Centre for Internet and Society

AI and Healtchare Report

Admin — 2018-01-26T01:35:20Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/files/ai-and-healtchare-report

AI and Governance Case Study pdf

pranav — 2018-08-01T02:06:47Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/ai-and-governance-case-study-pdf

Ahmednagar — Marathi Wikipedia Workshop

Tanveer Hasan — 2013-07-26T09:34:47Z

Wikipedia Community members helped the Higher Education Innovation and Research Applications Programme (HEIRA), CSCS Bangalore organize a day-long workshop on ‘Digital Literacy’ at Ahmednagar College, Ahmednagar, Maharasthra on January 17, 2013. Tanveer Hasan of HEIRA shares with us the developments in this report.

Ahmednagar College is one of the participant colleges in the ‘Pathways to Higher Education’ programme anchored by HEIRA, and run in collaboration with CIS. This programme works closely with undergraduate students in three states to address the problem of quality of access to higher education. The focus of the programme is on inculcating critical and analytical skills which play a very important role in gaining access to knowledge.

The Wikipedia workshop in Marathi held at the Ahmednagar College intended to introduce the students to the concepts of open and free sources of knowledge, and encourage active Marathi editors to edit and populate the Marathi Wikipedia domain.

Yogesh Khandke was representing the Wikipedia community. He started off by explaining the five pillars of Wikipedia, the copyright issues and the importance of references and citations. As most of the students were new to the concepts of both editing and knowledge production, we faced a few problems in the beginning. Since the IP addresses were already cleared for multiple registrations we did not face that particular problem.

The students were asked to come up with material and information that they would want to add to the Marathi Wikipedia domain. We conducted a group activity where the groups exchanged the information they were planning to use. These groups researched, proof read and added to the information collected by their friends. We had stressed that all the information needed to be cited from a reliable source and must have a clear reference. Hence, a lot of unnecessary and opinionated information was cleared at the first level itself.

The hands-on editing session proved to be challenging as most of the students did not know how to type in Marathi and ended up using phonetic keyboards. The session ended with all the students having been registered as Wikipedia editors and most of the groups were successful in editing. A couple of groups created new pages as well.

Yogesh Khandke was of immense help and he was ably supported by Nagesh Shelake, Dept. of Sociology, New Arts and Science College, Ahmednagar.

A special thanks to Dr. S.B Iyyer, Department of Physics, Ahmednagar College and Coordinator of Pathways Cell, and Raikwad, Department of Commerce and Assistant Coordinator of Pathways Cell.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/ahmednagar-marathi-wikipedia-workshop-report

Ahead of hosting Modi, Facebook rebrands internet.org as Free Basics

praskrishna — 2015-10-18T14:21:52Z

Hinting at what could be vital points of discussion when Prime Minister Narendra Modi visits Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg on Sunday, the social media giant has rebranded its internet access enabling platform Internet.org as Free Basics.

The article was published by Business Standard on September 26, 2015. Pranesh Prakash was quoted.

This was announced by Chris Daniels, vice-president of Internet.org, at a press meet in Menlo Park on Friday. Zuckerberg confirmed the same and wrote on his Facebook wall.

Facebook has opened up its Free Basics platform, which means any app developer can now include their services on it. “This gives people the power to choose what apps they want to use.” Zuckerberg in his post also said the company has improved the security and privacy of Internet.org, which will support HTTPS web services as well. “Connectivity isn't an end in itself. It’s what people do with it that matters. We hope the improvements we've made help even more people get connected — so that our whole global community can benefit together,” Zuckerberg said in his post, in which he quoted the example of a soybean farmer from Maharashtra, Asif Mujhawar, who uses parenting app BabyCenter for free through Internet.org.

This is a significant move by Facebook, considering the backlash it had from various quarters in India following debates on net neutrality. Internet.org is an open platform by Facebook across 19 developing countries, including India, to enable easy access of selected apps and app-based services to people at zero cost. In India, it had partnered with Reliance Communications to offer free access to about 30 websites.

“One of the concerns was calling the service ‘Internet.org’, despite it representing only a tiny sliver of the Internet,” said Pranesh Prakash, policy director at the centre for Internet and Society, a nonprofit entity to promote safe internet access in the country.

He said by removing the Internet word, Facebook is now talking of its own larger internet affordability project and allowing app developers to build apps and host it on the Free Basic platform. “This gives people the power to choose what apps they want to use,” Prakash said.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/business-standard-september-26-2015-ahead-of-hosting-modi-facebook-rebrands-internet-dot-org-as-free-basics

Agreement on Procurement

pranesh — 2008-12-08T06:08:19Z

On December 6, 2008, at the closing of the third Internet Governance Forum in Hyderabad, India, the Dynamic Coalition on Open Standards (DCOS) released an agreement entitled the "Dynamic Coalition on Open Standards (DCOS) Agreement on Procurement in Support of Interoperability and Open Standards".

Dynamic Coalition on Open Standards (DCOS) Agreement on Procurement in Support of Interoperability and Open Standards

Third Internet Governance Forum (IGF)

Hyderabad, India

6 December 2008

Preamble

The Contracting Parties,

Recalling the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) Declaration of Principles which states that "[i]nternational standards aim to create an environment where consumers can access services worldwide regardless of underlying technology,"

Recognizing that standards are increasingly global concerns, involving goods and services that move in international trade across borders,

Aware that current competition and legal remedies may not be enough to solve the inherent tensions that routinely arise in the realm of patents and standards,

Desirous of encouraging procurement policies that require evaluation of multiple, competing products based on open ICT standards in order to ensure a level playing field for vendors, governments and consumers,

Cognizant of the need for procurement policies for software programs that are predicated upon an open standard,

Open Standards

Given the multiplicity of interpretations of the term open standards, for the purpose of this document we endorse as an acceptable definition the position contained in the European Union's draft European Interoperability Framework:

1) The open standard is adopted and will be maintained by a not-for-profit organisation, and its ongoing development occurs on the basis of an open decision-making procedure available to all interested parties (consensus or majority decision etc.).
2) The open standard has been published and the standard specification document is available either freely or at a nominal charge. It must be permissible to all to copy, distribute and use it for no fee or at a nominal fee.
3) The intellectual property - i.e. patents possibly present - of (parts of) the open standard is made irrevocably available on a royalty free basis.
4) There are no constraints on the re-use of the standard.

(IDABC EIF v2 draft (http://ec.europa.eu/idabc/en/document/7728))

As noted in the European Interoperability Framework cited above, open standards or technical specifications must allow all interested parties to implement the standards and to compete on quality and price. The goal is to have a competitive and innovative industry, not to protect market shares by raising obstacles to newcomers. Thus, open standards or technical specifications must be possible to implement in software distributed under the most commonly used open source licences, with no limitations arising from IPR associated with the standard in question.

In addition to the above requirements, it is recommended that there should be multiple independent implementations of the standard.

Governments, publicly funded and non-profit institutions agree to implement the following policies.

Governments, publicly funded and non-profit institutions

Hereby agree to the following measures in order to promote interoperability and accessibility through the use of open standards.

1. To create a policy statement on interoperability and open standards, to be available to employees and the public.

2. By 2010, procurement of all software should be vendor neutral and implement open standards

3. By 2010, tender specifications for hardware (including peripherals and mobile devices) should require that manufacturers provide the driver and interface information necessary to work with a reasonable range of proprietary and free operating system platforms.

4. By 2010, all public facing web pages should conform to W3C standards for structure, presentation and accessibility.

5. By 2010, tenders for the supply of web based services (for example, online reservations) must specify the requirements of point 4.

6. By 2010, agencies should implement policies regarding the storage and archiving of government data and records to ensure that data is stored in open data and document formats.

Signed by:

Aslam Raffee, Government IT Officers' Council, OSS Working Group, Republic of South Africa

Association for Progressive Communications (APC)

Bob Jolliffe, Freedom To Innovate, South Africa

Centre for Internet and Society, India

Hamid Rabiee, Sharif University of Technology, Iran

Knowledge Ecology International

Moving Republic, India

Shuttleworth Foundation, South Africa

Swathanthra Malayalam Computing, India

Endorsed by:

Bangladesh Friendship Education Society, Bangladesh

Indian Social Action Forum (INSAF), India

Foundation for Media Alternatives, Philippines

OpenForum Europe

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/publications/standards/dynamic-coalition-on-open-standards-dcos-agreement-on-procurement

Agenda

sunil — 2008-10-13T12:25:59Z

The Centre for Culture, Media & Governance, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi, and the Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore, jointly organise the first Open Access Day on the 14th of October 2008 at Tagore Hall, Dayar-i-Mir Taqi Mir, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi.

Agenda

Time	Session
1400 – 1415	Welcome and Introduction: Prof. Biswajit Das, Director, Centre for Culture, Media & Governance, Jamia Millia Islamia
1415 – 1535	Chair: Prof. Arif Ali, Head Dept. of Bio-Technology, Jamia Milia Islamia Panelists: Mr. Zakir Thomas, Project Director - Open Source Drug Discovery, and Dr. Anshu Bhardwaj, Scientist, CSIR, New Delhi. Dr. Andrew Lynn, Professor, Department of Bio-informatics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Prof. Subbiah Arunachalam, Distinguished Fellow, Centre for Internet and Society
1535 – 1600	Question and Answer Session Open Discussion
1600 - 1615	Vote of thanks and closure by Sunil Abraham, Director – Policy, Centre for Internet and Society.
	End with Tea/Coffee

Contact Details

New Delhi	Bangalore
Vibodh Parthasarathi Reader/Associate Professor Centre for Culture, Media and Governance Nelson Mandela House, Mujib Bagh Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi 110 025 P.: +91 11 26933810/26933842 M: +91 9873458688 E: ccmgjmi AT gmail.com W: http://jmi.nic.in/ccm	Sunil Abraham Director - Policy Centre for Internet and Society No. D2, 3rd Floor, Sheriff Chambers 14, Cunningham Road, Bangalore - 560 052 P: +91 80 4092 6283 F: +91 80 4114 8130 M: +91 9611100817 E: sunil AT cis-india.org W: www.cis-india.org

Map

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

Agenda

praskrishna — 2011-03-16T06:16:31Z

word file

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/advocacy/open-access-agenda

After Supreme Court Setback, Fintech Firms Await Clarity On Aadhaar

Admin — 2018-10-01T23:39:42Z

The 12-digit Aadhaar number is now out of bounds for fintech companies in India.

The article by Nishant Sharma was published in Bloomberg Quint on September 27, 2018. Pranesh Prakash was quoted.

Video

With the Supreme Court on Wednesday terming Aadhaar authentication by private companies as “unconstitutional”, companies such as online wallets and e-tailers, among others, will now have to make changes to how they onboard and verify customers, in addition to how they transact.

