved 38 students creating 43 new articles on Konkani Wikipedia which is incubation. We’re hoping that these efforts will contribute towards bringing this 7 year old project out of incubation to a live Wikipedia project.

A modified version of this was published in DNA on September 6, 2013. This was re-posted in Fitness Foundation website on October 9, 2013.

Incubation

Before any language Wikipedia shapes up as a live project an incubation process is involved. A community of volunteers (known as Wikipedians) gradually grow to sustain this Wikipedia in incubation with active contribution. Konkani Wikipedia incubator began way back in 2006. However, due to many reasons it could not take off and is still in incubation. One of the major reasons has been the issue with multiple script usage. Due to political and religious reasons Konkani has multiple writing and verbal standards and is also written in multiple script. These include Devanagari and Roman (also known as Romi) in Goa where Devanagari is the official script, Kannada in the Konkani speaking regions of Karnataka (Mangalore region primarily), Malayalam in Kerala (Kochi region) and in Perso-Arabic script by part of the Konkani speaking population. The largest script usage for Konkani is in Devanagari. Goa University is world's first university to have a masters programme in Konkani language where the writing standard is in Goan Konkani (Language code: Gom) which is written in Devanagari. During the interaction with the faculty members; Prof. Madhavi Sardesai and Head of the department Dr. Priyadarshini Tadkodar we found that the students are very enthusiastic to contribute to their language. We met the students and introduced Konkani Wikipedia to them and they showed interest to take part in a workshop to learn Wikipedia editing. This was the beginning of something new after a long time. Four out of the 38 students volunteered to coordinate the workshop on the ground. They discussed about the workshop and the prerequisites; going through the list of articles on Konkani Wikipedia, and writing a unique article by collecting resources and creating their usernames on Wikipedia before attending the workshop. To our surprise, all of the students including the four coordinators came out with at least two pages of written content before the workshop.

Day 1: Building the Blocks

It was 10 in the morning. A big LED panel in the audio visual room of the Krishnadas Shama State Central Library, Goa was displaying the word cloud containing words like Wikipedia, Openness, Education, Open Knowledge, Global Collaboration, etc. Soon the room was filled with 20 M.A. students from the Konkani Department of Goa University. Prior to the workshop we had interacted with the students in the presence of Head of the department Dr. Priyadarshini and Prof. Madhavi Sardesai and from the Konkani department. Four of the students, Supriya Kankumbikar, Fr. Luis Gomes, Vaishali Parab and John Noronha volunteered to coordinate for the workshops. With the help of them we managed to get a majority of the students to sign up and create their user accounts before the first workshop. We had to do some rough work to plan for a whole day workshop. The word "workshop" has been always boring for the students and our biggest worry was how we would keep this boredom at bay and make Wikipedia editing a fun.

Intro Yourself

To start with the first day we had an "Adjective Name" activity. It was fun to know how people judge themselves with adjective. Myself turned out to be "Sub-Hashish" and Nitika turned out to be "Naughty-Nitika"! Then we had a discussion about articles that students planned to write. A few of them were not sure if articles like social issues and biography of a writer could fit into Wikipedia framework.

Editing Time

Article titles were decided. Everyone was ready with their homework write-ups and books for adding sources. The next big thing was typing in Devanagari. Only four-five of them knew typing. Students came forward for trying their hands in typing. For the first time some of them typed a few words and they typed it correctly. We could see the glow of triumph after they typed correctly using “Transliteration” layout. The editing session began. Our experience with majority of the Indian language outreach participants had been more or the less the same; most new Wikipedians struggle to type. This time we printed some handouts with the layout for typing help. It worked well. Students managed to type albeit small little typos.

Game Time

We had to cut the session for an activity break and invited them to play “Tumi Kashi Asat” (means How are you doing in Konkani). This is a game I learned from my colleague Vishnu. To make it more interesting we got it translated to Konkani by our coordinator Supriya. The host has to make some body movements and ask “Tumi Kashi Asat” and bending forward. The participants have to move their body in the reverse way and answer “Ami bari ashat” (I’m doing good). This replaced the caffeine intake for the four days and kept all of us alive.

