Centre for Internet and Society

DIPP Comments

praskrishna — 2016-04-24T04:40:15Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/dipp-comments.pdf

Aadhaar by Numbers

praskrishna — 2016-09-11T16:36:58Z

Sunil Abraham will be addressing a public seminar at an event organized by National Institute of Public Finance and Policy (NIPFP) in New Delhi on Friday, April 29, 2016.

This talk will reflect on several aspects of the Aadhaar project from a technical perspective. First, there will be a reflection on biometrics as a unique, identification and authentication technology. Second, there will be a critique of open washing by the UIDAI through their adoption of free software and open standards and finally there will be an analysis of alternative technical solutions and architecture which will allow India to harvest the benefits of identity management without the harms and risks of centralized biometrics.

Sunil Abraham

Sunil Abraham (an Ashoka Fellow) is the executive director of the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), Bangalore/New Delhi. CIS is a 7 year old policy and academic research organisation that focuses on accessibility, access to knowledge, internet governance and telecommunications. He is also the founder and director of Mahiti, a 17 year old social enterprise that aims to reduce the cost and complexity of ICTs for the voluntary sector by using free software. Starting 2004, for 3 years, Sunil also managed the International Open Source Network, a project of UNDP's APDIP, serving 42 countries in the Asia-Pacific region. Sunil currently serves on the advisory boards of OSF – Information Programme, Mahiti and Samvada.

The talk reflected on several aspects of the Aadhaar project from a technical perspective. First, there is a reflection on biometrics as a unique, identification and authentication technology. Second, there is a critique of open washing by the UIDAI through their adoption of free software and open standards and finally there is an analysis of alternative technical solutions and architecture which will allow India to harvest the benefits of identity management without the harms and risks of centralized biometrics.

Video

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/aadhaar-by-numbers

Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson (PUBL) v Competition Commission of India and Anr

praskrishna — 2016-04-20T15:58:21Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/telefonaktiebolaget-lm-ericsson-publ-v-competition-commission-of-india-and-anr

"Will the Magic Number Deliver?" - Roundtable on Aadhaar at CSLG, JNU, April 26

sumandro — 2016-04-20T10:49:58Z

The Centre for the Study of Law and Governance (CSLG), Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), will organise a roundtable discussion on Tuesday, April 26, to discuss the Aadhaar project and Act. Along with Rajeev Chandrasekhar, Prasanna S, Apar Gupta, and Chirashree Dasgupta, Sumandro Chattapadhyay will be one of the discussants. It will take place in the CSLG Conference Room at 6 pm.

Discussion Note

The Aadhaar (Targeted Delivery of Financial and Other Subsidies, Benefits and Services) Act, 2016, was enacted by the Parliament on March 16. Thereafter it has been notified on March 26.

The Act empowers the UIDAI (Unique Identification Authority of India) to collect biometric and demographic information of residents to provide them with a unique number. This unique number is to be used for enumeration, identification and targeting of beneficiaries of government subsidies and services.

Since the creation of the UIDAI as an executive authority in 2009, this process of enumeration has been ongoing. Recently, it was announced that more than 100 crore residents have been given their aadhaar cards. Alongside, however, legal challenges have continued in the Supreme Court.

Given this context, this Roundatable Discussion will focus on the following set of questions (among others):

Can the Aadhaar Number enable better delivery of government subsidies and services?
How does the Act ensure data protection?
Is there a right to privacy in India? What are the implications in the context of Aadhaar?
Does the Act ensure public access to statutory remedies in case of violations?
Did the Aadhaar Bill fulfil the requirements of a money bill?

Discussion Format

Setting the Theme - Short Introduction to the Topic by Natasha Goyal

Speakers' comments, 15 minutes each, consecutive, no power points

Rajeev Chandrasekhar, Member of Parliament, Rajya Sabha
Sumandro Chattapadhyay, the Centre for Internet and Society
Prasanna S, Lawyer
Apar Gupta, Advocate, Delhi High Court
Dr. Chirashree Dasgupta, Centre for the Study of Law and Governance

Open Session (Moderated Q and A)

Followed by Tea

Directions to Venue

From JNU main gate, proceed straight until you get to a T-junction. Turn left. Continue until you reach a second T-junction. Turn right. Follow the road for just 0.7 km until you see a bus stop labelled “Paschimmabad.” About 50 m past the bus stop turn right at a sign that reads: “Centre for the Study of Law and Governance”. The CSLG building is on the right. The conference room is on the first floor.

Poster

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/will-the-magic-number-deliver-aadhaar-cslg-26042016

Celebrating the 13th anniversary of Kannada Wikipedia

subha — 2016-05-23T09:08:23Z

The Kannada-language Wikipedia, arguably the largest online encyclopedia in Kannada language, celebrated its 13th anniversary on February 14, 2016 in Mangalore.

To celebrate the journey of the project and the community, Kannada Wikipedians gathered at St. Aloysius College Mangalore, Karnataka. The larger Kannada Wikimedia community including long time Wikipedians and new members like the students, faculty involved in Wikipedia Education Programs gathered, participated in a day long edit-a-thon and chalked out plans for the future. The event is organised by the Kannada Wikimedia community and Dr. Vishwanatha Badikana, Wikipedian and Assistant Professor of Kannada department at St. Aloysius College coordinated the event locally.

117 people gathered in the event out of which 96 were active editors of the Kannada Wikipedia community. Noted Kannada-computing researcher Kinnikambla Padmanabha Rao (widely known as KP Rao) addressed the public event and engaged with the audience about defining Kannada Wikipedia’s role a large role in widening Kannada’s presence on the Internet. The local organisers also took the event participants through a heritage walk in the heritage village of Pilikula Nisarga Dhama, an open library of the rich cultural heritage of Karnataka. The heritage walk resulted in over 300 image uploads on Wikimedia Commons ranging from the life and culture of coastal Karnataka to select rich heritage of the state. 20 new editors also participated in the event and they were oriented on basics of Wikipedia editing and Creative Commons licenses.

Triveni.K, one of the participants who is now pursuing her MSc. at Christ University, explains this event as a great learning platform for even core Wikipedia policies in details apart from many other Wikipedia policies she learnt here. “I’m little occupied for my exams but when it is over, I will be back on Wikipedia”, shares Triveni.

Prior to the event, four edit-a-thons were organised in four different cities of Karnataka. Themes chosen for the cities were Kannada literature in Mysore, Mechanical Engineering in Sagara, Science-related articles in Bangalore and article on notable female of the coastal Karnataka region in Mangalore. Follow up edit-a-thons were organised after the anniversary celebration with the same themes that were there in the previous session for the first three places where the follow up edit-a-thons in St. Aloysius College and St. Agnes College were both on medicinal plants.

The first ever edit on Kannada Wikipedia was made on 12 June 2003 with a message “Kannada Vishwa Koshakke Suswaagatha!” (meaning “Welcome to the Kannada encyclopedia” in Kannada). However it took over a year -- on July 12, 2004 the first article about a city Shimoga was created. Over the last decade Kannada Wikipedia has been a great gamechanger for the Kannada language where the Wikipedians have played a great role in making it a household name -- needless to say that 705,199 unique visitors read the articles every month as per the December 2015 statistics. The annual average of active editors for last year was 48, 91 (February) being the highest and 22 (May) the lowest and 80 being the count in last December. The peaks and valleys also signify that major outreach like Wikipedia Education Program at Christ University Bengaluru could have boosted the total number of editors during the months when the program was being rolled out. The project since its inception has gone through many ups and downs over time, the major one being a small community to edit and curate such a high level task of creating new articles in Kannada, editing and enriching them with more information and citations, and cleaning up many articles. The biggest hurdle, as explained by Wikimedian Hari Prasad Nadig, has been cleaning up the articles created by paid translations of Google when Kannada Wikipedia along with many other Indian language Wikipedias were used as testing grounds for improving Google Translate, a multilingual machine translation tool. Vasanth S.N., a Kannada Wikipedian who has cleaned up over 60 such articles prefers to use an existing good quality encyclopedia like the 14 volume Kannada Vishwakosha, published by Mysore University and relicensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0 by the university, as a resource to create and improve articles.

The 14th anniversary of Kannada Wikipedia was another milestone in the long journey of Kannada language and there are many more to come. More about the event could be read on the event page on Kannada Wikipedia.

Ananth Subray, Programme Associate, CIS-A2K contributed to this blog.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/kannada-wikipedias-13-year-old-journey-of-knowledge-sharing

Monitoring Sustainable Development Goals in India: Availability and Openness of Data (Part II)

sumandro — 2016-04-12T04:14:27Z

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are an internationally agreed upon set of developmental targets to be achieved by 2030. There are 17 SDGs with 169 targets, and each target is mapped to one or more indicators as a measure of evaluation. In this and the next blog post, Kiran AB is documenting the availability and openness of data sets in India that are relevant for monitoring the targets under the SDGs. This post offers the findings for the last 10 Goals. The first 7 has already been discussed in the earlier post.

The first part of the post can be accessed here.

Goal #08: Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all

There are fourteen indicators to monitor the goal 8 and the data is available for all the indicators mapped to their respective targets. For most of the indicators, the data availability is not what the indicator demands, but has to be derived from the available dataset.

The data can be accessed freely in the public domain for all the indicators. However, for the subparts in some of the indicators, the data is not accessible freely. There is a cross agency dependency over the data, to arrive at the required indicator.

Data is collected annually for most of the indicators, while the indicators, viz., Indicator 8.3.1.: Share of informal employment in non-agriculture employment by sex; Indicator 8.5.2: Unemployment rate by sex, age-group and persons with disabilities, which are measured by the Census or the planning commission the frequency of data collection becomes decennial or quinquennial. And the Indicator 8.8.2 : Number of ILO conventions ratified by type of convention, which lists the number of conventions the frequency cannot be determined as it's just a list updated whenever there is a ratification of any ILO conventions. Some of the available data are restricted to particular years and most of them are not till date.

Two indicators, i.e., Indicator 8.5.2 and Indicator 8.10.1: Number of commercial bank branches and ATMs per 100,000 adults, which are measured at the level of districts, whereas Indicator 8.7.1: Percentage and number of children aged 5-17 years engaged in child labour, per sex and age group; Indicator 8.8.1: Frequency rates of fatal and non-fatal occupational injuries by sex and migrant status, are measured at the state level. The remaining are measured only at the national level.

Most of the data are collected from the international organisations like ILO, UNEP, UNWTO, etc., from whose source the data are not updated regularly. There is also a need to disaggregate according to the indicator.

Goal #09: Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and foster innovation

When development is through industrialization, sustainable and inclusiveness should be the necessary conditions to attain it. Having said this, the data is available for all the indicators, i.e., twelve indicators, corresponding to the targets as defined for the goal 9. For most of the indicators, the data have to be derived for the required measure to monitor the goal.

From among these indicators, the data is collected annually for most of the indicators, while for the two indicators, Indicator 9.3.1: Percentage share of small scale industries in total industry value added; Indicator 9.3.2: Percentage of small scale industries with a loan or line of credit, the frequency of data collection is once in five years.

Excluding two indicators, i.e., Indicator 9.2.2: Manufacturing employment as a percentage of total employment; Indicator 9.1.1: Share of the rural population who live within 2km of an all season road, for which the data is available at the state level and district level respectively, for the remaining indicators the data is available only at the national level.

The data pertaining to eleven indicators are freely accessible in the public domain, however, for the Indicator 9.b.1: Percentage share of medium and high-tech (MHT) industry value added in total value added, the data is not freely accessible. Most of the freely available data are obtained from the international organisations, along with the official data from the government in India.

Goal #10: Reduce inequality within and among countries

Bridging the gap between the global north-south divide through co-operation – social, economical, political, etc., would promote equality. There are twelve indicators for measuring this goal, of which the data is not available for one of the indicators and are available for the remaining indicators.

From the data available, for six of the indicators the data is accessible freely in the public domain, whereas for the five of the indicators – Indicator 10.2.1; Indicator 10.3.1; Indicator 10.4.1; Indicator 10.7.3; Indicator 10.a.1, the data is closed.

Most of the data available are of the national level and for the Indicator 10.7.3: Number of detected and non-detected victims of human trafficking per 100,000, the data includes from the states as well. However, since the goal refers to inequalities within the country as well, the granularity of the data should have been from the state/district level as well.

And, the frequency of data collected are annually for some of the indicators and for some the details cannot be determined or not valid. For most of the indicators the data has to be derived from the available dataset and disaggregated as needed. Also, for some indicators the data is partially available.

Data Not Available:

Indicator 10.7.1: Recruitment cost borne by employee as percentage of yearly income earned in country of destination

Goal #11: Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable

Housing and the type of settlements determines the human development and the progress of development of a nation. Therefore for monitoring the goal 11 is implicit to human development. There are thirteen indicators to monitor this goal and out of which the data is available for ten indicators and for the three indicators the data is not available.

For three of the indicators the available data is not freely accessible, while for the remaining ones the data is accessible. And for most of the indicators the data has to be derived as needed.

The data is collected annually for most of the indicators and quinquennially for the Indicator 11.5.1, and for some data the data pertains to particular year and there lacks a sequence of data availability.

For four of the indicators – Indicator 11.2.1; Indicator 11.3.1; Indicator 11.6.1; Indicator 11.a.1, the data is available at the state/city level along with national level. And for the remaining indicators the data is available at the national level alone. Also, some of the data are not up-to-date and refers to data more than 3 or years old.