In a 567-page majority judgment authored by Justice Sikri and concurred upon by two other judges—Chief Justice Dipak Misra and Justice AM Khanwilkar—it said that Section 57 of the Aadhaar Act, which allows private companies to use Aadhaar for authentication services based on a contract between the corporate and an individual, would enable commercial exploitation of private data and hence is unconstitutional.

“What it essentially means is that the private bodies, such as lending platforms, wallets, or any private entity, cannot use Aadhaar for authentication,” said Anirudh Rastogi founder at Ikigai Law (formerly TRA), a law firm that specialises in representing businesses on data privacy.

The decision is set to impact private companies right from Flipkart-owned PhonePe, Paytm, Reliance Jio and Amazon, among others, which rely on Aadhaar for e-verification. Amazon recently launched cardless equated monthly installments on Amazon Pay through the digital finance platform Capital Float and asked customers to provide Aadhaar numbers or virtual ID and PAN details on the Amazon app for verification.

'Aadhaar Is Just Another ID'

Pranesh Prakash, fellow, Centre for Internet and Society, said that with this judgment Aadhaar is no longer an identity infrastructure as its creators have dreamt of. “It is now just another ID.”

For those opposed to Aadhaar, on privacy and security grounds, this may be a part victory. But for the Fintech industry it stymies the use of quick Aadhaar-based e-KYC (know your customer norms) to onboard customers. “The fintech industry thrives on the instant paperless mantra, and this move will curb its rapid growth, ” Amrish Rau, co-founder of PayU, said in a text message.

The verdict is also set to push up costs for the industry. Rau said: “Conducting physical KYC would be a costly affair, with every physical KYC costing about Rs 100 per person.”

Companies like PhonePe await more clarity. “We are waiting to hear from bodies like the Reserve Bank of India, UIDAI on what KYC that will be required for wallets moving ahead," Sameer Nigam, cofounder of PhonePe, said. "Whether we go to no KYC, lower limit environment or go to the physical KYC environment."

The judgment also stated that the identification number will not be mandatory for opening bank accounts, mobile-phone connections or for admissions into educational institutions. However, Aadhaar will continue to be mandatory for the distribution of state-sponsored welfare schemes including direct benefit transfers and the public distribution system. Taxpayers will have to link their Permanent Account Numbers to the biometric database.

Aadhaar-Based KYC: Allowed With Consent?

The Supreme Court has concluded that the part of section 57 which enables body corporate and individuals also to seek authentication, that too on the basis of a contract between the individual and such body corporate or person, would impinge upon the right to privacy of such individuals.

Prasanna S, a Supreme Court advocate and lawyer for one of the petitioners in the Aadhaar matter interpreted it to mean that even if a customer voluntarily wants to use Aadhaar for e-KYC, businesses cannot accept it.

They have struck down the part of Section 57 that allows use of Aadhaar based on a contract. A contract, by nature is voluntary, But since the court has struck down this part, even voluntary use won’t be permitted.

Prasanna S, Advocate, Supreme Court

Jaitley Hints At Legal Backing

Meanwhile, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Wednesday hinted that the Centre is likely to examine whether separate legal backing is needed for Section 57 of the Aadhaar Act, the newswire PTI reported. “So, let us first read the judgement. There are two-three prohibited areas. Are they because they are totally prohibited or are they because they need legal backing,” Jaitley was quoted as saying.

Rastogi of Ikigai Law said that the court has left open for the government to promulgate a law to enable private parties to use Aadhaar that can withstand judicial scrutiny.

Rahul Matthan, a technology partner at law firm Trilegal differed with this view. He said that since the apex court has ruled that private entities cannot access the Aadhaar infrastructure, it means that even if the government brings a specific law to allow for that, it would be unconstitutional.

Prasanna agreed with this interpretation.

The court has hinted that commercial exploitation of personal information will fail the proportionality test laid down by it in the Right to Privacy judgment. This is one of the grounds for them to conclude that Section 57 is unconstitutional. So even a law is introduced, private access will be impermissible.

Prasanna S, Advocate, Supreme Court

Are Aadhaar-Based KYCs Tainted?

Since the use of Aadhaar by private entities has been struck down, does it mean entities who have used it for KYC so far have to re-do that exercise? And data that was collected as part of Aadhaar-based KYC- does that need to be deleted?

The majority order hasn’t specifically addressed these questions, Matthan pointed out. But went on to explain that his reading of the judgment is that the court wants things to remain as they are.

The Supreme Court has said that collection of data before the Aadhaar Act was introduced is valid. If you follow that sentiment, may be we can argue that there’s no requirement to delete the data.

Rahul Matthan, Partner, Trilegal

Whatever has been done without the authority of law has to go, Prasanna said. But this outcome may not be practical and another hearing before the Supreme Court may be required to clear these questions, he added.

Private entities such as the online cab aggregator Ola have already removed eKYC from its e-wallet when BloombergQuint last checked. Others may follow suit.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/bloomberg-quint-nishant-sharma-september-27-2018-after-sc-setback-fintech-firms-await-clarity-on-aadhaar

After 15 Years, Is Free Access to Law Here to Stay?

rebecca — 2011-08-18T05:07:48Z

CIS, in collaboration with partners LexUM and SAFLII, is undertaking a Global Free Access to Law Study. Being the first of its kind within the Free Access to Law Movement, this comparative study will examine what free access to law initiatives do, evaluate their core benefits and identify factors determining of their sustainability. In the end, the free access to law study will provide future initiatives and existing LII networks with proven and adoptable best practices which will support the continued growth of the legal information commons.

The question in the title is the driving force behind a joint research initiative the Centre for Internet and Society has recently undertaken in collaboration with pioneering institutions, LexUM,and the South African Legal Information Institute. Over the past fifteen years, institutions providing free access to legal materials have transformed the modes in which legal information is produced and used. However, there have been few analyses of the ways in which legal information repositories operate. Lessons learned, best practices and successful models have not been systematically documented, and administrators may not have access to useful guidance or peer support. The study will bridge this gap by analyzing a variety of free access to law initiatives around the world in greater detail.

In 1992, the first Legal Information Institute (LII) at Cornell University began to place primary sources of law and interpretive legal materials online, free of charge. The Free Access to Law Movement soon expanded to form a broad network of LIIs who shared the belief that legal information is digital common property and should be accessible to all. Today, citizens around the world can access legal information in multiple languages through easily searchable databases. Among the resources available are statutes, bills, court decisions, bilateral treaties, law journal articles, legal reform documents and much more. This freely available legal information has helped make the law more accessible to audiences previously underserved by costly commercial databases, and has allowed comparative legal research to become more practicable than ever before.

Research will focus on gauging the broader societal effects of free access to law initiatives, as well as on understanding the diverse factors which contribute to or undermine their sustainability.The CIS will be overseeing research in Asia, while SAFLII and LexUM will cover South and West Africa, the South Pacific, Canada and Australia. The global scope of the study will facilitate the sharing of expertise and best practices within the global network of LIIs.

The value of creating a legal information commons has been clearly demonstrated. Access to legal materials helps to strengthen judicial systems, improve legal expertise, guide policymaking and maintain the rule of law. Legal transparency helps businesses assess risk and encourage entrepreneurship. Citizens and civil society actors require access to law to participate in the political process and assert their rights. These audiences form an important constituency for open access to legal scholarship and demonstrate the need to further examine the core benefits of free access to law initiatives.

Online free access to legal materials has also been an indispensable tool in underserved regions where a host of factors often undermine access to legal information. The following examples, derived from preliminary CIS research throughout Asia, demonstrate how free access to law can bridge various gaps in legal information accessibility. In some cases, laws may be completely unavailable. For example, bureaucrats may demand bribes before allowing access to copies of a law, or governments may wish to keep certain implementing guidelines or regulations a secret. In other cases, a law might have simply been lost through lack of proper storage or record-keeping.

A second problem occurs when laws and case law are available only in certain locations or certain forms. A law may be available only in hard copy or in one or two libraries in the capital city, for example. This causes difficulties for citizens and practitioners in remote areas who lack the resources to travel. Sometimes, the libraries containing the legal information also may require special permissions to access. In other instances, legal materials may have been digitized but not properly stored or networked.

Digitizing and uploading laws to organized, searchable databases presents its own challenges, and some governments lack the technical capacity to do so. However, digitizing and uploading laws does not guarantee general public access. In some countries, laws may be online but placed in pay-per-use databases. And some governments retain a copyright or similar intellectual property rights in their laws and other documents. This may mean that NGOs or LIIs cannot copy, consolidate, or re-post certain legal information without exposing themselves to copyright liability. The commercialization of legal information also restricts access to individuals and firms able to pay costly subscription fees.

Copyright and the commercialization of legal information can inhibit the free flow of legal information—notably when legal information can be better organized, preserved and disseminated further under more open standards. Because of the importance of free access to law, a significant focus of the research will be to identify factors that contribute to the sustainability and success of free access to law initiatives. This is of great importance in Asia, where the local capacities of LIIs require further strengthening before their databases can begin to rival their commercial counterparts.

Many challenges remain for the development and sustainability of free access to law initiatives in the Asian region. Searchable legal information must be provided in both English and regional languages, while local technical capacities require further development. Mariya Badeva-Bright of SAFLII also notes that LIIs need to secure working partnerships within the judicial branch of government in order to reduce the burdens of digitization and to promote common standards in preparation of legal material. The AsianLII has only begun to scrape the surface of valuable legal information that is potentially available and must continue to develop and strengthen partnerships in the region.

The study will have several concrete results. Upon completion of the study, a Free Access to Law Best Practices Handbook will be published and will serve as a comprehensive knowledge resource for both existing and nascent free access law initiatives. The handbook will outline various steps in creating and maintaining successful free access to law initiatives, while ensuring that important aspects of design and sustainability are not overlooked. Also, a comprehensive online library will host current and future materials relating to the free access to law movement, including a collection of free access to law case studies.

Research by the CIS, LexUM, SAFLII, and their respective team of researchers is expected to commence within the next few months. In the end, the free access to law study will provide future initiatives and existing LII networks with proven and adoptable best practices. This research will increase the chance that nascent initiatives will be successful, and support the continued growth of the thriving legal information commons.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/after-15-years-is-free-access-to-law-here-to-stay

Advocating for Openness: Nine Ways Civil Society Groups Have Mobilized to Defend Internet Freedom

Admin — 2017-11-26T03:58:47Z

The debate over whether the Internet is a better tool for democratic empowerment or authoritarian control misconstrues the nature of the democratic challenges of the digital age.