Rat and Frog Game

There was surprise for participating wikipedians post lunch, “Rat race”. Participants sit on chairs and one of them is made to stand in the center. The rat makes others run and replace each others seats and one among the participants become rat. This rat race brought back the old childhood memories and for a moment everyone forgot their age. At the end of it students sat down to take a deep breath and we taught them some of the basic wiki-codes (bold, Italics and adding references).

Editing session went on until the rest of the day. To our surprise all of the students had created their first articles by the end of the day.

Guide for Konkani Wikipedia editing with typing layouts

Day 2: Climbing up the Ladder

This was the day to tell the students about the advanced options and ensure addition of more citations. Citations on Wikipedia are very essential for readers to validate the facts. But bringing this to the students who just had started learning typing in their language a day before was not that easy. The second day was spent giving small breaks during the editing session for small activities. Running, jumping and shouting fueled the students to be happy editors and not burdened. We managed to teach them the advanced options for proper wiki-formatting (Bold, Italics, Heading and Category), and citations. By the end of the first two days 22 students created 24 articles (about 42 pages of written content). Everyone clapped for their friends. We welcomed them to Konkani Wikipedia community, left our contacts to contact further and showed them the Facebook group that they could join and be more connected before thanking and saying bye for the day with the promise of more fun for the next workshop.

Day 3: Fresh Batch, New Start

Sixteen new students from the M.A. course were welcomed. Four student-coordinators and one from the first batch of students joined the "funday". The entire day was spent with lots of fun, creating articles and learning about the basic know how about Wiki-codes. Half the students in this batch knew typing in Devanagari Inscript. Our first and second day taught us how students ask their fellow students more than they ask us for small little help. Nitika and myself being Inscript noobs made it tough. We then paired these students with those who knew Inscript, thanks to the Fedora Devanagari keyboard layout. It helped us to look and guide the students. All of the students created their first articles. John, Supriya and Vaishali (from first batch) were giving final touches to their second articles.

Day 4: No Need to Say Good Bye!

This was the day to do two very important things: clap for their contribution on the first day and tell about contribution of their friends, teach about the advanced options and extend further support. Seeing the newspaper coverage about the workshop featuring some of their friends was a delight for our new wikipedians after two long days. Few of them came forward to share their experience about the workshop and their vision for Konkani language.

At the end of four days all of them bid us farewell. It felt like saying bye to good old friends. These were the foundation days and the biggest editing rally Konkani Wikipedia Incubator has seen in the last seven years with this milestone that the students had created. Happy faces of our new found friends is going to be a great piece of memory in this journey.

Media Coverage

Wikipedia writes a new script (by Joyce Dias, The Goan, August 24, 2013)
Konkani Wikipedia makes headway (by Diana Fernandes, OHeraldO, August 24, 2013)

Video


Rusita Paryekar speaks about Konkani Wikipedia

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/konkani-wikipedia-climbing-up-the-indian-language-ladder

Access to Knowledge Bulletin — August 2013

praskrishna — 2013-10-04T10:49:51Z

The Access to Knowledge (Wikipedia) newsletter for the month of August 2013:

Updates from Konkani Wikipedia

The CIS-A2K programme organised a four-day workshop in collaboration with the Goa University for students of M.A. (Konkani) at the Central State Library, Konkani Department, University of Goa from August 21 to 24, 2013. Nitika Tandon and Subhashish Panigrahi conducted this workshop. The event saw 38 students creating 43 new articles on Konkani Wikipedia, which is incubation. The main objective is to bring this seven-year-old project out of incubation into a live Wikipedia project. Event reports, blog entries, videos, guest column and media coverage arising from the workshop can be accessed by clicking on the links below:

Event Reports

Konkani Wikipedia — Climbing up the Indian Language Ladder? (by Subhashish Panigrahi, August 31, 2013):
Konkani Wikipedia Advances in 4 Days — From 90 Articles to 130 Articles! (by Nitika Tandon, August 31, 2013):

Guest Columns

Konkani Wikipedia climbing up the Indian language ladder (by Subhashish Panigrahi, DNA, September 6, 2013).
Recap on Konkani Wikipedia Workshop (by Subhashish Panigrahi, Startup Goa Blog, September 9, 2013).

