Centre for Internet and Society

Odia Wikimedia community meetup at Cuttack

Sailesh Patnaik — 2015-12-29T12:07:56Z

Odia Wikimedians are planning to gather in Cuttack and discuss about future project ideas for the community.

Agenda:

Discussion about existing projects and planning for future
Implementing the community's plans
Responsibilities of CIS-A2K's new program Associate Sailesh Patnaik
Restarting monthly meetup plans in Cuttack and Bhubaneswar

As Odia Wikipedia turns 13, what happens next?

Subhashish Panigrahi and Sailesh Patnaik — 2016-06-18T17:08:41Z

Odia Wikipedia, one of several Indian-language Wikipedia projects, celebrated thirteen years of free knowledge contribution on June 3.

This was originally published on the Wikimedia Blog on August 21. The post was shared on Wikipedia's official Facebook page, and on Twitter handles [1 and 2]

Launched in 2002—just a year after the English Wikipedia was launched—Odia Wikipedia has grown to be the largest content repository in the Odia language available in Unicode on the Internet. With over 8,900 articles and about 17 active editors (also known as “uikiali”) spread across various parts of India and abroad, the project has become more than just an encyclopedia. The voluntary editor community has put its efforts into acquiring valuable content, re-licensing them under Creative Commons (CC) licenses, and building tools for acquiring more encyclopedic content from various sources.

The community has also engaged over 2,500 people through various outreach programs, such as the Wikipedia Education Program. For its thirteenth anniversary, the community released a character-encoding converter that promises to unlock massive amounts of content—from government portals to journals, newspapers and magazines that have their content in various legacy encoding systems other than Unicode. This has been a major roadblock in the search for and reuse of digital content in the Odia language. During our thirteenth anniversary celebrations, the community spent a day assessing community needs, addressing issues, and identifying priority areas to focus on in the future. This was arguably the first time almost the entire community gathered in a physical space. This allowed Odia Wikipedia administrator, and the most active Odia Wikimedian, Mrutyunjaya Kar and I to design a needs assessment survey. Participating Wikimedians were asked to brainstorm various problems they face in two major areas: editing and outreach.

The community has also engaged over 2,500 people through various outreach programs, such as the Wikipedia Education Program. For its thirteenth anniversary, the community released a character-encoding converter that promises to unlock massive amounts of content—from government portals to journals, newspapers and magazines that have their content in various legacy encoding systems other than Unicode. This has been a major roadblock in the search for and reuse of digital content in the Odia language.

During our thirteenth anniversary celebrations, the community spent a day assessing community needs, addressing issues, and identifying priority areas to focus on in the future. This was arguably the first time almost the entire community gathered in a physical space. This allowed Odia Wikipedia administrator, and the most active Odia Wikimedian, Mrutyunjaya Kar and I to design a needs assessment survey. Participating Wikimedians were asked to brainstorm various problems they face in two major areas: editing and outreach.

	Two-fifths of participants said that problems with the rendering of Odia characters in different operating systems, ignorance or lack of more documentation about enabling encoding for Odia, input methods and keyboard layouts, and other font- and keyboard-related issues as the major reason for low readership and contribution on Wikipedia. More than a third instead blamed the lack of good quality content on Wikipedia and the Internet as a whole in the Odia language, in English related to Odia language, and in Odisha on the Internet. A quarter blamed other technical issues, including the lack of mobile input in Odia, for low editorship, while low interest for contributing in Odia language by native language speakers was blamed by eight percent of survey participants.

Two-fifths of participants said that problems with the rendering of Odia characters in different operating systems, ignorance or lack of more documentation about enabling encoding for Odia, input methods and keyboard layouts, and other font- and keyboard-related issues as the major reason for low readership and contribution on Wikipedia.

More than a third instead blamed the lack of good quality content on Wikipedia and the Internet as a whole in the Odia language, in English related to Odia language, and in Odisha on the Internet. A quarter blamed other technical issues, including the lack of mobile input in Odia, for low editorship, while low interest for contributing in Odia language by native language speakers was blamed by eight percent of survey participants.

Aditya Mahar, the second-most active editor on the Odia Wikipedia, feels that the biggest setback for the Odia Wikipedia is a lack of interest in contributing in Odia language. He says many Odia speakers feel that Odia is not needed to acquire and share knowledge.

“Like many others, I have been very eager to learn and share more about my home state and culture,” he says. “That’s why I started to contribute to the Odia Wikipedia, to tell my people about our rich cultural heritage in my language.”

He adds that he is concerned by the way many have been alienating Odia with the excuse of learning English to connect to the rest of the world. “I want my future generation to find everything they want to learn in Odia—from the history of Odisha, our art, architecture, Odia language and people, and our cultural extravaganza,” he says.

