Centre for Internet and Society

Developing Digital Open Knowledge Resources in Indian Languages

praskrishna — 2014-08-22T00:51:52Z

The Centre for Internet and Society's Access to Knowledge team (CIS-A2K) in partnership with the School of Cultural Texts and Records, School of Women's Studies, Jadavpur University, Centre for Indian Languages in Higher Education, and the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai is organizing a two-day workshop for students at Jadavpur University on August 25 and 26, 2014.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/events/developing-digital-open-knowledge-resources-in-indian-languages

Developing Digital Open Knowledge Resources in Indian Languages

Tejaswini Niranjana and Tanveer Hasan — 2014-10-12T03:52:20Z

A two-day workshop for students was organized by Krantijyoti Savitribai Phule Women’s Studies Centre, University of Pune (KSPWSC), Centre for Indian Languages in Higher Education (CILHE), Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai and Access to Knowledge Programme, Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore (CIS-A2K) on September 11 and 12, 2014 in Pune. Tejaswini Niranjana and Tanveer Hasan summarize the developments from the workshop in this report.

Day 1

The workshop began with Tejaswini Niranjana speaking about the monolingual nature of the present day higher education system. She explained why monolingual students were disadvantaged in their pursuit of knowledge, since they could not grasp the concepts coming from the societies they lived in. The mandate of CILHE was briefly explained, and the commitment of the centre to generate accurate and relevant multi-lingual terminology for the social sciences and humanities stressed upon. She lauded the role of the KSPWSC, Pune University, in using bilingual pedagogic material and promoting an engagement with Indian language materials in their courses. The importance of using digital resources was also discussed. The collaborative nature of creating entries on the Wikipedia platform was stressed. The organizers added that students from various other institutions across the country would be participating in the larger exercise.

Next, T. Vishnu Vardhan of CIS-A2K spoke about the changing nature of knowledge repositories and the pattern of access to those repositories. He described at length the genesis of Wikipedia and the influence it has today on the way we access and understand knowledge. Different types of digital resources available to us and the nature in which they generate the knowledge and make it available was explained. Participants were also introduced to the difference between born digital material and digitized material along with the many sister projects of the Wikimedia foundation. Vishnu explained how anyone registering as an editor on Wikipedia could begin contributing to the development of this knowledge base. This was followed by a session in which the basics of Wikipedia editing were explained.

Following lunch, there was a group exercise that required the participants to pick any three concepts that were provided to them in a handout and try to explain the same without using the concept itself. This exercise was important as the participants would try to understand the concept more closely without assuming its meaning. This was self-evident. Better understanding of the concept would in turn help them to write about it or use it meaningfully in an Indian language entry on Wikipedia. Many participants found this exercise difficult in the initial stages as they fell back upon their classroom understanding of the term. They were asked to focus on explaining the concept without using the word itself but by understanding its effects and its multiple meanings.

In the second exercise, the participants made use of the material generated through the first exercise and tried to explain the denotative and connotative meanings of their chosen concept. The third exercise involved coming up with a cluster of concepts in which their chosen concept was embedded. The idea was to show how concepts derived meaning from a larger context, and could not be understood outside of their conceptual universe. The first day of the workshop ended with all the participants successfully registering themselves as Wikipedia editors, learning the basics of editing, and having taken part in an exercise that made them think about the concepts they used with greater clarity.


						Above: A participant explains the denotative and connotative meaning of her chosen concept.

Day 2

Participants were asked to search for an article in the English Wikipedia for a person, a book and a concept connected to women’s studies. They were asked to identify the challenges involved if they had to translate the article into an Indian language they were familiar with. The exercise was intended to alert the participants to the kind of problems they were likely to face during the act of translation. They were also asked to come up with solutions as to how these problems could be overcome. A key problem voiced by many participants was that of the non-availability of the right phrase/term/word in Indian languages. Tejaswini Niranjana advised the participants not to reinvent the wheel but use the terms that had been coined earlier but were now out of circulation in Indian languages. She also pointed out that translation from English to Indian languages is a different process than from Indian languages to English. In the former, one has to break sentence structure to make the meaning more clear, and in the latter one has to combine the sentences. She also said that the process of translation must happen at the level of sentences and ideas and not simply at the level of terms and words.

Answering another question about the lack of social context while translating a concept, Prof. Niranjana asked the participants to use the existing historical and social writings already available in their languages to overcome this problem. These writings could be updated and edited, and current references added.

Vishnu continued the discussion of using digital platforms to create and disseminate knowledge by explaining various tools available. He stressed the importance of sharing our efforts in creating knowledge and making it widely available, and pointed out various features of Wikipedia and Google translator. Participants were shown ways by which the existing knowledge base on Google and such other digital knowledge platforms could be improved.

Everyone then started working on his/her individual entries that would be the quantitative output of this workshop. They were asked to select one topic (a book, a person, a concept) from their previous exercise and develop an article based on that in any Indian language that they preferred. Most of the entries were in Marathi, with a few participants opting for Hindi. There was an entry in Bangla as well.

At the end of the workshop, more than half of our 26 participants had fully developed entries in Indian languages. These entries contained a table of contents and references, inter-wiki references, and external links, and in some cases included images too. Many participants wrote about personalities such as the writer Mukta Salve, the feminist theorist Mary John, and the contemporary Marathi writer Narayan Bhosle. Some wrote about concepts such as feminism, nationalism and domestic violence.

This two-day workshop proved to be immensely successful as the participants were motivated to contribute to the Wikimedia platforms regularly, and began to appreciate the importance of Indian language initiatives such as these.

We are very thankful to the entire faculty at KSPWSC, Pune University, Dr. Anagha Tambe, Dr. Swati Dyahadroy, Sneha Gole, Sanjay Kumar Kamble, and Deepa Tak who facilitated the discussions and were of immense help in conducting the workshop.


					Above: Tejaswini Niranjana with participants at the Pune workshop.

Click to download all the photographs from the workshop.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/report-on-developing-digital-open-knowledge-resources-in-indian-languages

Detecting Encrypted Client Hello (ECH) Blocking

divyank — 2023-09-05T12:10:47Z

A new internet protocol makes it harder for internet service providers to censor websites. We made a technical intervention to check if censors are interfering with its deployment.

This blogpost was edited by Torsha Sarkar.

The Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol, which is widely recognised as the lock sign in a web browser’s URL bar, encrypts the contents of internet connections when an internet user visits a website so that network intermediaries (such as Internet Service Providers, Internet Exchanges, undersea cable operators, etc.) cannot view the private information being exchanged with the website.

TLS, however, suffers from a privacy issue – the protocol transmits a piece of information known as the Server Name Indication (or SNI) which contains the name of the website a user is visiting. While the purpose of TLS is to encrypt private information, the SNI remains unencrypted – leaking the names of the websites internet users visit to network intermediaries, who use this metadata to surveil internet users and censor access to certain websites. In India, two large internet service providers – Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel – have been previously found using the SNI field to block access to websites.

Encrypted Client Hello (or ECH) is a new internet protocol that has been under development since 2018 at the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and is now being tested for a small percentage of internet users before a wider rollout. It seeks to address this privacy limitation by encrypting the SNI information that leaks the names of visited websites to internet intermediaries. The ECH protocol significantly raises the bar for censors – the SNI is the last bit of unencrypted metadata in internet connections that censors can reliably use to detect which websites an internet user is visiting. After this protocol is deployed, censors will find it harder to block websites by interfering with network connections and will be forced to utilise blocking methods such as website fingerprinting and man-in-the-middle attacks that are either expensive and less accurate, or unfeasible in most cases.

We have been tracking the development of this privacy enhancement. To assist the successful deployment of the ECH protocol, we contributed a new censorship test to the Open Observatory for Network Interference (OONI) late last year. The new test attempts to connect to websites using the ECH protocol and records any interference from censors to the connection. As censors in some countries were found blocking a previous version of the protocol entirely, this test gives important early feedback to the protocol developers on whether censors are able to detect and block the protocol.

We conducted ECH tests during the first week of September 2023 from four popular Indian ISPs, namely Airtel, Atria Convergence Technologies (ACT), Reliance Jio, and Vodafone Idea, which account for around 95% of the Indian internet subscriber base. The results indicated that ECH connections to a popular website were successful and are not currently being blocked. This was the expected result, as the protocol is still under development. We will continue to monitor for interference from censors closer to the time of completion of the protocol to ensure that this privacy enhancing protocol is successfully deployed.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/detecting-encrypted-client-hello-ech-blocking

Designing Change? Gatekeepers in Digital Humanities

sara — 2013-07-02T08:33:54Z

After defining the archive as one of the important concepts for digital humanities research, the question arose, whether or not a redefined archive still functions as a gatekeeper. This blog entry follows the question, if the digital humanities have overcome gatekeepers of knowledge, or if there has simply been a shift in what is doing the gatekeeping.

The last digital humanities blog entry finished on a rather resentful note, arguing that perhaps the difference between humanities and the digital humanities were feigned – and badly at that – and if the digital humanities would stop worrying only about infrastructure, there would no longer be a difference between the two. This insinuates that if only digital humanities would drop the digital and go back to humanities research and include digital technologies into it, all would be well and resolved. However, it is obvious that this generalization was slightly exaggerated, as generalizations tend to be. Nonetheless, the hypotheses is that archives have served as gatekeepers to traditional humanities research in the past. As they suggest a literary canon, they contribute to shaping the field according to certain discursive perceptions. If something is archived, it is considered important enough at the time, to serve as a representation for future reference. This constructs a hierarchy of written work over others, and especially publicized work over written text without publication. Therefore archives serve as a gatekeeper of knowledge, which, if one remembers the circumstances under which books are and were published, is mostly not necessarily representative of important topics but mainly boils down to capitalistic preferences. These preferences are not made transparent and often they are not questioned.

As one could see in the last post, the digital humanities have a reviewed concept of the archive to encompass a more contemporary memory of discourse. This changes the function of the archive, which leaves the question, whether the gatekeepers have changed as well, or even completely dissolved. In traditional humanities, archives served as more of a historical perspective of discourse, which could only be accessed from a temporal distance, for a better understanding of discursive perception at the time. As a matter of fact, Derrida stresses the point that archives are not possible without exteriority and that they are always a protheses to memory, but also to reproduction (Derrida: 1998: 14). So in fact they are not only not supposed to be live, but are always highly technological transformations of events. If the archiving process “produces as much as it records the event” (ibid.: 17), then that change from archival work to live-archives is fundamental to understanding the digital humanities. As the time restrictions, the materiality and the function of the archive has changed, so must the field it is archiving. Nonetheless, as included in the citation, the archive is also a technology of reproduction and every reproductive process changes what is being reproduced incessantly, so that what was there before is not available anymore (ibid.:26). Which means that archives are not historical at all, but constantly changing themselves, as the media that contains them reproduces them.

The archives being produced nowadays therefore might be a lot more representative, as the medium of the internet in itself is ever-changing and therefore makes the repetitive and transformative process of archival work visible. Another fundamental difference in archival work, apart from the 'right-here-right-now' stance of modern internet archives, is that prior archives were mainly text-based. Up until now, the written word has been perceived as progressive as it is one of the main features of western advanced civilization (Stein 2006). This marginalizes populations who do not or cannot do research work in latin alphabetic writing. According to Vilém Flusser, writing is also a form of structuring knowledge in a one-dimensional manner, aberrations that do not fit into a flow of writing are not easily included into literary pieces (Flusser 1990). Research phenomena get a direction and a structure, just as writing is structured on a page. Text-based knowledge production therefore reproduces the “official reasoning of occidental culture” (Flusser 1999). This literary structure is closed, in a sense that a text portrays a meaning and once the text is over, its meaning will have enfolded itself completely onto the reader. It is therefore a closed train of thought without derivative. This narrative framework constructs historical consciousness as something linear. Going back to Foucault's conceptions around the archive, however, we see that history is never linear and never singular, but always a subjective fragment of the whole (Foucault 1969). Overcoming the structure of textual flow through visualizations and design could therefore mean overcoming supposed linearity and becoming more open towards diverse narratives of histories or knowledge.