Media Coverage

Wikipedia writes a new script (by Joyce Dias, August 24, 2013, The Goan). CIS-A2K workshop held in Goa is mentioned extensively. Nitika Tandon and Subhashish Panigrahi are quoted.
Konkani Wikipedia makes headway (by Diana Fernandes, OHeraldO, August 24, 2013). Nitika Tandon is quoted.
Konkani Wikipedians Speak (Goan Voice Daily Newsletter, September 4, 2013). Konkani Wikipedia workshop organized in Goa from August 21 to 24, 2013 is mentioned in this newsletter.

Blog Entries

Voices from Goa: Frania Pereira tells Why She Writes Articles on Konkani Wikipedia (by Subhashish Panigrahi, August 27, 2013).
Voices from Goa: Wikipedia Editor Rusita Paryekar (by Subhashish Panigrahi, August 27, 2013)

Other Wikipedia Updates

Event Reports

A Kannada Wikipedia Workshop at Krishnarajapet (by Dr. U.B. Pavanaja, August 14, 2013). The workshop was co-organized by the CIS-A2K team along with Kannada Sahitya Parishat of KR Pet.
Wikimania 2013: Wikipedians represent Indian Languages in Hong Kong (by Subhashish Panigrahi, August 19, 2013). The event was organised by Wikimedia Foundation. Subhashish participated in the event.
An Odia Wikipedia Workshop at Sambalpur (by Gorvachove Pothal, August 27, 2013). This workshop was held at Veer Surendra Sai University of Technology, Burla, Sambalpur on July 26 and 27, 2013. Odia Wikipedian Gorvachove Pothal organized this workshop with financial support from the CIS-A2K programme.

Events Co-organised

Digitization of Books for Indic Language WikiSource (co-organised by Wikimedia India and CIS-A2K, CIS, Bangalore, August 18, 2013).
A Workshop on Editing Wikipedia in Mumbai (organised by the Centre for Indian Languages in Higher Education and CIS-A2K, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, August 24, 2013). The workshop was aimed at assisting students to take part in the Indian Languages Mela at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (September 20-21, 2013) which is hosting a competition for best Indian language entries on Wikipedia.

Event Organised

Mobile Training Workshop @ CIS (CIS, Bangalore, August 29, 2013). Rachita and Keerthana Chandrashekar gave a talk on mobile campaigns.
Wikipedia Training in Telugu for Dr. B.R. Ambedkar Open University, Hyderabad (Dr. B.R. Ambedkar Open University, Hyderabad, September 5-6, 2013). T. Vishnu Vardhan taught a module on "Knowledge and Openness in the Digital Era".

Events Participated

Wikimania 2013: The International Wikimedia Conference (organised by Wikimedia Foundation, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, August 7 – 11, 2013). T. Vishnu Vardhan and Subhashish Panigrahi participated in the event.
Wikimedia Asia Meeting (organised by Wikimedia community, Hong Kong, August 10, 2013). T. Vishnu Vardhan and Subhashish Panigrahi participated in the meeting. Unedited transcript of the entire conversation is posted online.
వికీపీడియా:సమావేశం/హైదరాబాద్/ఆగష్టు (Hyderabad, August 25, 2013). T.Vishnu Vardhan participated in the meeting through Skype.