Mrutyunjaya Kar, an administrator on the Odia Wikipedia and the most active contributor, feels that Wikipedia is like a marathon and there is a great need for fresh blood in the community. Asked if the community will ever die out, Mrutyunjaya feels that even with a small community, the Odia Wikipedia community is always going to thrive, even if, in the worst case, only one active Wikipedian remains. So, we badly need new users to pass the baton. For him, community support and bonding with the fellow editors is the most important thing to lead a community.

Mrutyunjaya adds that creating many short articles, known as “stubs”, is a necessary evil and essential for a project like the Odia Wikipedia, as they are drafted as a by-product of collaborative editing.

“It takes little longer for a small community like Odia to expand and enhance quality of stubs though,” he says. “Many-a-times, new editors learn about Wikipedia editing while creating stubs. However, all the active Wikipedians agreed during the thirteenth anniversary not to create or promote many stubs.”

Sailesh Patnaik, Odia Wikimedian
Subhashish Panigrahi, Odia Wikimedian and Programme Officer, Access To Knowledge (CIS-A2K)

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/wikimedia-foundation-blog-as-odia-wikipedia-turns-13-what-happens-next

June 2015 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2015-09-13T16:10:19Z

Newsletter for the month of June.

We are happy to share with you the sixth issue of the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) newsletter (June 2015). The past editions of the newsletter can be accessed at http://cis-india.org/about/newsletters.

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Highlights
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As part of its project on mapping cyber security actors in South Asia and South East Asia, CIS conducted a series of interviews with cyber security actors. The interviews were compiled and edited into one documentary . The film was produced by Purba Sarkar, edited by Aaron Joseph, and directed by Oxblood Ruffin features Malavika Jayaram, Nitin Pai, Namita Malhotra, Saikat Datta, Nishant Shah, Lawrence Liang, Anja Kovacs, Sikyong Lobsang Sangay and, Ravi Sharada Prasad.

CIS conducted a training on eSpeak Tamil Computing with NVDA in Tirunelveli in the month of June. Sixteen delegates attended the event.
The 30th Session of the World Intellectual Property Organization's ("WIPO") Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights ("SCCR") was held from June 30 to July 3, 2015. CIS was unable to attend the meeting. However, CIS had a statement to make on negotiations on the Proposed Treaty for Broadcasting Organizations .
The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India had called for comments on the technical background paper prepared by the WIPO Secretariat in relation to the Broadcast Treaty. CIS submitted its comments .
Rohini Lakshané in a blog post analysed the commonalities in big-ticket patent infringement lawsuits pertaining to mobile devices.

Sumandro Chattapadhyay co-authored a report on open data intermediaries in developing countries . The report concluded by saying that consideration needs to be given to the presence of multiple intermediaries in an open data ecosystem, each of whom may possess different forms of capital to enable the use and unlock the potential impact of open data.
Odia language Wikipedia has grown to 800k page views in a month. The Odia Wikipedia community gathered in Bhubaneswar on June 3 to celebrate Odia Wikipedia's 13^th anniversary. Subhashish Panigrahi wrote about this.
Sunil Abraham in an article titled "The generation of e-Emergency" published by Livemint on June 22 argued that the next generation of censorship technology is expected to be 'real-time content manipulation' through ISPs and Internet companies.
In two separate blog entries, Jyoti Panday provided insights into IANA Transition Stewardship & ICANN Accountability. The first part gives a background to the IANA transition and updates on the ensuing processes in an attempt to familiarise people with the issues at stake and the second part provides an overview of submitted proposals and highlights the areas of concern that will need attention moving forward .

Sumandro Chattapadhyay co-designed and co-facilitated a workshop for government officials from Bhutan, Maldives, Meghalaya, Sikkim, and Tripura, on open data policy and implementation, organised by UNDP India.
Shyam Ponappa in his monthly column published in the Business Standard stated that government can't control market forces but can and must fix regulatory issues.

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Accessibility and Inclusion
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Under a grant from the Hans Foundation we are doing two projects. The first project is on creating a national resource kit of state-wise laws, policies and programmes on issues relating to persons with disabilities in India. CIS in partnership with CLPR (Centre for Law and Policy Research) compiled the National Compendium of Policies, Programmes and Schemes for Persons with Disabilities (29 states and 6 union territories). The publication has been finalised and is being printed. The draft chapters and the quarterly reports can be accessed on the project page. The second project is on developing text-to-speech software for 15 Indian languages. The progress made so far in the project can be accessed here.

►NVDA and eSpeak

# Monthly Updates

June 2015 Report (Suman Dogra; June 30, 2015).

# Language Testing Reports

Report on eSpeak Tamil Computing with NVDA Training Workshop in Tirunelveli (Organized by NVDA team; Anne Jane Askwith Higher Secondary School for the Visually Impaired, Palayamkottai, Tirunelveli; June 3 - 7, 2015).

►Other

# White Paper

Inclusive Financial Services - Global Trends in Accessibility Requirements (Nirmita Narasimhan; May 3, 2015).

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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.