Data Not Available:

Indicator 11.3.2: Percentage of cities with direct participation structure of civil society in urban planning and management, which operate regularly and democratically
Indicator 11.7.1: The average share of the built-up areas of cities that is open space in public use for all, disaggregated by age, sex, and persons with disabilities
Indicator 11.b.1: Percentage of cities implementing risk reduction and resilience strategies aligned with accepted international frameworks (such as the successor to the Hyogo Framework for Action on Disaster Risk Reduction) that include vulnerable and marginalised groups in their design, implementation and monitoring

Goal #12: Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns

Production and consumption should go hand in hand, but over consumption or over production would only lead to destruction of the environment. Therefore goal 12 seeks to ensure a sustainability in both. The data is available for ten indicators out of twelve indicators, and for the two indicators the data is not available, so as to monitor the respective goals. Some of the data are partially available and using the available data the indicators can be derived.

Moreover, the data for six of the indicators which are available are freely accessible in the public domain whereas for the remaining four indicators – Indicator 12.4.1; Indicator 12.4.2; Indicator 12.5.1; Indicator 12.b.1, the data is not open.

While for most of the indicators say, Indicator 12.2.1; Indicator 12.3.1; Indicator 12.5.1; Indicator 12.a.1; Indicator 12.c.1, the data is collected annually, whereas for the others, the data which are available are for particular years or cannot be determined. Except for the Indicator 12.5.1, for which the data is available at the city level, the data for the remaining are of the national order. The data is collected from both the national institutions, ministries and also from the international organisations.

Data Not Available:

Indicator 12.1.1: Number of countries with SCP National Actions Plans or SCP mainstreamed as a priority or target into national policies.
Indicator 12.8.1: Percentage of educational institutions with formal and informal education curricula on sustainable development and lifestyle topics

Goal #13: Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts

The impact of climate change is severe, therefore taking an urgent action ensures could reduce the impact. The data is available for four of the indicators out of five, and for one of indicators the data is not available.

The data for three indicators are freely accessible in the public domain, whereas for the Indicator 13.3.1: Number of countries that have integrated mitigation, adaptation, impact reduction and early warning into primary, secondary and tertiary curricula, the data is not open and also not specific to the indicator. The data for some of the indicators are partially available and have to be derived.

The frequency of the data is not uniform and cannot be determined, by the virtue of the indicator itself. For example, the occurrence of a disaster event is random. However, for some of the indicators the reporting is either annual or quadrennial.

The data availability is at the national level and in case of the Indicator 13.3.1., the data is available for two states – Orissa and Tamil Nadu. Data for almost all the indicators are obtained from international organizations and very less data availability from the national databases.

Data Not Available:

Indicator 13.2.1.: Number of countries that have formally communicated the establishment of integrated low-carbon, climate-resilient, disaster risk reduction development strategies

Goal #14: Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development

Oceans are the torchbearers for all the countries. Therefore everything related to oceans, seas and marine resources have an impact on the human life. There are ten indicators corresponding to the targets, of which the data is available for nine indicators and for one indicator the data is not available. The data for some of the indicators are not direct, but need to be derived, while for some indicators the data is partially available. To derive some indicators we need to rely on cross agency data.

For the Indicator 14.a.1: Budget allocation to research in the field of marine technology as a percentage of total budget to research, the data on budgetary allocation doesn't specify to marine technology.

The frequency of data collected for most of the indicators are not available or cannot be determined or not applicable, whereas for some the data is collected annually. And for most of the indicators the data is available at the national level and for the Indicator 14.5.1: Coverage of protected areas in relation to marine areas, the data is available for the states also.

Data Not Available:

Indicator 14.6.1: Dollar value of negative fishery subsidies against 2015 baseline

Goal #15: Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss

This goal on restoring, promoting ecosystem and stopping biodiversity loss, etc., has fifteen indicators mapped to twelve corresponding targets. Of which, the data is available for fourteen of the indicators and the data is not available for the one of the indicators. Data for some of the indicators exist partially and for some the data has to be derived to match the indicators. To arrive at the indicators, the data has to be derived from different datasets available.

Most of the data which are available are closed and only five are accessible in the public platform – Indicator 15.1.1 : Forest area as a percentage of total land area; Indicator 15.4.2: Mountain Green Cover Index; Indicator 15.8.1: Adoption of national legislation relevant to the prevention or control of invasive alien species; Indicator 15.9.1: Number of national development plans and processes integrating biodiversity and ecosystem services values; Indicator 15.a.1: Official development assistance and public expenditure on conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity and ecosystems.

The frequency of data collected is not available or cannot be determined for majority of the indicators, while the data is annually collected for the ones which can be determined. Furthermore, the data is available at the national level for all the indicators, except the Indicator 15.b.1: Forestry official development assistance and forestry FDI, for which the data is available at the level of states as well.

The data available are collected by international organisations like OECD, FAO, Convention on Biological Diversity, etc., as well as by the national institutions and ministries like Planning Commission, Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, etc.

Data Not Available:

Indicator 15.2.2: Net permanent forest loss

Goal #16: Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels

A society which is inclusive, peaceful, provides justice and accountable in all its forms would ensure sustainable development, therefore to promote the aforementioned parameters one has to monitor them through an established measure. There are twenty-one indicators for this goal mapped to the respective targets and out of which the data is not available for five indicators to monitor the goal. From the available dataset, the values need to be derived for some of the indicators and for some indicators the data is directly/partially available.

From among the data which are available, for nine indicators the data is not freely accessible in the public platform, while the remaining six data set are open to access. They are available both from national and international agencies and most of the data are not up to the date.

The data which are available are collected/reported annually. And, excluding four indicators. i.e.; Indicator 16.1.3, Indicator 16.3.1, Indicator 16.4.2, Indicator 16.b.1, the data is available at the state level, while for the remaining indicators the data is available only at the national level. Most of the indicators require data from past 12 months, but the available dataset does not cater the needs, as they are not updated regularly. Finally, the indicators seeks disaggregated data for monitoring the goal.

Data Not Available:

Indicator 16.1.4: Proportion of people that feel safe walking alone around the area they live
Indicator 16.2.3. Percentage of young women and men aged 18-24 years who experienced sexual violence by age 18
Indicator 16.6.2: Percentage of population satisfied with their last experience of public services
Indicator 16.7.2: Proportion of countries that address young people's multisectoral needs with their national development plans and poverty reduction strategies
Indicator 16.a.1: Percentage of victims who report physical and/or sexual crime to law enforcement agencies during past 12 months disaggregated by age, sex, region and population group

Goal #17: Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the global partnership for sustainable development

Moving towards achieving SDGs in the global scenario requires support – financial, technological, etc. This support can be strengthened the relationship between the developing and the developed countries. There are twenty-four indicators to monitor the goal 17, out of which the data is available for twenty-three of the indicators and for one of the indicators the data does not exist.

The data which are available are direct as per the indicators, whereas for most of the indicators the data need to be derived. Data is partially available for the Indicator 17.16.1: Indicator 7 from Global Partnership Monitoring Exercise: Mutual accountability among development co-operation actors is strengthened through inclusive reviews.

From the data available for twenty-three indicators, fourteen of the data set are freely accessible and the nine are not open. Also, some of the data which are open are not up to date or the latest data is not open.

The data is collected annually for most of the indicators and for some the data is available for particular year. Also for some of the indicators like Indicator 17.5.1: Number of national & investment policy reforms adopted that incorporate sustainable development objectives or safeguards x country; Indicator 17.6.1: Access to patent information and use of the international intellectual property (IP) system; Indicator 17.18.2: Number of countries that have national statistical legislation that complies with the Fundamental Principles of Official statistics, the frequency cannot be determined or not valid.

Since this indicator speaks at the national level, the granularity of the data pertains to the nation. Most of the data are obtained from the international organisations say UN, World Bank, IMF, OECD, etc., and some are from the national institutions/ministries like Planning Commission, Finance Ministry, etc.

Data Not Available:

Indicator 17.17.1: Amount of US$ committed to public-private partnerships and civil society partnerships

Conclusion

Decision making depends on data, a data should be representative, with high quality and has to be timely collected, which ensures precise assessment of the decision being made. From the analysis it was found that, most of the data which are available are either not freely accessible, outdated and not precise to the need. Most of the SDG indicators are based on disaggregation. The disaggregation is a key to measure to the precision, especially incidences like poverty, food security, health, etc. Therefore, to monitor different parameters we need to identify the different levels prevailing in the parameter to ensure inclusivity.

Said above, the frequency of data collection is either annual, quinquennial and decennial. To enable real time evaluation, the data should be up-to-date. Moreover, for most of the indicators the data availability is at the national level or at the state level and sometimes at the district level. The granularity of data ensures geographic inclusiveness.

In a country like India for close monitoring of progress/development of any sort the data availability should be;

at a granular level of district/block,
collected and updated regularly,
disaggregated by age, sex, and also by social group, and
the data should be open to be able to access in the public domain freely.

Open data will be a crucial tool for governments to meet the transparency and efficiency challenges. For this reason, government data should be open – freely accessible, presented in a format that is comparable and reusable and, ideally, released in a timely manner.

Author

Kiran A B, is a student of Master of Public Policy (MPP) at the National Law School of India University, Bengaluru. Kiran has an undergraduate degree in electronics and communications engineering, and he has three years full-time work experience as a software engineer, working in different technological platforms. His research interest includes interdisciplinary linkages between policy, law and technology.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/monitoring-sustainable-development-goals-in-india-availability-and-openness-02

India's biometric database crosses billion-member mark

praskrishna — 2016-04-07T02:54:08Z

India's biometric database notched up one billion members on Monday, as the government sought to allay concerns about privacy breaches in the world's biggest such scheme.

The news by AFP was published by Daily Mail, UK on April 4, 2016. Sunil Abraham gave inputs.

The database was set up seven years ago to streamline benefit payments to millions of poor people as well as to cut fraud and wastage. Under the scheme, called Aadhaar, almost 93 percent of India's adult population have now registered their fingerprints and iris signatures and been given a biometric ID, according to the government.

IT minister Ravi Shankar Prasad hailed it as "an instrument of good governance" at a ceremony in New Delhi marking the crossing of the one-billion member mark.

Prasad said the initiative, inherited from the previous left-leaning Congress government, had enabled millions to receive cash benefits directly rather than dealing with middlemen.

He said the government had saved 150 billion rupees ($2.27 billion) on its gas subsidy scheme alone -- by paying cash directly to biometric card holders instead of providing cylinders at subsidised rates.

He also said all adequate safeguards were in place to ensure the personal details of card holders could not be stolen or misused by authorities given access to the database.

"We have taken all measures to ensure privacy. The data will not be shared with anyone except in cases of national security," Prasad said.

His comments come after parliament passed legislation last month giving government agencies access to the database in the interests of national security.

It was passed using a loophole to circumvent the opposition in parliament, where the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) lacks a majority in the upper house.

The way it was passed, as well as the legislation itself, raised concerns about government agencies accessing private citizens' details.

Internet experts have also raised fears about the safety of such a massive database, including hacking and theft of details.

"It was as if Indian lawmakers wrote an open letter to criminals and foreign states saying, 'we are going to collect data to non-consensually identify all Indians and we are going to store it in a central repository. Come and get it!'," Sunil Abraham, executive director of the Centre for Internet and Society, wrote in India's Frontline news magazine.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/daily-mail-april-4-2016-afp-india-biometric-database-crosses-billion-member-mark

Mapping MAG: A study in Institutional Isomorphism

jyoti — 2017-03-03T00:59:48Z

The paper is an update to a shorter piece of MAG analysis that had been conducted in July 2015. At that time our analysis was limited by the MAG membership data that was made available by the Secretariat. Subsequently we wrote to the Secretariat and this paper is based on the data shared by them including for the years for which membership details were previously not available.

This paper that delves into the history of the formation of the Multi-Stakeholder Advisory Group (MAG) and the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) including the lessons from the past that should be applied in strengthening its present structure. The paper covers three broad areas:

History of the formation of the MAG, its role within the IGF structure, influences that have impinged on its scope of work, manner in which its evolution has deviated from conceptualization
Analysis of MAG membership (2006-2015): Trends in the selection and rotation of the MAG membership
Recommendations to reform MAG/IGF

Jyoti Panday^[1]

The recent renewal of the Internet Governance Forum^[2] (IGF) mandate at the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS)+10 High-Level Meeting^[3] was something of a missed opportunity. The discussions unerringly focused on the periphery of the problem - the renewal of the mandate, leaving aside questions of vital importance such as strengthening and improving the structures and processes associated with the IGF. The creation of the IGF as a forum for governments and other stakeholders to discuss policy and governance issues related to Internet was a watershed moment in the history of the Internet.

In the first decade of its existence the IGF has proven to be a valuable platform for policy debates, a space that fosters cooperation by allowing stakeholders to self-organise to address common areas of concern. But the IGF rests at being a platform for multistakeholder dialogue and is yet to realise its potential as per its mandate to “find solutions to the issues arising from the use and misuse of the Internet” as well as “identify emerging issues […] and, where appropriate, make recommendations”.^[4]

From the information available in the public domain, it is evident that the IGF is not crafting solutions and recommendations or setting the agenda on emerging issues. Even if unintended, this raises the disturbing possibility that alternative processes and forums are filling the vacuum created by the unrealised IGF mandate and helming policy development and agenda setting on Internet use and access worldwide. This sits uneasily with the fact that currently there is no global arrangement that serves or could be developed as an institutional home for global internet governance issues.

Moreover, the economic importance of the internet as well as its impact on national security, human rights and global politics has created a wide range of actors who seek to exert their influence over its governance. Given the lack of a global centralized body with authority to enforce norms and standards across political and functional boundaries, control of internet is an important challenge for both developed and emerging economies. As the infrastructure over which the internet runs is governed by nation states and their laws, national governments continue to seek to exert their influence on global issues.

Divergence of approaches to regulation and differences in capacity to engage in processes, has led to fragmentation of approaches to common challenges.^[5] Importantly, not all governments are democratic and may exert restrictions on content and access that conflict with the open and global nature of the internet. Alongside national governments, transnational private corporations play a critical role in security and stability of the internet. Much like the state, they too raise the niggling question of how to guard against the guardians.