Media Coverage

Wikipedia Gains Massive Traffic Thanks To Vernacular Languages (Before It’s News, August 1, 2013). T. Vishnu Vardhan is quoted.
Wikipedia boom in Marathi, Malayalam and other desi languages (by Sandhya Soman, The Times of India, August 1, 2013). T. Vishnu Vardhan is quoted.
Wikipedia boom in vernacular languages (by Divya Saboo, DNA, August 1, 2013). The Centre for Internet and Society is mentioned.
Stress on posting articles on Kannada Wikipedia (by R. Krishna Kumar, Hindu, August 2, 2013). Dr. U.B.Pavanaja is quoted.
India’s Indigenous Languages Drive Wikipedia’s Growth (by Mahesh Sharma, TechCrunch, August 6, 2013). T. Vishnu Vardhan is quoted.
Krishnarajapet Wikipedia Workshop Coverage (Prajavani, August 12, 2013).
Krishnarajapet Wikipedia Workshop Coverage (Vijaya Vani, August 12, 2013).
Krishnarajapet Wikipedia Workshop Coverage (Suvarna Times of Karnataka, August 12, 2013).

Other guest columns:

ଅବସର ପରର ଦ୍ବିତୀୟ ଜୀବନ, ଅବସର ପରେ ସକ୍ରିୟ ଭାବେ ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଉଇକିପିଡ଼ିଆରେ ଲେଖାଲେଖି ଜାରୀ ରଖିଥିବା ଜଣେ ଡାକ୍ତରଙ୍କ ସ‌ହ ଭାବାଲୋଚନା (by Subhashish Panigrahi, Odiapua, September 10, 2013).

Ongoing / Upcoming Events

Digital Resources in Telugu: A Workshop for Research Scholars (co-organised by the Department of Cultural Studies, English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad and CIS-A2K, September 13, 2013).
Train the Trainer — Four-day long Residential Training Workshop in Bangalore (organised by CIS-A2K, Bangalore, October 1 – 5, 2013). The programme will be held in the first week of October.

Wikimedia Foundation has funded A2K to anchor the growth of Wikimedia movement in India. The A2K team consists of three members based in Bangalore: T. Vishnu Vardhan, Dr. U.B. Pavanaja and Subhashish Panigrahi and one member Nitika Tandon in Delhi.

Archives of our newsletters can be accessed here (http://cis-india.org/about/newsletters). Wikipedians from various communities can request for outreach programs, technical bugs, logistics-merchandize and media, public relations and communications at http://bit.ly/TOcXId.

About CIS

The Centre for Internet and Society 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 (including open government, FOSS, open standards, etc.), and engages in academic research on digital natives and digital humanities.

Follow us elsewhere

Twitter: https://twitter.com/CISA2K
CIS group on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/cis.india
Visit us at: https://cis-india.org

Support Us
Please help us defend consumer / citizen rights on the Internet! Write a cheque in favour of ‘The Centre for Internet and Society’ and mail it to us at No. 194, 2nd ‘C’ Cross, Domlur, 2nd Stage, Bengaluru – 5600 71.

Request for Collaboration
We invite researchers, practitioners, and theoreticians, both organisationally and as individuals, to collaboratively engage with Internet and society and improve our understanding of this new field.

To discuss the research collaborations, write to Sunil Abraham, Executive Director, at sunil@cis-india.org or Nishant Shah, Director – Research, at nishant@cis-india.org.

To discuss collaborations on Indic language wikipedia, write to T. Vishnu Vardhan, Programme Director, A2K, at vishnu@cis-india.org

CIS is grateful to its donors, Wikimedia Foundation, Ford Foundation, Privacy International, UK, Hans Foundation and the Kusuma Trust which was founded by Anurag Dikshit and Soma Pujari, philanthropists of Indian origin, for its core funding and support for most of its projects.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/access-to-knowledge-bulletin-august-2013

TRAI Consultation Paper on Spectrum

Shyam Ponappa and A.B. Beliappa — 2013-09-18T06:36:11Z

Shyam Ponappa and A.B.Beliappa worked on this submission to Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) on their spectrum consultation paper. The submission was made on August 21, 2013.