The blog post by Sarah Oh was published by the Center for International Media Assistance on November 15, 2017

Key Findings

Civil society groups from the Global South are leading the charge to advocate for an Internet that remains open, pluralistic, and democratic. The nine case studies highlighted in this report demonstrate various ways groups in different countries have successfully fought for policies and norms that strengthen Internet freedom and digital rights. These strategies include awareness-raising, nonviolent direct action, regional and international coalition-building, and strategic litigation.

Media freedom advocates have been at the forefront of many Internet freedom efforts.
Threats to independent media online and freedom of expression continue to mount as authoritarian regimes become more technologically savvy.
Building broad civil society coalitions around Internet rights increases the chances of long-term success.

Introduction

The debate over whether the Internet is a better tool for democratic empowerment or authoritarian control misconstrues the nature of the democratic challenges of the digital age. The Internet is not a tool, but a complex domain of “competing forces and constraints.”1 These forces are comprised of powerful businesses, states, politicians, criminal enterprises, advocacy groups: in short, all of the elements present in any democracy. But in this cyber-democracy, forces compete in part on the shifting ground of the technological and physical infrastructure of the Internet, where some players wield more power than others with an ability to mold the terrain in their favor. Authoritarian states aware of what is at stake in the evolution of the Internet are beginning to engage in long-term and well-resourced efforts to undermine the democratic rights of citizens in this more fundamental way.

In a reference to the distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks that take down a specific website, these broader efforts represent what some have called a “distributed denial-of-democracy” (DDoD) attack aimed at reducing the utility of the Internet for genuine democratic discourse. These efforts, which are coordinated and well resourced, are often more insidious, harder to detect, and have the overall effect of undermining civic engagement and overall trust in the media ecosystem.

And while the diffuse and fast-changing nature of Internet can at times make it difficult for authoritarian regimes to exert their control, the complex interplay between technology, laws, infrastructure, and socio-political factors shaping the Internet make it equally difficult for democratic actors to counteract these DDoD strategies. As an additional obstacle, the values that underpin Internet freedom can be sidelined in the forums and governing bodies that set Internet standards by the dominance in those spaces of private tech companies concerned primarily with generating profits.

Formidable though they may be, these challenges are not insurmountable. Civil society groups from the Global South are leading the charge to advocate for an Internet that remains open, pluralistic, and democratic. The nine case studies highlighted in this report demonstrate various ways groups in different countries have successfully fought for policies and norms that strengthen Internet freedom and digital rights. These strategies include awareness-raising, nonviolent direct action, regional and international coalition-building, and strategic litigation.

Each of the following case studies corresponds to one of the nine guiding principles of a Democratic Framework to Interpret Open Internet Principles. This framework was collaboratively developed by a network of civil society groups worldwide to illuminate the ways that an open Internet is essential for the functioning of democratic societies. It was inspired by the norms and standards developed by the Internet Rights and Principles Dynamic Coalition (IRPC) of the United Nations Internet Governance Forum.

The framework is an important starting point for more effective, coordinated effort to ensure that the Internet remains a welcoming place for democratic life. Its aim is to create a consensus around the values that should shape the future development of the Internet. But moreover, it also provides an avenue for understanding and sharing knowledge on the concrete strategies that can be put into practice in different contexts to make sure that the Internet remains a level playing field. The following nine examples demonstrate how citizen groups can mobilize to enshrine such democratic principles in cyberspace.

“The debate over whether the Internet is a better tool for democratic empowerment or authoritarian control misconstrues the nature of the democratic challenges of the digital age.”

1. Freedom of Expression

In the Philippines, a cybercrime law introduced in 2012 proposed increasing penalties for libel and giving authorities unchecked power to track information online. Internet freedom activists worried several provisions of the law would infringe on freedom of expression by preventing Filipinos from freely posting content on websites, and participating in online forums and discussions without fear of being blocked or facing serious penalties. In response, pro-democracy organizations from across the political spectrum joined together to challenge the constitutionality of the law. Through protests, roundtables, and capacity building activities, they raised awareness and encouraged advocacy efforts around the dangers the law posted to freedom of expression and privacy. The Foundation for Media Alternatives (FMA ), a digital rights organization founded after the fall of the Marcos dictatorship and the Philippine Internet Freedom Alliance (PIFA), a broad nationwide coalition of pro-democracy and Internet freedom advocates, were among the organizations in the front lines on the struggle. PIFA was even one of the 20 organizations to file 15 petitions to the Supreme Court about the constitutionality of the law.

Public efforts in the courts and actions in the streets contributed to the takedown of three contested provisions of the law, including provision that would allow government to block or restrict access to computer data. The Supreme Court declared these provisions unconstitutional and delayed implementation of the law. Despite public concerns about the surviving provisions, the national campaign against the cybercrime law led to a turning point for Filipino activists; it showed the power of people coming together and fighting for the importance of digital rights in the Philippines. Initially fragmented, the campaign led to a larger movement unified under the goal of protecting human rights and freedom of expression online. Thus, it took the introduction of a flawed law and active public campaigns to initiate a broader dialogue about privacy, surveillance, and digital security. Digital rights communities across Southeast Asia have been inspired by Filipino advocacy efforts, which they have understood to be an example of how to communicate the balance required between anti-cybercrime measures with fundamental rights to a public audience.

2. Freedom of Assembly and Association

Social media is an important organizing tool for journalists and advocacy groups in Uganda. Facebook, WhatsApp, and other messaging applications have been used to share political knowledge, connect leaders with supporters, and organize events — even share information about government abuses. During national ‘Walk to Work’ protests in 2011, organized to protest living costs after presidential elections, Facebook and Twitter provided a steady stream of updates from protestors, bystanders, and journalists.

Using social media, however, can have dangerous consequences for marginalized groups such as the LGBT community. The government of Uganda has been known to collect user information and prosecute individuals based on information shared on social media. Uganda is one of 76 countries where homosexuality is currently criminalized, and LGBT activists fear that their online conversations will be monitored and used against them. By posting information taken from photos and content posted on Facebook, a local tabloid exposed the identity of numerous members of the LGBT community in 2011 and again in 2014. The tabloid stories in 2011 are believed to have contributed to the killing of David Kato, a prominent gay rights activist.

Furthermore, the government has repeatedly restricted access for advocacy groups to use the Internet to share political information. In 2016, the country’s media regulator restricted the use of WhatsApp, Facebook, and Twitter to prevent the organizing of protests before presidential elections in February as the government had done before in 2011. In both cases, the electoral commission enforced the social media shut-down.

Civil society groups have responded in two ways. First, they have sought to deepen their digital security capacity. To protect against threats to journalists, LGBT organizations, and other groups have learned how to use Facebook and social media applications more securely and to implement other practices that increase their privacy. In the lead up to the 2016 election this included the use of virtual private networks (VPNs) to share information. Civil society groups spread information about how to use them through radio broadcasts. The fact that the hashtag #UgandaDecides trended on Twitter shows how they were able to spread their knowledge through local networks and connect with international media. Secondly, civil society groups built coalitions with international organizations to draw attention to abuses taking place in Uganda. In 2016, Access Now supported a coalition of groups to demand that the government stop the Internet shutdown as part of the #KeepitOn campaign.

3. Accessibility

In Nigeria, national broadband plans have overlooked rural communities, leaving them with low bandwidth and high-cost options for Internet access. This means that broadband and mobile data fees are unaffordable to many in Nigeria, especially the poor. Fixed-line broadband subscriptions cost an average of 39 percent of average income, and mobile broadband packages cost 13 percent. Given that approximately 80 percent of Nigerians earn below the poverty line ($2 a day or less), access to the Internet is out of reach and unaffordable for a majority of citizens in Nigeria.

The Alliance for Affordable Internet, a global coalition working on Internet affordability, works with Nigerian civil society leaders to raise awareness around this issue through thematic working groups. The consumer advocacy and pricing transparency working group, for instance, works closely with a coalition of Nigerian NGOs that have been leading campaigns to raise awareness about pricing and taxation policies that have been proposed in Nigeria. One proposed policy includes imposing a nine percent tax on voice, data, and SMS services to consumers. This policy would make the Internet dramatically more expensive for Nigerian consumers. Groups say they worry about the consequences of the proposed policy in an environment where farmers are forced to climb trees just to get a stable Internet connection.

Civil society leaders who are part of the coalition have worked to build a healthy dialogue between regulators, civil society, and the government. A key strategy, according to activists, has been encouraging groups to find constructive ways to work with government and leveraging the interests of each of these groups to protect and drive down costs for Nigerian consumers. They seek to build relationships with the regulator and to inform them about ways to better communicate with and engage consumer groups, such as sharing their content through social media rather than press releases. Another important learning has been identifying champions within government to work on these issues.

4. Privacy and Data Protection

In Burma, gaps in the law have left citizens vulnerable when it comes to privacy and data protection. Restrictions on privacy have eased since the country’s transition from military rule, but a lack of data protection laws and general lack of awareness around privacy and data protection present significant challenges for protecting an open Internet.

Messaging applications such as Viber and Facebook Messenger, for example, are the de-facto tool for communication for activists and are used to organize political events and activities. Cheaper than voice calls, far more accessible than landlines, and easier to use than email, these tools are the primary way people in Burma communicate. Activists have received harsh penalties for sharing content that may be viewed as threatening state security. These applications are often not secure, making it possible for Burma state authorities or agents of the state to intercept their conversations. During a crackdown on student protests in March 2015, mobile phones were taken by police. Activists worried at the time that information on these phones would eventually be used against them.

Observing the need to protect activists and educate them about data protection, activists in 2016 formed a coalition, Digital Rights MM. The coalition, led by Phandeeyar, Myanmar Center for Responsible Business, Myanmar ICT for Development, and Free Expression Myanmar, has led a national conversation on the issue. Drawing on expertise from the region and international organizations, 22 local Burma-based organizations have been successful in pointing out gaps when it comes to privacy and freedom of expression in the national telecommunications law, a comprehensive law that oversees the development of the telecommunications sector in Burma. They also participated in meetings with the government and launched a public facing campaign #ourvoiceourhluttaw pushing to amend 23 articles, including one on lawful interception of data.

“Messaging applications such as Viber and Facebook Messenger, for example, are the de-facto tool for communication for activists and are used to organize political events and activities.”

5. Personal Safety and Security

In Pakistan, women face threats of physical, sexual, and psychological harassment online. Leaking explicit photos and threats of blackmail are growing increasingly more common. From 2014 to 2015, more than 3,000 cybercrimes were reported to the Federal Investigation Agency and of those cases, nearly half were targeted to women on social media. Observers estimate far more cases go unreported. In fact, in workshops conducted by the The Digital Rights Foundation, many female college students reported that they did not know cyber harassment was a crime.