# Submission / Comments

Comments on the Protection of Broadcasting Organizations: Technical Background Paper Prepared by the WIPO Secretariat (Nehaa Chaudhari; June 28, 2015).
Statement by the Centre for Internet and Society on the Broadcast Treaty at SCCR 30 (Nehaa Chaudhari; June 30, 2015).

# Blog Entries

Joining the Dots in India's Big-Ticket Mobile Phone Patent Litigation (Rohini Lakshané; June 1, 2015).
National IPR Policy Series: India's National IPR Policy - What Would WIPO Think? (Nehaa Chaudhari; June 20, 2015).
National IPR Policy Series: Follow-up RTI to DIPP on the IPR Think Tank (Nehaa Chaudhari; June 25, 2015).
The US 301 Report - A Myopic View of IP Rights (Varun Baliga and Nehaa Chaudhari; June 24, 2015).

# Media Coverage

CIS gave inputs for the following:

One reason startups are moving out of India (Evelyn Fok and Varun Aggarwal; The Times of India; April 10, 2015). This was also mirrored in Economic Times .
Indian businesses crave IP certainty, but better patent values are tempting them overseas (IAM Magazine; April 28, 2015).

►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).

# Blog Entries

How the Odia Wikimedia community is enriching Wikipedia with character encoding technology (Subhashish Panigrahi; June 14, 2015).
Odia Wikipedia meets Google Developer Group (Sailesh Patnaik; June 29, 2015).

# Event Organized

Odia Wikipedia Turning 13 this June 3 (Organized by CIS-A2K and Odia Wikipedia Community; Institute of Physics, Sachivalaya Marg, Sainik School PO, Gajapati Nagar, Bhubaneswar, Odisha; June 3, 2015).

# Media Coverage

CIS gave its inputs for the following:

ଭୁବନେଶ୍ୱରରେ ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଉଇକିପିଡ଼ିଆର ୧୩ ତମ ଜନ୍ମତିଥି ପାଳନ, ୨୦୧୫ ଜୁନ ୩ ତାରିଖ (Odishan.com; June 2, 2015).
Odia Wikipedia celebrates 13 years of free knowledge contribution at Bhubaneswar (Orissadairy.com; June 2, 2015).
Odia Wikipedia Celebrates 13 Years of Free Knowledge Contribution at Bhubaneswar (FullOdisha.com; June 3, 2015).

►Openness

# Blog Entries

FOSS for Public Use:Free and Open Source Software for Digital India (Anubha Sinha; June 1, 2015).
Workshop on Open Data for Human Development (Sumandro Chattapadhyay; June 2, 2015).
Open Data Intermediaries in Developing Countries - A Synthesis Report (Sumandro Chattapadhyay; June 16, 2015).

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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.

►Free Speech and Expression

# Article

The generation of e-Emergency (Sunil Abraham; May 20, 2015).

# Blog Entries

IANA Transition Stewardship & ICANN Accountability (I) (Jyoti Panday; June 20, 2015).
IANA Transition Stewardship & ICANN Accountability (II) (Jyoti Panday; June 21, 2015).

# Participation in Event

Panel Discussion on Internet Intermediaries, Law and Innovation (Organized by Confederation of Indian Industries, Google and Centre For Communications Governance, NLU Delhi; New Delhi; June 2, 2015). Jyoti Panday attended the panel discussion.

► Cyber Security

# Film

DesiSec: Cybersecurity and Civil Society in India (produced by Purba Sarkar, edited by Aaron Joseph, and directed by Oxblood Ruffin). The film features Malavika Jayaram, Nitin Pai, Namita Malhotra, Saikat Datta, Nishant Shah, Lawrence Liang, Anja Kovacs, Sikyong Lobsang Sangay and, Ravi Sharada Prasad.

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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

Unfettering Stranded Capacity (Shyam Ponappa; Business Standard; June 3, 2015 and Organizing India Blogspot; June 4, 2015).

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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

Indic Scripts and the Internet (Dibyajyoti Ghosh; June 30, 2015).

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News & Media Coverage
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CIS gave its inputs to the following media coverage:

Can Uber, Ola apps be blocked? Govt fighting cyber odds (Siladitya Ray; Hindustan Times; June 4, 2015).
Government's stand on internet governance draws applause from civil society organisations (Neha Alawadhi; Economic Times; June 24, 2015).
Most emerging firms low on cyber security: Experts (Malavika Murali and Payal Ganguly; June 24, 2015).

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About CIS
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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
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

► 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.

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/june-2015-bulletin

Odia Wikipedia meets Google Developer Group

Sailesh Patnaik — 2015-07-16T13:17:07Z

This is a guest post by Wikimedian Sailesh Patnaik who has been a ardent contributor in Odia-language Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects and has led outreach and partnership building initiatives to grow the Wikimedia projects in Odia and other Indian languages. In this post Sailesh shares his personal experience from his interaction at the Google Extended I/O organised by Google Developer Group in Bhubaneswar, Odisha. All the views are author’s personal views.