Q.1. What method should be adopted for refarming of the 900 MHz band so that the TSPs whose licences are expiring in 2014 onwards get adequate spectrum in 900/1800 MHz band for continuity of services provided by them?

Comments on Spectrum Refarming

1. Arbitrary Policies & Their Consequences
The proposed manner of refarming the 900 MHz spectrum is perceived to be as arbitrary as, for instance, the tax claims against Vodafone after the courts upheld its refutation of these claims. Such actions contribute to India’s very low rating on contracts (184 out of 185 countries in enforcing contracts in 2013: http://www.doingbusiness.org/data/exploreeconomies/india/), and for being a very difficult place to do business.

2. Legitimacy Of Terminating 900 MHz Holdings Starting 2014
One question is whether a refusal to renew existing spectrum holdings in the ordinary course is legitimate, or if it needs to be tested for breach of contract in the courts. This proposed manner of withholding access to assigned spectrum is also contrary to prevalent practice, as well as to the logic of spectrum being essential to the delivery of services of a wireless operator as a going concern.

3. Must All Spectrum Be Auctioned?
a) Another question is whether the Supreme Court order requires that all spectrum must in fact be auctioned. If this is so, the auction of all spectrum is necessary when it becomes available.

b) This is so damaging to the public interest, however, that all reasonable efforts must be made once again to inform the Supreme Court of the facts, i.e., the technological reasons against splintering bandwidth, and the financial reasons against extracting payments that would otherwise be invested in the essential infrastructure of broadband. If the facts are presented clearly and persuasively, there may be a reconsideration of the ruling to auction all spectrum in the light of these facts, as against continuing with this ruling based on miscommunication or misinformation.

c) If there is no alternative to auctions, to succeed, the reserve price needs to be relatively low, and bidders in difficult financial circumstances must be convinced they have no better option. Perhaps one way of ensuring this is to auction for a shorter period, e.g., five years, while simultaneously laying out the path for transitioning to shared spectrum. This is because parallel developments in spectrum sharing for Authorized Shared Access and Licensed Shared Access that are being pursued in the US and the EU are likely to be deployed by then.

4. Net Benefits of Refarming
Given the stage of evolution and coverage of networks in India, their technological level and usage, refarming should be held in abeyance until our markets are in a position to benefit from them. This is because the detrimental effects if the 900 MHz band is cleared in the proposed manner are likely to far outweigh the benefits, as explained below.

5. Purpose of Refarming
What is the purpose of refarming? If the answer is the potential benefits of services from 4G technologies and products, consider the likely nature of these benefits in India. The purpose of refarming in OECD countries is to use 900 MHz for 3G and LTE for high-speed data. This is appropriate for developed economies that have large numbers of data users. In India, high-end users comprise only a niche segment (15.09 million broadband users in April 2013, despite over 725 million active wireless subscribers). Developed economies have refarmed the 900 MHz band because 3G and 4G assume widespread use of data services in the entire network. In other words, if India had a large base of high-data users, 4G networks would be required to deliver high-speed traffic. Also, such users would presumably be (a) willing and (b) able to pay [for the expensive equipment required] for these services.

6. No Economic Basis for Refarming in India
a) The reality is that there are insufficient data users with the willingness and ability to pay for the higher level of throughput. The present state of the economy and its trajectory pose additional constraints. More important, existing technologies are capable of delivering data services at lower cost. The priority is for access networks at lower cost, e.g., wireless middle-mile and last-mile that will enable large numbers of users to access data services at a reasonable price (“reasonable” in the cost structure of India comparable to TV services, and not in cents/minute comparable with OECD countries).

b) That said, a possible consideration is whether and how certain advanced technologies, such as “supplemental downlink” or “carrier aggregation” for augmenting capacity, may be made usable in our circumstances, and whether if certain bands are earmarked for them, such solutions can be introduced here.