Online platforms are an important space for political engagement, expression, and mobilization in Pakistan. Thus, online harassment directly impacts the political participation of women, including female journalists and women politicians. In 2016 the Digital Rights Foundation established a Cyber Harassment Helpline that women can reach out to for help when they are harassed on the Internet. One of the main objective of the helpline is to help bridge the trust deficit between survivors and law enforcement agencies. An analysis of more than 400 cases showed that the most common barriers to equal participation are non-consensual use of information, impersonation, account hacking, black mailing, and receiving unsolicited messages; the most targeted groups include women, children, human rights defenders, and minority communities. The Digital Rights Foundation has also been leading efforts to strengthen legal protections for women and responding to survivors by recommendations to law enforcement agencies and the government. Pakistan has a National Response Centre for Cybercrime, but it has faced challenges serving women outside of major cities.

6. Inclusion

In India, the population of people with disabilities is estimated to be as high as 150 million people, and the recorded rates of those who are vision-impaired are among the highest in the world. Indian digital rights advocacy groups, like the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) have worked to ensure that these individuals are able to participate fully online by promoting policies that prioritize accessibility. These include the National Policy on Universal Electronics Accessibility, the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, and Guidelines for Indian Government Web (GIGW), which all require government information be shared in formats that are accessible. Advocacy groups, however, have successfully shown that policies alone are not enough and have taken action to ensure persons with disabilities have access to critical resources and information online.

Mobile phones in particular are a vital portal to access government services, but mobile applications remain largely inaccessible to many people with disabilities, especially those with vision disabilities. For example, CIS observed in 2015 that the MyGov, the Indian Government’s mobile citizen engagement platform and the Prime Minister’s application was highly inaccessible: screens cannot be navigated by visually impaired users and can also not be read using a screen reader. Based on this, CIS with other advocacy organizations worked on framing accessibility guidelines for mobile applications recommended to the Government of India as a standard. Advocacy groups, such as the National Centre for Promotion of Employment for Disabled People (NCPEDP), have also been appealing to the private sector to ensure products designed to serve these needs are affordable and readily available to people with disabilities. They appeal to Indian companies and policymakers by advocating for the universal appeal of assistive technology to ensure disabled communities are not left behind.

Sustained advocacy, new legal mandates applied to public and private sectors, and increased research in this domain have helped advance the issue of accessibility of mobile applications. The country’s National Informatics Centre has set up a committee to revise the GIGW to bring them up to speed with international standards.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/accessibility/news/cima-sarah-oh-november-15-2017-openness-nine-ways-civil-society-groups-have-mobilized-to-defend-internet-freedom

Adopting ORCID as a Unique Identifier will Benefit all Involved in Scholarly Communication

Subbiah Arunachalam and Muthu Madhan — 2016-10-28T16:28:49Z

ORCID, the Open Researcher and Contributor ID, is a nonprofit, community-driven effort to create and maintain a registry of unique researcher identifiers and a transparent method of linking research activities and outputs to these identifiers. Together with other persistent identifiers for scholarly works such as digital object identifiers (DOIs) and identifiers for organizations, ORCID makes research more discoverable.

The research paper jointly authored by Prof. Subbiah Arunachalam and Muthu Madhan was published on the eprints@IISc repository on October 28, 2016. The article was originally published in the National Medical Journal of India, Vol. 29, No.4, 2016.

It helps ensure that one’s grants, publications and outputs are correctly attributed. It helps the research community not just in aggregating publications, but in every stage of research, viz. publishing, reviewing, profiling, metrics, accessing and archiving. Funding agencies in Austria, Australia, Denmark, Portugal, Sweden and the UK, and the world’s leading scholarly publishers and associations have integrated their systems with ORCID registry. Among the BRICS countries, China and South Africa are adopting ORCID avidly. India is yet to make a beginning. If research councils and funding agencies in India require researchers to adopt ORCID and link ORCID iDs to funding as well as tracking performance, it will help them keep track of the workflow. Journal editors can also keep track of contributions made by different authors and work assigned to different reviewers through their ORCID iDs.

INTRODUCTION

Names in scholarly publishing are not all that simple. Names here mean both names of authors of papers and names of researchers referred to in those papers. They can cause much confusion to researchers, editors of journals, database producers, librarians and bibliometricists, but if we handle them correctly we can overcome most of the problems.

SCHOLARLY LITERATURE: DISAMBIGUATION OF NAMES AND AGGREGATING ONE’S WORKS

As early as 1969, Eugene Garfield had expressed his dismay at the ‘needless ambiguity and confusion’ caused by authors who omit parts of their names and initials in their published works, and recommended that ‘scientists who are just now embarking on their careers would be well advised to measure the information content on their names as they appear in indexes such as Index Medicus, Physics Abstracts, Biological Abstracts and Science Citation Index.[1] Some 12 years later, he wrote a detailed paper on the problems the scholarly world faces on account of mere names of people.[2] He had reasons to worry more than anyone else; as the publisher of Science Citation Index, Current Contents and several other search and indexing tools for the world’s scientists and scholars, he had the unenviable task of processing millions of papers and author names not only in the byline of these papers but also in the references cited in them and rendering these author names accurately and attributing research papers to the right authors and institutions within a few weeks of publication.

People hail from all parts of the world and from different cultures, each having its own peculiarities in naming their people so much so people from one culture may find names of another strange. Added to that are the ways names from different cultures and languages are transliterated into the Roman script. The names in most parts of the western world have three parts, viz. the first name (or given name), middle name and last name (also called the family name or surname). Often the last name may have more than one word, e.g. Duncan Smith, von Braun, van der Waals, de Solla Price. The prefix ‘van’ in some names may be spelt with a capital V, albeit rarely, e.g. Van de Graaff (of generator fame). In some cultures there are a very large number of people having the same surname. For example, close to 85% of China’s population have one of only 129 surnames, and three names in particular, viz. Wang, Li and Chen, are predominant among authors publishing currently. Also there are two Chinese surnames that can be spelt as Wang when publishing in English language, says Jane Qiu.[3] Eight Chinese names transliterate in Roman script into Wei Wang and to avoid ambiguity in such cases journals may allow authors the option to include their names in their own language in parentheses after the transliterated name.[4] Among Korean authors, Kim and Park account for a large percentage. In India there are many Agarwals, Guptas, Mukherjees, Raos, Sharmas and Singhs among publishing authors. While some Indians have two-part surnames, e.g. Ghosh Dastidar, Guha Thakurta and Sen Sharma, a few drop their initials altogether, e.g. Karmeshu.

Some have hyphenated names, e.g. Noel-Baker, Szent-Györgyi, Julius Wagner-Jauregg, all three Nobel laureates. Curiously, Noel-Baker was born Philip Baker, but took Noel as his second surname on marriage to Irene Noel and subsequently started hyphenating his surname. But in the majority of cases hyphenated names are those of women who add their husband’s family name to their own, e.g. Françoise Barré-Sinoussi, Rita Levi-Montalcini, both of whom won Nobel Prizes for medicine, and Irene JoliotCurie, who won a Nobel Prize for chemistry. In a variation, Marie Curie, née Sklodowska, who won Nobel Prizes in both physics and chemistry, used her husband’s name ahead of her maiden name: Marie Curie, née Sklodowska. Some examples from among Fellows of the Indian Academy of Sciences and the Indian National Science Academy: mathematician Rajinder Jeet HansGill, photochemist Krishna Kamini Rohatgi-Mukherjee, plant physiologist Renu Khanna-Chopra, condensed matter physicist Tanusri Saha-Dasgupta, development biologist Professor Priyambada Mohanty-Hejmadi, conservation biologist Professor Asha Chandola-Saklani, and neurophysiologist Professor Sushil Dua-Sharma. Many of these women scientists have published papers both under their maiden names and under their hyphenated family names.

In Japan, married couples are required by a 1898 law, which is valid till date, to have the same surname, even though giving up one’s maiden name does disadvantage women in certain ways, including professionally.[5]

Both retaining one’s maiden name and adopting the husband’s surname have their advantages. If one achieves a lot as a young person, one would be better off retaining the name that brought her the reputation in the first place. If one achieves much after taking her husband’s name, she will have much to lose if she ever gets a divorce. Better to hold on to one’s maiden name, says Kalpana Sharma.[6] Some professionals, e.g. Bhatnagar award winner and fluid flows expert Professor Rama Govindarajan, has chosen this option. The situation is changing in India albeit slowly. A woman in Maharashtra can now use either her father’s or husband’s names in all official documents.

There are also rare instances of people changing their names midway in their career, e.g. a woman electrical engineer of Indian origin working in the University of Waterloo has over the years published under three different names, viz. K.H. Sheshakamal, Shesha Jayaram, Shesha H. Jayaram (personal communication, Muthanna J, 23 Dec 2015).

Missing middle name in the byline, spelling mistakes and problems faced in printing (or processing by computers) texts with diacritical marks can all lead to ambiguity. But with all these vagaries, it is important that contributions such as papers, patents, datasets and software are attributed to the right contributors.

Many researchers have recognized the problem of author name disambiguation. A Scopus search (on 28 June 2015) using the key words ‘author name’ and ‘disambiguation’ led to 86 papers in the 13-year period 2003–2015. Of these, 46 had the keywords in the title. Some of these papers were related to the problems faced by biomedical databases, e.g.

Author Name Disambiguation for PubMed, http://online library.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/asi.23063/pdf
Author Name Disambiguation in MEDLINE, http://www. ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2805000

From 2012 onwards PubMed uses a ranking algorithm for author searches to show more relevant results by disambiguating common author names.[7] This helps pooling papers by the real A.K. Sen when there are papers by others with the same name and initials.

The name ambiguity problem can only be solved collaboratively, when all stakeholders agree on a standard identification scheme.

Rachel Bruce, deputy chief innovation officer, Joint Information Systems Committee (Jisc), UK, says that our inability to associate valuable research outputs with their right authors ‘has led to extremely inefficient research management and difficulty in identifying what has been produced. Ineffective reporting and sharing of research impact on both individual researcher’s and universities’ profiles.’ According to her, ‘wider adoption and use of Open Researcher and Contributor ID (ORCID)’ is the solution to this problem.[8]

WHAT IS ORCID?

A person’s ORCID iD takes the form of a unique 16-digit number, e.g. 0000-0000-0000-0000. ORCID also gives each person a web page profile based on the iD, e.g. http://orcid.org/0000-00024398-4658, listing their iD number, name(s), institution(s) and publications. (Generally ORCID is used for the organization and the registry, and ORCID iD to denote the identifier itself.) Publications here go beyond research publications such as journal articles, conference papers, dissertations, reports, research techniques, software and inventions to include books, lectures/ speeches, websites, etc.