On this June 14 Google Developer Group Bhubaneswar organised an extended I/O at Bhubaneswar. To my surprise I found that there were more than 60 participants attending the conference. Basanta Kumar Maharana. TELL WHO HE IS, was the speaker in the event. Basanta shared his memories from Google I/O 2015, San Francisco and demonstrated about the new launch and updates of Google. It was quite interesting for me to learn about various Google apps (?) kike Google cardboard, Android M, etc.

In an informal interaction with the host Sanjib Parida, he proposed me to speak about Odia Wikipedia there who came to know about the project while attending Odia Wikipedia's 13th anniversary.

I started my talk by asking four questions to the audience:

How many of the audience know about Wikipedia? (Everyone raised hands.)
Who have copied content from Wikipedia for assignments? (People giggled about it, 50-60% of the participants nodded saying yes!)
Who knows that anyone can “edit” Wikipedia? (the count reduced to about 10-20%)
Who knows about Odia Wikipedia and contributes in creating and editing articles? (Only 4-5 people said yes, I found 2-3 of them being contributors to Odia Wikipedia)

I started my talk with a brief introduction to the history of Odia Wikipedia and how it was started in 2002 as one of the first four Indic language Wikipedia projects along with Assamese, Malayalam and Punjabi.

Odia Wikipedia was in dormant for the next eight years which was intervened when Wikimedians like Subhashish Panigrahi, Ashutosh Kar, Anshuman Giri, Mrutyunjaya Kar and others started building a community to improve and increase the content of Odia Wikipedia. Now we have grown as a community consisting about 17 active editors and the project has more than 8800 articles. The monthly page view of Odia Wikipedia has grown to more than 800,000 from merely 200,000 in 2011. We have three active Odia-language Wikimedia projects; Odia Wikipedia, the largest Odia online encyclopedia, online library Odia Wikisource, and multilingual online dictionary Odia Wiktionary. Odia Wikipedia community has not limited their work only in editing articles, rather has expanded into many other aspects of Odia computing. On the day of Odia Wikipedia’s 13th anniversary it has launched a converter that can convert many non-Unicode encodings into Unicode. We have been supported by CIS-A2K for many activities to grow our community and the Odia Wikimedia projects. Like Odia Wikipedia we have 20 more Wikipedia projects in other Indic languages and in over 288 languages globally. Hindi Wikipedia among all the Indic Wikipedia projects has the highest number of articles whereas Malayalam Wikipedia has the highest number of quality articles.


Pictured above: Participants at the conference organized by the Google Developer Group at Bhubaneswar

Some of the state governments have been quite open and positive in bringing Wikipedia into academics. The Government of Kerala has introduced Wikipedia contribution in its curriculum for BA and MA students and The Government of Tamilnadu has introduced Tamil Wikipedia to participants at the International Tamil Conference which helped the Tamil Wikimedia community in expanding the community. Awareness and community building are two major challenges for us at this moment. I invited the participants there to take part in the Wikimedia movement.

I touched upon the Odia input for the audience. While it was quite difficult a few years back for Odia input it is no longer a challenge. With the help of the Android app “Indic Keyboard” we can also edit Odia Wikipedia from mobile phones. I myself have used it for editing Wikipedia, for tweeting and posting Facebook status in Odia. After the talk I was asked a few questions. There are two important ones I would like to share here. To the question “how can I contribute in Odia Wikipedia? Do I have to install any keyboard for it?” I elaborated how anyone can edit and expand articles or create new Wikipedia articles in Odia just by creating a new account and logging in to https://or.wikipedia.org, and how the Wikimedia projects like Wikipedia have an input tool called Universal Language Selector (ULS) enabled in them and one does not need to install any additional input method. I was asked by one from the here is no support from the government at this moment but we are constant effort to collaborate audience about the Government of Odisha helping to grow Odia Wikipedia.

Many participants came and personally greeted me after the event was over. I was really excited to share the news about our (Odia Wikimedia community's plans for creating Bhubaneswar Wiki Group/WikiTungi with two active communities in engineering colleges like CET and KIIT. It was a wonderful experience at Google I/O and I hope to grow our Wikimedia community by collaborating with more like minded communities.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/odia-wikipedia-meets-google-developer-group

Odia Wikipedia celebrates 13 years of free knowledge contribution at Bhubaneswar

praskrishna — 2016-06-18T18:18:05Z

Odia Wikipedia, one of the first of several Indian language Wikipedia projects is ready to celebrate 13 glorious years of free knowledge contribution on June 3.

This was published in Orissadiary.com on June 2, 2015. Also see http://odishan.com/14971 (In Odia)

Beginning in 2002 — a year after the world's largest online encyclopedia, the English Wikipedia, was launched — Odia Wikipedia has grown to be the largest content repository in the Odia language available in Unicode on the Internet at https://or.wikipedia.org.