7. Need: Low-Cost Last-Mile & Aggregation/Backhaul Capacity
How can networks be built at reasonable cost that have the capacity to deliver data services more comprehensively in India? By providing much more wireless access for the last-mile, and more middle-mile capacity (in combination with existing wired networks). This is where policies can facilitate network build-out and service delivery at lower cost. The nature of required reforms are: reduced front-end charges for wireless last mile access; reduced microwave charges (administered prices) for aggregation and backhaul; incentives for broadband delivery, and perhaps higher incentives for rural broadband delivery. Also, a whole host of initiatives can be orchestrated, as in South Korea, for instance, or Sweden, which contribute to the development of broadband services and usage.

a) South Korea*
South Korea’s digital economy resulted from a combination of macroeconomic, supply-side and demand-side policies and programs, with the government stimulating broadband adoption, particularly in the early years. For example, Korea’s response to the financial crisis of 1997-1998 was to increase the export strength of key sectors such as electronics. There was also a thrust on consumer credit, facilitating the purchase of consumer goods and electronics-related services such as broadband. The initiatives to push broadband deployment and adoption included tax incentives, rural deployment and R&D grants, building certification incentives, and applications support. There were also mistakes, as in the government’s choice of WiBro technology.

By way of illustration, a set of Korean initiatives are detailed below:

Table 5: Selected Korean Supply-Side Broadband Subsidy Programs

Infrastructure Deployment

Tax benefits (credits, accelerated depreciation, exemptions, etc.) for broadband deployment

Backbone provision or subsidy for broadband deployment (KII-Government program providing funding for operators to reach 40,000 govt. locations as well as rural districts)

Technology Support

R&D grants and tax credits
Applications support (KOREN—Korean Advanced Research Network or KII-Testbed) Building Certification & Codes
Requiring or encouraging the pre-equipping of new buildings with fibre and/or broadband access points (e.g. DSLAM)
Institution of certification programs for broadband readiness of MDUs (multi-dwelling units, based on three classes of transmission speed)

Source: Kalba International, Inc., 2012. Ovum Consulting, Broadband Policy and Development in the Republic of Korea

b) Sweden*
Sweden's regulator demonstrated a strong commitment to cover low-density areas, and one of the ways was to foster network sharing. The government promotes a broadband strategy with incentives for all stakeholders. State authorities are actively involved in the Digital Agenda for Sweden, a national initiative. In education, for instance, about 25% of all students rely to some extent on distance education. Open access policies and competition have had a significant impact on the development of broadband.

* Source: Digital Scotland 2020

Achieving World-Class Digital Infrastructure
21st December 2012
http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Resource/0041/00414982.pdf

8. Shared Facilities
One way that delivery costs can be reduced is if operators share networks, so that all operators can access these networks where they are licensed to do so. This would be feasible if there were practical ways of structuring “common-carrier” or network-neutral access (as in roads, rail, flight paths and airports, ports, oil pipelines, etc.). This would require a buy-in by service providers for radical changes in approach and policies, followed by radical changes in operating networks. It is possible that open consultation with TSPs, other stakeholders, and specialists, done with the help of one or more expert facilitator/s, could yield such a solution. If this were to happen, the process of organizing structures at (a) the wholesale (network services) level, and (b) the retail (user access level) could be addressed collectively.

9. Extend Voluntary Infrastructure Sharing to Mandatory Sharing
We already have consortiums for passive sharing of wireless towers. This needs to be extended from voluntary commercial associations to mandatory, “common-carrier” access, after putting in place suitable commercial arrangements through negotiation. Such commercial arrangements exist for oil pipelines and for oil exploration and production, and can be structured in like manner for facilities and spectrum. They need the appropriate financial structuring with the help of financial specialists, in addition to the engineering solutions.