These profiles or records together comprise the ORCID registry. This registry of unique researcher identifiers and a transparent method of linking research activities and outputs to these identifiers (http://orcid.org/node/47) is created and maintained by an open, non-profit, community-driven effort. ORCID iDs help distinguish individuals with common names, and they are not affected by changes in name or name order or alphabet in which the name is rendered. ORCID is researcher-controlled; the researcher decides what information is included in her ORCID record.

ORCID iDs can be embedded in research workflows. If included by the publisher or funding agency, they are part of the metadata associated with scholarly works and grants. Together with other persistent identifiers for scholarly works such as DOIs and identifiers for organizations, ORCID makes research more discoverable.

But ORCID is not the first such attempt to associate unambiguously research papers (and other output such as datasets and software) with the right authors. Fenner has listed a number of them.[9] Some of these cover only specific fields. Some are country specific. Some are proprietary. Some are linked to specific databases while others want to cover a wide area of science and scholarship. Fenner’s list includes RePEc Author (set up by Thomas Krichel in 1999), LATTES (an information platform mandatory for researchers in Brazil, set up by the National Council of Scientific and Technological Development or CNPq, in 1999), VIAF (set up by OCLC in 2003), NARCIS (set up in 2004 by the Royal Academy of Sciences of the Netherlands and mandatory for all researchers in the Netherlands), arXiv Author ID (set up in 2005 by Cornell University for researchers in physics and related disciplines), Scopus Author ID (set up in 2006 by Elsevier), Names Project Mimas (set up in 2007 by the British Library for authors and institutions in all academic disciplines), Researcher ID (set up in 2008 by Thomson Reuters) and Author Claim (set up by Thomas Krichel in 2008).

If there are many author identity services already available, why add ORCID, one may ask. The other services are not truly interoperable, whereas ORCID allows linkage to other identifiers such as Scopus ID and Researcher ID. ORCID is the only service trying to associate its identifier with other existing author identifiers, with more than publications, and to collaborate across the community to embed it at the time that a work is ‘released’ by a researcher. Also, most other services are linked to a single bibliographic database (e.g. Researcher ID is linked to Web of Science).

‘Thus, since none of the available author identifier services looked like the solution to the name ambiguity problem, the ORCID initiative was started in late 2009 and formed as a nonprofit organization in August 2010.’[10]

Why should a researcher have an ORCID iD?

This section draws on information mainly from private communication with the Executive Director and other staff of

ORCID and the Library Guide of the University of Southampton.[11]

ORCID helps ensure that one’s grants, publications and outputs are correctly attributed. It is for life, irrespective of where one chooses to live and work. Connections between the ORCID registry and other databases help one to keep one’s research profile updated and to make it visible worldwide. Authors with an ORCID iD can have Crossref automatically push information about their published work to their ORCID record.[12]

Often researchers waste much time in filling forms that require address, employment history, collaborator names, affiliation, etc. when applying for jobs, awards, academy fellowships or grants or submitting manuscripts to journals. One can have all such information in one’s ORCID profile and draw upon it at short notice. Researchers can save much of their productive time by linking their ORCID iDs to the grants or manuscript processing systems.

As the Caltech Library Guide points out, as one collaborates across disciplines, institutions and borders, one ‘must interact with an increasing number and diversity of research information systems. Entering data over and over again can be time-consuming, and often frustrating’ (http://libguides.caltech.edu/orcid).

To obtain the list of publications of a researcher from a database such as Web of Science, one would need to give the name (with all variants), research domains and names of organizations (with all their variants) associated with the author. With all that, one may not get the full list. But if one uses the researcher’s ORCID iD in the identifier field, the search will give the correct list instantaneously.

Anstey, editor of the 125-year-old British Journal of Dermatology, has explained lucidly why researchers, editors and funders should embrace ORCID and how through ORCID iDs one could connect to websites such as Web of Science, figshare, Impact story and others.[13]

How do researchers get an ORCID iD?

Scientists, researchers, teachers, students, clinicians, scholars, authors and anyone at all, contributing to scholarly outputs from anywhere in the world can sign up for a free ORCID iD through the ORCID website (https://orcid.org/register). It is also possible to create an ID at other websites that are integrated with ORCID, for example manuscript submission websites of journals. About 5000 journals, including those published by the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE), Taylor & Francis, and Cambridge University Press, use ScholarOne developed by Thomson Reuters and whenever one submits a paper to these journals one is asked to provide an ORCID iD. And if you do not have one you can create it through the publisher’s Application Program Interface (API). Claiming an ORCID iD is not at all difficult. After claiming, researchers can associate the ORCID iDs with their education and employment details and details related to collaborators, publications and outputs.

Including one’s publications is simple. One can import bibliographic details of one’s publications having unique identifiers (e.g. DOI, ISBN) from the list of databases integrated with ORCID registry. The list includes Scopus, Web of Science, Europe PubMed Central, Crossref Metadata Search, Redalyc, etc.[14]One can just log in to ORCID and choose the database from which one wants to import bibliographic data. For publications that are not indexed by the databases integrated with ORCID, one can use the template provided by ORCID to manually add details. Also ORCID has created a tool by which one can import bibliographic data from BibTeX (.bib) files into one’s ORCID record, including files exported from Google Scholar and other popular reference management tools.[15]

Is one’s ORCID private information?

Of course, one can choose which information to be assigned as public or private in one’s record except the actual iDs assigned by ORCID that are designed to be publicly available. Once researchers have claimed their ORCID iD, the settings are in their sole control. ORCID has a privacy selector option that lets one set the privacy level of all new works, education, employment and funding items. Usually, everyone makes the list of publications public.

ORCID features

ORCID offers its essential features for free to individual researchers and organizations across the world. Researchers would be able to automatically update their ORCID record with links to published manuscripts in which they have included their ORCID iD. However, ORCID charges membership fees from organizations such as publishers, funders, and academic and research institutions, in order to sustain the registry and the mission to achieve name disambiguation, and in return offers them premium API services and personalized technical support. Also, when many organizations join as a consortium, they benefit from reduced ORCID membership costs and enhanced technical support.

ORCID conforms to the values of an open scholarly infrastructure organization.[16] Indeed, Public Knowledge Project (PKP) Director John Willinsky considers ORCID ‘an important emerging technology with opportunities to help shape and improve the open access publishing landscape worldwide’.[17]Organizations can integrate ORCID iDs into research management systems and workflows using the free public API. ORCID releases a public data file annually under Creative Commons License (CC0 1.0 Public Domain Dedication) to support broad access to data that are made public by individual researchers through their ORCID records. The file contains the public information associated with each user’s ORCID record. Each record is included as a separate file in both JSON and XML formats (http://orcid.org/content/ orcid-public-data-file-2014).

ORCID helps institutions track one’s work, compile information for university-level reporting (including total funding received by its scholars), and more efficiently manage information on faculty profiles. By eliminating redundancies and automating some reporting functions, ORCID will be especially helpful in reducing time and monies spent on other assessment activities such as the Research Excellence Framework (REF) in the UK.[18]

Feedback from a pilot study with eight UK universities showed that organizations that have adopted ORCID were likely to see ‘measurable efficiency improvements within two years of implementation—especially in internal data quality, streamlining of publications management, and enhanced reporting to funders— with accrued benefits increasing steadily over the following three to four years.’[19]

Jan Jan Jan Jan

2013 2014 2015 2016

Year

FIG 1. Growth of ORCID iDs (http://support.orcid.org/ knowledgebase/articles/150557-number-of-orcid-ids)

Funders, 5%

Associations, 7%

Repositories,

10%

Publishers,

13%

Research institutes,

65%

FIG 2. Sectoral distribution of ORCID members (Haak LL, personal communication, 30 Sep 2015)

Middle East and

Africa, 2% South America, 1%

Australasia, 6%

Asia, 8%

North Europe, 53%

America,

30%

FIG 3. Geographical distribution of ORCID members (Haak LL, personal communication, 30 Sep 2015)

Uptake of ORCID

The number of live ORCID iDs grew rapidly from late 2012 (Fig. 1) and as of 29 July 2016, it exceeded 2.43 million. These are currently used by more than 200 research and workflow platforms at academic and other research institutions, at funding agencies and at publishers.

As of mid-December 2015, more than 350 organizations have opted for ORCID’s member services and are at different stages of integrating ORCID iDs into their systems and workflows (Miyairi N, personal communication, 18 Dec 2015). As of 30 September 2015, 65% of ORCID members were universities (Fig. 2) spread all over the globe (Fig. 3). A representative list of different categories of members is provided in Box 1. The large European contingent is a result of three national consortia. These proportions are expected to be fluid over the next couple of years as more consortia are formed and join ORCID (Haak LL, personal communication, 30 Sep 2015).

Recognizing that publishers can promote systems that would provide support to researchers and to science, commencing January 2016, eight publishers will be requiring the use of ORCID iDs by corresponding authors during the publication process. These include the American Association for Advancement of Science (AAAS; publishers of Science), American Geophysical Union

(AGU), eLife, EMBO, Hindawi, IEEE, the Public Library of

Box 1. Uptake of ORCID Among the long list of members of ORCID are:

Publishers: AIP Publishing, Elsevier, National Academy of Sciences (USA), Oxford University Press, Public Library of Science (PLoS), Science Open, Springer, Taylor & Francis, Wiley, Wolters Kluwer

Associations: American Association for Advancement of Science (AAAS), American Astronomical Society, American Chemical Society, American Psychological Association, American Physical Society, American Society of Microbiology, American Society of Civil Engineers, Association of Computing Machinery, Electrochemical Society, Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE), IOP, Modern Language Association, Royal Society of Chemistry

Universities: Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Caltech, Cornell University, Lund University, Stockholm University, City University of Hong Kong, National Taiwan University, CINECA, Italy’s consortium of 70 universities and four research institutes

Academies: African Academy of Science, Chinese Academy of Science, Royal Society

Funding agencies: National Institutes of Health (USA), Department of Energy (USA), Wellcome Trust (UK), National Institute for Health Research (UK), Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (Portugal)

Intergovernmental bodies: CABI, CERN, International Food Policy Research Institute, International Water Management Institute

Libraries: British Library, Royal Library – Denmark

Repositories: Social Science Research Network (SSRN) For the full list of members, see http://orcid.org/about/ community/members

Science (PLoS), and the Royal Society. More than 3000 journals are already collecting ORCID iDs from corresponding authors. Currently about 75% of all registrations are through journal accounts.

Similarly, six consortia too will require the use of ORCID iDs. These are: Jisc (50 universities and research councils, UK), Italy/ ANVUR (70+ universities and research institutes), Australia, via the Australian Access Federation (40 universities, research institutes, and Australian Research Council and National Health and Medical Research Council funders), and three library consortia in the US: Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC) consisting of 15 universities in the US midwest, the Greater Western Library Alliance (GWLA), a consortium of 35 research libraries located in the central and western US, and the North East Research Libraries Consortium (NERL) comprising 29 core member academic research libraries and approximately 90 affiliate member academic and/or research libraries.