The symbol for the ladies washroom exemplifies how design could be more generative to meaning than a purely textual format. The schematic depiction of a female via a dress implies that only females should enter the room beyond. It works internationally and does not need to rely on language or latin letters to portray its meaning. At the same time, women all across the world feel included by the sign, even though they do not match its proportions, or may never have worn a skirt or a dress, let alone one similar to the usual depiction. The depiction of the female body is completely fictional and has no relation to biological reality. The sign, just like Derrida's archive, is a repetition of the ideal of being female, just as any other female body is a repetition of this ideal, an ideal which does not have a 'real' existing counterpart. As Judith Butler explains, all embodiments of categories such as gender, but also race and class or any other category, are repetitions of this fictional ideal, and in their repetition they prove the ideal to be non-existent (Butler 1990). As no biologically female person would agree to the sign being a representation of womanhood, at least in this instance one could imagine a more open context within that sign to include people, who feel just as badly or well represented by the crude depiction, as any strictly biological female. The pictorial representation is a good example of how having only text-based information can often narrow perspectives and choosing design over text can open knowledge production to become more inclusive.

Nowadays digital technologies allow for multimedia documentation, in fact design has been identified as a key feature in digital humanities work, up to a point where designers, coders and artists are seen as equal to textual authors when collaborating on work (Burdick et. Al 2012: 12). This is a step towards deconstructing the hegemony the written word has over alternative forms of knowledge production. Visualizing what has been written and produced before, or even producing knowledge in a not solely textual form increases the openness of knowledge and makes it more accessible for people before marginalized by the latin phonetic alphabet, thereby overcoming conceptual barriers of nationality and dominant languages. Sure enough, giving credit to non-textual authors' contributions to text is sensible, as the way the output is shaped influences accessibility, readability and finally the content itself. So overcoming the hierarchy between text and non-textual knowledge production surely is something digital humanities should work on, it surely is not achieved yet, although some might claim otherwise. Especially in academia, a certain amount of written text is important even in visual departments such as an art academy, to show that ones productivity is not completely random, but justified. Still, design is becoming more and more relevant, just as packaging is important to sell a product.

However, the question is, if design counts as a main feature in research work, does it then function as a new gatekeeper? The hypotheses is, that just as publication and academic structures were limiting the knowledge being produced, needing a designer, a coder or any visual artist to actually produce and publish work can be just as limiting. If you need someone to visualize your work so that it can be comprehended, it will be just like needing a publisher – work will again be produced according to capitalistic preference and design just helps put your (intellectual) product on the market. Putting something in pretty packaging can sometimes obscure the production process, as it adds value to the final form, while hiding any ugly obstacles that were to be overcome along the way and could serve as a learning for future research. Design and visuality being more able to display affirmative information, such obstacles and learnings could be difficult to visualize. Also, given the timely limits one is faced with, there is reason for critics to believe that a nice form is valued over 'proper' or 'good' content. The problem lies within defining what is 'good' and what is 'proper'. Digital humanists like Ramsay would argue that “doing” is more important than reading (Ramsay 2011). However, by overcoming the hierarchy between written and non-textual knowledges, content and form cannot be separated but should be seen as two intertwined facets of one bundle of research output.

Another problem with the rising importance of design is that people with visual impediments are marginalized from knowledges that rely on optics and design to get their point across. So when design reaches new importance, researchers creating output must also take into consideration in what way this output is marginalizing people and how to overcome this marginalization. It is one of the main insights of disability studies that disabilities are “not so much a property of bodies as a product of cultural rules about what bodies should be or do” (Garland-Thomson 1997). Just as the phonetic alphabet, visualizations are therefore conceptualizing knowledge around a norm which implies functionality of vision. One way of overcoming that barrier is including screen-reading software onto visually appealing websites like it is described by George H. Williams (2012). The concept of inclusion is called 'universal design', instead of 'assistive technology', and is based on the perception that technology is always assistive, not only in the case of e.g. screen readers for the visually impaired (Williams 2012). This breaks with the normative perspective of the body functioning in a certain way and deconstructs the understanding of disabilities as an aberration of the norm. Universal design therefore benefits not only disabled people, but all people. As Williams puts it, “whether in a physical or digital environment, designers are always making choices about accessibility. However, not all designers are aware of how their choices affect accessibility. Universal design is design that involves conscious decisions about accessibility for all, and it is a philosophy that should be adopted more widely by digital humanities scholars” (ibid.). At the same time this intentional inclusion may be difficult to follow at times. Especially when considering that technology itself can be seen as co-authoring a text in the form of programs, algorithms and code, it might become difficult to impose the philosophy of universal design on non-human authorship. This implies that technology, too, should be theorized, a thought that is being suggested throughout more critical approaches of digital humanists and humanities (see e.g. Earhart 2012). As has been stated in prior blog entries, the digital humanities are trying to move away from theorizing, which might be the reason for the problems arising within the field. The deconstruction of text-based hegemony should not take place in favor of establishing new hierarchies. The written word and the visual underly a complex power/knowledge complex, simply trying to reverse it will not work. The category 'nation', or 'nationality' portrays the ambivalence of this case very well. While in some cases, like a national constitution, the written word will be more powerful than a pictorial or designed description, in others, like a national flag, the visual and symbolic materiality of a knowledge product is a lot more powerful than simple text. Instead of moving from reading to doing, as has been suggested (e.g. Ramsay), the digital humanities need to find a balance between the two, so as to incorporate questions of race, gender and other categories of human agency into their research. Especially when it comes to postcolonial studies and research in cultures and languages other than those of western dominance, digital humanists should not only consider themselves as consumers, but as actual producers of knowledge resources. This counts for producing work as much as it does for archiving, as the productive process of today remain the archives of tomorrow, or even of simultaneously happening research projects. Design can be a factor to help overcome these barriers, if the concept of universal design is incorporated into digital humanities work. All too often, however, design is still a concept that marginalizes, often unknowingly, so as to serve as a gatekeeper to knowledge production, benefiting capitalistic values.

Butler 1990 Butler, Judith: "Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity". New York/London: Routledge

Derrida 1998 Derrida, Jacques: "Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression". Chicago: University of Chicago Press,

Earhart 2012 Earhart, Amy E.: "Can Information be Unfettered? Race and the New Digital Humanities Canon". Debates in the Digital Humanities. Open Access Edition. accessed June 28th, http://dhdebates.gc.cuny.edu/debates/text/16

Flusser 1990 Flusser, Vilém: "Does Writing have a Future?" U of Minnesota Press. 2011

Flusser 1999 Flusser, Vilém: “Into the Universe of Technical Images” U of Minnesota Press. 2011

Foucault 1969 Foucault, Michel: “The Archeology of Knowledge” translated by Allan Sheridan, New York: Harper and Row, 1972

Garland-Thomson 1997 Garland-Thomson, Rosemarie: "Extraordinary Bodies: Figuring Physical Disability in American Culture and Literature". New York: Columbia University Press, 1997.

Ramsay 2011 Ramsay, Stephen: “On Building” accessed June 20^th 2013, http://lenz.unl.edu/papers/2011/01/11/on-building.html.

Stein 2006 Stein, Peter: "Schriftkultur. Eine Geschichte des Schreibens und Lesens". Darmstadt: Primus

Williams 2012 Williams, George H.: "Disability, Universal Design, and the Digital Humanities". Debates in the Digital Humanities. Open Access Edition. accessed June 28th, http://dhdebates.gc.cuny.edu/debates/text/44

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/digital-humanities/designing-change-gatekeepers-in-digital-humanities

Designing a Human Rights Impact Assessment for ICANN’s Policy Development Processes

Collin Kure, Akriti Bopanna and Austin Ruckstuhl — 2019-10-03T14:18:13Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/files/designing-a-human-rights-impact-assessment-for-icann2019s-policy-development-processes

Design!publiC

praskrishna — 2011-06-03T13:27:22Z

The Centre for Internet and Society in partnership with Centre for Knowledge Societies, Venkataramanan Associates, Centre for Law and Policy Research and LiveMint is organising Design!publiC on March 18, 2011. Design Public is a conversation about whether and how to bring design thinking to bear upon the challenges of government so as to promote governance innovation.

Background

The problem of governance is perhaps as old as society, as old as the rule of law. But it is only more recently -- perhaps the last five hundred years of modernity -- that human societies have been able to conceive of different models of government, different modalities of public administration, all having different effects on the configuration of society. The problem of governments, of governmentality, and of governance is always also the problem of how to change the very processes and procedures of government, so as to enhance the ends of the state and to promote the collective good.

Since the establishment of India’s republic, many kinds of changes have been made to the policies and practices of its state. We may think of, for instance, successive stages of land reforms, the privatization of large-scale and extractive industries, the subsequent abolition of the License Raj and so and so forth. We may also consider the computerization of state documents beginning in the 1980s, and more recently, the Right To Information Act (RTI). More recently there have been activist campaigns to reduce the discretionary powers of government and to thereby reduce the scope of corruption in public life.

While all these cases represent the continuous process of modification, reform, and change to government policy and even to its modes of functioning, this is not what we have in mind when we speak of ‘governance innovation.’ Rather, intend a specific process of ethnographic inquiry into the real needs of citizens, followed by an inclusive approach to reorganizing and representing that information in such a way that it may promote collaborative problem-solving and solutioneering through the application of design thinking.

The concept of design thinking has emerged only recently, and it has been used to describe approaches to problem solving that include: (i) redefining the fundamental challenges at hand, (ii) evaluating multiple possible options and solutions in parallel, and (iii) prioritizing and selecting those which are likely to achieve the greatest benefits for further consideration. This approach may also be iterative, allowing decisions to be made in general and specific ways as an organization gets closer and closer to the solution. Design thinking turns out to be not an individual but collective and social process, requiring small and large groups to be able to work together in relation to the available information about the task or challenge at hand. Design thinking can lead to innovative ideas, to new insights, and to new actionable directions for organizations.

This general approach to innovation -- and the central role of design thinking -- has emerged from the private sector over the last quarter century, and has enjoyed particular success in regards to the development of new technology products, services and experience. The question we would like to address in this conference is whether and how this approach can be employed for the transformation public and governmental systems.

What is the Evidence that Design Thinking Positively Impacts Governments?

Many European countries have government-supported design conglomerations for the purposes of enhancing business and the government’s interface with the public. Design Council in the UK not only works to create public identities but also helps formulate national design strategies that help the United Kingdom to differentiate its national brand and achieve broad national benefits. Elsewhere in the UK, a private organization, Think Public, and various governmental agencies, are working through a consultative approach with citizens to better target governmental services so as to maximize citizen benefits.

In the context of public health, the first major public health information system has been built in Canada, and in many ways it may serve as a reference and benchmark for other countries around the world. The first deployment of a public health information system in developing country contexts is in Ghana, where a specialized Resource Center is even now being conceived to enable the support and further development of this new system.