With about 17 active editors (also known as “uikiali”) spread across various parts of India and abroad, and over 8,800 articles, the project has become more than just an encyclopedia. The voluntary editor community has put its efforts into acquiring valuable Creative Commons (CC) licensed content by lobbying copyright holders/authors to relicense copyrighted content under CC licenses.

Date and time: 3 June 2015, 5 pm
Venue: Institute of Physics, Near Apollo Hospital, Bhubaneswar, Odisha
Event details: https://or.wikipedia.org/s/sml

It has also engaged with over 2,000 people by organizing various outreach programs including the globally accredited pedagogic program the Wikipedia Education Program (WEP). For its 13th anniversary the community is planning to release a character-encoding converter that promises to unlock massive amounts of content from government portals as well as journals, newspapers and magazines that have their content in non-Unicode character encoding that prevents user searching and reuse of digital-based content.

May you have any further questions about the project or the event, please reach us in the contact details mentioned below:

Mrutyunjaya Kar, Administrator, Odia Wikipedia (9437112371)
Sailesh Patnaik, Editor, Odia Wikipedia (7537097770)
Subhashish Panigrahi, Programme Officer, Access To Knowledge (CIS-A2K)
subhashish@cis-india.org. 08050515339

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/news/orissa-dairy-june-2-2015-odia-wikipedia-celebrates-13-years-of-free-knowledge-contribution-at-bhubaneswar

CIS-A2K, KIIT University and Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences sign MoUs

subha — 2014-02-03T06:24:18Z

KIIT University, Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences and the Centre for Internet and Society's Access to Knowledge team (CIS-A2K) have entered into a memorandum of understanding (MoUs) for furthering Odia Wikipedia.

Dr.Achyuta Samanta, Founder-Chairman of KIIT and KISS inaugurated both the collaborations formally. Dr. Sasmitarani Samanta, Registrar, KIIT and Surjya Kanta Mohanty, Chief Operating Officer, KISS signed the MoUs of KIIT and KISS respectively whereas T. Vishnuvardhan, Programme Director, CIS-A2K was there to sign in both the MoUs on behalf of CIS along with Subhashish Panigrahi, Programme Officer, CIS-A2K. Odia Wikipedians Dr. Subas Chandra Rout, Shitikantha Dash, Jnanaranjan Sahu and Sailesh Patnaik, senior faculty and management members; Prof. Parthosen Gupta, Professor-KIIT School of Management, Sucheta Priyabadini, Joint Registrar, KIIT Santosh K. Pani, Dean-KIIT School of Electrical Engineering and other staff members from KISS were there for this event.

The event was held on January 11, 2014 from 10.00 a.m. to 1.00 p.m.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/cis-a2k-kiit-university-kaling-institute-of-social-sciences-mou

Odia WikiMeetup

praskrishna — 2014-02-03T06:46:33Z

CIS-A2K organized an Odia Wiki meetup in Bhubaneswar on January 11.

The event was attended by Odia Wikipedians Dr. Subas Chandra Rout, Shitikantha Dash, Jnanaranjan Sahu and Sailesh Patnaik. T. Vishnuvardhan, Programme Director and Subhashish Panigrahi, Programme Officer, CIS-A2K met Odia Wikipedians to discuss about various ongoing projects in Odia Wikipedia, potential projects and incubator projects.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/events/odia-wiki-meetup-january-11-2014

Access To Knowledge Work Plan (April 2013 - June 2014)

T Vishnu Vardhan — 2013-06-10T14:20:06Z

This page is created to share CIS-A2K's Annual Work Plan (2013-2014) for Indian language Wikimedia projects. The main objective of this document is to present a detailed plan with projection of outcomes and expected impact of the A2K programme activities. The document has been made in consultation with various stakeholders and keeping in mind the objectives, opportunities and challenges faced by each of the Indian language Wikimedia projects. Feel free to share any feedback.

Language Area Work Plans

Telegu

Odia

Kannada

GOM (Konkani)

Bengali

Overall Support Across Indian Language Communities

Pilot Project - Performing Arts in India

Learning and Evaluation

Introductory note

Context

The Wikimedia Foundation has approved a grant of ₹26,000,000 to the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) in Bangalore to expand their Access to Knowledge (A2K) program in India; of this, ₹11,000,000 has been released. The purpose of the grant is to enable the A2K team to work with the Wikimedia community of volunteers in India to expand on Wikimedia’s Indic-language free-knowledge projects. In addition, the grant aims to generate improvements in India-relevant free knowledge in Wikimedia’s English projects, and the wider distribution of Wikimedia’s free knowledge within India.

Objective

The main objective of this document is to present a detailed Annual Work Plan for 2013–14, setting out the expected outcomes and impact of the A2K program activities. The overall objectives of the A2K Team are here.