Corporations control of sensitive information, their institutional identity, secrecy of operations: all are essential to their functioning but could also erode the practice of democratic governance, and the rights and liberties of users online. Additionally, as issues of human rights, access and local content have become interlinked with public policy issues civil society and academia have become relevant to traditionally closed policy spaces. Considering the variety of stakeholders and their competing interests, concerns about ensuring stability and security of the Internet have led the international community to pursue a range of governance initiatives.

Implementing a Multistakeholder Approach

At the broadest level debates about the appropriate way forward has evolved as a contestation between the choice of two models. On the one hand is the state-centric ‘multilateral’ model of participation, and on the other a ‘multistakeholder’ approach that aims for bottom up participation by all affected stakeholders. The multistakeholder approach sees resonance across several quarters^[6] including a high level endorsement from the Indian government last year.^[7] An innovative concept, a multistakeholder approach fits well within the wider debate about rethinking governance in a globalized world.

Proponents of the multistakeholder approach see it as a democratic process that allows for a variety of views to be included in decision making.^[8] Nevertheless, the intertwining of the Internet and society pitches actors and interests at opposing ends. While a multistakeholder approach broadens the scope for participation, it also raises serious issues of representation and accountability. Since multistakeholder processes fall outside the traditional paradigm of governance, establishing legitimacy of processes and structures becomes all the more important.

The multistakeholder concept is only beginning to be critically studied or evaluated. There have been growing concerns, particularly, from emerging economies^[9] of a lack of representation in policy development bodies and that issues affecting marginalised communities being overlooked in policy development process. From this view, the multistakeholder model has created ‘transnational and semi privatized’ structures and ‘transnational elites’.^[10] Such critics define emerging and existing platforms derived from the multistakeholder concept as ‘an embryonic form of transnational democracy’ that are occupied by elite actors.^[11]

Elite actors may include the state, private and civil society organisations, technical and academic communities and intergovernmental institutions. In the context thus sketched out, the key question that the WSIS+10 Review should have addressed is whether the IGF provides the space for the development of institutions and solutions that are capable of responding to the challenges of applying the multistakeholder concept to internet governance. The existing body of work on the role of the IGF has yet to identify, let alone come to terms with, this problem.

Applying critical perspectives examining essential structures and processes associated with the IGF becomes even more relevant given its recently renewed mandate. However, already the forum’s first planning meeting scheduled to take place in Geneva this week is already mired in controversy^[12] after a new Chair was named by the UN Secretary General.

The decision for appointing a new Chair was made without any form of public process, or any indication on the selection criteria. Moreover, the "multistakeholder advisory group" (MAG), which decides the content and substance of the forum, membership was also renewed recently. Problematically most of the nominations put forth by different constituent groups to represent them were rejected and individuals were appointed through a parallel top-down and secretive UN process. Of the 55 MAG members, 21 are new but only eight were officially selected by their respective groups.^[13]

This paper focuses on the role of the MAG structure and functioning and highlights issues and challenges in its working so as to pave the way for strategic thinking on its improvement. A tentative beginning towards identifying what the levers for change can be made by sifting through the eddies of history to uncover how the MAG has evolved and become politicised.

The paper makes two separate, but interrelated claims: first, it argues that as the de-facto bureau essential to the functioning of the IGF, there is an urgent need to introduce transparency and accountability in the selection procedure of the MAG members. Striking an optimum balance between expertise and legitimacy in the MAG composition is essential to ensure that workshops and sessions are not dominated by certain groups or interests and that the IGF remains an open, well-functioning circuit of information and robust debate.

Second, it argues for immediate evaluation of MAG’s operations given the calls for the production of tangible outcomes. There has been on-going discussion within the broader community about the role of the IGF with divisions between those who prefer a narrow interpretation of its mandate, while others who want to broaden its scope to provide policy recommendations and solutions.^[14]

The interpretation of the IGF mandate and whether the IGF should make recommendations has been a sticking point and is closely linked to the question of IGF’s legitimacy and relevance. Be that as it may, the intersessional work, best practices forum and dynamic coalitions over the last ten years have led to the creation of a vast repository of information that should feed into the pursuit of policy options and identification of best practices.

The true test of the multistakeholder model is not only to bring together wide range of views but to also ensure that accumulated knowledge is applied to address common problems. Implementing a multistakeholder approach and developing solutions necessitates enhanced coordination amongst stakeholder groups and in the context of the IGF, is contingent on the strength and stability of the MAG to be able to facilitate such cooperation.

The paper is organised in three parts: in the first section I delve into the history of the formation of the MAG. To understand the MAG’s role within the IGF structure it is essential to revisit the influences that shaped its conceptualisation and subsequent evolution over the decade. A critical historical perspective provides the context of the multiple considerations that have impinged on MAG’s scope of work, of the manner in which MAG’s evolution has deviated from intentions, and the lessons from the past that should be applied in strengthening its present structure.

The second section analyses trends in the selection and rotation of the MAG membership and traces out the elite elements in the composition of the MAG. The analysis reveals two distinct stages in the evolution of the MAG membership which has remained significantly homogeneous across stakeholder representation. The final section of the paper focuses on a set of recommendations to ensure that the MAG is strengthened, becomes sustainable and provides the impetus for IGF reform in the future.

Origins of the IGF

The WSIS process was divided in two phases, the Geneva phase focused on principles of internet governance. The outcome documents of the first phase included a Declaration of Principles and a Plan of Action being adopted by 175 countries. Throughout the process, developing countries such as China, Brazil and Pakistan opposed the prevailing regime that allowed US dominance and control of ‘critical infrastructure’. As the first phase of the WSIS could not resolve these differences the Working Group on Internet Governance (WGIG) was set up by the UN Secretary General to deliberate and report on the issues.

The establishment of the WGIG is an important development in the WSIS process not only because of the recommendations it developed to feed into the second phase of the negotiations, but also because of the procedural legitimacy the WGIG established through its working. The WGIG embodied the multistakeholder principle in its membership and open consultation processes. WGIG members were selected and appointed in their personal capacity through an open and consultative process. As a result the membership demonstrated diversity in the geography, stakeholder groups represented and gender demographics.

The consultations were open, transparent and allowed for a diverse range of views in the form of oral and written submissions from the public to feed into the policy process. At its final meeting the WGIG membership divided into smaller working groups to focus on specific issues, and reassembled at the plenary to review, discuss and consolidate sections which were then approved in a public forum. As the WGIG background paper notes “The WGIG agreed that transparency was another key ingredient to ensure ownership of the process among all stakeholders.”^[15]

The WGIG final report^[16] identified a vacuum within the context of existing structures and called for the establishment of a forum linked to the UN. The forum was to be modelled on the best practices and open format of the WGIG consultative processes allowing for the participation of diverse stakeholders to engage on an equal footing. It was in this context that the IGF was first conceptualised as a space for global multistakeholder ‘dialogue’ which would interface with intergovernmental bodies and other institutions on matters relevant to Internet governance.

The forum was conceived as a body that would connect different stakeholders involved in the management of the internet, as well as contribute to capacity-building for governance for developing countries drawing on local sources of knowledge and expertise. Importantly, the forum was to promote and assess on an ongoing basis the embodiment of WSIS principles in Internet governance processes and make recommendations’ and ‘proposals for action’ addressing emerging and existing issues not being dealt with elsewhere. However, as things turned out the exercises of power between states and institutional arrangements ultimately led to the development of a subtly altered version of the original IGF mandate.

Aftermath of the WGIG Report

The WGIG report garnered much attention and was welcomed by most stakeholders with the exception of the US government which along with private sector representatives such as Coordinating Committee of Business Interlocutors (CCBI) disagreed with the recommendations.^[17] Pre-empting the publication of the report, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) issued a statement in June 2005 affirming its resolve to “maintain its historic role in authorizing changes or modifications to the authoritative root zone file.”^[18]

The statement reiterated US government’s intention to fight for the preservation of the status quo, effectively ruling out the four alternative models for internet governance put forward in the WGIG report. The statement even referenced the WGIG report stating, “Dialogue related to Internet governance should continue in relevant multiple fora. Given the breadth of topics potentially encompassed under the rubric of Internet governance there is no one venue to appropriately address the subject in its entirety.”^[19]

The final report was presented to PrepCom 3 of the second phase in July 2005 and the subsequent negotiations were by far, the most significant in the context of the role and structure that the IGF would take in the future. US stance on its role with regard to the root zone garnered pushback from both civil society and other governments including Russia, Brazil, Iran and China. However the most significant reaction to US stance came from the European Union issuing a statement after the commencement of PrepCom 3 in September.

EU’s position recognised that adjustments were needed in institutional arrangements for internet governance and called for a new model for international cooperation which would include “the development and application of globally applicable public policy principles.”^[20] the US had not preempted this “shocking and profound change” and now isolated in its position on international governance of the internet, and it sent forth a strongly worded letter^[21] invoking its long-standing relationship and urging the EU to reconsider its stance.

The pressure worked since the US was in a strong position to stymie the achievement of a resolution from WSIS process. Moreover, introducing reforms to the internet naming and numbering arrangements was not possible without US cooperation. The letter resulted in EU going back on its aggressive stance and with it, the push for the establishment of global policy oversight over the domain names and numbers lost its momentum.

The letter significantly impacted the WSIS negotiations and shaped the role of the IGF. By creating a deadlock and by applying pressure US was able to negotiate a favourable outcomes for itself. The last minute negotiations led to the status quo continuing and in exchange the US provided an undertaking that it would not interfere with other countries’ ccTLDs. The weakened mandate meant that even though creation of the IGF under the WSIS process moved forward the direction changed from its conceptualisation and origins from the WGIG report.

Institutionalizing the IGF

In 2006, the UN Secretary General appointed Markus Kummer to assist with the establishment of the IGF. The newly formed IGF Secretariat initiated an open consultation to be held in Geneva in and issued an open call to stakeholders seeking written submissions as inputs into the consultation.^[22] Notably neither the US government nor the EU sent in a response to the consultation and submissions made by other stakeholders were largely a repetition of the views expressed at WSIS.

The division on the mandate of IGF was evident in this very first consultation. Private sector representatives such as the CCBI and ICC-Basis, government representatives from OECD countries like Canada and the technical community represented by likes of Nominet and ISOC^[23] opposed the development of the IGF as platform for policy development. On the other hand, civil society representatives such as APC called for the IGF to produce specific recommendations on issues where there is sufficient consensus.^[24]

With reference to the MAG structure, again there was division on whether the “effective and cost-efficient bureau” referred to in the Tunis Agenda should have a narrow mandate limited to setting the agenda for plenary meetings or if it should have a more substantial role. Civil society stakeholders envisioned assigning the bureau a more substantial role and notably the Internet Governance Project (IGP) discussion paper released in advance of the February 2006 Geneva consultations.^[25]

The paper offered design criteria for the Forum including specific organizational structures and processes proposing “a small, quasi-representational decision making structure” for the IGF Bureau.^[26] The paper recommended formation of twelve member bureau with five representatives from governments (from each UN geographic region) and two each from private sector civil society academic and technical communities. The bureau would set the agenda for the plenary meeting not arbitrarily through private discussions, but driven by working group proposals and it would also have the power to approve or reject applications for forming working groups.

The proposed structure in the IGP paper had it been implemented would have developed the bureau along the lines of the IETF where the working groups would develop recommendations which would feed into the deliberation process. However, there was a clear divide on the proposed structure with many stakeholders opposing the establishment of sub-groups or committees under the IGF.^[27]

Following the written submissions the first open consultations on the establishment of the IGF were held in Geneva on 16 and 17 February 2006, and were chaired by Nitin Desai.^[28] The consultation was well attended with more than 300 participants including 40 representatives from governments and the proceedings were webcast. Further, the two-day consultation was structured as a moderated roundtable event at which most interventions were read from prepared statements, many of which were also tabled as documents and later made available from the IGF Web site. This ofcourse meant that there was a repetition of the views expressed in response to the questionnaire or the WGIG report and as a consequence, there was little opportunity for consensus-building.

Once again there was conflict on whether the IGF should be conceptualised as annual ‘event’ that would provide space for policy dialogue or a ‘process’ of engaging with policy issues which would culminate in an annual event. The CCBI reiterated that “[t]he Tunis Agenda is clear that the IGF does not have decision-making or policy-making authority,” and the NRO emphasised that the “IGF must be a multi-stakeholder forum without decision-making attributions.”^[29]

William Drake argued for the IGF “as a process, not as a series of one-off meetings, but as a process that would promote collective dialogue, learning, and mutual understanding on an ongoing basis.”^[30] Government representatives were split for example see El Salvador statement “that the Internet Governance Forum will come up with recommendations built on consensus on specific issues,” and Brazil even characterised the first meeting as “an excellent opportunity to initiate negotiations on a framework treaty to deal with international Internet public policy issues.”^[31]

Although a broad consensus was declared on need for a lightweight multi-stakeholder bureau there was no consensus on its size, composition and the mandate of this bureau. Nitin Desai held the issue for further written input and the subsequent consultation received twelve submissions with most respondents recommended a body of ten and twenty five members. The notable exceptions were submissions from the Group of 77 and China that sought a combined total of forty members half of which would be governmental representatives.

The discussions during the February consultations and the input received from the written submissions paved the way for what eventually became the MAG. The IGF Secretariat announced the formation of a bureau with forty members and while not expressly stated, half of these would be governmental representatives. It has been speculated that the large membership decision was a result of political wrangling among governments, especially the G77 governments insisting on large group that would accommodate all the political and regional differences among its members.^[32]

IGF Secretariat - Set to Fail?