In India, early innovation research and concept development activities by the Center for Knowledge Societies for the Gates Foundation has shown promising results in terms of new opportunities to enhance the quality of health care delivery through the Bihar pilot itself, using the tools and techniques of ethnography, design, and user experience enhancement. In its studios in New Delhi and Bangalore, it has hosted innovation workshops with international health experts, public officials and other stakeholders to envision new kinds of technologies and solutions for improving public health delivery. In future, it may be possible to organize these kinds of efforts in the form of an Innovation Lab or Innovation Center.

Whereas, in the past, diverse attempts have been made to reform government, to make it more efficient, to reduce corruption and the arbitrariness of decisioning authority. Beneficial as these approaches may have been, they have not always been successful in fundamentally transforming the ways in which bureaucracies think about their mission, objectives and goals. They have not resulted in greater consumer orientation of these cadres, or greater public participation in the decision-making of these bureaucracies. These are the kinds of benefits that design thinking can bring to governmental and quasi-governmental bureaucracies.

In this conclave, our interest is to explore how design thinking and user-centered innovation might help such organizations better accomplish their mission and better serve their beneficiaries. We also seek to explore and establish particular modalities through which governance innovation can be achieved, as well as to identify key stakeholders and personalities gripped of the challenge of governance innovation. Our larger goal is to craft a path forward for integrating design thinking and innovation methodologies in the further re-envisioning, refashioning and improvement of public services in India and elsewhere in the world.

Specific Expected Outcomes

A shared understanding and common vocabulary around design thinking and innovation
A review of insights and outcomes from the event by members of government with a view to routinizing and institutionalizing innovation in government
A documentation of case-studies, concepts and perspectives from different participants emerging from the conclave
An emerging community of thinkers and practitioners interested in working together to share information and insights to accelerate governance innovation
A consensus on the modalities and occasion for the conduct of a follow-up conclave, possibly in Bangalore as soon as September 2011

An Invitation to Dialogue

Design Public is a conversation among a select group of high level thinkers and actors who care about public services design. No more than 50 persons will be in attendance. Presentations will be brief. Panel discussants will intersperse with the other participants for greater involvement and equal opportunity for dialogue and response. All attendees will be asked to participate in the emerging dialogue through the day.

Draft Schedule

10.00 am
What do Designers do? How can Physical, Informational and Interaction Design Impact the Everyday Life of Citizens?

Sunil Abraham, Executive Director, Centre for Internet and Society (Moderator)
Aditya Dev Sood, CEO, Center for Knowledge Socities
Abhimanyu Kulkarni, Design Director, Philips Design
Younghee Jung, Senior Designer, Nokia Corporation
Daniela Sangiorgi, Lecturer, Lancaster University
Sudhir Krishnaswamy, Founder, Centre for Law and Policy Research
Naresh Narasimhan, Principal Architect, VA Group

11.00 am

How Can the Government Best Use Designers and Design Thinking?

Aditya Dev Sood, CEO, Center for Knowledge Societies (Moderator)
Niels Hansen, Project Manager, MindLab
Aparna Piramal Raje, Design Thinker, Mint
Anant Shah, Program Officer, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
Harsh Shrivastava, Consultant (Planning), Planning Commission of India
Kiran Dhingra, Secretary, Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation
Shubhagato Dasgupta, Senior Research Fellow, Centre for Policy Research
Steven Solnik, Member-Government Performance and Accountability, Ford Foundation

12.00 pm

How can Social / Media Promote Design and Governance Innovation?

Suresh Venkat, Executive Producer, CNBC TV18 (Moderator)
Vibodh Parthasarthy, Associate Professor, Jamia Milia Islamia
Yatish Rajawat, Editor-in-Chief, Business Bhaskar
R. Sukumar, Editor, Mint
Sashwati Banerjee, Executive Director, Sesame Workshop India
Aditya Mishra, Founder, Headstart Foundation

1.00 pm

Working and Networking Lunch

2.00 pm

Innovation Workshopping Breakout Sessions

Track One:

Conducting Ethnography to Inform the Innovation Process

The group is responsible for coming up with an innovative approach to curbing power theft in peri-urban locations in India. Many factors are responsible for this phenomenon. What questions will you ask and how will you collect information on the ground to inform any future innovations you might come up with? (Case Study subject to change)
Brainstorming and Concepting in Response to Ethnographic Data

The group is responsible for conceptualizing a new ways to promote maternal and child health using mobile devices. Data on this question has already been collected and will be shown to you in the form of a brief presentation. You must come up with as many different ideas or concepts as possible using post-its. Then you must prioritize these concepts and vote on the ones you would like to see implemented. (Case Study subject to change)
Approaches to Institutionalizing Innovation in Government

This group will consider ways and means for accelerating and institutionalizing innovation in governance, through for example, the provision of knowledge, best practices, support, training, and organizational change. Ideas may include, but not be restricted to new kinds of handbooks, online sources, academic and applied training and other ideas. Approaches should be evaluated and prioritized prior to presentation back to the group.

4.30 pm
Team Presentations (over tea served at tables)

5.00 pm
What institutional and organizational models can best foster Governance Innovation?

Amit Garg, Director, MXV Consulting (Moderator)
Arun Maira, Member, Planning Commission & Member, National Innovation Council
R. Gopalakrishnan, Member Secretary, National Innovation Council
Mohammad Haleem Khan, Director, CAPART
D S Ravindran, CEO, Center of e-Governance, Government of Karnataka
Aditya Dev Sood, CEO, Center for Knowledge Societies

Other Notable Discussants and Interactants

Anil Khachi, Deputy Director General, UIDAI
Narahari Mahato, Member of Parliament, AIFB
N. Cheluvaraya Swamy, Member of Parliament, JD(S)
Syed Azeez Pasha, Member of Parliament, CPI
Moinul Hassan, Member of Parliament, CPM
Amit Garg, Director, MXV Consulting
William Bissell, Managing Director, FabIndia
Kalpana Awasthi, Officer on Special Duty (OSD) to Sam Pitroda
Abhimanyu Kulkarni, Design Director, Philips Design
D. Raja, Member of Parliament, CPI
Josh Glazeroff, Visa Chief, US Embassy
Pooja Sood, Curator and Director, Khoj Foundation
Ravina Agarwal, Program Officer, Ford Foundation
Nita Soans, Advisor, Center for Knowledge Societies
Ekta Ohri, Head of Project Operations, Center for Knowledge Societies

Individual Participation

In order to make each voice count, entry to the conclave will be by arrangement only. Others who are truly interested, should please drop us a few lines on how they would like to contribute and we will be glad to get back in touch.

There are no registration fees. However, we would like to see participants take their own initiative in covering their own travel costs and making their own arrangements for stay so far as possible. If specific needs are perceived, please communicate them to the organizers.

Institutional Participation

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

Organizers

Center for Knowledge Societies (CKS)
Center for Internet and Society (CIS)

Sponsors

Venkatramanan Associates (VA)
Center for Law and Policy (CLP)

Date and Venue
The date for the event has been decided for Friday, the 18th of March, 2011. It will be held at the Taj Vivanta in Central Delhi.

Thought Leadership and Dialogue
Dr. Aditya Dev Sood, CEO, Center for Knowledge Societies
aditya@cks.in

Naresh Narasimhan, Principal, VA Associates
naresh@vagroup.com

Sudhir Krishnaswamy, Founder, Center for Law and Policy
sudhir.krishnaswamy@ashiralaw.co.in

Participation Enquiries

Sumeet Malhotra, Business Development Manager
sumeet@cks.in

Download the book here [PDF, 2.8 MB]
Download the case studies here [PDF, 641 KB]
Download the glossary here

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

Design!Public

praskrishna — 2014-04-08T11:14:52Z

Centre for Knowledge Societies is organizing this event in partnership with Grameen Foundation India, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, UNDP, et.al. Sunil Abraham is a speaker at this event to be held in New Delhi on March 14, 2014.

Design Public is a high-level conversation among a select group of thinkers, decision-makers and opinion-leaders who seek to transform India into an innovation society. It brings together influential actors from all sectors of society to deliberate the best ways in which innovation can serve the public interest. The larger goal of the Conclave is to serve as an enabling platform for building the necessary partnerships and consortia that will bring this agenda to practical realization.

Schedule

8.30	Registration and Coffee Background Track: Hamsa Dhwani
9.00	Breakfast Dialogue: Three Perspectives to Citizen-Centricity by Shazia Ilmi Somnath Bharti Namrata Mehta Aditya Dev Sood and Sunil Abraham Three distinct approaches to Governance Innovation are seen in India today: citizen activism, the open data and open governance agenda, and the integration of design and innovation into government processes. Representatives from each of these spaces begin the day with an open and friendly public dialogue.
10.20	Word of Welcome
10.30	Session One: The Elements of Governance Innovation by Sumandro Chattapadhyay Raman Jit Singh Chima Arndt Husar Esko Kilpi Chakshu Roy Divya Datta Namrata Mehta How are people thinking about Governance Innovation around the world in terms of process, data and systems change? What is the success of various Lab models and how do they exactly work? What is the relevance of these approaches to the Indian scenario?
12.00	Session Two: Social Innovation through Partnership with Private Sector by Nehal Sanghavi Daniel Radcliffe Louise Pulford Chandni Ohri Ada Wong Aditya Dev Sood How can we promote social innovation through new partnerships between the social and private sectors? How can we take advantage of the new Companies Act to develop new alliances and partnerships across sectors that will actually drive innovation? How does the concept of social innovation fit into these needs?
01.00	Networking Lunch Talk and connect with people outside your comfort zone!
02.00	Convene for Working Group Breakouts
02.30	Working Group One: Design a Social Innovation Exchange for India by Mike Knowles Nehal Sanghavi Daniel Radcliffe Louise Pulford Chandni Ohri Abhimanyu Nowhar Ada Wong Aditya Dev Sood The Social Innovation Exchange is a global organization with several regional hubs, such as SIX Asian in Hong Kong. What if there were to be a SIX India? What would be its mandate? What activities and goals should it pursue?
02.30	Working Group Two: Building an Action Plan for a Civic Innovation Lab The assembled group of thought leaders at this Design Public Conclave have the potential to reorganize as a new non-partisan community dedicated to achieving governance innovation. For this to be possible, however, they must first breakout into articulating challenges and goals in each of the three areas identified below.
03.30	WGII Breakout Two Alpha: A New Agenda for Citizen-centric Innovation by Sumandro Chattapadhyay Soaib Grewal Ambrish Arora Usha Alexander Ishan Khosla MP Ranjan Sunil Abraham How can design and innovation methods benefit the citizenry? How can mobile networks and different kinds of data be used to create better urban experiences? How can India’s new urban activism better align with design and data approaches?
03.30	WGII Breakout Two Beta: Institutionalizing a Civic Innovation Network by Lysander Menezes Suhas Mhaskar Rajesh Khati Shweta Banerjee Arndt Husar Jatin Modi Esko Kilpi Rajesh Sawhney Chakshu Roy How do we bring together the natural allies of Civic Innovation into a larger network? Which government agencies, startups, and social development organizations need to work together towards this goal? How could Civic Innovation be operationalized? What institutions, individuals and networks might support Civic Innovation?
04.30	Coffee Jam with Music
05.00	Public Presentations from Each Breakout by Prashant Bhushan Balasubramanian Munuswamy Harsh Shrivastava Anant Shah MP Ranjan Sukumar Ranganthan Thought leaders and decision makers critique and review public presentations made by each of the breakout sessions. An open dialogue ensues.
05.30	Dialogue: Framing Conclusions and Charting Next Steps An open dialogue to articulate possible next steps, possible coalitions, alliances, research programs and funding prospects for these areas of work.
07.00	Cocktails, Dancing and Dinner After a heavy day at the office, you deserve to twist that spine.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/design-public-2014

Design in urban democracy: A question of survival

admin — 2008-10-11T09:49:21Z

Urban dynamics dissected by John Thackara and Sunil Abraham; questions and answers on the anatomy of cities. An article from the August issue of Cluster Magazine.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/publications-automated/cis/sunil/Thackara.pdf

Design and the Open Knowledge Movement

saumyaa — 2019-04-01T12:13:00Z

With the objective of connecting the open knowledge movement with design, the Access to Knowledge team at the Centre for Internet and Society co-organised the Wikigraphists Bootcamp India 2018 with the Wikimedia Foundation during September 28-30, 2018 in New Delhi. The event was held at the School of Design at Ambedkar University Delhi. As part of the bootcamp, a panel discussion was held in order to bring together design practitioners, educators, open knowledge contributors, and design students to explore how design and open knowledge communities can engage with each other. In this post, Saumyaa Naidu shares the learnings from the panel discussion aimed at exploring the potential collaborations between design and the open knowledge movement.