Methodology

In putting together this Work Plan the A2K team has, over the last two months extensively engaged with various stakeholders. These include a) some Wikimedia India Community members across various Indian-language Wikimedia projects; b) some English-language Wikimedia community members from India; c) Wikimedia India chapter executive committee; d) some potential institutional partners; e) a few like-minded advocates of free knowledge; f) A2K Program Adviser Dr. Tejaswini Niranjana; and g) a few of the Wikimedia Foundation staff.

A draft of each of the language plan will be shared with the particular language community through respective language Wikipedia village pumps, mailing lists; feedback will be collected in finalizing the plan.

A2K’s method of work

A2K principally sees itself as working hand-in-hand with the Indian Wikimedia community and the Wikimedia India chapter, and with all formal and informal groupings within the Wikimedia movement in India. A2K will mostly engage in catalytic kind of work; however, depending on the requirements of each language-area, the A2K team may also undertake the hands-on implementation of some activities that would otherwise be done by the community. The planned A2K program activities are mostly in the south and south-east of India, and it makes better programmatic sense to have the A2K team located in Bangalore. This will not only save the A2K program from relatively larger overhead spending for the project (which could be productively used for programmatic work) but will enable the A2K team to be more in touch with the Wikimedia India community and in proactively undertaking collaborative activities with the community on the ground. Thus the entire A2K team will relocate to Bangalore and work out of the existing CIS office. Please kindly note that the A2K team will hire a new space in Bangalore, once the work plan is finalized, and the intention is that this space will be open to free use by the WM India community and chapter alike.

How to read this Annual Work Plan

This plan is not set in stone and will be periodically (right now quarterly) reviewed and revised. The intention of this Work Plan is to continually ensure better design and better engagement. The broader aspects of the plan have been outlined here. Thus this document is more towards evolving a sense of granularity of the A2K team’s work along with micro level outcome and impact metrics.

We have worked towards developing an Annual Work Plan that is language-specific. The A2K team has not adopted ONE single model, because we believe that each language area has a) specific strengths that we need to build on; b) particular needs for support that we could offer; and c) specific challenges that require localized solutions. Thus there are chances that you might see repetitions in the strategies mentioned across language areas.

Please note that the A2K team has some language area plans worked out in greater detail than others. This is mainly because we intend to prioritize working on five language areas during the coming year. This does not mean that we will not support other language areas/communities, but our engagement will be activity/project-specific, based on requests made to the A2K team by the community. The A2K team will continue its efforts in actively exploring to include a few more language areas, and will share such plans after they reach a certain stage.

Risk and mitigation

The message that comes across, after a cursory glance at Indian-language Wikipedias, is that there is a huge potential to increase the number of editors, especially active editors, along with the expansion of article entries. On one hand, unfortunately there is no fool-proof formula or plan that either the Wikimedia India community, Wikimedia India chapter or A2K can immediately bank on. This does not mean, on the other hand, that there are no ideas, experiences, learnings and failures, that can inform a strategy. An important point is that what we (the community, WMI chapter, WMF and A2K) all are attempting to do is to achieve something that sounds very simple (increase the number of editors, increase the articles, and build article quality) but yet complex to achieve. In addition to this, improving the Indian-language Wikipedias becomes even more complex for some the following reasons:

Lack of reference material available online in Indian languages.
Typing in Indian languages is a major challenge.
Relative dearth of quality content available in digital format.
Relative lack of research/academic standards, which is transferred on to Indian language Wikipedias.
Various technical issues like input, browser compatibility, font display, which deter new users.

Thus it should be noted that we should extend our work beyond Wikipedia, if we are to grow Indian-language Wikipedias. We need to think of a holistic intervention that would also involve enabling, facilitating and forming localized language-based virtual communities. That this has never been done before, and Indian language Wikipedias have a huge potential to do so.[1] This is also the significance of Indian-language Wikipedias, which are a potential (often the only) medium/platform for migrating Indian languages into the digital era. Also Wikipedia can be leveraged to further the much-needed active research culture in India and Indian culture. As a collective, we are doing something cutting edge and have too much of a risk of failure, time and again. This kind of work has failure fore-written. The only mitigation by which we can aim to be successful is by being open to learning, working as a collective, being supportive of each other, picking ourselves up whenever we fall down, and celebrating the little successes.

Language area work plans

As indicated above, the A2K team has prioritized the five languages and developed a detailed plan. We had initially set out to work with a different set of languages. The language set has slightly changed during the past two months.