The unwieldy size of the MAG meant that it would have to rely on the newly constituted Secretariat for organization, agenda-setting, and results. This structure empowered the Secretariat while limiting the scope of the MAG, a group that was already divided in its interests and agenda. However, the Secretariat was restrained in its services to stakeholders as it had limited resources since it was not funded by the United Nations and relied upon voluntary donations to a trust fund.^[33]

Early donors included the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SWADC), ICANN and Nominet.^[34] Due to disjointed sources of funding, the Secretariat was vulnerable to the influence of its donors. For example, the decision to to base the Secretariat in Geneva was to meet the condition set by SWADC contribution. Distressingly, of the 20 non-governmental positions in the MAG, most were directly associated with the ICANN regime.

The over-representation of ICANN representatives in MAG selection was problematic since the IGF was conceptualised to address the lack of acceptance of ICANN’s legitimacy in the WSIS process. The lack of independent funding led to a deficit of accountability demonstrated in instances where it was possible for one of the MAG members to quietly insinuate that private sector support for the IGF and its Secretariat would be withdrawn if reforms unacceptable to that stakeholder group went ahead.^[35]

As might perhaps be expected from a Secretariat with such limited resources, its services to stakeholders were confined to maintaining a rudimentary website and responding to queries and requests. The transparency of the Secretariat’s activities was also very limited, most clearly exemplified by the process by which the Advisory Group was appointed.

Constituting the MAG

Following the announcement of the establishment of the MAG, a call for membership to the advisory group was made in March 2006. From the beginning the nomination process was riddled with lack of transparency and the nominations received from stakeholders were not acknowledged by the IGF Secretariat, nor was the selection criteria of made available. The legitimacy of the exercise was also marred by a top-down approach where first that nominees heard of the outcomes was the Secretariat's announcement of selected nominees. Lack of transparency and accountability resulted in the selection and appointment procedure being driven by patronage and lobbying.

The political wrangling was evident in the composition of the first MAG which was expanded to accommodate six regional coordinators personally appointed by Chair Nitin Desai to the Special Advisory Group (SAG). Of the twenty non-governmental positions, most were associated with the naming and numbering regime including sitting and former Board members and ICANN staff.^[36] Participation from civil society was limited as the composition did not recognise^[37] technical community as a distinct group, including it along with academic community and as part of civil society.

The political struggles at play was visible in the appointment of Michael D. Gallagher, the former head of the US Commerce Department's NTIA. This appointment was all the more relevant since it was Gallagher who had had only a few months back stated that the US government owns the DNS root and has no intention of giving it up. His presence signalled that the US government took the forum seriously enough to ensure its interests were voiced and received attention on the MAG.

Beyond issues of representation the working of the MAG suffered from a serious lack of transparency as meetings of the Advisory Group were closed, and no reports or minutes were released. The Advisory Group met in May and September in Geneva before the inaugural IGF meeting in Athens. Coordination between members for the preparations for Athens was done utilising a closed mailing list that was not publicly archived. Consequently, the detail of the operations of the Advisory Group ahead of the first IGF meeting were known only to its members.

Whatever little has been reported suggests that the Advisory Group possessed little formal authority, operating like a forum where members expressed views and debated issues without the object of taking formal decisions. Decisions were settled upon by rough consensus as declared by the Chair, and on all matters where there was no agreement the issues were summarised by the Chair in a report to the UN Secretary-General. The Secretary-General would take the report summary in consideration however retained the ultimate authority to make a formal decision.^[38]

The UN’s clear deciding role was not so obvious in the early years of the MAG’s existence because of the relatively novel nature of the IGF. Moreover Nitin Desai Chair, MAG and Markus Kummer, IGF Secretariat were appointed by the UN Secretary General and were on good terms with the then-Secretary General Kofi Annan and working together they acted as de facto selectors of the members of the MAG. Most of the MAG’s core membership in the first five years of its existence was made up of leaders from across the different stakeholder groups and self-selection within those groups was encouraged to lend broader stability.

Over the last decade, changes in institutional arrangements led the IGF to be moved as a ‘project’ under the UNDESA umbrella, where it is not a core mission, but simply one of many conferences that it handles across the world every year. The core personnel that shepherded the MAG and the IGF from its early days retired allowing for the creation a new core membership. The new group of leaders in the MAG membership have emerged partly as the result of selection and rotation process instituted by the UNDESA in appointing a ‘program committee’.

The history presented above is to help understand how the MAG was established under the UN umbrella and to highlight the key developments that shaped its scope and working. Importantly the weakened IGF mandate created divergences on the scope of the MAG to function as a ‘program committee’ limited to selecting proposals and planning the IGF or as an ‘advisory committee’ with a more substantial role in developing the forum as an innovative governance mechanism. In its conception the IGF was a novel idea and by empowering MAG and introducing transparency in the selection procedures of members and their workings could have perhaps led to a more democratic and accountable IGF. However, the possibility of this was stemmed early on.

The opacity in the appointment processes meant that patronage and lobbying became key to being selected as a member of the MAG. It established the worrying trend of ensuring diversity and representation taking precedent over the necessity of ensuring that representatives were appointed through a bottom-up multistakeholder process. Further, distributing the composition to ensure geographic representation severely limited participation of technical, academic and civil society. In the next section, I focus on the rotation of members of the MAG over the last ten years to identify and highlight trends that have emerged in its composition.

Analysis of MAG Composition (2006 - 2015)

This primary data for the analysis of the MAG membership has been collected from the membership list from 2010-2015 available on the I website. The membership list for 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2008 have been provided by the UN IGF Secretariat during the course of this research. To the best of my knowledge, this data is yet to be made publicly available and may be accessed here.^[39] The Secretariat notes that the MAG membership did not change in 2008 and 2009 and the confirmation is the only account of the list of members for both years, as the records were poorly maintained and are therefore unavailable in the public domain.

It is also worth noting that to the best of my knowledge, no data has been made available by the IGF Secretariat regarding the nomination process and the criteria on which a particular member has been re-elected to the MAG. The stakeholder groups identified for this analysis include government, civil society, industry, technical community and academia. Any overlap between two or more of these groups or movements of individuals between stakeholder groups and affiliations has been taken into account.

Over the decade of its existence, the MAG has had 196 unique members from various stakeholder groups. As per the Terms of Reference^[40] (ToR) of the MAG, it is the prerogative of the UN Secretary General to select MAG members. There also exists a policy of rotating one-third members of MAG every year for diversity and taking new viewpoints in consideration. Diversity within the UN is an ingrained process where every group is expected to be evenly balanced in geographic and gender representation. However, ensuring a diverse membership often comes at the cost of legitimate expertise. Further it may often lead to top-down decision making where individuals are appointed based on their characteristics rather than qualifications.

The complexity of the selection process is further compounded by the fact that the IGF Secretariat provides an initial set of recommendations identifying which members should be appointed to the MAG, but the selection and appointment is undertaken by UNDESA civil servants based in New York. Notably, while the IGF Secretariat staff is familiar with and interacts with stakeholder representatives at internet governance meetings and forums that are regularly held in Geneva, the New York UN based officials do not share such relationships with constituent groups.

Consequently, they end up selecting members who meet all their diversity requirements and have put themselves forward through the standard UN open nomination process. The practice of ensuring that UN diversity criteria is met, creates tension within the MAG membership as representatives nominated by different stakeholder and who have more legitimacy within their respective constituencies are not appointed to the MAG.

The stress on maintaining diversity is evident in the MAG membership’s gradual expansion from an initial group of 46 members in 2006 to include a total of 56 members as of 2015. However the increase in membership has not impacted representation of the technical, academic and civil society constituencies with only 56 members having been appointed from the three groups over the last decade.

This is problematic considering that at the time of its constitution of the MAG the composition did not recognise^[41] technical community as a distinct group, including it along with academic community as part of civil society. Consequently the three stakeholder groups have been represented collectively in the MAG and yet account for only 24.77% of the total membership compared to the government’s share of 39.3% and industry’s share of 35.7% respectively. At the regional level too membership across the three groups has ranged between 20-25% of the total membership.

The technical community is the least represented constituency accounting for only 5% of the total membership with only 10 members having been appointed over ten years. Of the 10, 6 were appointed from the WEOG region and there were no representatives appointed from the GRULAC region. Representatives from academia accounted for only 6% of the total membership with 13 representatives from the group having been appointed on the MAG. The technical community representation too was low from the US with only two members being appointed to the MAG and with each serving for a period of three years.

Civil society accounted for only 17% of the total membership with a total of 33 members and representation from the constituency was abysmally low across all regions. Civil society representation from the US included a total of five members, of which one served for one year, three served for two years each and only one representative continued for more than three years. Notably, there have been no academics from the US which is surprising given that most of the scholarship on internet governance is dominated by US scholars.

Industry was second largest represented group with a total of 64 members appointed to the MAG of which a whopping 30 members were appointed from the WEOG region. Representation was the highest across WEOG countries with 39.47% of the total membership and the group accounted for 32.4% and 32.5% of the total members from Africa and Asia Pacific respectively. Across Eastern European and GRULAC countries industry representation was very low accounting for merely 11.53% and 18.18% of the total membership respectively. Industry representative from the US Included two members serving one year each, five members who served two years each, two members who continued for three years each, one member was appointed for five years, one member who completed the maximum MAG term of eight years.

It is also interesting to note that the industry membership base expanded steadily, spiking in 2012 with a total of 40 representatives from the industry on the MAG. When assessed against the trend of the core leadership trickling out in 2012, the sudden increase in industry representation may point to attempts at capture from the stakeholder group in 2012. Industry representation from US in the MAG was by far the most consistent over the years and had the most evenly distributed appointment terms for members within a group.

Government has been the most dominant group within the MAG averaging a consistent 40% of the total membership over the last 10 years. At a regional level representation on the MAG was highest from Eastern Europe with more than 61% of its total membership comprising of individuals from the government constituency. GRULAC countries appointments to the MAG also demonstrate a preference for government representation with almost 58% of the total members appointed from within this group. The share of government representation in the total membership from Asia Pacific was 47.5% and 32.43% across Africa.

Another general policy followed in the selection procedure is that members are appointed for a period of one year, which is automatically extendable for two more years consecutively depending on their engagement in MAG activities. Members serving for one year term is inevitable due to the rotation policy, as new members replace existing members and often it may be the case of filling slots to ensure stakeholder group, geographic and gender diversity. Due to the limited resources made available for coordination between MAG members, one year appointments may not allow sufficient time for integrating new members into the procedures and workings of UN institutions.

Over the last decade 24.36% of the total appointed MAG members have been limited to serving a term of one year. Of the total 55 one year appointments 26 individuals served their first term in 2015 alone. This includes all nine representatives of civil society and it could be argued that for a stakeholder group with only 11% of the total membership share, such a rehaul weakens the ability of members to develop linkages severely limiting their ability to exert influence on decision making within the MAG.

Interestingly, the analysis reveals that one year term was a trend in the early years of the MAG where a core group took on the leadership role and continued guiding activities for newcomers including negotiating often conflicting agendas. The pattern of one year appointments was hardly visible from 2008-2012 but picked up again in 2013 and has continued ever since. The trend is perhaps indicative of the movement in the core MAG leadership as many of the original members retired or moved on to other engagements from 2010.

Importantly, the MAG ToR note that in case there is a lack of candidates fitting the desired area or under exceptional circumstances a member may continue beyond three years. However in the formative years the MAG this exception was the norm with most members continuing for more than three years. An analysis of the membership reveals that between 2006-2012 an elite core emerges which guided and was responsible for shaping the MAG and the IGF in its present day format. No doubt some of these members were exceptional talents and difficult to replace, however the lack of transparency in the nomination system makes it difficult to determine the basis on which these people continued beyond the stipulated one year term.

The analysis also suggests a shift in the leadership core over the last three years and points that a new leadership group is emerging which is distinguishable in that most members have served on the MAG for three or four years. Members serving for one, two or three years makes up more than 75% of the total membership and 111 individual members have served more than 2 years on the MAG. This could be the result of the depletion in membership of those familiar with internal workings and power structures within the UN, and the selection and rotation criteria and procedures that have weakened the original composition over the last decade.

Rotating membership might be necessary to prevent capture from any particular constituency or group, on the other hand more than half of the total members have spent less than three years on the MAG which makes the composition a shifting structure that limits long term engagement. Regular rotation of members can also lead to power struggles as continuing members exercise their influence to ensure that more members from within their constituency groups are appointed. Only seven individuals have completed the maximum term of eight years on the MAG while 23 individuals have completed five years or more on the MAG.

Finally, in terms of gender diversity, the ratio of male to female members is approximately 13:7 in the total membership with the approximate value in percentage being 65% and 35% respectively. Female representatives from WEOG countries dominate with a total of 29 women having been appointed from the region. Participation of women was the lowest across Asia Pacific and Eastern Europe with only nine and five representatives having been appointed respectively. There was a better balance of gender ratios across countries from Africa and GRULAC with 12 and 14 females having been appointed from the region.

Further analysis and visualisations derived from the MAG composition and identifying trends in appointment of individual members are available on the CIS website. The visualizations include MAG membership distribution across region^[42] and stakeholder groups^[43], evolution of stakeholder groups over the years^[44], stakeholder group distribution across countries^[45] and the timeline of total number of years served by individual members^[46]. The valuation also include a comparison of stakeholder group representatives appointed across India and the USA.^[47]

Recommendations: Reforming MAG & the IGF

Between April 4-6, 2016 the MAG convened in Geneva towards the IGF’s first planning meeting for the year^[48]. The meeting marks the beginning of MAG’s work in planning and delivering the forum, the first in its recently renewed and now extended mandate. This report is a much needed documentation of its working and processes and has been undertaken as an attempt to scrutinize if the MAG is truly a multi-stakeholder institution or if it is has evolved as a closed group of elite members cloaked in a multi-stakeholder name.