Introduction

Exchange between Design Academics and Open Knowledge

Potential Means of Engagement with Open Knowledge in Design Practice

Applications of Open Knowledge in Design Education

Conclusion

Introduction

Design has historically been functioning in a closed paradigm, both with regard to practice and education. The design process, resources, and products are largely proprietary and limit who can access them. On the other hand, increased use of digital technology offers the potential for greater access and knowledge sharing. In this setting, a dialogue on design and openness becomes essential. There is a need to build sensitivity among designers towards open knowledge and open access practices. Such an exchange can not only allow for design resources and products to be available in the open domain, but also help designers build an extensive shared knowledge base.

With the objective of connecting the open knowledge movement with design, the Access to Knowledge team at the Centre for Internet and Society co-organised the Wikigraphists Bootcamp India 2018 with the Wikimedia Foundation from 28th to 30th September, 2018 in New Delhi. The event was held at the School of Design at Ambedkar University Delhi. As part of the bootcamp, a panel discussion was held in order to bring together design practitioners, educators, open knowledge contributors, and design students to explore how design and open knowledge communities can engage with each other.

The discussion was preceded by an introduction to the open knowledge movement and its potential in creating access and inclusion, by Satdeep Gill. Satdeep is a community outreach coordinator for India at the Wikimedia Foundation. He is also one of the founding members of Punjabi Wikimedians User Group. Satdeep was the programme leader for the Wikiconference India in 2016. The introduction provided a brief history of copyrights and the beginning of the copyleft movement. It discussed creative commons licensing and the role of Wikipedia in the open knowledge movement.

The panel included Suchitra Balasubrahmanyan, Pooja Saxena, and Shyamal. Suchitra Balasubrahmanyan is the dean at the School of Design in Ambedkar University Delhi (AUD). Her research has been on multiple areas such as history of craft and design, and design education in India. Her practice focuses on social communication design. Pooja Saxena is a typeface and graphic designer whose work centres on multi-script design. She has designed an Ol Chiki typeface for Santali language which is available for free and open use. Pooja also teaches typography at several design schools including Pearl Academy, National Institute of Design, and Srishti school of Art, Design, and Technology. Shyamal is an independent researcher and an ornithologist. He has been contributing to Wikipedia for over fifteen years now. In addition to his contributions about the biodiversity of birds, he has also created several illustrations relating to the same. The panel was moderated by Saumyaa Naidu, a designer and researcher at the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS).

The discussion was aimed at addressing three primary questions around design and the open knowledge movement; how academic materials in design inform unstructured or open knowledge spaces and in what ways do these unstructured spaces come back into design education?, what are the potential means of engagement with open knowledge in design practice?, and in what ways can it be applied in design education?

Exchange between Design Academics and Open Knowledge

The discussion began with an enquiry into the challenges faced in the design of knowledge production and the knowledge production of design. It was directed at understanding the various ways in which design education and academia interact with open knowledge. Prof. Suchitra responded by saying that it is still early days for such an interaction to take place as the discipline of design itself is very proprietary in its approach. The work created in different areas of design is often guarded. Locating the discussion at the School of Design in AUD, she suggested that the Social Design course, which looks at the social application of design, believes in socially produced knowledge and contributing to it. However, the university is constrained by the academic environment which does not facilitate the open exchange of knowledge. There is a culture of copyright and protection of work in academia, and heavy funding is required for journal subscriptions. There is an imbalanced gatekeeping of knowledge as countries like India, which have weaker currencies, cannot access this knowledge or contribute to it. The social design community, a small community yet, is interested in making this knowledge freely accessible, in community participation, in co-designing, and in challenge the idea of one ‘super-designer’ who gets all the credit.

Open knowledge spaces such as Wikipedia often make their way into classrooms when students use these resources for assignments. It was pointed out by Prof. Suchitra that there is a lack of regard among students for giving due attribution to material taken from such platforms. Social Sciences universities also consider Wikipedia as an unreliable source, and discourage its use. There is a need to build the culture of knowledge sharing, borrowing, and contribution. She believes that this should be initiated at the level of school education, and not just design schools, so it is internalised at an early stage. She also shared an epistemological concern regarding such a cultural shift in design as it is commonly believed that the knowledge designers produce belongs to them and their livelihoods are connected to it. Hence, open knowledge and open source are antithetical to the profession. This means that the profession itself has to be imagined differently. The social design programme, in this regard, is trying to ensure that when students create work based on interactions with a community, also go back and present it to the community. This is to say that the work produced cannot be exclusively owned by the designers.

The open knowledge movement in India is closely tied to accessibility of information in Indian languages. The availability of a design knowledge base in Indian languages was discussed in this context. Prof. Suchitra explained that most design education in India is in English and is borrowed from another cultural and geographical setting. Design is a discipline of making, and making has its own language. In that sense, the act and content of design transcends language. But, it is the pedagogy which is held by language. The act of making, which is ubiquitous, and is done naturally by everybody, gets held back when it comes to the transmission in different languages. There can be sanskritised words for design terminology, but the vocabulary of everyday use should be applied to represent this knowledge. The School of Design is looking for ways in which important and more provocative texts in design can be made available in other Indian languages. When students are exploring a career in design and they want to learn about it, the information about courses, programmes, and universities should also be available in their language.

The students at AUD recently demanded that education at the university be provided in multiple languages. Since AUD is funded by the Delhi state government, the students want the medium of instruction to include languages of the state (Hindi, Urdu, and Punjabi) apart from English. However, in order to accomplish this, the university would require multilingual teachers. At a personal level, Prof. Suchitra feels that the medium of instruction cannot be monolingual, and that it is good to be multilingual. There is also the conflict that it doesn’t do justice to either languages, and there is no neat answer yet. She believes that technology provides some answers in the sense that students can access the material through translations in whichever language they prefer. Being located in Delhi, the university attracts students from all parts of the country, so it needs to be multilingual in different ways. Technology can intervene and provide a layer by which access can be given in the language of one’s choice. She inferred that this is not a question of one or two languages, but of languages everywhere.

Potential Means of Engagement with Open Knowledge in Design Practice

Presently, there is limited participation from design practitioners on open knowledge platforms. From the perspective of a design practitioner and educator, Pooja Saxena explained that apart from Wikipedia, designers use The Noun Project, which offers both free and paid ways to use icons. She mentioned how students also use this platform but it appears that they are not as interested in contributing to it. They are guarded about the work they create but are fine with using someone else’s work that is available for free. Pooja suggested a much needed change in the understanding that open knowledge simply means that it is open for use. It must be seen as a community which one needs to engage with in whichever capacity and give back to. Agreeing with Prof. Suchitra, Pooja also observed that students fail to give fair attribution when any work is available for free. There is a lack of training and communication around attribution among designers. Regarding open source softwares meant for image making and creating illustrations, Pooja said that despite her several attempts of using them, she has always gone back to proprietary softwares. She believes that there are not enough people contributing to making these open source applications better to work with. A middle path she recommended for designers is creating work in formats which can be edited across applications, so that the work created can be built upon in any application, and is not bound by a proprietary software.

As an experienced Wikipedian, Shyamal also stressed upon the idea of finding ways to productively give back to the open knowledge community. He talked about the opportunities that design students have in terms of creating quality images and graphics, and making them available for public use. An example of such an opportunity could be creating clipart or icons that can be used for roadside signages or other such public resources. Another possibility he proposed was publishing rough drafts or discarded work on platforms like Wikipedia, so it can be refined and used by others. It is not well known that aside from the textual part of Wikipedia, there exists a larger environment which includes projects like Wikidata, which is a semantic database, and Wikimedia Commons, which is meant for a variety of media such as images, video, audio, and even 3D models now. This offers a variety of options to designers to make their work available for open use. Another aspect that Shyamal brought attention to in this regard is to make the work available in a way that it can be easily found by others, by effectively using metadata and writing appropriate descriptions.

A relevant example of engagement of design with the open knowledge community was shared by Pooja through her type design project. This included designing a typeface family for the Ol Chiki script, which is used to write in the Santhali language. The project was initiated by Subhashish Panigrahi at CIS in order to set up the Santhali Wikipedia. But, at the time there were no unicode compliant fonts available for Ol Chiki. This was a clear example of how a design intervention in the form of a typeface could lead to knowledge being shared and possibly even created in the future. The project was then funded by the Access to Knowledge programme at CIS. Pooja described the process of designing the typeface. She mentioned that even though the Santhali language is spoken by over 6 million people, Ol Chiki is not a commonly used script. The script itself was invented less than a hundred years ago, which meant that there is little documentation available of the script to look at. The team then engaged with the community to understand how they would like the letters to look like, and whether the letters in the font were correct. This was done through comprehensive feedback forms to test the letters and ask specific questions around their form and placement. The exercise was repeated a number of times to get accurate letters.

Through this process, Pooja made a key observation on perfection. Designers are often trained to share or show their work only when they think it is perfect. But, in the case of the typeface, it was impossible to achieve something even close to being finished without showing it and seeking help from the community. The project also led to inspiring a design student from the National Institute of Design, who belongs to the Santhal community, to create letters in Ol Chiki script as part of the ‘36 days of type’ challenge on Instagram. The typeface thus, can contribute towards such projects as well. Pooja concluded that the typeface being available for free can also lead to students making a version of it that serves their purpose better.

Further on open typefaces for Indian languages, Shyamal spoke about the several issues regarding the use of Indian languages, specific to Wikipedia and in general as well. He correlated the lack of academic disciplines in Indian languages with the lack of vocabulary of technical terms. Several people also oppose borrowing words from other languages. In an example of needing to translate the labels of an illustration of a four-stroke engine into an Indian language, the engineer would not know the terms in that language, and the language expert will not know enough about engineering. Shyamal suggested transliterating English words as a first step, so that somebody who doesn’t know English can understand what the word sounds like. Another technical concern is the use of open source fonts of Indian languages for better compatibility on Wikimedia Commons. The platform replaces proprietary fonts with equivalent open source ones during the process of uploading. This changes the typesetting in the illustration in terms of spacing between the letters and sentences, and the resulting design can end up looking different from the intended one. Hence, it is important to include identification and use of open source fonts as part of the learning process in design.

Shyamal further talked about the need to create more awareness about copyright. He explained that the fact that anything we create is automatically copyrighted is not really understood by most people. People posting images on Facebook and Instagram would allow others to use their work when asked, but would hesitate to give a written permission. It would be useful to license out the work. This lack of copyright awareness hinders the creation of a vast visual database on Wikimedia Commons. There is little visual information available online about objects, monuments, maps, places, etc. in India. The advantage of using systems like Wikipedia is that you can geotag places, you can semantically describe them so that people who speak other languages can find that content. The value of availability of such content online for an outsider is not well understood yet. As a practice, when learning something new, Shyamal himself tries to add it on Wikipedia or on related projects, so that it can be of use to anyone else looking for it as well.