Jisc negotiated an ORCID consortium through which universities would benefit from premium ORCID membership at significantly reduced costs. The official launch event for the consortium took place at Imperial College in late September 2015 with the participation of more than 50 UK universities, ORCID, Jisc, GuildHE, RCUK and Current Research Information System (CRIS) vendors.[20]Since August 2015, the Wellcome Trust has required all lead applicants for grants to provide an ORCID iD.[21]From 23 September 2015, an ORCID iD has become mandatory for all new National Institute of Health Research (NIHR, UK) personal award applications.[22]

Italy has implemented ORCID on a national scale, and has signed a three-year consortium membership agreement with ORCID. Under the auspices of ANVUR (National Agency for the Evaluation of the University and Research Systems) and CRUI (the Conference of Italian University Rectors), 70 universities and four research centres initially participate in the consortium (Cineca). ANVUR made ORCID mandatory in order to participate in the National Assessment from November 2015.[23]The Italians expect that at least 80% of Italian researchers will have an ORCID iD, with links to their research output by the end of 2016.[23]

ORCID is now included in the Danish National Open Access Strategy and the National Research Data Strategy. The Danish Council for Independent Research recommends, and the Novo Nordisk foundation requires an ORCID iD in funding applications. Currently DEFF, a library collaboration funded by several ministries, is sponsoring a national ORCID implementation project with project partners including seven of the eight Danish universities, a consortium of all Danish university colleges and a consortium of research institutions under the Ministry of Culture.[24]

In Australia, according to Arthur Sale of the University of Tasmania, ‘there is an active ORCID activity, and it has been adopted (or recommended) for universal application, but this has not yet reached the status of a mandate by government’ (personal communication, 2 Jan 2016). The Australian ORCID Consortium was launched on 1 January 2016 with 38 organizations (http:// aaf.edu.au/orcid/). The Universities of Sydney, Melbourne, New South Wales, and Queensland, Macquarie University, Griffith University, Queensland University of Technology, La Trobe University and Charles Darwin University and the Australian National Data Service (ANDS) are all members of ORCID. ORCID Working Group of Australia comprising research councils and associations has developed a consortium model for implementing ORCID iDs across the Australian research sector.[25]Funding agencies are also keen to partner with ORCID. Portugal’s Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) mandated the use of ORCID in 2013. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) asks that grantees use ORCID iDs to manage information in their ScienCV system.

Many other funding agencies across the world have also adopted ORCID:[26]

The Swedish Research Council (SRC) mandated the use of ORCID in Spring 2015.
Austrian Science Fund (FWF) has mandated the use of ORCID starting in 2016.
European Commission H2020 Grantee Guidelines recommend that contributors be uniquely identifiable through identifiers which are persistent, non-proprietary, open and interoperable (e.g. through leveraging existing sustainable initiatives such as ORCID).[27]
Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) will mandate the use of ORCID in the next funding cycle.
Autism Speaks, a US-based awareness, advocacy and funding body, requires all investigators and mentors to register with ORCID to obtain a unique iD. This enables Autism Speaks to update one’s funding record and to monitor one’s research progress. Autism Speaks will not consider applications without ORCID accounts for the key personnel.[28]

Publishing platforms such as Aries Editorial Manager, eJournal Press, and ScholarOne have already built-in ORCID support so authors publishing in those journals can create their ORCID iDs through them. PKP is working on developing modules for the Open Journal Systems used by more than 8600 journals.

Research information systems such as Elements, Plum Analytics, PURE, SmartSimple, InfoEd, University Office and Research Master, and the open access repository platforms DSpace, Dryad, EPrints, and VIVO have also built-in ORCID support.

Towards the end of 2015, Altmetrics integrated ORCID with its Explorer apps, and now one can search for Altmetric attention data for all the research outputs associated with one’s ORCID profile and thus scholars can get credit for all their research contributions, including journal articles and participation in social media.

SUPPORT TO ORCID

Right from the beginning, ORCID’s aim was to become completely self-sustaining based on member fees. However, they did have some sponsors and they did take some loans from their own members/stakeholders (http://orcid.org/about/community/ sponsors).

In September 2011, ORCID received an NSF Eager grant of US$ 200 000 via the University of Chicago.[29] The APIs developed with this funding and released in November 2011 could be used by third parties to integrate grant, manuscript or personnel tracking systems with ORCID. This project led to the formal launch of ORCID and its website (http://orcid.org). The philosophy and evolution of ORCID were disseminated through journals such as Nature and EduCAUSE, outreach meetings and social media channels such as twitter.

Seeing its value, a few philanthropic foundations came forward to support ORCID. An award by Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to ORCID funded the pilot integration of ORCID identifiers by a group of universities and science and social science professional associations, such as Purdue University and the Society of Neurosciences. This programme supported the collaborative elicitation and documentation of ‘use cases’ and open source code, and established a collaborative venue for disseminating best practices. All projects were completed in December 2014. Partnering institutions have shared integration source code and lessons learnt with the ORCID community through ORCID’s GitHub open source repository and online ‘use cases’, and now serve as reference sites for organizations planning similar integrations.[30]

In April 2015, the Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust awarded US$ 3 million to ORCID to develop the infrastructure and capacity to support international adoption and technical integration.[31]

ORCID IN EMERGING AND DEVELOPING COUNTRIES

The National Science Library (NSL) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) has taken the lead in China and is taking steps to adopt ORCID nationwide.[32] China fully recognizes the importance of the unique author identifiers, especially so for Chinese authors and the NSL sees the value in an international, open, and researcherdriven person identifier. Scientists in China are willing to work with ORCID to promote it in CAS and in the country. To this purpose, the NSL is enlisting cooperation from Web of Science, the Chinese Science Citation Database (CSCD), Chinese Social Science Citation Index (CSSCI), CAS Science, Technology and Medicine (STM) Journal Association, University STM Journal Association, and a number of major research and academic libraries. NSL has developed the iAuthor platform, as an easy Chinese front gate to register for an ORCID identifier and to interoperate with Chinese journals, CSCD and others. The NSL iAuthor service was launched in October 2014.[32]

ORCID is yet to pick up in India. As of 15 September 2015, more than 1.5 million ORCID iDs have been assigned. Of these, 14 439 have been registered with an email address that ends in ‘.in’ and 17 048 records where the country is set to India (email communication from ORCID, 29 Jun 2015). That comes to <1.14%. Many authors may be using web mail addresses and we will not be able to identify them as Indian researchers.

ORCID is just starting in Latin America, according to Dominique Babini, Open Access Program Coordinator at the Latin American Council of Social Sciences (CLACSO) (personal communication, 1 Jan 2016). According to Abel Packer, Director of SciELO, ‘ORCID is not yet widely adopted in LA. There is an increasing awareness of it and its role and importance. But, only a few institutions adopted it as an obligatory policy to their affiliates’ (personal communication, 2 Jan 2016). Less than 10% of the authors fill the ORCID field in the submission form in the online manuscript submission/processing services used by SciELO Brazil. But, it will be adopted if funding agencies and journals make it mandatory on their submission systems. A barrier to its wide adoption is that researchers have many options to manage their profiles (personal communication, 2 Jan 2016). The first to join ORCID were:[33] Redalyc, the University of the State of Mexico’s open access platform; CONCYTEC – National Council of Science and Technology in Peru; and UNESP (Sao Paulo State University) in Brazil.

Interest in ORCID has been growing in Africa for some time. In South Africa alone over 3500 researchers have registered and three universities, viz. University of Cape Town, Stellenbosch University, and the Gordon Institute of Business Science are ORCID members, as is the National Research Foundation. In all of Africa, there are >7000 registered researchers mostly from South Africa, Egypt, Nigeria, Tunis, Ghana, Kenya and Botswana. The cities in Africa that lead in ORCID use are Cairo, Tunis, Lagos, Algiers, Giza, Cape Town, Pretoria and Alexandria.[34]

In the Asia–Pacific region there were 37 members of ORCID[35]as of August 2015, including 13 in Australia, 3 in New Zealand, 6 in Hong Kong, 5 in Taiwan and 4 in Japan. There is one in India—a multinational company providing editing and publishing services—with offices in many countries and does not really qualify to be known exclusively as an Indian entity.

SOME CONCERNS

Some are critical of ORCID. One criticism is that ORCID is not open access and it appears to be a complicated, expensive, proprietary and monopolistic system, and the participation of several commercial publishers makes it a Trojan horse which could eventually lead to strengthening the stranglehold of the publishing industry over scholarly communication. We were alerted to this concern by Thomas Krichel (personal communication, 6 Jul 2015). Krichel ignores the fact that without the participation of large bibliographic databases, ORCID cannot provide the service effectively. Bringing on board Scopus (Elsevier), Web of Science (Thomson Reuters), etc. is not only a clever move but is an absolute necessity.

Many others do not agree with this view. Bilder et al.[16] believe that ORCID conforms to the values of an open scholarly infrastructure organization. Also, as Paglione[36] has put it: ‘One of the core principles of ORCID is that all software we develop will be publicly released under an open source software license approved by the Open Source Initiative. In addition to transparency, releasing our code will improve interoperability and integration with external services, lead to more robust code because more individuals are auditing and testing it, and, with an extended developer community, enable faster code iteration and evolution.’ Haak has also listed the open features of ORCID, viz. it provides free, barrier-free access, it is democratic and transparent, and it is open access.[37]

Another concern is: what if unscrupulous individuals claim authorship on papers that are not theirs, if the ORCID authorship has not been previously claimed by the true author? Is there any safeguard to prevent such a possibility? Can ORCID help prevent fraudulent reviewing?

In the early days, it is possible for someone to claim authorship of papers written by others. But, according to Laure Haak (personal communication, 10 Dec 2015), ‘ORCID is a public resource, and if someone claims erroneously this can be monitored by the community and reported and addressed using ORCID’s dispute procedures (see http://orcid.org/orcid-dispute-procedures). As universities and other employers of researchers are using ORCID to assert affiliation (and funders are asserting awardees also using ORCID), there becomes built a web of trusted data about an individual’s research activities, all with researcher consent.’ Also, as more and more publishers receive ORCID iDs of authors as part of the metadata when authors submit papers, and as Crossref updates the ORCID records, it will reduce unethical claims.

As far as peer-review fraud is concerned, there are attempts to counter it using ORCID.[38] But, these are social problems and technical solutions are not the answer. The fight between good and evil is often a see-saw. However, as the uptake of ORCID gains momentum it will become difficult for such fraudsters to lay claim on others’ works.