There is very little literature on the evolution of, or critiquing the MAG structure partly due to it being a relatively new structure and partly due its workings being shrouded in secrecy. The above analysis has been conducted with the aim of trying to understand MAG’s functioning of the selection of its membership. The paper explores the history of the formation of IGF and the MAG to identify the geo-political influences that have contributed to the MAG’s evolution and role in shaping the IGF over the last decade.

In this section I apply the theory of institutional isomorphism developed by DiMaggio and Powell in their seminal paper^[49] on organizational theory and social change. The paper posits that as organisations emerge as a field, a paradox arises where rational actors make their organizations increasingly similar as they try to change them. A focus on institutional isomorphism can add a much needed perspective on the political struggle for organizational power and survival that is missing from much of discourse and literature around the IGF and the MAG.

A consideration of isomorphic processes also leads to a bifocal view of power and its application in modern politics. I believe that there is much to be gained by attending to similarity as well as to variation between organisations within the same field and, in particular, to change in the degree of homogeneity or variation over time. In this paper I have attempted to study the incremental change in the IGF mandate as well as in the selection of the MAG members.

Applying the theoretical framework proposed by DiMaggio and Powell I identify possible areas of concern and offer recommendations for improvement of the IGF and reform of the MAG. I detail these recommendations through the impact of resource centralization and dependency, goal ambiguity, professionalization and structuration on isomorphic change. There is variability in the extent to and rate at which organizations in a field change to become more like their peers. Some organizations respond to external pressures quickly; others change only after a long period of resistance.

DiMaggio and Powell hypothesize that the greater the extent to which an organizational field is dependent upon a single (or several similar) source of support for vital resources, the higher the level of isomorphism. Their organisational theory also posits that the greater the extent to which the organizations in a field transact with agencies of the state, the greater the extent of isomorphism in the field as a whole. As my analysis reveals both hypotheses hold true for the IGF which is currently defined as a ‘project’ of the UNDESA. Since the IGF and the MAG are dependent on the UN for their existence, it is not surprising that both structures emulate the UN principles for diversity and governmental representation.

It is also worth noting that UN projects are normally not permanent and require regular renewal of mandate, reallocation of resources and budgets. When budget cuts take place as was the case during the global economic crisis, project funding is jeopardized as was the case when the IGF was left without an executive coordinator or a secretariat due to UN budget cuts.

This led to constituent groups coming together to directly fund the IGF secretariat through a special IGF Trust Fund created under an an agreement with the United Nations and to be administered by the UNDESA.^[50] The fund was drawn up to expire on 31 December 2015 and efforts to renew contribution to the fund for 2016 is being opposed and questions on the legality of the arrangement are being raised.^[51]

It is widely rumoured that the third party opposing the contribution is UNDESA itself. Securing guaranteed, stable and predictable funding for the IGF, including through a broadened donor base, is essential for the forum’s long term stability and ability to realize its underutilized potential. There have been several suggestions from the community in this regard including IT for Change’s suggestion that part of domain names tax collected by ICANN should to be dedicated to IGF funding through statutory/ constitutional arrangements. Centralisation of resources may lead to power structures being created and therefore any attempts at IGF and MAG reform in the future must consider the choice between incorporating the IGF as a permanent body with institutional funding under the UN and the implications of that on the forum’s structure.

There are four other hypotheses in DiMaggio and Powell’s framework that may be helpful in identifying levers for improvement of the IGF and the MAG. The first states that, the greater the extent to which goals are ambiguous within afield, the greater the rate of isomorphic change. As my analysis suggests, there is an urgent need to address the decade long debate on the MAG’s scope as a programme committee limited to planning an annual forum.

The question is linked to the broader need to clarify if the IGF will continue to evolve as an annual policy-dialogue forum or if it can take on a more substantive role that includes offering recommendations and assisting with development of policy on critical issues related to internet governance. Even the MAG is divided in its interpretation of its roles and responsibilities. A resurgence of the IGF necessitates that the global community reassess the need of the forum not only on the mandate assigned to it at the time of its conceptualisation but also in light of the newer and more complex challenges that have emerged over the decade.

The second hypothesis holds that the greater the extent of professionalization in a field greater the amount of institutional isomorphic change. DiMaggio and Powell measure professionalization by the universality of credential requirements, the robustness of training programs, or the vitality of professional associations. As the MAG composition analysis reveals the structure has evolved in a manner that gives preference to participation from the government and industry over participation from civil society, technical and academic communities.

Since the effect of institutional isomorphism is homogenization, the best indicator of isomorphic change is a decrease in variation and diversity, which could be measured by lower standard deviations of the values of selected indicators in a set of organizations. Such professionalization is evident in the functioning of the MAG that has taken on bureaucratic structure akin to other UN bodies where governmental approval weighs down an otherwise light-weight structure. Further the high level of industry representation creates distrust amongst other stakeholders and may be a reason the forum lacks legitimacy as a mechanism for governance as it could be perceived as being susceptible to capture.

The third hypothesis states that fewer the number of visible alternative organizational models in a field, the faster the rate of isomorphism in that field. The IGF occupies a special place in the UN pantheon of semi-autonomous groups and is often held up as a shining example of the ‘multistakeholder model’, where all groups have an equal say in decisions. Currently, there is no global definition of the multistakeholder model which at best remains a consensus framework for legitimizing Internet institutions.

It is worth noting that the system of sovereignty where authority is imposed is at odds with the earned authority within Internet institutions. Given the various interpretations of the approach, if multistakeholderism is to survive as a concept then it needs to be understood as a legitimizing principle that is strictly at odds with state sovereignty-based conceptions of legitimacy.^[52] Under a true multistakeholder system, states can have roles in Internet governance but they cannot unilaterally declare authority, or collectively assert it without the consent of the rest of the Internet.

Unfortunately as the MAG membership reveals the composition is dominated by governmental representatives who seek to enforce territorial authority over issues of global significance. Further, while alternative approaches to its application exist within the ecosystem they are context specific and have evolved within unique environments.^[53] As critics note emerging and existing platforms derived from the multistakeholder concept create ‘an embryonic form of transnational democracy’. Therefore it is important to recognise that the IGF is a physical manifestation of a much larger ideal, one where individuals and organizations have the ability to help shape the Internet and the information society to which it is intrinsically connected. This points to the need to study and develop alternative models to multistakeholder governance while continuing to strengthen existing practices and platforms.

As such, the IGF and its related local, national and regional initiatives represent a critical channel for expression especially for countries where such conversation is not pursued adequately and keeps discussions of the internet in the public space as opposed to building from regional/national initiatives. However, interaction between the global IGF and national IGFs is yet to be established. The MAG can play a critical role in developing and establishing mechanism to improve the national IGFs coordination with regional and national initiatives. A strengthened IGF could better serve national initiatives by providing formal backing and support to develop as platforms for engaging with long standing and emerging issues and identifying possible ways to address them.

DiMaggio and Powell’s final hypothesis holds that the greater the extent of structuration of a field, the greater the degree of isomorphism. As calls for creating structures to govern cyberspace pick up pace and given the extension of the IGF mandate its structure and working are in need of a rehaul. More research and analysis is needed to understand if there is a preferred approach for multistakeholder participation and engagement is emerging within both the IGF and MAG.

For example, if a portion or category of stakeholder group, countries and regions are not engaging in common dialogue, does the MAG have the mandate to promote and encourage participation? Has a process been established for ensuring a right balance when engaging different stakeholders and if yes, how is such a process initiated and promoted? The data shared by the IGF Secretariat confirmed that there were no records of the nomination procedure, that the membership list was missing for a year and that there was confusion in some cases who the nominees were are actually representing.

This opens up glaring questions on the legitimacy of the MAG such as on what criteria were MAG members selected and rotated? Was this evaluation undertaken by objective criteria or were representative handpicked by the UN? Moreover, it is important to asses of selection took place following an open call for nominations; or if members were handpicked by UN. Such analysis will help determine if there is scope within the current selection procedure to reach out to the wider multistakeholder community or if all MAG activities and discussions are restricted to its constituent membership. Clarifying the role of the IGF in the internet governance and policy space is inextricably linked to reforms in the MAG structure and processes and the questions raised above need urgent attention.

While these issues have been well known and documented for a number of years, yet there has been no progress on resolving them. Currently there is no website or document that lists the activities conducted by MAG in furtherance of ToR, nor does it produce annual report or maintain a publicly archived mailing list. Important recommendations for strengthening the IGF were made by the UN CSTD working group on IGF improvements.

The group took two years to produce its report identifying problems and offering recommendations that were to be implemented by end of 2015 and yet many of the problems identified within it have yet to be addressed. Worryingly, an internal MAG proposal to set up a working group to dig into the delays is being bogged down with discussions over scope and membership and a similar effort six months ago was also shot down.^[54]

The ineffectiveness of the MAG to institute reform have led to calls for a new oversight body with established bylaws as the MAG in its present form does not seem up to the task. Further the opaque decision making process and lack of clarity on the scope of the MAG means that each time it undertakes efforts for improvements these are thwarted as being outside of its mandate. There remains a lot of work to be done in strengthening the MAG structure as the group that undertakes the day-to-day work of the IGF and the many issues that plague the role and function of the IGF. A tentative beginning can be made by introducing transparency and accountability in MAG member selection.

^[1] This paper has been authored as part of a series on internet governance and has been made possible through a grant from the MacArthur Foundation.

^[2] The Internet Governance Forum See: http://www.intgovforum.org/cms/

^[3] World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS)+10 High-Level Meeting See: https://publicadministration.un.org/wsis10/

^[4]The mandate and terms of reference of the IGF are set out in paragraphs 72 to 80 of the Tunis Agenda for the Information Society (the Tunis Agenda). See: http://www.itu.int/net/wsis/docs2/tunis/off/6rev1.html

^[5] Samantha Bradshaw, Laura DeNardis, Fen Osler Hampson, Eric Jardine and Mark Raymond ‘The Emergence of Contention in Global Internet Governance’, the Centre for International Governance Innovation and Chatham House, 2015 See: https://www.cigionline.org/sites/default/files/no17.pdf

^[6] Mikael Wigell, ‘Multi-Stakeholder Cooperation in Global Governance’, The Finnish Institute of International Affairs. June 2008, See: https://www.ciaonet.org/attachments/6827/uploads

^[7] Arun Mohan Sukumar, India’s New ‘Multistakeholder’ Line Could Be a Game Changer in Global Cyberpolitics,The Wire, 22 June 2015 See:http://thewire.in/2015/06/22/indias-new-multistakeholder-line-could-be-a-gamechanger-in-global-cyberpolitics-4585/

^[8] Background Note on Sub-Theme Principles of Multistakeholder/Enhanced Cooperation, IGF Bali 2013 See: https://www.intgovforum.org/cmsold/2013/2013%20Press%20Releases%20and%20Articles/Principles%20of%20Multistakeholder-Enhanced%20Cooperation%20-%20Background%20Note%20on%20Sub%20Theme%20-%20IGF%202013-1.pdf

^[9] Statement by Mr. Santosh Jha, Director General, Ministry of External Affairs, at the First Session of the Review by the UN General Assembly on the implementation of the outcomes of the World Summit on Information Society in New York on July 1, 2015 See: https://www.pminewyork.org/adminpart/uploadpdf/74416WSIS%20stmnt%20on%20July%201,%202015.pdf

^[10] Jean-Marie Chenou, Is Internet governance a democratic process ? Multistakeholderism and transnational elites, IEPI – CRII Université de Lausanne, ECPR General Conference 2011,Section 35 Panel 4 See: http://ecpr.eu/filestore/paperproposal/1526f449-d7a7-4bed-b09a-31957971ef6b.pdf

^[11] Ibid. 9

^[12] Kieren McCarthy, ‘Critics hit out at 'black box' UN internet body’, The Register 31 March 2016 See: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/03/31/black_box_un_internet_body/?page=3

^[13] Ibid.

^[14] Malcolm Jeremy, ‘Multistakeholder governance and the Internet Governance Forum, Terminus Press 2008

^[15] Background Report of the Working Group on Internet Governance June 2005 See: https://www.itu.int/net/wsis/wgig/docs/wgig-background-report.pdf

^[16] Report of the Working Group on Internet Governance, Château de Bossey June 2005 http://www.wgig.org/docs/WGIGREPORT.pdf

^[17] Compilation of Comments received on the Report of the WGIG, PrepCom-3 (Geneva, 19-30 September 2005) See: http://www.itu.int/net/wsis/documents/doc_multi.asp?lang=en&id=1818%7C2008

^[18] U.S. Principles on the Internet's Domain Name and Addressing System June 30, 2005 See: https://www.ntia.doc.gov/other-publication/2005/us-principles-internets-domain-name-and-addressing-system

^[19] Ibid. 16.

^[20] Tom Wright, ‘EU Tries to Unblock Internet Impasse’, International Herald Tribune

Published: September 30, 2005 See: http://www.nytimes.com/iht/2005/09/30/business/IHT-30net.html

^[21] Kieren McCarthy, Read the letter that won the internet governance battle’, The Register, 2 Dec 2005 See: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/12/02/rice_eu_letter/

^[22] United Nations Press Release, 2 March, 2006 Preparations begin for Internet Governance Forum,

http://www.un.org/press/en/2006/sgsm10366.doc.htm

^[23] The Internet Society’s contribution on the formation of the Internet Governance Forum, February 2006 See: http://www.internetsociety.org/sites/default/files/pdf/ISOC_IGF_CONTRIBUTION.pdf

^[24] APC, Questionnaire on the Convening the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) See:http://igf.wgig.org/contributions/apc-questionnaire.pdf

^[25] Milton Mueller, John Mathiason, Building an Internet Governance Forum, 2 Febryary 2006, See: http://www.internetgovernance.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/igp-forum.pdf

^[26] Ibid.

^[27] Supra note 11.

^[28] Supra note 20.