On encouraging designers to contribute to open knowledge, Pooja advised that designers can contribute through side projects or self-initiated projects as they are not looking to make any money from them to begin with, and would be able to share the work for free. These side projects can take the form of resources or tools that other people can use to build something else. She also pointed out that it is not necessary that designers cannot get paid to do open work, and shared the example of the Ol Chiki typeface, which was paid for by a patron. There are also organisations that commission projects which are supposed to be available for free use because those organisations need that product to be available for free. Google fonts for example, commissions the typefaces to designers which are eventually available as free and open fonts. It is important for designers to be aware that such opportunities exist, and that they need to be sought.

Applications of Open Knowledge in Design Education

The discussion led to several suggestions on involving design students in the open knowledge movement. Pooja recommended that students can be encouraged to make their assignments available on Wikimedia Commons. Design students are often expected to work on projects that address problems that exist in the real world. In most cases, these projects remain with the students and not get implemented in the real world. If such projects were available on open platforms like Wikimedia Commons, they can be taken forward by others who are tackling the same concerns. It is also something that design students would benefit from because their work will be publicly available.

In order to address the disregard for attributions pointed out earlier, Prof. Suchitra stressed upon the need to build a culture among design students to attribute fairly. This would allow for acceptable acknowledgement to someone who has produced work and contributed it to the open domain. She added that this is being initiated in other design spaces such as the Decolonise Design group, which some design faculties are a part of. The group looks at ways of finding different cultural anchors for design. One such project is where design faculties have gotten together to share design assignments, in order to see what kind of assignments we set in the classroom for teaching various kinds of concepts in design. The faculties are trying to form an international platform where teaching methods can be shared and a bank of design assignments can be created. These methods and assignments are otherwise considered proprietary.

Prof. Suchitra also talked about the onus on public funded educational institutions to make their work available on open platforms, at least in projects which have a larger use. The Industrial Design Centre (IDC), Powai already has a portal on which design related educational material is available for anyone who is interested. They offer an online course in design which anyone can register for and attend. It is only for the certification at the end of the course, that one needs to pay to take an exam. Design courses otherwise tend to be quite expensive. She mentioned that the School of Design at AUD has been contemplating sharing the thesis work that students produce on Academia, a platform for academics to share research papers, where it can be downloaded for free. This allows for the work to be viewed by people outside the school, which is a significant step for young designers. Design as a profession fundamentally does not allow sharing, and this certainly needs to change. She gave the example of textiles, where the traditional artworks and motifs are picked up from different sources and placed on fabrics. Such reuse borders on unethical practice. Therefore, we need to identify the boundaries of open source. The ethical aspects of it need to be opened up and discussed, otherwise it can lead to asymmetrical knowledge practices. The attribution or acknowledgement that the work individually or culturally belongs to somebody, needs to be recognised.

On the learning by doing approach in design education, Pooja raised the concern that there is a lack of attention towards ‘learning by reading’. Design related reading materials are not available on open platforms and in different languages. She suggested that even if the readings are available in English, it is also useful for them to be available in a vocabulary that is more acceptable for someone for whom it is not their first language. Further, the ‘doing’ is also framed by a certain perspective, and often that perspective is quite closed. It does not take into account where the students is coming from. For example, a branding assignment for a product for new mothers does not consider how eighteen year old students would understand the product without any interaction with the users. It doesn’t ask why does it have to be branding to begin with. It also limits the objective to ‘selling something’ while there are other ways in which design can intervene. In the assignments where students engage with a community, there is often a clear asymmetry between the students and the people they are designing for. There is a vast gap in the knowledge and experience shared by the two. Consequently, students are forced to either assert themselves in this community or misrepresent themselves. This also takes away from students wanting to share their work on open platforms. Pooja recommended that they would be more willing to put the work out in the open when they are working with their own community because they can then see how it affects people in a much more direct way.

Conclusion

The discussion brought forward various intersections in design and open knowledge, and the possible ways in which the two can lend to each other. Broader interventions such as a cultural shift in design around sharing work and discussing its ethical aspects, availability of academic material in design on open platforms and in different Indian languages, sensitivity around fair attribution and copyrights among designers, and designers seeking out or self initiating projects that contribute to the open domain were discussed. In terms of specific steps, ideas including design practitioners creating works in formats which are editable on open applications, adding more visual content on platforms like Wikimedia Commons, creating and using more open typefaces in Indian languages, and students sharing their assignments on open platforms were considered. Other ways of engagement with design education could be through internships and workshops that demonstrate the need for open knowledge systems.

During the interaction with the audience, another key concern was brought up by Govind Sivan, a student at the School of Design at AUD. He spoke about the prevalent approach in design schools of giving primary importance to originality. Students work towards thinking of unique ideas and any similarity between their own and a classmate’s assignment is seen as a failure of creativity. Such an approach goes on to curb shared knowledge and collaborative working, and needs to be changed in order to make way for openness in design. Prof. Suchitra also advised that there is more value to design in thinking of it as a collaborative project.

Design is also gradually opening up its process to include the people being designed for through open research methods such as co-design and participatory design. All aspects of a design process such as need identification, data gathering, and the end product can be conceptualised for openness. These directions can be explored by both designers and the open knowledge community for the creation of a greater and more accessible knowledge base.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/saumyaa-naidu-design-and-the-open-knowledge-movement

Deployed

jha.anand — 2012-04-04T10:56:39Z

Name(s): Anand Jha
Location: Bangalore, India
Age: 30
Profession: Information Architect, Artist

Bangalore (India) is home to a lot of technology start-ups. A lot of geeks, who find it limiting to work for corporations, are driving a very open source-oriented, frugally-built and extremely demanding culture. While their products are standing at the bleeding edge of technology, their personal lives, too, are constantly driven on the edge; every launch being a make or break day for them. The project would aim at capturing their story, their frustration and motivation, looking at the possibilities of Indian software scene moving beyond the services and back-end office culture into a more risk-prone but more passionate business of technology.

Video Genre

Documentary

Interview

What do you understand by the term Digital Native? Do you consider yourself one? Are there factors that contribute to identifying oneself with the term?
Digital Natives are those who are comfortable with a part of their social and professional lives being spent over digital ecosystems. I consider myself one. Considering that this digital ecosystem is still out of reach for many people belonging to the other side of the digital divide, I feel there are clear socio-economic and geographic fault lines differentiating those who are digital natives and those who aren’t.

There is a perception that the digital native is typically a Young, White, Male, American – a geek hooked to his gadgets and apathetic about social issues. Comment.
Stereotypes exist for a reason. The developed countries of Europe and the Americas are the early adopters of digital technology and there will be a trickledown effect on the rest of the world. But the point about digital natives NOT being concerned with social causes is the part I do not agree with. The Internet has been the springboard for several people’s movements across the globe. I remember stumbling upon riseup.net and Pirate Bay in 2005, and most of what the Web is made of today has been politico-social in nature, including the FOSS frameworks that empower it. These are the very same youngsters who initiated these movements.

Can digital natives from developing nations create an impact with digital activism?
Yes they can help attract attention to issues but this has to be matched with onsite campaign. With most of the television and print media being controlled by mega-corporations or funded by them, I see a lot of people consuming information from the P2P information channels. I rely mostly on mailing lists, news forums and video channels run by popular activist networks. I was once involved in managing and running such a mailing list, now I am just a consumer.

How effective is digital activism in comparison to traditional forms of campaigning?
Digital campaigns definitely have an impact as a lot of the traditional media outlets are now reflecting information from popular internet broadcasters-aggregators. But I still remain skeptical about the kind of issues that receive focus and how effectively these campaigns contribute to non-urban bases.

What would you say to critics who label digital native campaigns as ‘slacktivism’?
There is a certain audience on Facebook, and most of them are consumerists: they consume godmen and grocery with the same active passive behavior, with little time and patience to get into details and interdependencies. Their responses are also pretty moralistic and shaped up by the same assembly line thought processes that induces them to make the most important decisions of their lives through a template. I am a bit scared about the enthusiasm of “doing something”. People have spent entire lives understanding a lot of these issues that come from public spaces before they make even the slightest intervention. That degree of sensitivity and integrity is required for any solution to evolve. I don’t see that happening with online activism.

Are we seeing a trend where digital natives are more involved with local (neighborhood) causes than with global issues such as environment, poverty, corruption?
I wish there was a trend like that. From where I see it (and I am limited by what I can see). I guess people are broadcasting less and less about local issues. Social Web has still not been able to translate the neighborhood camaraderie into a digital forum buzzing with activity. And since the broadcasts are about generic topics concerning the globe, most of the momentum fizzles out. Often local issues also inspire a more physical behavior….I don’t know if the web is a space for contemplation or for action, especially when we talk about local issues.

Comment on the role of ICTs in fostering citizen action.
Access and agency are two important words that come to my mind. More people should be able to use ICT and in ways that suit them. Localization is still underserved in India. Accessibility in terms of most of the online media being inaccessible to senior-citizens, more demanding of high bandwidth, less on anonymity, English being the dominant language online, etc., are some of the problems that we face. I feel the real potential of such an ecosystem has still not been realized; there is a lot of space for people to start working on. Also, the question of what informs people and how, who is curating information and creating viewpoints and manufacturing opinions, how can information be true to its context and yet not sound like propaganda are frameworks that need rethinking and resolution.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/video-contest/entries/deployed

Department of Science and Technology & Department of Biotechnology adopt Open Access Policy

sinha — 2014-12-29T10:17:52Z

This post discusses the newly adopted Open Access Policy of the Department of Science and Technology & the Department of Biotechnology.

The Ministry of Science and Technology and Earth Sciences approved the Policy on Open Access to Department of Biotechnology(“DBT”) and the Department of Science (“DST”) funded research last week. The DBT and DST Open Access Policy(“Policy”) is a laudable step towards implementing open access to publicly funded research and is also in sync with other open access initiatives by Government funded institutions such as the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research(“CSIR”), Indian Council of Agricultural Research(“ICAR”) and Institute of Mathematical Sciences(“IMSc”).

You may access the approved policy here.

CIS participated in developing the policy and made various submissions with the goal of formulating a stringent open access policy. The drafting committee comprised of members of the DST and DBT. The drafting began in June 2014 and subsequently underwent two rounds of public consultation. You may access and read about the first draft here. I blogged about CIS' comments and the resultant draft policy here and here.

While the CSIR and ICAR present outlines of their open access policies, the IMSc provides access to a digital repository containing digital theses/dissertations, matscience reports and other publications of institute members. CIS also sent comments to the ICAR upon release of ICAR’s draft policy.

Key insertions and amendments to the final draft of the Policy

The initial draft of the Policy did not mandate depositing literature in a repository. The approved Policy requires researchers to compulsorily archive their research and provides access to the same. Requests for embargoed papers deposited in a repository may be forwarded to the authors by use of a Request Button made available in the repository software. To ensure timely dissemination of research the embargo period has been further shortened and the Policy now recommends “.. the embargo should be no longer than 6 months for Science, Technology and Medicine (STM) disciplines and 12 months for Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences.” CIS strongly recommended an embargo period of one year, and making deposits in repositories mandatory, regardless of the open access routes ( Gold OA or Green OA) adopted by the researcher.