There are some reservations though about the costs involved in becoming a member of ORCID. Here is what J.K. Vijayakumar of King Abdullah University, Saudi Arabia, told us: ‘if an institution wants to use ORCID to integrate with their repository, research management systems, etc., the institution needs to become a member (the fees are high and one has to pay even more if ORCID integration is required for more than one system). This needs to be debated and ORCID should bring down the membership fee according to income of the country, so that developing nations can also take part’ (personal communication, 11 Jul 2015). This seems to be a good suggestion. In fact, a member can use one member API credential in many systems. ORCID also provides a substantial discount for small organizations (<US$ 200 000). In addition, affordability is partly why the consortium member model was launched. Haak says: ‘We continue to evaluate membership fees and are starting an initiative for adoption in developing countries in 2016’ (personal communication, 2015).

What we are concerned more is the fact that although the number of live ORCID iDs exceed 2.43 million (as of 29 July 2016), only about 337 000 of them have at least one work (https://orcid.org/statistics). Only about one in five iDs is actually being used.

DISCUSSION

The value of ORCID is evident even in its first 5 years. As Jonathon Kram of the Strategic Planning and Policy Unit at Wellcome Trust says, ‘the ability to uniquely identify contributors is a deceptively simple concept which, if realized, could enable forms of real-time understanding of scientific research that up to now have been extremely costly (if not impossible).’[39]

When the Modern Language Association (MLA) enabled in June 2015 retroactive assigning of ORCID iDs to the nearly two million records in its International Bibliography, which holds the key to language and literary scholarship for more than 90 years, it met an especially critical need in the humanities and arts, where publication types and venues are so diverse, needing more work to be done to create clarity and connect the parts than in the sciences. It would also bring increased recognition and validation of humanities scholarship.[40]

As early as 2012, concerned by the lack of quality, comprehensive data about biomedical researchers, the US NIH recommended the development of a simple, comprehensive tracking system for trainees, and implemented a researcher profile system called the Science Experts Network Curriculum Vitae (SciENcv), and encouraged the adoption of unique, persistent ORCID identifiers for researchers.[41]

ORCID, along with open access and open educational resources, is integral to the open knowledge movement. It supports ‘the transition from science to e-Science, wherein scholarly publications can be mined to spot links and ideas hidden in the ever-growing volume of scholarly literature’.[42]

Such benefits of ORCID adoption will be fully realized only if ORCID iDs are adopted widely across the research community, and if ORCID iDs are integrated within systems of higher educational institutions, funders and publishers.[43]

If research councils such as the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), and Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) and funding agencies such as the Department of Science and Technology (DST), Department of Biotechnology (DBT) and the University Grants Commission (UGC) mandate ORCID iDs for all researchers in all their laboratories and for all applicants for grants, India can make quick progress. Vice chancellors of universities, directors of research institutions, and the governing boards of academies and professional associations and societies could insist on all researchers in their respective institutions registering for an ORCID iD. Scholarly journals published by the science academies, CSIR-NISCAIR, ICAR, ICMR, professional associations, etc. could mandate inclusion of ORCID iDs by all authors at the time of submitting manuscripts. It would help immensely if India were to adopt a manpower tracking system based on ORCID in all areas of science, technology and innovation, similar to that used by NIH.

India has done reasonably well in the area of open educational resources (OER). In particular, the National Programme of Technology Enabled Learning (NPTEL) executed by a consortium of IITs and Indian Institute of Science is highly regarded and is used well. But it took several years of voluntary effort before green open access became acceptable to a small percent of Indian researchers and research institutions, long after it became standard practice in many countries. We hope this time around things will move quickly and many researchers and institutions will adopt ORCID soon.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We are grateful to Dr L.L. Haak, Alice Meadows, Nobuko Miyairi and Alainna Wrigley of ORCID, Rachel Bruce of Jisc, Thomas Krichel of GESIS and RePEc, Peter Suber of the Harvard Berkman Center for Internet & Society, Martin Fenner of DataCite, Arthur Sale of University of Tasmania, John Willinsky of Stanford University, Dominique Babini of CLACSO, Abel Packer of SciELO, for answering our questions and providing some valuable information. We are indebted to Subbiah Gunasekaran of the Central Electrochemical Research Institute, Karaikudi, for valuable discussion and for alerting us to some important developments. The comments of two referees were very helpful in rewriting and improving the original text.

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[18] Joint Information Systems Committee (Jisc). National consortium for ORCID set to improve UK research visibility and collaboration. 2015. Available at jisc.ac.uk/ news/national-consortium-for-orcid-set-to-improve-uk-research-visibility-andcollaboration-23-jun (accessed on 29 Sep 2015).

[19] Joint Information Systems Committee (Jisc). Jisc-ARMA ORCID Pilot Project.Available at http://orcidpilot.jiscinvolve.org/wp/hei-based-projects/ (accessed on 3 Jan 2016).

[20] Reimer T. UK ORCID members meeting and launch of Jisc ORCID consortium at Imperial College, London, 28 September 2015, Available at http:// wwwf.imperial.ac.uk/blog/openaccess/2015/10/07/uk-orcid-members-meeting-andlaunch-of-jisc-orcid-consortium-at-imperial-college-london-28th-september-2015/ (accessed on 3 Jan 2016).

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[35] Miyairi N. ORCID: Building academic trust. Panel discussion on reputation management and research integrity, STM Publishing and China Industry Day, Beijing, 25 August 2015. Available at stm-assoc.org/ 2015_08_25_STM_CAST_Miyairi_ORCID_Industry_Day.pdf (accessed on 29 Sep 2015).

[36] Paglione L. ORCID Blog. Available at http://orcid.org/blog/2013/02/21/orcidopen-source (accessed on 29 Sep 2015).

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[38] Ferguson C, Marcus A, Oransky I. Publishing: The peer-review scam. Nature 2014;515:480–2.

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[40] Taylor LN. MLA (Modern Language Association) International Bibliography launches ORCID App. 2015 Available at http://laurientaylor.org/2015/06/19/news-mlamodern-language-association-international-bibliography-launches-orcid-app/ (accessed on 3 Jan 2016).

[41] Schaffer W. The adoption of ORCID identifiers by funding organizations. Available at slideshare.net/ORCIDSlides/20140423-webinar-schaffer (accessed on 3 Jan 2016).

[42] Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE). Metrics cannot replace peer review in the next REF. Available at hefce.ac.uk/news/newsarchive/2015/ Name,104464,en.html (accessed on 3 Jan 2016).

[43] Research Councils UK (RCUK) Administrator. We’re now a member of ORCID. Available at http://blogs.rcuk.ac.uk/2015/12/03/were-now-a-member-of-orcid/ (accessed on 3 Jan 2016).

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/eprints-iisc-ernet-october-28-2016-subbiah-arunachalam-madan-muthu-adopting-orcid-as-unique-identifier-will-benefit-all-involved-in-scholarly-communication

Adianta School for Leadership and Innovation to Host Design Public

praskrishna — 2014-04-04T08:08:10Z

The conclave in its 5th edition will feature Aam Aadmi Party members Rajmohan Gandhi and Somnath Bharti along with Sunil Abraham in conversation with Dr. Aditya Sood about different approaches through citizen centric governance.

The information was posted on BusinessWire India on March 11, 2014. Source : Adianta School for Leadership and Innovation

Adianta School of Leadership and Innovation is setting up the stage for yet another conclave to establish a dialogue around innovation with ‘Design Public’. The key aspect of the conclave would be a dialogue between Raj Mohan Gandhi, Member- Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) & Grandson of Mahatma Gandhi; Somnath Bharti, Former Law Minister Delhi, Member- Aam Aadmi Party (AAP); Sunil Abraham, Executive Director, Centre for Internet & Society and Dr. Aditya Dev Sood, Founder & CEO, CKS about different approaches through citizen centric governance.

The fifth edition of the Design Public Conclave which will be held on Friday, March 14^th, 2014 at Vihara Campus, is being produced by the Center for Knowledge Societies, the Adianta School for Leadership and Innovation, the Startup Tunnel, the Bihar Innovation Lab, and the Financial Innovation Alliance, in partnership and with the support of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Grameen Foundation, CGAP, UNDP's GCEPA and the Social Innovation Exchange (SIX).

Over the past three years, Design Public has emerged as the premier location for high-level conversations about the public role and social impact of design and innovation in India. It has attracted some erudite and high profile speakers and discussants across regions, society and sectors of industry. The fifth edition of Design Public will focus on “Social Innovation through Partnership with Private Sector” and “The Elements of Governance Innovation” as both are relevant in present day context. The discussions will set the stage for recommendations and suggestions around promotion of social innovation through new partnerships between the social and private sectors, promoting social enterprises and beneficial social consequences of private sector activity with specific focus on the new companies bill and how it brings centre stage new opportunities for promoting social innovation. Focus on “The Elements of Governance Innovation” will focus on the importance of distinguishing governance innovation from policy work, the key constituencies involved in governance innovation and how better collaboration can create more meaningful impact.

The conclave will see two Keynotes touching both the aspects by Esko Kilpi, Writer and Theorist of the Networked Society and Arndt Hussar, UNDP-GCPSE, Singapore, respectively. Apart from the Keynotes, there would be other speakers which include Ada Wong, Chair, SIX, Hong Kong; Nehal Sanghavi, Advisor, USAID, India; Rajesh Sawhney, Founder, Global Superangels Fund, India; Louis Pulford, Director of SIX (Social Innovation Exchange) and Prof. M.P. Ranjan, Design Chair, CEPT University.

Apart from the keynotes, the conclave will also feature two working groups and three breakout sessions followed by presentations from each breakout and a dialogue for framing conclusions and charting next steps.

The working groups will focus on designing a Social Innovation Exchange for India and building an action plan for Governance Innovation respectively. The breakouts will be explaining Open Data in the Indian context, opening out closed systems of Governance and developing start-up opportunities in Governance Innovation.

Other key participants for the fifth edition of Design Public conclave include Abhimanyu Nowhar, Founder, The Kiba Design; Ambrish Arora, Head, Lotus Design; Balasubramanian Munuswamy, Private Sector Development Advisor, Department for International Development (DIFD), British High Commission; Chakshu Roy, Heads, Outreach Initiatives, PRS Legislative Research; Chandni Ohri, CEO, Grameen Foundation, India; Daniel Radcliffe, Senior Program Officer, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; Gautam Gandhi, New Business Development for Emerging Markets, Google; Harsh Srivastava, Chief Operating Officer, Centre of Civil Society; Ishan Khosla, Founder, Ishan Khosla Design; Jatin Modi, Founder, FrogIdeas, India; Karan Malik, Associate, Advisory Research, Dasra; Lysander Menezes, Team Leader, Maternal Child Health & Nutrition, PATH; Namit Arora, Writer & Activist; Nehal Sanghavi, Advisor, USAID, India; Rajesh Khati, Founder & Principal Consultant, Clearway Advisors; Ramanjit Chima, Senior Policy Analyst, Google; Sanjay Rishi, President, MCS, Usha International Ltd.; Shweta Banerjee, CGAP, India; Soaib Grewal, Founder, Bold Capital, India; Somnath Bharti, Member-AAP and Former Law Minister, Government of Delhi; Suhas Mhaskar, Senior General Manager & Head, Mahindra and Mahindra Ltd.; Sumandro Chattapadhyay, Researcher, The Sarai Programme at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies and Usha Alexander, Writer and Instructional Designer.