^[29] Consultations on the convening of the Internet Governance Forum, Transcript of Morning Session 16 February 2006. See: http://unpan1.un.org/intradoc/groups/public/documents/igf/unpan038960.pdf

^[30] Ibid.

^[31] Ibid.

^[32]Milton Mueller, ICANN Watch, ‘The Forum MAG: Who Are These People?’ May 2006 See: http://www.icannwatch.org/article.pl?sid=06/05/18/226205&mode=thread

^[33] IGF Funding, See: https://intgovforum.org/cmsold/funding

^[34] Supra note 12.

^[35] Ibid.

^[36] ICANN’s infiltration of the MAG was evident in the composition of the first advisory group which included Alejandro Pisanty and Veni Markovski who were sitting ICANN Board members, one staff member (Theresa Swineheart), two former ICANN Board members (Nii Quaynor and Masanobu Katoh); two representatives of ccTLD operators (Chris Disspain and Emily Taylor); two representatives of the Regional Internet Address Registries (RIRs) (Raul Echeberria and Adiel Akplogan). Even the "civil society" representatives appointed were all associated with either ICANN's At Large Advisory Committee or its Noncommercial Users Constituency (or both) Adam Peake of Glocom, Robin Gross of IP Justice, Jeanette Hofmann of WZ Berlin, and Erick Iriarte of Alfa-Redi.

^[37] United Nations Press Release, Secretary General establishes Advisory Group to assist him in convening Internet Governance Forum, 17 May 2006 See: http://www.un.org/press/en/2006/sga1006.doc.htm

^[38] Jeremy Malcolm, Multi-Stakeholder Public Policy Governance and its Application to the Internet Governance Forum See: https://www.malcolm.id.au/thesis/x31762.html

^[39] MAG Spreadsheet CIS Website https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1uZzfBz9ihj1M0QSvlnORE0nRD62TCRxhA5d1E_RKfhc/edit#gid=1912343648

^[40] Terms of Reference for the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) Multistakeholder Advisory Group (MAG) Individual Member Responsibilities and Group Procedures See: http://www.intgovforum.org/cms/175-igf-2015/2041-mag-terms-of-reference

^[41] United Nations Press Release, Secretary General establishes Advisory Group to assist him in convening Internet Governance Forum, 17 May 2006 See: http://www.un.org/press/en/2006/sga1006.doc.htm

^[42] IGF MAG Membership Analysis, 2006-2015 http://cis-india.github.io/charts/2016.04_MAG-analysis/CIS_MAG-Analysis-2016_Treemap.html

^[43] IGF MAG Membership - Stakeholder Types and Regions - 2006-2015 See: http://cis-india.github.io/charts/2016.04_MAG-analysis/CIS_MAG-Analysis-2016_StakeholderTypes-Regions.html

^[44] IGF MAG Membership - Stakeholder Types across Years - 2006-2015 See: http://cis-india.github.io/charts/2016.04_MAG-analysis/CIS_MAG-Analysis-2016_StakeholderTypes-Years.html

^[45] IGF MAG Membership - Stakeholder Types and Countries - 2006-2015 See: http://cis-india.github.io/charts/2016.04_MAG-analysis/CIS_MAG-Analysis-2016_StakeholderTypes-Country.html

^[46] IGF MAG Membership Timeline, 2006-2015 See: http://cis-india.github.io/charts/2016.04_MAG-analysis/CIS_MAG-Analysis-2016_Member-Timeline.html

^[47] MAG Membership - India and USA - 2006-2015

See: http://cis-india.github.io/charts/2016.04_MAG-analysis/CIS_MAG-Analysis-2016_StakeholderTypes-India-USA.html

^[48] MAG Meetings in 2016

http://www.intgovforum.org/cms/open-consultations-and-mag-meeting

^[49] Paul J. DiMaggio and Walter W. Powell, ‘The Iron Cage Revisited: Institutional Isomorphism and Collective Rationality in Organizational Fields’, Yale University, American Sociological Review 1983, Vol. 48 (April: 147-160)

^[50] United Nations Funds-In-Trust Project Document Project number: GLO/11/X01 Project title: Internet Governance Forum Country/area: Global Start date: 1 April 2011 End date: 31 December 2015 Executing agency: UNDESA Funding: Multi-donor – extrabudgetary Budget: Long-term project framework – budget “A” See: http://www.intgovforum.org/cms/2013/TrustFund/Project%20document%20IGF.pdf

^[51] Kieren McCarthy, Critics hit out at 'black box' UN internet body, The Register 31 March 2016 See: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/03/31/black_box_un_internet_body/?page=2

^[52] Eli Dourado, Too Many Stakeholders Spoil the Soup, Foreign Policy, 15 May 2013 See:http://foreignpolicy.com/2013/05/15/too-many-stakeholders-spoil-the-soup/

^[53] IANA Transition, NetMundial are some of the other examples of multi-stakeholder engagement.

^[54] Ibid.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/mapping-mag-a-study-in-institutional-isomorphism

CIS - A2K Work Plan: July 2016 - June 2017

sunil — 2016-04-29T09:36:45Z

One of the key mandates of the Access to Knowledge (A2K) program at the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) is to work towards catalyzing the growth of the free and open knowledge movement in Indic languages. CIS has been a steward of the Wikimedia movement in India since December 2008. Since September 2012, we at CIS-A2K, have been actively involved in growing the movement in India through (i) a grant received from the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) for the period September 2012 - June 2014, (ii) the FDC Grant received for the period July 2014 - June 2015 and (iii) the FDC Grant received for the period July 2015 - June 2016. Based on the productive experience of working with various Indic Wikimedia communities, CIS-A2K has developed this work plan for July 2016 to June 2017.

This was originally published on Meta-wiki on April 2, 2016.

We have revised the work plan template taking into account the changed proposal plan sent out by WMF and in light of the feedback that we have received from FDC assessment during last proposal application. The FDC feedback is taken into account at the level of design, RoI and ensuring quality for all our activities.

CIS-A2K responses towards Indic communities concerns

During the last plan period CIS-A2K received the following complaints, suggestions, and feedback. We have attempted to address the concerns under redesigned CIS-A2K 2.0. This table was first prepared during our progress report for the current grant and A2K would like to acknowledge the learnings derived out of the suggestions and feedback it received during the last plan. Please see the table here.

Background to CIS-A2K Program

CIS-A2K is working with the Indic Wikimedia communities since December 2008, when Jimbo Wales came to India and visited Bangalore. In mid-2012 CIS-A2K received a financial grant from the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) and since then it has been actively involved in growing the Wikimedia and free knowledge movement in India. Following a grant received from WMF for the period September 2012 to June 2014, CIS-A2K received FDC Grant for the periods July 2014 to June 2015 and July 2015 to June 2016. Based on the 41-month experience of working with various Indic Wikimedia communities, CIS-A2K has prepared this year's work plan for July 2016 to June 2017.

Objective

CIS-A2K is committed to improve Wikimedia movement in India by supporting Indic Wikimedia communities and working on Wikimedia projects and collaborating with FOSS and other like minded movement partners. It also strives to catalyse the growth of open and free knowledge movement in South Asia and especially in India. Our main objectives are:

Bringing content under Creative Commons and similar free licenses;
Supporting and empowering Indic Wikimedia communities;
Building and maintaining institutional partnerships in order to support the open knowledge movement and creation of open knowledge resources;
Planning and executing Wikimedia projects with wider community participations and effective consultation;
Fostering and enabling an appropriate legal and technological ecosystem;
Building sustainable communities and grooming potential leaders to represent the communities and projects globally.

Context

CIS-A2K has focussed on creating sustainable programmes and capacity development for communities in the last few years. CIS-A2K intends to continue its work during the proposed grant period and would continue to focus on the following Indian language Wikimedia projects: Kannada, Konkani, Marathi, Odia, Telugu (Focus Language Areas, FLA). In order to achieve higher RoI, A2K will be including Tulu in its language plan from this plan period.

CIS-A2K will continue to provide general support and service to all other Indian language Wikimedia communities for all Wikimedia projects as necessary and as requested by the communities or individuals from the community through its request page and needs assessment workshops.

Community strengthening initiatives will be prioritised in order to address the poor participation of Wikimedians from Indian sub continent in particular and global south in general. CIS-A2K has rolled out initiatives such as Train the Trainer and MediaWiki training, focused edit-a-thons and GLAM activities.

CIS-A2K and Indian language Wikimedia communities would greatly benefit from collaborating with these initiatives and CIS-A2K during this grant period would attempt to bring these communities closer with a series of interactions, hack-a-thons and training sessions.

Our institutional partnerships have played a very important role in content donation, generation of content, attracting new readers and editors and collaborating opportunities with existing community members. They have provided much needed press coverage towards Indian language Wikimedia projects. The institution partnerships and WEP have been redesigned as per community suggestions.

Methodology

This work plan has been prepared based on an extensive engagement with various Wikimedia movement participants and enthusiasts in India. These include:

Wikimedia community members across all Indic communities: We have talked to a large number of Indic Wikimedia community members and specially community members of our focused language areas;
Institutional Partners of CIS-A2K: We have taken feedback and suggestions from our institutional partners regarding the challenges of conducting WEP;
Like-minded advocates of free and open knowledge;
Surveys and Interviews.

Performance against plans and projected targets

Overall

Kannada

Konkani

Marathi

Odia

Telugu

Progress against goals set

Language Area Work Plans

CIS-A2K has put in significant efforts across four focus language areas Kannada, Konkani, Odia and Telugu during the previous work plans. CIS-A2K proposed and initiated Marathi as a focus language project during the last proposal plan. As A2K's strategy of working with FLA has resulted in community building and sustainable outreach efforts, we intend to work with the nascent Tulu community towards making Tulu Wikipedia live.

The Tulu Wikipedia plan is a 'minimal cost program' and is not budgeted same as the other FLA. A2K has been able to build a strong community in Mangalore for the Kannada and Konkani Wikimedia projects. Tulu community draws its editor base and institutional support from Mangalore, hence A2K's plans towards Kannada and Konkani Wikimedia projects can also have the added dimension of Tulu Wikipedia incubation activities.

Detailed work-plan for each of these language areas may be seen here (in alphabetical order):

Woman's day editathon at Christ University

Some of the key factors that determined the July 2016-June 2017 work plan:

Development of Focus Language Area Plan: A2K's strategy of building a plan along with the consultation of the community and further customised as per the feedback received by communities and FDC Staff have resulted well across five languages. CIS-A2K is pleased to inform that during July 2015-June 2016 it engaged with all the five focus language area plans as it has been able to recruit program officers and program associates for the vacant positions. It is important to note that while we are engaging with Tulu Wikipedia community with intentions of making Tulu Wikipedia live, it is also a 'minimal cost' program. It helps A2K in acheiving higher RoI for monetary resources and optimisation of staff and volunteer expertise.
A2K 2.0 as a response to FDC and Indic Wikimedians' Feedback: As a learning derived out of FDC, WMF Board and Indic Wikimedians suggestions, CIS-A2K has revised its program structure and composition of work. Please find details of revised divisional of responsibilities of A2K team.
Partnership and networking with institutions and groups: CIS-A2K has had the privilege of partnering with educational institutions and developmental organisations. These partnerships and collaborations not only resulted in significant quality-content contributions, but also lead to the diversification and expansion of that particular language Wikimedia community. In order to strengthen the communities, increase participation and conduct GLAM activities and attract content donation A2K would look out for possible institutional partnerships.
Providing sustainability and developing leadership skills: A2K has always worked towards enabling Indian Language Wikimedia communities to achieve sustainability and visibility amongst the global communities. We have been greatly privilege to work with the Focus Language Communities and would like to pass on our learning through collaborations with other language communities, while exiting few of our current FLA programs. Through our skill building initiatives such as Train-the-Trainer, Media Wiki Training and Train-a-Wikipedian A2K has also been able to support growth of a new community of volunteers to support the existing community.

Community Strengthening Initiatives

CIS-A2K started two community strengthening initiatives— Train-the-Trainer and MediaWiki Training to grow and strengthen the Indic Wikimedia projects and the associated communities, both qualitatively and quantitatively. The earlier iteration of these two programs played an important role in connecting the Indian language Wikimedia communities and fostering multi-lingual projects. This year also CIS-A2K proposes to undertake these two successful community strengthening initiatives. In mid-March 2016, CIS-A2K conducted a 2-day-long nationwide Wikipedia Education Program review workshop that brought students and faculty members from institutions that are running WEP in partnership with CIS-A2K and several important topics such as structural challenges such as academic schedule, institutional interest, faculty buy-in and more importantly response by the students were discussed. This year also CIS-A2K proposes to conduct such a workshop.

Creating Movement Resources

CIS-A2K has been creating resources to help Indic Wikimedia communities. All the resources are created after assessing the communities' need assessment and close interactions with many of the active community members.

CIS-A2K proposed to create the following resources (this also include printed resources):

Wikipedia editing tutorials
PEG and IEG application handbooks;
Handbook on how apply for various WMF scholarships;
Handbook on best practices for Wiki-events, workshops, meetup, outreach and other programs;
FAQ for content donors –give this job to a law school intern. No need of this handbook to be translated to Indian languages.
Bookmarks creation to increase awareness about Indian Wikimedia Projects;

General Support and Service to the Movement

CIS-A2K regularly supports Indic-language Wikimedia communities to conduct workshops, edit-a-thons and events to improve their projects. All these requests are placed at CIS-A2K request page and fulfilled after extensive community discussion and needs assessment.

Currently CIS-A2K is working on a program named Train-a-Wikipedian (TAW) to identify enthusiastic Indic Wikipedians and train and groom them to develop their editing skills. We'll continue empowering Indic Wikimedia community members through this program.

Learning and Evaluation

Following the Global metrics and discussions some members of the Wikimedia community, the A2K program had put together some evaluation tools to assess the impact of its work during the last year. We have included some more metrics for evaluation this year.