To encourage making publications open access, the Policy also states that extrinsic metrics such as Journal Impact Factors should not be the criteria to assess a researcher's work. Thus, the Policy seeks to create a level playing field for assessment of quality of publications by making the title of the journal irrelevant. However, to this end, some concerns remain. The Policy does not address the legal position of copyright vesting with the government and the latter retaining rights to reproduction of the work in order to issue free copies of the work to the public. The Policy apparently relinquishes the its rightful ownership of the Government in the research by stating that it does not intend to override the agreements between the researchers and publishers, however, it recommends the authors to bring to the notice of publishers their obligations under the Policy. This is a cause for grave concern because the bargaining power still rests in the hands of the publishers, who may impose unfair terms on researchers to make the publication open access. Furthermore, the Policy fails to establish a time period for compliance and setting up of required infrastructure, thereby leaving obligations and duties of various stakeholders undefined.

Nonetheless, the policy is a welcome step in the field of Indian scientific research. It stands to impact approximately 18,000 papers published since 2013 under the aegis of the DBT and DST. As pointed out earlier, in the recent past many scientific research institutions have implemented open access policies. It is hoped that the move shall be emulated across all disciplines, including arts, humanities and social sciences.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/department-of-science-and-technology-department-of-biotechnology-adopt-open-access-policy

Department of Information Technology Meeting on a National Policy on E-Accessibility

nirmita — 2011-09-22T12:32:54Z

On 30 January 2009, the Department of Information Technology hosted a meeting in New Delhi bringing together important stakeholders to discuss the issue of electronic accessibility for the disabled and persons with special needs in India.

Creating a barrier free internet is vital to creating a pluralistic and democratic virtual environment, where all groups irrespective of disability or levels of literacy are able to access culture and knowledge goods and services which are available on the internet today. Since its inception last year, CIS has been campaigning for legislative, administrative and legal interventions in the area of web accessibility for the print disabled and working with different groups towards the common goal of having a National Policy on Electronic Accessibility in India.

On 30 January, the Department of Information Technology (DIT) called a meeting of all stakeholders to discuss the issue of web accessibility for disabled persons and persons with special needs. The meeting was attended by 34 key persons from the Government and private organisations around India. Sunil Abraham (Director--Advocacy, CIS) and Nirmita Narasimhan (Programme Manager, CIS) were amongst the attendees (a complete list of attendees is given below).

The meeting was chaired by N. Ravi Shankar, Joint Secretary, DIT, who in his opening remarks briefed the gathering about the initiatives of the Government in this area. He talked about the Government’s goal of providing Universal Accessibility and Internet for all. He informed the gathering that the DIT had already initiated schemes for ICT empowerment of visually impaired/hearing impaired children; under these schemes, 21 ICT Vocational Centers had already been set up and 100 additional ICT vocational centers would be set up in phase II. Additionally, he explained that the issue of Universal Accessibility had been internationally addressed at the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) 2008 held in December 2008 in Hyderabad. He stressed the need for initiating inclusive developmental activities in the e-governance programme of DIT and language initiatives of TDIL (Technology Development for Indian Languages), in order to increase coverage and diversity, culminating in education for all alongside Internet for all.

Dr. Govind, Senior Director and Head of Department, E-Infrastructure and Internet Governance Division in the Ministry, highlighted the issue of web accessibility for visually impaired and other differently able persons and the need for initiating a concrete action plan for the same.

Javed Abidi, Director, National Center for Promotion of Employment for Disabled People talked at length about the need for web accessibility and proposed that the government should set a time line within which all existing government web sites should be made standards compliant. All new web sites should be created keeping compliance with WCAG 2.0 in mind right from the start and proposed that for existing web sites, we should adopt a staged approach and aim at ensuring complete compliance at least by 2010-2012.

Ms. Neeta Verma, Sr. Technical Director, NIC gave a presentation on the issues related with making web accessibility universal. She said that NIC has formulated guidelines for government websites, in association with DIT and DARPG. Compliance to these guidelines shall make Indian government websites Usable, User Centric and Universally Accessible. She proposed that even the Manual of Procedures (MoP) used in the Govt. should mandate Universal Web Access for Government business and day to day activities. Websites should not only be designed once for accessibility but also need to be sustainable in the long run.

All attendees gave their inputs on the issue of web accessibility. Shri Jaijit from Sun Microsystems stressed the fact that the need for standards was not essential for disabled persons alone, but was necessary for other groups as well, such as illiterate persons. Ms.Shilpi Kapoor from Barrier Break Technologies mentioned that most government web sites had to firstbe be made html compliant in order to be standards compliant and stressed the need for training, resource generation and sensitization. Shri Minocha, Director, NAB felt that a law similar to the one in USA should be implemented which mandates that any web site developed had to be Universally Accessible. He asked the Government. to look at daisy guidelines, digital library and procurement policy for differently abled persons. He strongly urged the Government to take into account not merely standards of website accessibility, but also brouser standards, document standards etc, since an accessible web site was not of much use if the content posted on it was in an inaccessible format. He also appreciated the efforts of NIC and C-DAC towards working for open source and cited the example of the Venezualian Government. He proposed that DIT should initiate a technology development or customization project in this area. Shri Vijaiy Krishnamani from Infosys stressed on the need for creating a common simple usable interface rather than multiple types.

Shri Vijay Kapur from Microsoft proposed for implementation of WCAG1.0 & 2.0 standards to bring out interactivity in web content like Arya and the Clint side document accessibility through the daisy consortium.

Shri Rajesh Aggarwal, CEO, NIXI offered complete support for all initiatives in the area of web accessibility and voiced the opinion that all software produced out of public funds should be made available in the public domain so as to encourage research and innovation. In addition to policy advocacy, he was also supporting a capacity building and awareness workshop on web accessibility for web developers from all over the country which was being organized by CIS in Ghaziabad from Feb 16th-18th. Smt.Jayalakshmi Chittor of CSDMS proposed that an audit process should be evolved to check government web sites for WCAG 2.0 compliance and cited the example of Malta for policy in this area. Some other issues which were stressed time and again by other attendees were the legal mandating of adherence to standards within a fixed time period, adequate representation of Indian language in Unicode format, adherence to WCAG 2.0 and not merely 1.0, supporting voice enabled web sites etc. Sunil Abraham Director Centre for Internet & Society (CIS) lauded the DIT/MCIT for the timely and critical accessibility initiative and strongly endorsed the suggestion to create a national policy document mandating accessibility for all publicly funded electronic infrastructure. CIS offered to provide a comparative analysis of national electronic accessibility policies from developed and developing countries and also prepare a draft policy for DIT/MCIT. Further, he urged DIT/MCIT to advocate for the adoption of the proposed WIPO Treaty for improved access for the blind, visually impaired and other reading disabled put forward by the World Blind Union and knowledge Ecology International.

After the round of discussions the following recommendations were made to the DIT/MCIT:

i) The Government should formulate a national policy to mandate necessary guidelines so that the web sites are standards compliant for universal web accessibility.

ii) Steps should be taken for sensitization and awareness generation towards this issue through trainings, publicity, workshops, conferences.

iii) R&D projects should be initiated for development of screen readers in Indian languages and other tools for universal web access.

Attendees

Shri N. Ravi Shanker, Joint Secretary, DIT, New Delhi - Chairman
Dr. Govind, Sr. Director, DIT, New Delhi
Shri Mohan Ram, ED, ERNET India, New Delhi
Shri Rajesh Aggarwal, Additional CEO, NIXI, New Delhi
Shri Javed Abidi, Director, National Center for Promotion of Employment for Disabled People (NCPEDP, New Delhi
Shri Dipender Minocha, Director, NAB, R.K. Puram, New Delhi
Ms. Neeta Verma, Sr. Technical Director, NIC, New Delhi
Shri A. Bandopadhyay, GM, Webel Mediatronics Ltd., Kolkata
Mr. Sunil Abraham, Director – Policy, Centre for Internet & Society, Bangalore
Ms. Shilpi Kapoor, Founder and Managing Director, Net Systems Informatics (I) Pvt. Ltd. and Barrier Break Technologies, Mumbai
Shri Vijay Kapur, Microsoft India, New Delhi
Mr. Rahul Gonsalves, Web Accessibility Consultant, Bangalore
Jyotindra V.Mehta, Advisory Systems Consultant, IBM Global Services India
Mr. Zamir Dhale, Sense International India Office, Ahmedabad Gujarat
Shri Jaijit Bhattacharya, M/s Sun Microsystems, New Delhi
Ms. Jayalakshmi Chittor, CSDMS, Noida, U.P
Shri Manoj Jain, TDIL, DIT, New Delhi
Ms. Gitanjali Sah, UN Solution Exchange, New Delhi
Shri Pradeep Gupta, Managing Director, Cyber Media India Ltd., Gurgaon, Haryana
Shri Vijay Krishnamani, Infosys, New Delhi
Shri Ajai Kumar, C-DAC, Pune
Shri Indranil Das Roy, M/s Webel, Kolkata
Shri Deepak Maheshwari, Microsoft India , New Delhi
Shri Vikas Goswami, Microsoft India, New Delhi
Ms. Helen Mahtani, Programmer, NCPEDP, New Delhi
Shri Muthamma B. Devaya, Senior Program officer, NCPEDP, New Delhi
Ms. Nirmitha Naresimhan, Centre for Internet & Society, Bangalore
Ms. Tejal Tiwari, ERNET India, New Delhi
Shri D.P. Misra, NIC, New Delhi
Shri Sachin Rizal, Sense International (India) Ltd., Ahmedabad Gujarat
Ms. Ritu Srivastava, CSDMS, Noida
Shri Santosh Kumar Gupta, CSDMS, Noida, UP
Shri Rajan Varada, UN Solution Exchange, New Delhi
Shri S.K. Aggarwal, Scientist ‘F’, DIT, New Delhi - Convenor

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/meeting-by-the-dit-on-a-national-policy-on-e-accessibility-at-delhi-on-jan-30th-2009

Department of Biotechnology and Department of Science, Ministry of Science and Technology, Government of India, release first draft of Open Access Policy

sinha — 2014-12-26T11:20:59Z

The Department of Biotechnology and the Department of Science, Ministry of Science and Technology, Government of India, recently published a draft Open Access Policy in consultation with several open access experts, government officials and CIS. This post discusses open access and the exercise undertaken to draft this policy.

The Department of Biotechnology (“DBT”) and the Department of Science (“DST”), Ministry of Science and Technology, Government of India, released their draft Open Access Policy (“the Policy) on July 5, 2014 (the Policy may be accessed hereand comments may be sent to madhan@dbt.nic.in by July 25, 2014). This step by the Ministry of Science and Technology is laudable, especially from the view of increasing access to research undertaken at these institutions. DBT/DST’s endeavour to provide open access applies to scientific research directly (including ad-hoc) or indirectly funded by them. It also applies to scientific research which has received benefits, infrastructure or other support from the DBT/DST. Providing open access may also ensure percolation of cutting edge research at a rapid pace into higher education curriculum, thereby raising the standard of technical and scientific education.

The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (“CSIR”), Indian Council of Agricultural Research (“ICAR”) and Institute of Mathematical Sciences (“IMSc”) are the few Indian government institutions to have implemented open access policies applicable to the research undertaken at their respective institutions. While the CSIR and ICAR present outlines of their open access policies, the IMSc provides access to a digital repository containing digital theses/dissertations, matscience reports and other publications of institute members. CIS had sent comments to the ICAR upon release of ICAR’s draft policy.