Telugu
Odia
Kannada
(GOM) Konkani
Bengali

Some of the key factors that determined the selection of languages areas have included:

Networking of institutions and groups. The A2K team has put together a list of knowledge institutions, groups and individuals with whom it has some connections and believes that it can bring them into the Wikimedia movement. These collaborations will not only result in significant quality-content contributions, but will lead to the diversification and increase in that particular language Wikimedia community.
Willingness of that particular language community to interact and engage with the A2K team. Though we tried approaching other language communities, we were given to understand that they would like to consider engaging with us at a later point. We have respected the community's decision and are open to work with a couple of language areas later in time.
Work on one incubation project. During our interaction with Wikimedia India Chapter EC about the A2K plans, they have actively encouraged the A2K team to take up at least one project under incubation. Based on their suggestion we have taken up Konkani as we have some institutional contacts that could be leveraged to build the Konkani Wikipedia. The A2K team has also conducted some outreach work in Goa over the past 3–4 months that could be built on.
Familiarity of the A2K team members with the language. Each of us are editors/can edit in most of the above language Wikipedias. This will give us an insider's perspective of what is happening in that particular language community and the Wikimedia projects.

As mentioned earlier, A2K team's prioritization of working actively with these five language projects does not mean that A2K team will not support other language areas/communities. The A2K team will continue to provide overall support to all Wikipedia Communities in India. Our engagement will be activity/project-specific, based on the requests made to the A2K team by community members.

Overall A2K support to all Wikipedia communities in India

Besides the specific programs mentioned under individual language area plans, A2K team will provide overall support to all Indian-language Wikipedia communities. Please see this page for more details.

Pilot Project – Performing Arts in India

India has a wide range of performing arts. A lot of work is done on performing arts by various individuals and institutions, which offers rich knowledge about the aesthetics, artists, institutions, performance spaces/infrastructure, and policies, across various geographies and languages. This pilot is premised on a theme and seeks to create a multilingual repository of knowledge on Indian performing arts that is interdisciplinary, dynamic and ever evolving. Please go here to read more about the plan.

Learning and evaluation

Based on discussions with the Wikimedia India Chapter EC and with some members of the Community, the A2K team has arrived at some evaluation tools to assess the impact of its work. Please see this page for more details.

Giving 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.
- For Telugu plan here.
- For Odia plan here.
- For Kannada plan here.
- For Konkani plan here.
- For Bengali plan here.
For feedback on Pilot Project plan go here.
For feedback on Overall Support Across Indian language Communities you can write here.
Alternatively you could also share your feedback over e-mail at vishnucis-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 call +919845207308 from 08:00 to 21:00 hours IST (Indian Standard Time).

List of contributors

[1] Many of the challenges that we see vis-à-vis Indian-language Wikipedias are somewhat akin to the challenges print technology faced during the 19th century in India.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/resources/access-to-knowledge-work-plan

Global IP Convention 2013

praskrishna — 2013-01-21T09:58:18Z

The convention is being held in Bangalore from January 23 to 30, 2012.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/global-ip-convention

Technology, Transparency and Accountability: A Bar-Camp in Delhi

praskrishna — 2011-06-06T06:30:09Z

Accountability Initiative (AI) held a bar-camp on “Technology, Transparency and Accountability” on 5th June at Google office in Gurgaon. Pranesh Prakash participated in this bar-camp.

The camp brought together technology enthusiasts, coders, hackers and policy-thinkers together in a collaborative environment to develop innovative solutions to accountability and transparency challenges in India.

Agenda

10:00 AM - Introduction
10:30 AM - 11:30 AM Combined sessions at the cafe
11:30 AM - 1:30 PM - Breakout sessions in the various rooms and demo sessions in the cafe
1:30 PM - Lunch
2:30 - 5:30 PM - Breakout sessions in the various rooms and demo session in the cafe
5:30 - 6:30 PM - Deciding the future of the camp and creating blueprints for further collaboration
6:30 PM - Ending session

Some of the topics being talked about thus far

Social accountability tools and how can technology be used for this?

Public finance tracking and PAISA
Participatory budgeting
Participatory research for tracking outcomes
Citizen report cards
Social audits

Open Data and why it is important for transparency

Where can you find government data
Scraping government data using Needle Base
Why is visualization important?
Some examples of how open Data is changing the world
Akshara's work at the Karnataka Learning Partnership and the need for open educational data.
Data-mashups
The draft policy on open data in India
One stop govt ports

Technology innovations for improving the Right to Information

A wishlist
Shouldn't the replies to RTI be in the public domain?
Filing an RTI: Problems and Prospects
RTI Question and Answer Portal
How do you file an RTI though an SMS?

Egovernance initiatives that are leading to greater accountability and transparency

Mahima Kaul - Digital Empowerment Foundation

Making the links between politics and businesses transparent

Rohit Chandra

Electoral accountability

‘Improving and Strengthening Democracy in India’ - Lessons from Election Watch Process

Crowd-sourcing actionable data

An example of crowd-sourcing - Powercuts.in

Transparency in diplomacy

Using online tools to engage and be engaged by the public.

How should we look at technology when dealing with grassroots situations?

How can programmers help in making governance more transparent?

Perspectives from the Government

Perspectives from the NIC
Perspectives from the NEGP
Perspectives from the Office of Mr Sam Pitroda, Adviser to the Prime Minister of India on Public Information Infrastructure and Innovations.