About Design Public

Over the past three years, Design Public has emerged as the premier location for high-level conversations about the public role and social impact of design and innovation in India. It has attracted speakers and discussants from all regions of the world, from all estates of society and from diverse sectors of industry. Out of the conversations held here, many new initiatives have emerged, including the Bihar Innovation Lab, the Adianta School for Leadership and Innovation, among others. There has been wide coverage of the themes and ideas emerging from Design Public in the media and blogosphere, including in the New York Times, Economic Times, Times of India, and Mint Newspaper. High value participants in the past have included Arun Maira (Planning Commission), Sam Pitroda (National Innovation Council), Geoff Mulgan (NESTA, UK), Ashok Alexander (BMGF), Rohini Nilekani (Arghyam), Yamini Aiyer (Accountability Initiative), Ashwin Mahesh (Lok Satta Party), Samanth Subramanaian (Writer), Vish Palekar (Mahindra Group), Jeby Cherian (IBM), Riku Makela (Tekes, FI), among many others.

About Adianta

The Adianta School for Leadership and Innovation promotes a radical and empowering educational approach that promotes Learning by Doing. It is a collaborative effort between some of the world’s leading innovation organizations, including the School of Design at the Technische Universiteit Delft (Netherlands), NESTA (UK), The Social Innovation Exchange (Global), and the Center for Knowledge Societies (India). With a distinguished team of advisors, international faculty and a global network of over 100 mentors, the Adianta School provides an unprecedented quality of international education right here in India.

For News Release background on Adianta School for Leadership and Innovation click here

Media Contact Details

Abhishek Shivam, Greyhound Neo, +919582199990 , ashivam@greyhoundgroup.com Priyanka Ahuja, Brand Manager, Adianta School for Leadership and Innovation, outreach@adianta.org

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Address delivered during the IGF Closing Ceremony

radha — 2011-08-02T07:18:36Z

This address was delivered by Dr. Anja Kovacs, as a representative of civil society, to the IGF during its closing ceremony.

Good evening, Mr Chairperson and all the distinguished participants, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for this opportunity to address this assembly on behalf of civil society, it is a real honour. And thank you also to the organisers and to the government of Egypt, for the wonderful arrangements and for creating such a excellent environment for us to work in.

I would like to use this opportunity to celebrate, together with you, two very important achievements in particular that we have made collectively during the four days of our intensive deliberations together.

The first one is the progress we are making in terms of recognising the importance of attention for human rights in ensuring a people-centred, development-oriented, non-discriminatory information society. Thus, for example, in the main session on security, openness and privacy, speakers across stakeholder groups couched the debate not any more in terms of security vs. privacy, but in terms of security and privacy. Security or other concerns, it was consistently argued, while obviously deserving our attention, should not be used to justify curtailing longstanding gains made in terms of human rights; rather, it is an improved implementation of already agreed on human rights instruments that we need to reach our goal of an inclusive, people-centred information society. The growing recognition of this fact is an evolution that civil society welcomes with open arms.

Another very hopeful evolution during this IGF was the central attention devoted to the question of where we stand in terms of promoting a people-centred, development-oriented information society more generally. The message that came out of the main session on “Internet governance in the light of the WSIS principles” clearly confirmed the urgent need to pay greater attention to this important issue, and several suggestions were made to address this concern. These include devoting devoting a main session solely to the topic of Internet governance for development in next next year's IGF, and I sincerely hope that these suggestions will be taken up.

While we thus have important reason to celebrate, challenges of course remain. Throughout the existence of the IGF, and perhaps increasingly so, the value of the multistakeholder model has been recognised and stressed by all stakeholder groups. However, at the same time, it has also been acknowledged that we need to continue to work to further strengthen participation from currently underrepresented countries and groups. I would like to note, however, that it is important that we do not restrict our efforts in this regard to capacity building, significant as that may be. Perhaps even more crucial is that the agenda of the IGF consistently talks to the concerns of actors in the developing parts of the world as well.

The reconfirmation of the importance of a development agenda that we have seen in this IGF is thus a very important step forward indeed. At the same time, within this larger development agenda, it is crucial that we also as soon as possible start to discuss some of the specific issues that require our attention on an urgent basis. For example, within the IGF as elsewhere, it is generally acknowledged that access to knowledge is central to development processes; yet the IGF so far has not paid systematic attention to the ways in which the amazing possibilities that the Internet offers in this regard are increasingly threatened by new policies that seem to make intellectual property regimes more stringent day by day. From a developing country perspective, finding a balanced solution that can address these concerns is an urgent priority. Starting the debate on how this can be achieved here, in the IGF, is certain to attract a larger number of developing country participants, including from governments.

Going by the experience of the past years as well as this particular meeting, I have no doubt that if given the opportunity, we will measure up to the challenges before us. Without wanting to preclude the Under-Secretary General's report, the proceedings during this IGF have made clear time and again its crucial significance in Internet governance processes. I hope with all my heart that we will continue to get the opportunity to work together on addressing these important issues and on resolving tensions and contradictions as they emerge, with the support of an independent secretariat that can ensure an environment genuinely inclusive of all stakeholders. Only when such open, inclusive conditions govern our own processes, may we in turn, together be able to create a genuinely inclusive information society which will indeed create opportunities for all.

Thank you.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/address-igf-closing-ceremony

AdaCamp Bangalore: "Nothing could be more open and encouraging than this"

praskrishna — 2015-02-12T01:53:43Z

I can say this conference was the most truly touched feminist endeavor I have ever witnessed or thought of. An inspiration to last through. — Rupali Talwatkar.

Rohini Lakshané delivered a session on digital security. For more info see the details on Ada Initiative website

Session on Imposter Syndrome:

Impostor syndrome is a common reaction to doing publicly visible and publicly criticised work like that done in open technology and culture. Impostor Syndrome is the feeling that you aren't actually qualified for the work you are doing and will be discovered as a fraud. It is prevalent among women in open tech/culture, many of whom have been socialised to value other's opinion of their work above their own, and to do things "by the book."
http://adainitiative.org/what-we-do/impostor-syndrome-training/

Session on Open Street Maps:
https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/yAxa2Kwkfm

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/news/ada-camp-bangalore

Act now to protect yourself against future ransomware attacks

praskrishna — 2017-07-10T14:46:14Z

There was Wannacry, then Petya, and several other lesser-known ones: With ransomware attacks coming thick and fast, get proactive about protecting yourself.

The article by Sanjay Kumar Singh was published by Business Standard on July 5, 2017.

The Wannacry ransomware attack in May was followed by the Petya attack last week. This attack affected the Ukrainian government and large corporates like Maersk and Merck. In India it affected the operations of terminals at Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust (JNPT), operated by Maersk. According to Kaspersky Lab, the rate of ransomware attacks on businesses grew from one every 120 seconds in January 2016 to one every 40 seconds by October that year. The rate of attack on individuals' computers rose from one every 20 seconds to one every 10 seconds over this period. Today, it has become imperative for everyone, including entrepreneurs and small business owners, to learn how to defend themselves against such attacks.

A trend witnessed in 2016 was the growth of ransomware-as-a-service business model. "Code creators offer their malicious product on demand, selling uniquely modified versions to criminals who then distribute it through spam and websites, paying a commission to the creator," says Altaf Halde, managing director, Kaspersky Lab (South Asia). He adds that the growth of cashless payments in India will undoubtedly attract the attention of cyber criminals and lead to more attacks in future.

Next, let us turn to how ransomware works. An operating system (OS) is a large and complicated piece of software with millions of lines of software code. A malware exploits vulnerabilities within the OS to infiltrate it. An infiltration can happen in multiple ways: if you download a malicious email attachment, visit a code-carrying web site, via an infected pen drive, and so on.

Ransomware is a form of malware that encrypts the files in a critical part of the computer, such as My Documents or Desktop, where people usually store their files. It could also encrypt specific file types, say, such .doc files. The user is then informed that his files have been encrypted along with the warning that unless he pays up within the next few hours his files will be deleted. Says Udbhav Tiwari, policy officer at the Centre for Internet and Society, Bengaluru: "You first have to first pay the attackers using anonymous money like bitcoins and then they give you the key for decrypting your files."

A ransomware attack can be dealt with in two ways: either pay the money and get the files unlocked, or find a way to circumvent the encryption. The latter option can, however, take a fair bit of time.

Safeguard measure you should adopt
Back up important files regularly. Check periodically that these files have not got damaged Enable ‘Show file extensions’ option in Windows settings. Stay away from extensions like “exe”, “vbs” and “scr”. Many familiar file types can be dangerous as scammers use multiple extensions (like hot-chics.avi.exe or doc.scr) If you discover an unknown process on your machine, cut off the Internet connection immediately If you have been infected, find the name of the ransomware. If it's an older version, your files can be restored. For restoration tools visit https://www.nomoreransom.org/

Among the safeguard measures you should adopt, first and foremost, never open a suspicious file. By being vigilant you can avoid a lot of ransomware attacks.

Most malware exploit vulnerabilities within the OS. "These vulnerabilities are frequently patched by the creators of the OS. But if people use pirated OS, or don't upgrade it regularly, they could land in trouble," says Tiwari. Soon after the Wannacry attack, Microsoft had issued a patch. People who updated their computers immediately didn't get affected by it. Also, use the latest version of an OS.

Use a quality antivirus (AV) solution, which is usually one you have to pay for. A high-quality AV can even protect you against vulnerabilities not patched by the OS manufacturer. AVs scan files. If they detect patterns indicating the presence of malware, they lock them apart from the rest of the computer, thereby preventing them from spreading.

One option is to use an OS that is less vulnerable, like Mac and Linux. Fewer malware are designed for these OS as fewer people use them.

Finally, if your files do get encrypted, don’t pay the ransom, unless instant access to those files is critical. "Each payment only fuels this unlawful business," says Halde.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/business-standard-july-5-2017-sanjay-kumar-singh-act-now-to-protect-yourself-against-future-ransomware-attacks