Open Access in Scientific Research

Presently two models of scientific research publications exist, namely, the commercial model and the open access model. The scientific research ecosystem traditionally functioned on the commercial model, until open access was embraced by a part of the scientific community. It is reported that presently, there exist approximately 25,000 journals in the areas of science, technology and medicine. The conventional model of communicating research is by publishing it in printed journals. These journals are usually subscription based, and demand hefty amounts from interested authors for publication. Further, research was only accessible to that select group of persons willing to pay a high monetary sum for the same. These industry practices led to restrictions on access to scholarly research, including restrictions on sharing and building further on work already created. . Over the past few years, this trend has witnessed a change, with research being increasingly published in online, open access journals.

Open Access is free, immediate, permanent online access to the full text of research articles for anyone, web-wide, without severe restrictions on use commonly imposed by publisher copyright agreements. Open access was first defined in 2002 at the Budapest Initiative. The Bethesda Statement (2003) provided:

An Open Access Publication is one that meets the following two conditions:

The author(s) and copyright holder(s) grant(s) to all users a free, irrevocable, worldwide, perpetual right of access to, and a license to copy, use, distribute, transmit and display the work publicly and to make and distribute derivative works, in any digital medium for any responsible purpose, subject to proper attribution of authorship[2], as well as the right to make small numbers of printed copies for their personal use.

A complete version of the work and all supplemental materials, including a copy of the permission as stated above, in a suitable standard electronic format is deposited immediately upon initial publication in at least one online repository that is supported by an academic institution, scholarly society, government agency, or other well-established organization that seeks to enable open access, unrestricted distribution, interoperability, and long-term archiving (for the biomedical sciences, PubMed Central is such a repository).

The Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities is another significant milestone of the Open Access movement. Globally, USA and Europe have been instrumental in adopting open access policies across a wide range of institutions. Illustratively, the US’ National Institute of Health open access policy is a comprehensive document detailing every aspect of the policy and its implications. Several premier academic institutions (Harvard) under experts (Peter Suber) have drafted documents containing guidelines on drafting a suitable open access policy.

The advantages of adopting an open access policy are manifold- free access to scientific research irrespective of subscription affiliation, decrease in publishing and research costs for industry and academia; It has also been argued that restricting access to government funded research is unethical, since scientific research conducted by government agencies is partly, if not entirely, funded by the taxpayers’ money. Further, adoption of open access alone could improve visibility and impact of Indian science,

Open Access and Intellectual Property

Intellectual property is the essential instrument used to effect principles of open access. The extent of rights under copyright which the owner chooses to exercise over scholarly publication in question determines whether a publication may be openly accessed or not. Traditionally, journal publishers ran an inequitable policy which required all publication and reproduction rights (copyright) to be exclusively transferred by the author or institution to the publishers in consideration of publication in reputed journals. This practice created artificial and expensive barriers to scholarly research. Contrast this with open access principles wherein to provide open access- Generally, the author or the institution (depending on the jurisdictional copyright laws) retain certain rights in the publication, whilst permitting zero-barrier access to their research. This requires careful balancing and distribution of rights between three stakeholders- author, institution and the publisher.

About the DST/DBT’s Open Access Policy

The Open Access Policy Document for DBT/ DST was drafted by the Open Access Policy Committee on a specific request from Dr. VijayRaghavan, Secretary, DBT. The Policy was drafted after multiple rounds of consultation with Ministry officials, eminent academics and experts on open access, government officials with prior experience of set-up of institutional repositories and CIS. Prof Subbiah Arunachalam led the discussions along with the Open Access Policy Committee and brought different perspectives to the fore. The Policy may be accessed here. The Policy will be applicable to publications in peer reviewed journals, and aims to maximise the distribution of these publications by providing free online access by depositing them in a gratis open access repository (deemed mandatory). Authors can make their publications open access by publishing in an open access journal, or if they choose to publish in a subscription journal, by posting the final accepted manuscript to an online repository. The Policy suggests a maximum embargo period placed on authors by journals to not exceed one year. It also addresses the methodology of depositing in a repository and provides for a proposed copyright addendum between the author and publisher.

CIS’ Contribution

CIS participated in discussions along with experts brought on board by Prof. Subbiah Arunachalam to develop and review an open access policy for the purposes of DST and DBT. CIS, inter alia, commented on the legality of clauses in the policy pertaining to Indian copyright law and supplied a note on utilisation of ‘public domain’ in open access policies. Legally, a work is said to have entered the public domain when it is free from copyright protection. The note recommended usage of the phrase “made available to public” as opposed to “public domain” since the said policy permitted the institution and/or author to retain rights in the scientific paper. You may access the note here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/department-of-biotechnology-and-department-of-science-ministry-of-science-and-technology-government-of-india-release-open-access-policy

Demonetisation Survey Limits the Range of Feedback that can be Provided by the User

tiwari — 2016-11-24T14:50:08Z

The government has faced increasingly targeted attacks by the Opposition and the public on the merits of the demonetisation move carried out a fortnight ago. In an attempt to placate this ire and to create a feedback loop that directly engages with the public, the government has decided to conduct a mass survey to gauge public perception. The survey is hosted on the Narendra Modi mobile application that can be found on the Android and iOS app stores. This article will attempt to analyse the mobile application by looking at the design principles followed in the survey and the scope given to survey takers to express their true opinion of the demonetisation move.

The article was published by First Post on November 24, 2016.

At the time of writing, 90 percent of respondents expressed the feeling that the government's move was 'brilliant/nice'. However, one must look into the merits of the survey and its limitations to understand the true value and nature of the results of the survey.

The first step required in order to take the survey, is downloading the application itself, which forces the user to automatically grant access to Contacts, Phone and Storage functions of their phone. While there are ostensible reasons for these permissions, (sharing the data from within the application, storing downloaded information, etc.) unless the user is running Android 6.0 or above, the user doesn’t have a choice in giving these permissions. This leaves the application with the potential to collect the entire phone book of the user as as well as access any files stored on the user’s device. This is independent of the survey and provides a large scope for massive data collection from any user just choosing to install the application in the first place. It is easily possible to create a version of the application that carries out a vast majority of its current functions without these permissions and the government (along with the application developer) should endeavour to do so at the earliest. In the alternative, they should have a clear and distinct privacy policy that informs users of the data collection and its possible use.

The second major step required to take the survey is the long and tedious registration process, which requires all sorts of details with massive privacy implications. This includes the name, email ID, phone number, residency details, profession and interests, all of which are compulsory fields. Why all of these details are necessary to take a supposedly simple survey and what possible use this information can be put to by the government is both unclear and problematic. It is also possible to register using Google, Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites where there is a varying standard of equally private and unnecessary information that is being collected by the application from these websites. There are no privacy notices or consent forms that govern this information collection nor is their any indication of how this information will be put to use beyond the scope of the survey. The generic, standard form privacy policy (less than 10 lines long) on the Narendra Modi website is hidden at the bottom of the application download page (not in the application itself) and leaves a lot to be desired to safeguard user interest.

Once the registration is complete, the user is presented with the survey, which has a total of 10 questions of 3 broad categories. 6 of these questions have multiple choice answers, 3 of them have a sliding rating meter and 1 question has general comments/suggestion page. The article will now look at these categories and analyze the design of the questions, the extent of the choice they give to the users and finally if the survey has a coercive or limiting effect on the feedback that can be given by the user via the application regarding the demonetisation move.

Choice limiting multiple choice questions.

The first category of questions, the multiple choice questions (MCQ), have varying degree of choices that the user can select from. However, regardless of the extent of the choices, their exact nature is severely limiting and makes it almost impossible to express a truly negative opinion of the survey. This is done in two ways, first the explicit restriction of choices and second the more subtle negative colouring of responses by cleverly phrasing questions. An example of the explicit restriction of choices can be seen in Question No 7. “Demonetisation will bring real estate, higher education, healthcare in common man’s reach” which has three options, “Completely Agree, Partially Agree and Can’t Say.” There is no option to disagree with the paradigm set by the question and neither is there an option for the user to further explain or elucidate upon the answer, if he/she choose Can’t Say as an option. This also means that there will be no answers that will have “No” as an answer to the fairly open ended question, which can have a myriad of responses. The same can be said for Question No. 6 regarding the demonetisation move’s effectiveness in curbing illegal activities to which, once again, “No” is not an answer, with “Don’t Know” being the best a user disagreeing can do with the survey question.

The second, more subtle aspect of the MCQ questions are questions that serve as bait to demand a positive answer, which can be used to later bolster the survey's results in a positive light. For example, Question No. 1 reads “Do you think Black Money exists in India” and Question No. 2 reads “Do you think the evil of Corruption & Black Money needs to be fought and eliminated?” both of which have simple “Yes” and “No” as the only two possible responses. These rhetorical questions, which demand a positive answer, provide almost no aspect for the user to subtly or explicitly disagree with motivating factor behind the demonetisation move. The placement of these questions and the lack of choice in responses that can be given to them leaves huge potential to tilt the survey results in the favour of the government’s move. For example, you can’t simultaneously agree that black money is a problem and think the demonetisation move is a bad idea, simply because you can’t express that view in a single question within the survey.

Positive bias driven multiple choice question.

The other two categories of questions do not suffer from the overt problems of encouraging positive bias that the MCQ questions do but leave a fair bit to be desired in their outlook towards individuals who disagree with the move. In the sliding rating meter questions, there are strong visual cues that hint that disagreeing with the demonetisation move is a negative, undesirable idea. They do so by using a large, danger red frown as the icon for Question No. 5 that asks for the survey takers opinion on the ban on old 500 and 1000 rupee notes. The same goes for Question No. 3 that deals with the general moves of the government to tackle black money. This makes any opinion or answer that disagrees with the validity of the move an answer that is portrayed in a negative light. Similarly, the general comments/suggestion section in Question No. 10 is the only place for anyone to express a negative or non-concurring opinion, which there is no way to measure statistically in the overall survey results and will mostly likely not be counted in the final survey results.

Visual cues.

All of the above points clearly show that the design of both the Narendra Modi mobile application and its survey have huge potential for coercing a biased viewpoint upon any survey taker and ensure that it is almost possible to express a stark, negative opinion against the demonetisation move via the survey. This can and should be remedied by the government to allow for a more open, conducive and critical discourse to take place regarding the move among the public. It is only when such opinion is allowed to exist in the first place, that the government can understand, engage and respond to the various valid critiques of the move. The chilling effect that would take place in the current form of the survey would be counterproductive to the original intent behind its creation, which was to create a direct constructive feedback loop between the public and the government.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/first-post-udbhav-tiwari-november-24-2016-demonetisation-survey-limits-the-range-of-feedback-that-can-be-provided-by-the-user

Delhi Declaration on Open Access

Admin — 2018-02-26T14:53:07Z

Open Access India recently released a statement to promote openness in science and research communities. CIS contributed to the text and introduced it to the participants of OpenCon 2018, Delhi.

Published by Open Access India on February 14, 2018. Read the original post here.

This declaration was drafted by a group comprising of researchers and professionals working for opening up access to research outputs for public good in India. The declaration is aimed at scientific communities, scholarly societies, publishers, funders, universities and research institutions to promote openness in science and research communications.

Preamble

The South Asian region, home to 24% of the world’s population faces major challenges such as hunger, poverty and inequality. These challenges become the collective responsibility of scholars and experts in research universities across the country. Consequently, it becomes imperative that research institutes share scientific research outputs and accelerate scientific research. The Open Access movement which aims for making all ‘publicly funded research outcomes publicly available for the public good’ is gaining momentum.

“Open means anyone can freely access, use, modify, and share for any purpose(subject, at most, to requirements that preserve provenance and openness)” –Open Definition.