10. Shared Spectrum: Pool New Spectrum

a) An evolutionary step in this direction is to pool all available, unallocated [unassigned] spectrum, so that it can be shared by [existing] service providers. This is being pioneered in the so-called TV White Space bands in the USA, the EU, the UK, and Singapore. It can be extended to other bands here. This could be a transitional step in evolving a shared facilities model. Provided the stakeholders agree, and an equitable structure and process is devised, this will relieve the present constraints on spectrum availability by providing a common pool of spectrum.

b) Shared spectrum is an alternative that is technically feasible and economically far more viable than fragmenting available spectrum for the exclusive use of our many operators. This also provides for complete transparency, as well as much lower capital and operating costs for society as a whole. The implication is that broadband could be made available more widely at lower cost, leading to much better productivity and payoffs.

c) Many of the questions and associated problems would be resolved. For instance, open access would allow for each operator to choose any technology that is compatible and that does not create interference. Fees could be determined in the same manner as for taxes in inducing investment for manufacturing, as was done in South Korea. It would need a whole range of supportive measures as in the case of South Korea, and if done right, could result in tremendous gains as an organizing force in society.

11. Some 900 MHz Access (Common-Carrier) For All TSPs
If a portion of the 900 MHz band is set aside for shared access, it may resolve one of the most contentious problems between the GSM and CDMA operators, of access to the highly advantageous 900 MHz for its low-cost equipment and ability to penetrate buildings, i.e., better delivery. This step may create conditions that allow for stakeholder engagement for an overall resolution, including ultimately, shared infrastructure.

12. Revenue-Sharing & Consumer Surplus From Shared Spectrum/Networks
India’s experience with revenue-sharing after NTP-99 has shown that collections are far in excess of up-front revenues forgone. Building a sound broadband service with a combination of incentives and forbearance will lead to much greater economic benefits overall, as well as much higher collections by the government over time. The sector can once again prosper and be an engine of productivity.

Shyam Ponappa
Centre for Internet and Society
August 21, 2013

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/telecom/blog/trai-consultation-paper-on-spectrum

Centre for Internet and Society

Privacy and Surveillance Talk by Sunil Abraham

Recap on Konkani Wikipedia Workshop

Day 1: Building the Blocks

Introduce Yourself

Editing time

More Editing Post Lunch

Rat and frog game

Day 2: Climbing Up the Ladder

Day 3: Fresh Batch, New Start

Day 4: No Need to Say Good Bye!

Selection of Programme Officer — Pilot Projects, CIS-A2K

An Interview with Suresh Ramasubramanian

Wikipedia Training in Telugu for Dr. B.R. Ambedkar Open University, Hyderabad

వికీపీడియా:శిక్షణ శిబిరం/హైదరాబాద్/హైదరాబాద్2

UNESCO Global Report

Workshop on e-Content Development

Train the Trainer — Four-day long Residential Training Workshop in Bangalore

Why CIS-A2K is conducting this Program?

Overview of the programme

Selection Criterion

Candidates' Deliverable

What's in it for you?

Call for Participation

FAQ

Contact

Syllabus: “Policy and regulation conducive to rapid ICT sector growth in Myanmar: An introductory course”

Goal

Outcomes

Assignments

Course schedule

Faculty

Resource Material

Gmail ban looms for Indian gov't workers

UNESCO Global Report: Opening New Avenues for Empowerment

Preface

Forward

Acknowledgements

Konkani Wikipedia Advances in 4 Days — From 90 Articles to 130 Articles!

Introduction

Highlights of the Workshop

Articles and Participants

Media Coverage

Learnings

Challenges

Acknowledgements

What's Next?

Konkani Wikipedia — Climbing up the Indian Language Ladder?

Incubation

Day 1: Building the Blocks

Intro Yourself

Editing Time

Game Time

More Editing Post-lunch

Rat and Frog Game

Day 2: Climbing up the Ladder

Day 3: Fresh Batch, New Start

Day 4: No Need to Say Good Bye!

Media Coverage

Video

Access to Knowledge Bulletin — August 2013

Updates from Konkani Wikipedia

Event Reports

Guest Columns

Media Coverage

Blog Entries

Other Wikipedia Updates

Event Reports

Events Co-organised

Event Organised

Events Participated

Media Coverage

Other guest columns:

Ongoing / Upcoming Events

About CIS

TRAI Consultation Paper on Spectrum