Evaluation tools

Participation

Number of active editors involved
Number of newly registered users
Number of individuals involved

Content

Number of new images/media added to Wikimedia article pages
Number of new images/media uploaded to Wikimedia Commons
Number of articles added or improved on Wikimedia projects
Number of bytes added to and/or deleted from Wikimedia projects

Reports

CIS-A2K will undertake monthly and annually review of our work using the above evaluation tools. CIS-A2K report activities and progress to Wikimedia foundation in monthly meetings.^[1] CIS-A2K team will also report the successes and learnings to the Wikimedia India & the Global Community. CIS-A2K team will actively review progress of each language area plan in collaboration with the respective Wikimedia community. Based on this feedback we will undertake mid-course corrections, should there be a need. To summarize following reports will be published in the year of 2016 - 2017:

Progress report (for the current grant)
Impact Report (July 2016 - June 2017)
Monthly report to Wikimedia foundation;
Monthly Newsletters
Annual report to CIS

Monthly Review and Learning Sessions

Last year we wrote about conducting monthly review and learning sessions. Currently CIS-A2K is conducting monthly learning sessions to critically reflect on the successes and failures of our work internally. The learnings are shared with Wikimedia Foundation for their feedback and suggestion. We'll continue conducting monthly reviews and learnings and progress will be shared with Wikimedia Foundation. We will try to share the same the Wikimedia India members.

Budget

Please find link to CIS-A2K program budget for proposed grant period July 2016-June 2017 here

Feedback

We appreciate your valuable feedback. However, for the sake of structured engagement by everyone, we request you to consider the following before you share your feedback.

For feedback on the overall A2K Work Plan you can write here.
For feedback on respective Language area plans, please write on the discussion page of the respective language plan.

Alternatively you could also share your feedback over e-mail at tanveer@cis-india.org. Please use the subject line Feedback on Work Plan.
Should you feel the need to discuss any aspect of the plan before sharing your feedback, please write to us and we can set up a telephone/Skype call.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/cis-a2k-work-plan-july-2016-june-2017

SSRN-id2756486.pdf

praskrishna — 2016-06-20T01:51:25Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/SSRN-id2756486.pdf

Global Congress 2015 - A Collection of Resources

Nisha S Kumar — 2016-05-03T02:24:01Z

The 4th edition of the Global Congress 2015 was organized at the National Law School of India University in New Delhi from 15 - 17 December 2015. The largest ever in Asia, the Global Congress was jointly organized by the Centre for Internet & Society (CIS) in association with National Law University, Delhi, Open A.I.R., CREATe, Columbia University and American University.

The Global Congress on Intellectual Property and the Public Interest was one of the most significant events on the calendar for scholars and policy advocates working on intellectual property from a public interest perspective. This year, the discussions included attention to broad perspectives on clarifying the meaning and reality of open collaborative innovation, as well as significant focus on the sub-themes of economic development (innovation and software patents, clean technologies, climate change and green patenting, issues of branding and plain packaging); sustainable development (agriculture and geographic indicators [GI]); policy, law and regulation (role of governments, patenting, compulsory licensing [CL], global institutions [particularly WTO, WIPO and WHO] and national institutions [particularly patent offices]). Trade dominated the discussions across the IP and Dev track, including the TPP and other issues, reflecting the strong global trade agenda.

For a summary of the wrap-up of the IP and Development track click here.


Global Congress participants in one of the sessions.

Presentations by the Pervasive Technologies Team at CIS

Nehaa Chaudhari: The Curious Case of the CCI: Competition Law and SEP Regulation in India
Amba Uttara Kak and Maggie Huang: Rethinking Music Copyright Management in the Age of Digital Distribution: Business Models, Licensing Practices and Copyright Institutions in India
Rohini Lakshané: Patent Landscaping in the sub-$100 Mobile Device Market in India
Anubha Sinha: IP in Mobile Applications Development in India

Interview Series

Job Michael Mathew, an intern at CIS conducted a series of interviews as a lead up to the Global Congress: Mathew conducted interviews with Michael Geist, Zakir Thomas, Susan K. Sell, Shamnad Basheer, and Jayashree Watal.

Photographs

See the photographs from the Global Congress 2015 on Flickr: Day 1, Day 2, and Day 3 (Conclusion).

Nehaa Chaudhari - WIPO Initiatives - 05 March, 2016.pdf

praskrishna — 2016-03-31T16:18:56Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/Nehaa%20Chaudhari%20-%20WIPO%20Initiatives%20-%2005%20March-%202016.pdf

Nehaa Chaudhari - NLSIU - 04 March 2016.pdf

praskrishna — 2016-03-31T16:16:35Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/Nehaa%20Chaudhari%20-%20NLSIU%20-%2004%20March%202016.pdf

BHASHA - Indian Languages Digital Festival

praskrishna — 2016-06-18T17:14:37Z

Subhashish Panigrahi gave a talk at the Bhasha- India Languages Digital Festival a conference organized by news media YourStory, at New Delhi on March 11, 2016. In the panel "The challenges of making regional language content available on the Web and on mobiles" Panigrahi spoke about some of the challenges in growing the Indian-language Wikipedia projects and the communities.

The notes for the talk are below:

Wikipedia, that exists in many Indian languages are not known to masses. I personally did not know about the Odia Wikipedia until 2011 when a friend told me about its existence. Back then the project was completely inactive. And then a couple of friends and I started contributing, more contributors joined and the project grew up to what it is today. The site now has over 300,000 visitors every month and it is the largest visited site in Odia language on the Internet. This could probably be the same case for your language.

It has been quite challenging in the past to grow the Indian-language Wikipedia projects. There are many challenges and I would talk about eight of them:

1. Language communities

The language communities of many of the Indian languages are such that many of them even do no know how to search any information online in their language typed in their script. Some even share that because Google's home page does not have their script means that their language does not exist on the Internet. There exist a large gap of ignorance.

2. Wikipedia's editor community

Wikipedia, as you all know, is written by people like you and me. And from writing to editing everything happens voluntarily. As many people do not probably know or do not try to learn that they themselves can correct the mistakes and inaccuracy that exist in many Wikipedia articles. The Wikipedia editor communities for several Indian languages are really small. When these languages are spoken by millions of people, only a handful editors contribute in editing the Wikipedia in these languages.

3. Language input

There is a vast majority of people in this country that do not know how to type in their own language.

4. Low availability of Indian-language content on the Internet

There are two stages to the lack of Open Access to information. First, lack of native language content on the Internet bars many to access knowledge. Take the example of my state. When the Kerala government's official tourism portal is available in Odia and other Indian languages, my state, the Odisha government's tourism portal has no information in Odia-language. Our languages are neglected largely in our own states.

5. Mismatch of conventional and new media

Many conventional have still been using non-standard variants of ASCII/ISCII script encoding systems instead of adopting the Unicode standard. Unicode being a global standard and having the advantage of unifying the world has been available for Indian languages about 25 years now.^[1] But many of our traditional media has failed to adopt this. Malayala Manorama, one of the most circulated dailies in Malayalam languages and one of the oldest Indian newspaper still has not started using Unicode on their website. Same is the case for many other newspapers in India.

6. Lack of Open Access

The information produced on the Internet in general and by the government, in particular, are mostly copyrighted. The paywalled garden of copyright restrictions keeps the information closed and stop people from sharing and learning more. On the contrary, Wikipedia is available under a Creative Commons Share-Alike license which allows anyone to make use of the content and even distribute commercial copies of its content. The idea of opening up information for masses in a free license could make the information reach to millions of people.

7. Mobile input

With over 1 billion people with mobile phones, the 15% internet penetration rate will soon grow meaning lot many Indians will have access to the Internet. If these people are not educated about native language input then they will be victims of the English-centric Internet rather than being able to enjoy the virtue of the same. Many Indians that have smartphones need pre-built input methods to be able to contribute in their own language Wikipedia.

8. People with disabilities

Many cannot read, speak and write. India has over 60 million people with hearing impairment.^[2] There is a need for good quality text to and speech to text engine for these languages. Also, these software products have to be free software so common people, that cannot afford to buy expensive proprietary software like JAWS, can contribute to Wikipedia in their language. Many text-to-speech engines that are available today for Indian languages sound so mechanical that it is way hard for common speakers to use them.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/news/bhasha-indian-languages-digital-festival

March 2016 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2016-04-13T08:05:42Z

CIS Newsletter for the month of March 2016 is here.

The Centre for Internet & Society (CIS) is happy to share its March 2016 newsletter. Previous issues of the newsletters can be accessed at http://cis-india.org/about/newsletters.

Highlights
CIS published and circulated two press releases on March 11 and 15, 2016, as the Lok Sabha passed the Aadhaar (Targeted Delivery of Financial and Other Subsidies, Benefits and Services) Bill, 2016: 'The Law cannot Fix what Technology has Broken!' and 'The New Bill Makes Aadhaar Compulsory!' CIS submitted an initial list of recommendations to the Members of Parliaments to highlight the aspects of the Bill that require immediate attention. The recommendations were prepared by Amber Sinha, Sumandro Chattapadhyay, Sunil Abraham, and Vanya Rakesh. In an article titled Flaws in the UIDAI Process published in the Economic and Political Weekly, Hans Varghese Mathews. He stated that the Government of India is engaged upon biometrically identifying the entire population of India. An experiment performed at an early stage of the programme has allowed us to estimate the chance of a false positive: and from that to estimate the proportion of duplicands. For the current population of 1.2 billion the expected proportion of duplicands is 1/121, a ratio which is far too high. Vipul Kharbanda wrote an analysis of Aadhaar Act in the context of Justice A.P. Shah Committee Principles. The analysis has thrown light on the substantial aspects of the Act in relation to privacy concerns which have been raised by a number of experts. Pooja Saxena and Amber Sinha produced two infographics that 1) evaluate the Aadhaar Bill 2016 against the National Privacy Principles, and 2) highlight the vulnerabilities in the UIDAI implementation process not addressed by the Aadhaar Bill, 2016. CIS has initiated the CIS Papers series with a fascinating exploration of humanitarian use of big data and its discontents by Sean McDonald, FrontlineSMS, in the context of utilisation of Call Detail Records for public health response during the Ebola crisis in Liberia. With the objective to sensitize and impart the skillset in handling NVDA – the Screen Reader and the usage of BookShare Online Library for the print disabled to the Special Educators, Karna Vidya Technology Centre in collaboration with Computer and Internet Society conducted a one-day workshop on February 27, 2016. 48 special educators participated and benefited from the workshop. An article titled 8 Challenges In Growing Indian-Language Wikipedias by Subhashish Panigrahi was first published in Huffington Post on March 19, 2016. This was cross-posted in Medianama titled as Multiple key factors preventing Indic Wikipedia growth on March 21, 2016. CIS has published a report on the 30th Session of WIPO-SCCR giving an analysis of the Broadcast Treaty Negotiations and the Negotiations on International Instrument for Exceptions and Limitations for Libraries and Archives. Anubha Sinha wrote an essay titled Fueling the Affordable Smartphone Revolution in India as part of the The Good Life in Asia's Digital 21st Century essay collection. She stated that smartphones have emerged as the exemplar of mankind's quest for shrinking technologies. They embody the realization of a simple premise – that computing devices would do more and cost less. This realization has been responsible for modern society's profound transformations in communication, governance, and knowledge distribution. Rohini Lakshané wrote an analysis of the patent landscape in a research paper titled Patents and Mobile Devices in India: An Empirical Survey. The paper has indicated that although India has the second-largest wireless subscriber base in the world, with more than 150 mobile device vendors, it has, until recently, remained relatively unaffected by the global smartphone wars. The Department of Science and Technology, Government of India, has constituted a National Expert Committee for developing a draft National Geospatial Policy (NGP) to provide appropriate guidelines for collection, analysis, use, and distribution of geospatial information across India, and to assure data availability, accessibility and quality. A pre-drafting consultation meeting for the NGP was organised in Delhi on February 3, 2016. Anubha Sinha attended the meeting. The glue that allows infrastructures to link and operate efficiently is standards as they make technologies interoperable and efficient tells Vanya Rakesh in a blog entry titled Adoption of Standards in Smart Cities - Way Forward for India. P.P. Sneha wrote a blog post which studies the digital creative industries in India while examining some initial questions. She stated that the term ‘creative industries’ has been around for a while now, but with the advent of the digital, and with interest from different sectors, especially with a focus on policy and economic development, it would be essential to critically examine the discourse around the term, and see where it may be changing to open up new possibilities, particularly for the arts, humanities and design. CIS strongly condemns the acts of sexual harassment that took place against one of its representatives Padmini Baruah during ICANN 55 in Marrakech. It is completely unacceptable that an event the scale of an ICANN meeting does not have in place a formal redressal system, a neutral point of contact or even a policy for complainants who have been put through the ordeal of sexual harassment. ICANN cannot claim to be inclusive or diverse if it does not formally recognise a specific procedure or recourse under such instances.

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Accessibility & Inclusion
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India has an estimated 70 million persons with disabilities who don't have access to read printed materials due to some form of physical, sensory, cognitive or other disability. As part of our endeavour to make available accessible content for persons with disabilities we are developing a text-to-speech software in 15 languages with support from the Hans Foundation. The progress made so far in the project can be accessed here.

►NVDA and eSpeak

The workshops were conducted earlier but published recently on our website:

Report on eSpeak with NVDA Screen Reader and Assistive Technology for Visually Challenged (Organized by National Association for the Blind, New Delhi, Centre for Differently Abled Persons, Bharathidasan University, Tiruchirappalli, and CIS; January 21, 2016; Tiruchirappalli).
Report on NVDA with E-Speak and BookShare Online Library (Organized by Karna Vidya Technology Centre, Computer and Internet Society, and CIS; February 27, 2016; Chennai).