As per the Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI), ‘Open Access’ (to scholarly literature) is “free availability on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself”.

Since the launch of the BOAI on 14th Feb. 2002, efforts are being made by various scholarly societies, academic communities and governments to make scholarly content Open. However, due to various reasons, the full potential of Open Access is not realised by the producers (scholars), publishers and readers (scholars and society at large) of this knowledge and the world is still disconnected in terms of sharing the scholarly content openly.

As per the Scimago Journal & Country Rank (SJR), India ranks 9th in the year 2016 producing about 13 lakhs articles. However, 82% of them are not Open Access and the Institutional Repositories in India are sparsely populated in spite of having Open Access mandates in place. The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) lists only 200 out of the 20,000+ journals being published from India.

The historical BOAI is now 16 years old, but still there is a need for all of us to be educated and empowered to realize the power of Open Access to scholarly content and harness it for public good in India. With burgeoning commercial scholarly publications and increasing diversity in terms of availability of & accessibility to the information, we need to create a necessary framework for making Open Access the default by 2025 in India.

To ensure the wide availability and encourage the use of of research data and information for the purpose of addressing multifaceted challenges, Open Access to publicly funded research and scholarly outputs are to be made available under Open Licenses (e.g. Creative Commons) while duly acknowledging the intellectual property (work/rights of the creators/producers/authors).

Declaration

We, the contributors and signatories of this declaration, members of the Open Access India, Open Access communities of practice in India and the attendees of the OpenCon 2018 New Delhi held on 3rd Feb., 2018 at Acharya Narendra Dev College, Kalkaji, New Delhi (University of Delhi) agree to issue this declaration:

We advocate for the practice of Open Science (sharing research methods and results openly which will avoid “reinventing the wheel”) and adoption of open technologies for the development of models for sharing science and scholarship (Open Scholarship) to accelerate the progress of research and to address the real societal challenges
We will strive to publish our interim research outputs as preprints or postprints (e.g. Institutional Repositories) and encourage our peers and supervisors to do the same to make our research open and actionable in a timely manner.
We will practice and encourage researchers and scientists to implement openness in peer-reviewing and other editorial services, influence the scholarly societies to flip their journals into Open Access and will contribute for the development of whitelist of Open Access journals in India adhering to the “Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing”.
We will garner support of the relevant stakeholders (scholars, journal editorial teams, university libraries, research funders, authorities’ in-charge of dissemination of scholarship in higher education) for spearheading the Open Access movement.
We will take forward the concept of Open Access to further bring all the publicly funded research outputs (not limited to journal literature alone) to be freely available under open licenses to the public to use, reuse and share in any media in open formats.
We will impress upon policy makers to adopt an open evaluation system for research and an institutional reward system for practicing openness in science ,scientific communications and academic research across disciplines including Humanities and Social Sciences
We will support and work for an alternate reward system in recognition and promotion not in terms of the ‘Impact Factor’ of the journals, but the ‘Impact’ of the articles/scholarship in science and the society and impress upon all the scientists/scholars, research funders, research institutes, universities, academies and scholarly societies to sign the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA).
We strongly agree with the Joint COAR-UNESCO Statement on Open Access , Jussieu Call and Dakar Declaration. And will also follow the international initiative Open Access 2020, to develop roadmaps to support sustainable Open Access scholarly communication models which are free of charge for the authors and free of charge availability to the readers.
While learning from South South cooperation on Open Access, will work for developing a framework for Open Access in India and South Asia: National Policies for Open Access and country-specific action plans will be formulated aimed at making Open Access as the default in India and South Asia, by 2025.
For creating more awareness on Open Access, infrastructure, capacity building, funding and policy mechanisms, as well as incentivizing for the Open Access, we come forward to share success stories, studies and discussions during the Open Access Week.

Adopted on 14th February 2018

Signatories (along with their affiliation):

Anasua Mukherjee, BRICSLICS
Anubha Sinha, CIS India
Anup Kumar Das, Open Access India; CSSP, JNU
Arul George Scaria, NLU Delhi
Barnali Roy Choudhury, Open Access India
Bhakti R Gole, Open Access India
Girija Goyal, ReFigure.org
Javed Azmi, Jamia Hamdard
Kavya Manohar, Open Access India
Neha Sharma
Nirmala Menon IIT Indore
Sailesh Patnaik, Access to Knowledge, CIS
Savithri Singh, Creative Commons India
Sridhar Gutam, Open Access India
Subhashish Panigrahi, Internet Society, O Foundation
Vijay Bhasker Lode, Open Access India
Virendra Kamalvanshi, Banaras Hindu University
Tanveer Hasan A K, Access to Knowledge, Bangalore
Waseem A Malla

Ahsan Ullah, Bangladesh
Anila Sulochana, Central University of Tamil Nadu
Anoh Kouao Antoine, Ecole Supérieure Africaine des TIC, Côte d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast)
Antonio Solís Lima,México
Atarino Helieisar, FSM Supreme Court Law Library, Federated States of Micronesia
Bidyarthi Dutta, Vidyasagar University
Binoy Mathew, INELI
Boye Komla Dogbe, Ministère De La Communication, De La Culture, Togo
Srikanth Reddy, CBIT
Cajetan Onyeneke, Imo State University, Nigeria
Chantal Moukoko Kamole, Universitty of Douala, Cameroun
D Puthira Prathap, Extension Education Society
Daniel Bossikponnon, Ministère du plan et du Développement, Bénin
Dare Adeleke, the Federal Polytechnic, Ado-Ekiti, Nigeria
Dilip Man Sthapit, TU Central Library/LIMISEC, Nepal
Emmy Medard Muhumuza, Busitema University Library, Uganda
Fabian Yelsang, Institute for Interdisciplinary Research and Consultancy Services, Ghana
Fayaz Loan, University of Kashmir
GJP Dixit, Central Library, Central University of Karnataka
Gurpreet Singh Sohal, GGDSD College
Harinder Pal Singh Kalra, Punjabi University
Hue Bui, Thainguyen University of Sciences, Vietnam
Jacinto Dávila, Universidad de Los Andes, Venezuela
Jaishankar K, International Journal of Cyber Criminology
Jancy Gupta, National Dairy Research Institute
JK Vijayakumar
Jonathan Tennant, Open Science MOOC, Germany
Julián Vaquerizo-Madrid, Unidad de Neurología Clínica Evolutiva, Spain
Kamal Hossain, University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh (ULAB), Bangladesh
Kasongo Ilunga Felix, Democratic Republic of Congo
Kavita Chaddha
Kojo Ahiakpa, Research Desk Consulting Ltd., Ghana
Krishna Chaitanya, Velaga, the Wikipedia Library
Kumaresan Chidambaranathan, New Zealand
Kunwar Singh, Banaras Hindu University
Luis Saravia, PERU
Mahendra Sahu, Gandhi Institution of Engineering & Technology,Gunupur
Maidhili S., Meenakshi College for Women
Manika Lamba, University of Delhi
Md. Nasir Uddin, BRAC University, Bangladesh
Md. Nazim Uddin, International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh
Md. Nurul Islam, International Islamic University Chittagong, Bangladesh
Md. Shahajada Masud Anowarul Haque, BRAC University, Bangladesh
Mir Sakhawat Hossain, Kabi Nazrul Government College, Bangladesh
Munusamy Natarajan, CSIR-NISCAIR
Murtoza Kh Ali, Bangladesh
Subash Pillai, ICAR-Indian Institute of Farming Systems Research
Nasar Ahmed Shah, Aligarh Muslim University
Nimesh Oza, Sardar Patel University
Niraj Chaudhary, United States
Poonam Bharti
Prerna Singh, Central University of Jammu
Rabia Bashir, Law and Parliamentary Affairs, Pakistan
Rajendran Murugan, Department of Education, University of Delhi
Rama Kant Shukla, Delhi Technological University
Raman Nair R, Centre for Informatics Research and Development
Rebat Kumar Dhakal, KUSOED Integrity Alliance, Nepal
Revocatus Kuluchumila, AMUCTA, Tanzania
M. Humayun Kabir, Tutul, National Health Library & Documentation Centre, Bangladesh
Sabuj Kumar, Chaudhuri, University of Calcutta
Sandipan Banerjee
Satwinder Bangar
Shahana Jahan, Bangladesh
Shamnad Basheer, SpicyIP
Shivendra Singh
Shreyashi Ray, NLU, Delhi
Sivakrishna Sivakoti
Soumen Kayal, Maharaja Manindra chandra College
Srinivasarao Muppidi, Sanketika Vidya Parishad Engineering College
Stephanie Gross, MSLIS from Pratt Institute, USA
Sujata Tetali, MACS-Agharkar Research Institute
Surjodeb Lulu Hono Basu
Susmita Das, Bangladesh Agricultural Research Council, Bangladesh
Susmita Chakraborty, University of Calcutta
Thilagavathi, Thillai Natarajan, Avinashilingam Institute for Home Science and Higher Education for Women
Umesh Kumar
Umme Habiba, Noakhali Science and Technology University, Bangladesh
Vinita, Jain, M D College of Arts, Science and Commerce
Virginia Inés Simón, Red Iberoamericana de Expertos sobre la Convención de los Derechos de las Personas con Discapacidad, Argentina
Vrushali Dandawate, AISSMS College of Engineering/DOAJ
Waqar Khan, Dhaka Shishu Hospital, Bangladesh
Wilbert Zvakafa, Chinhoyi University of Technology, Zimbabwe
Yasser Ahmed, South Valley University, Egypt
Yohann Thomas, Wikimedia India
Zakir Hossain, International Association of School Librarianship, International Schools Region, Switzerland
Dahmane Madjid, CERIST, Algeria
Nagarjuna G, Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education, TIFR
Sulyman Sodeeq Abdulakeem, Federal Polytechnic Offa, Nigeria
Leena Shah, DOAJ
Hamady Issaga Sy, Sénégal
Sanket Oswal, Wikimedia India
Chitralekha, University of Delhi
Chris Zielinski, University of Winchester, United Kingdom
Mourya Biswas, Prateek Media

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/news/delhi-declaration-on-open-access

Centre for Internet and Society

Developing Digital Open Knowledge Resources in Indian Languages

Developing Digital Open Knowledge Resources in Indian Languages

Day 1

Day 2

Detecting Encrypted Client Hello (ECH) Blocking

Designing Change? Gatekeepers in Digital Humanities

Designing a Human Rights Impact Assessment for ICANN’s Policy Development Processes

Design!publiC

Background

What is the Evidence that Design Thinking Positively Impacts Governments?

An Invitation to Dialogue

Draft Schedule

Individual Participation

Institutional Participation

Participation Enquiries

Design!Public

Schedule

Design in urban democracy: A question of survival

Design and the Open Knowledge Movement

Introduction

Exchange between Design Academics and Open Knowledge

Potential Means of Engagement with Open Knowledge in Design Practice

Applications of Open Knowledge in Design Education

Conclusion

Introduction

Exchange between Design Academics and Open Knowledge

Potential Means of Engagement with Open Knowledge in Design Practice

Applications of Open Knowledge in Design Education

Conclusion

Deployed

Video Proposal

Interview

Department of Science and Technology & Department of Biotechnology adopt Open Access Policy

Department of Information Technology Meeting on a National Policy on E-Accessibility

Department of Biotechnology and Department of Science, Ministry of Science and Technology, Government of India, release first draft of Open Access Policy

Demonetisation Survey Limits the Range of Feedback that can be Provided by the User

Delhi Declaration on Open Access

Preamble

Declaration