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Access to Knowledge
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As part of the Access to Knowledge programme we are doing two projects. The first one (Pervasive Technologies) under a grant from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) is for research on the complex interplay between pervasive technologies and intellectual property to support intellectual property norms that encourage the proliferation and development of such technologies as a social good. The second one (Wikipedia) under a grant from the Wikimedia Foundation is for the growth of Indic language communities and projects by designing community collaborations and partnerships that recruit and cultivate new editors and explore innovative approaches to building projects.

►Pervasive Technologies

Article

Fueling the Affordable Smartphone Revolution in India (Anubha Sinha; The Good Life in Asia's 21st Century Essay Collection; March 16, 2016).

Blog Entries

Report of the 30th Session of the WIPO SCCR by the Centre for Internet & Society (edited by Nehaa Chaudhari with assistance from Nisha S.K., Aarushi Bansal, Amulya P., and Saahil Dama; March 16, 2016).
Dataset: Patent Landscape of Mobile Device Technologies in India (Rohini Lakshané; March 31, 2016).

Patents and Mobile Devices in India: An Empirical Survey (Rohini Lakshané; March 31, 2016)

►Wikipedia

As part of the project grant from the Wikimedia Foundation we have reached out to more than 3500 people across India by organizing more than 100 outreach events and catalysed the release of encyclopaedic and other content under the Creative Commons (CC-BY-3.0) license in four Indian languages (21 books in Telugu, 13 in Odia, 4 volumes of encyclopaedia in Konkani and 6 volumes in Kannada, and 1 book on Odia language history in English).

Articles

Eight Challenges That Indian-Language Wikipedias Need to Overcome (Subhashish Panigrahi; The Wire; March 17, 2016). A version of the article was also mirrored by Opensource.com on March 28, 2016.
8 Challenges In Growing Indian-Language Wikipedias (Subhashish Panigrahi; Huffington Post; March 19, 2016). This was cross-posted in Medianama titled as Multiple key factors preventing Indic Wikipedia growth on March 21, 2016.
8 Challenges for Improving Indian Language Wikipedias (Subhashish Panigrahi; Opensource.com; March 28, 2016). The article was originally published in the Wire on March 17, 2016 and later mirrored on Opensource.com on March 28, 2016.

Participation in Event

BHASHA-Indian Languages Digital Festival (Organized by news media YourStory; March 11, 2016; New Delhi). Subhashish Panigrahi gave a talk in the panel “The challenges of making regional language content available on the Web and on mobiles.
8th IBA International Conference (Organized by Indus Business Academy; March 24 - 26, 2016; Bangalore). Dr. U.B. Pavanaja gave a talk on Democratizing of Knowledge Access- Case of Regional Language Wikipedia.

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Openness
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Our work in the Openness programme focuses on open data, especially open government data, open access, open education resources, open knowledge in Indic languages, open media, and open technologies and standards - hardware and software. We approach openness as a cross-cutting principle for knowledge production and distribution, and not as a thing-in-itself.

Submission

Consultation on 'National Geospatial Policy' - Notes and Submission (Anubha Sinha; March 29, 2016)

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Internet Governance
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As part of its research on privacy and free speech, CIS is engaged with two different projects. The first one (under a grant from Privacy International and International Development Research Centre (IDRC) is on surveillance and freedom of expression (SAFEGUARDS). The second one (under a grant from MacArthur Foundation) is on studying the restrictions placed on freedom of expression online by the Indian government.

►Big Data

Article

Too Clever By Half: Strengthening India’s Smart Cities Plan with Human Rights Protection (Vanya Rakesh; The Wire; March 22, 2016).

Blog Entry

Adoption of Standards in Smart Cities - Way Forward for India (Vanya Rakesh; March 19, 2016).

►Freedom of Expression

Statements

Sexual Harassment at ICANN (Padmini Baruah; March 18, 2016).
CIS' Statement on Sexual Harassment at ICANN55 (Vidushi Marda; March 21, 2016).

►Privacy

Submission

List of Recommendations on the Aadhaar Bill, 2016 - Letter Submitted to the Members of Parliament (Amber Sinha, Sumandro Chattapadhyay, Sunil Abraham, and Vanya Rakesh; March 16, 2016).

Articles

Flaws in the UIDAI Process (Hans Varghese Mathews; Economic & Political Weekly, Journal, Vol. 51, Issue No. 9, February 27, 2016).
Aadhaar: Still Too Many Problems (Pranesh Prakash; Livemint; March 7, 2016).
Aadhaar Bill fails to incorporate suggestions by the Standing Committee (Amber Sinha; The Wire; March 10, 2016).
Are we Losing the Right to Privacy and Freedom of Speech on Indian Internet? (Amber Sinha; March 10, 2016).
Privacy Concerns Overshadow Monetary Benefits of Aadhaar Scheme (Pranesh Prakash and Amber Sinha; Hindustan Times; March 12, 2016).
Will Aadhaar Act Address India’s Dire Need For a Privacy Law? (Nehaa Chaudhari; Quint; March 31, 2016).

Blog Entries

A comparison of the 2016 Aadhaar Bill, and the 2010 NIDAI Bill (Vanya Rakesh; March 9, 2016).
Aadhaar Bill 2016 & NIAI Bill 2010 - Comparing the Texts (Sumandro Chattapadhyay; March 9, 2016).
The New Aadhaar Bill in Plain English (Amber Sinha, Vanya Rakesh and Vipul Kharbanda; March 11, 2016).
An Urgent Need for the Right to Privacy (Sumandro Chattapadhyay; March 16, 2016).
The Law cannot Fix what Technology has Broken! (Japreet Grewal and Sunil Abraham; March 16, 2016).
The New Bill Makes Aadhaar Compulsory! (Amber Sinha; March 16, 2016).
Analysis of Aadhaar Act in the Context of A.P. Shah Committee Principles (Vipul Kharbanda; March 17, 2016).
Vulnerabilities in the UIDAI Implementation Not Addressed by the Aadhaar Bill, 2016 (Pooja Saxena and Vipul Kharbanda; March 21, 2016).

Participation in Events

GNI-Industry Dialogue Learning Session: Human Rights Impact Assessments and Due Diligence in the ICT sector (Organized by Global Network Initiative; March 11, 2016; Washington D.C.). Elonnai Hickok attended the event.
RightsCon Silicon Valley 2016 (Organized by RightsCon; Mission Bay Conference Center in San Francisco, California; March 30 - April 1, 2016).

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Telecom
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CIS is involved in promoting access and accessibility to telecommunications services and resources and has provided inputs to ongoing policy discussions and consultation papers published by TRAI. It has prepared reports on unlicensed spectrum and accessibility of mobile phones for persons with disabilities and also works with the USOF to include funding projects for persons with disabilities in its mandate:

Op-ed

Connectivity: Let's Apply What We Know (Shyam Ponappa; Business Standard; March 2, 2016).

Submission

TRAI Consultation on Differential Pricing for Data Services - Post-Open House Discussion Submission (Sumandro Chattapadhyay; March 30, 2016).

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Researchers at Work
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The Researchers at Work (RAW) programme is an interdisciplinary research initiative driven by contemporary concerns to understand the reconfigurations of social practices and structures through the Internet and digital media technologies, and vice versa. It is interested in producing local and contextual accounts of interactions, negotiations, and resolutions between the Internet, and socio-material and geo-political processes:

Blog Entry

Studying Digital Creative Industries in India: Initial Questions (P.P. Sneha; March 17, 2016).

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News & Media Coverage
-----------------------------------

CIS gave inputs to the following media coverage:

The Crypto Wars Are Global (Joseph Cox; Motherboard; March 4, 2016).
Govt narrative on Aadhaar has not changed in the last six years: Sunil Abraham (Shreeja Sen; Livemint; March 8, 2016).
Aadhaar: Govt will not compromise on national security (Shreeja Sen; Livemint; March 9, 2016).
Hard to broad ban! (Taru Bhatia; Governance Now; March 9, 2016).
Seven reasons why Parliament should debate the Aadhaar bill (and not pass it in a rush) (Anumeha Yadav; March 11, 2016).
Aadhaar is actually surveillance tech: Sunil Abraham (Sahil Makkar; Business Standard; March 12, 2016).
Will Only Legal Backing For Aadhaar Suffice? (Indian Express; March 14, 2016).
India's billion-member biometric database raises privacy fears (Sanjeev Miglani and Manoj Kumar; March 16, 2016).
A scheme in India to help the poor raises privacy concerns (John Ribeiro; IDG News Service and CSO; March 16, 2016).
Pratap Vikram Singh - Why Aadhaar is Baseless? (Governance Now; March 17, 2016).
Forget privacy, Aadhaar Bill gives too much power to the executive (Aloke Tikku; Sunil Abraham; March 17, 2016).
In India, Biometric Data Storage Sparks Demands for Privacy Laws (Anjana Pasricha; Voice of America; March 18, 2016).
Dead and Clicking (Jayanthi Madhukar and Sowmya Rajaram; Bangalore Mirror; March 20, 2016).
India Still Trying To Turn Optional Aadhaar Identification Number Into A Mandatory National Identity System (TechDirt; March 22, 2016).
Debate: Five Aadhaar Myths that Don’t Stand Up to Scrutiny (Reetika Khera; March 23, 2016).
How the government gains when private companies use Aadhaar (M. Rajshekhar and Anumeha Yadav; March 24, 2016).
Making Aadhaar Mandatory: Gamechanger For Governance? (NDTV; March 24, 2016).
ICANN Sexual Harassment Case Highlights Lack of Procedure at Global Internet Body (Wire; March 24, 2016).
Securing the internet’s future (Hindu Businessline; March 25, 2016).
On Google Maps, JNU top result in search for 'anti-national' (Kim Arora; The Times of India; March 25, 2016).
Woman Alleges Harassment at Major International Conference (Kavita Patil; Bangalore Mirror; March 30, 2016).

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About CIS
-----------------------------------
The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) is a non-profit organisation that undertakes interdisciplinary research on internet and digital technologies from policy and academic perspectives. The areas of focus include digital accessibility for persons with diverse abilities, access to knowledge, intellectual property rights, openness (including open data, free and open source software, open standards, open access, open educational resources, and open video), internet governance, telecommunication reform, digital privacy, and cyber-security. The academic research at CIS seeks to understand the reconfigurations of social and cultural processes and structures as mediated through the internet and digital media technologies.

► Follow us elsewhere

Twitter: http://twitter.com/cis_india
Twitter - Access to Knowledge: https://twitter.com/CISA2K
Twitter - Information Policy: https://twitter.com/CIS_InfoPolicy
Facebook - Access to Knowledge: https://www.facebook.com/cisa2k
E-Mail - Access to Knowledge: a2k@cis-india.org
E-Mail - Researchers at Work: raw@cis-india.org
List - Researchers at Work: https://lists.ghserv.net/mailman/listinfo/researchers

► Support Us

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

► Request for Collaboration

We invite researchers, practitioners, artists, and theoreticians, both organisationally and as individuals, to engage with us on topics related internet and society, and improve our collective understanding of this field. To discuss such possibilities, please write to Sunil Abraham, Executive Director, at sunil@cis-india.org (for policy research), or Sumandro Chattapadhyay, Research Director, at sumandro@cis-india.org (for academic research), with an indication of the form and the content of the collaboration you might be interested in. To discuss collaborations on Indic language Wikipedia projects, write to Tanveer Hasan, Programme Officer, at tanveer@cis-india.org.

CIS is grateful to its primary donor the Kusuma Trust founded by Anurag Dikshit and Soma Pujari, philanthropists of Indian origin for its core funding and support for most of its projects. CIS is also grateful to its other donors, Wikimedia Foundation, Ford Foundation, Privacy International, UK, Hans Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, and IDRC for funding its various projects.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/march-2016-bulletin

Centre for Internet and Society

DIPP Comments

Aadhaar by Numbers

Sunil Abraham

Video

Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson (PUBL) v Competition Commission of India and Anr

"Will the Magic Number Deliver?" - Roundtable on Aadhaar at CSLG, JNU, April 26

Discussion Note

Discussion Format

Directions to Venue

Poster

Celebrating the 13th anniversary of Kannada Wikipedia

Monitoring Sustainable Development Goals in India: Availability and Openness of Data (Part II)

Goal #08: Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all

Goal #09: Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and foster innovation

Goal #10: Reduce inequality within and among countries

Goal #11: Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable

Goal #12: Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns

Goal #13: Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts

Goal #14: Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development

Goal #15: Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss

Goal #16: Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels

Goal #17: Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the global partnership for sustainable development

Conclusion

Author

India's biometric database crosses billion-member mark

Mapping MAG: A study in Institutional Isomorphism

Implementing a Multistakeholder Approach

Origins of the IGF

Aftermath of the WGIG Report

Institutionalizing the IGF

IGF Secretariat - Set to Fail?

Constituting the MAG

Analysis of MAG Composition (2006 - 2015)

Recommendations: Reforming MAG & the IGF

CIS - A2K Work Plan: July 2016 - June 2017

CIS-A2K responses towards Indic communities concerns

Background to CIS-A2K Program

Objective

Context

Methodology

Performance against plans and projected targets

Language Area Work Plans

Community Strengthening Initiatives

Creating Movement Resources

General Support and Service to the Movement

Learning and Evaluation

Reports

Monthly Review and Learning Sessions

Budget

Feedback

SSRN-id2756486.pdf

Global Congress 2015 - A Collection of Resources

Global Congress participants in one of the sessions.

Presentations by the Pervasive Technologies Team at CIS

Interview Series

Photographs

Further Reading

Nehaa Chaudhari - WIPO Initiatives - 05 March, 2016.pdf

Nehaa Chaudhari - NLSIU - 04 March 2016.pdf

BHASHA - Indian Languages Digital Festival

March 2016 Bulletin