Making conversation: citizens and their government

Making visual sense of Data and Policy

Policy to Practice: From the lab and to the people

How can legislators and parliamentarians and MPs be tracked by citizens?

Research Tools to work with large amounts of data

Other interesting ideas that have come up

Panini Keypad - Mr Abhijit Bhattacharjee
How Ashok Leyland dealt with its problems of too many layers between the customer on the ground and the top management - Its implications for the government

The Speakers

Nikhil Dey - Nikhil Dey has done more to fight for the rights of people than he will ever allow the world to find out. Always far from the spotlight, he has worked quietly to shape legislation, lobby governments and politicians and build grassroots campaigns.Born in 1963 in the city of Bangalore, Nikhil was educated in India and the US. Before the formal completion of his graduate course at the George Mason University, he left to ‘follow his bliss' and came to India. His initial work was with the Kheduth Mazdoor Chetna Sangathan in Madhya Pradesh. He then joined Aruna Roy and Shankar Singh in 1987 to go to a village called Devdungri in Rajsamand district, Rajasthan. Devdungri was soon to become the head office of the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS), a peasants-workers-women organisation founded by the trio in 1990. He currently is the Convener of the National Campaign for People's Right to Information.

Shri Sailesh Gandhi - Shailesh Gandhi is one among the handful of people whose dogged perseverance has demonstrated that the Right to Information Act is a valuable tool that can be used by ordinary people to resolve issues and to clean up public life. Currently one of the Information Commissioners of India, Mr Gandhi is a graduate from IIT-Mumbai and first-generation entrepreneur.

Prof Trilochan Sastry - Prof Trilochan Sastry has a Bachelors in Technology from IIT, Delhi, an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Ahmedabad, and a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) USA. He taught for several years at Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Ahmedabad after which he moved to IIM, Bangalore. He is currently Dean at IIM Bangalore. He has taught in other Universities in India, Japan, Hong Kong and United States and has published several academic papers in Indian and International journals. Has received national award for research and teaching. He was part of the cofounding team of ADR India in 1999.

GVL Narasimha Rao: Rao is a well known Psephologist who has been predicting Indian elections for two decades for various leading media organisations in the country. He is the founder of Development & Research Services Pvt. Ltd., a leading research organisation offering professional research services for various governmental, international and commercial organisations. Formerly, he was a Columnist for MINT newspaper and regularly writes in various newspapers on politics and elections.

Rao is presently Media Adviser to Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh in the rank of a state minister. He is also a member of the BJP’s National Committee on Electoral Reforms under the guidance of BJP’s senior Leader Mr. L.K. Advani.

Rao is President of VeTA (Citizens for Verifiability, Transparency and Accountability) and has organised various efforts in highlighting the lack of transparency and verifiability in Indian EVMs. He has authored a book titled “Democracy at Risk! Can We Trust Our EVMs?” which became the intellectual basis for the campaign for EVM reform. He had highlighted the vulnerabilities of India’s EVMs in a round table international Electronic Voting Workshop in Washington D.C. last year which was also attended by the Election Commission of India. Rao has blogged extensively on the vulnerabilities of EVMs at www.indianEVM.com which exerted huge pressure on the Election Commission of India and even served as an eye opener for laying bare hitherto unknown vulnerabilities (brought out by the research of Hari Prasad et al.) and raising uncomfortable questions regarding the pitfalls in EVM procurement, storage and field administration.

Mahima Kaul - Mahima Kaul is a writer/journalist and has worked with different formats - print, video and online. She has written for The Indian Express, Sunday Guardian, PBS World Focus and also worked on video programming for Al Jazeera and PBS. She was the India producer for PBS's special coverage on the Mumbai Terror Attacks, which was nominated for an Emmy Award. She has a blog that has been picked up by (among others) OpenDemocracy, Global Voices, Huffington Post and Ground Report.

She is deeply involved in ICT4D -- Information and Communication Technologies for Development -- sector. She has worked with Video Volunteers, a community media organization, and helped launch India's first community TV channel, India Unheard. She is a consultant with the Digital Empowerment Foundation where she manages the Digital Knowledge Center, the first information portal in India on best practices in ICT4D. Mahima has also established The Open Communication Foundation as a multidisciplinary platform devoted to ICT4D.

Rohit Chandra - Rohit Chandra is an engineering graduate currently doing research in the areas of power, energy and natural resources at the Centre for Policy Research. He will be discussing a nascent idea at the Accountability Initiative which hopes to map the links between businesses and politicians.

Sukhman Randhawa - Sukhman has completed her Masters in Social and Political Sciences from the University of Cambridge, UK and has obtained a BA in English Literature (Hons.) from St. Stephen's College, Delhi University. She is also an honorary fellow of the Cambridge Commonwealth Trust. She has worked as a Research Associate at the National Knowledge Commission (NKC), a high level advisory body to the Prime Minister of India, on the focus areas of Higher Education, Libraries, National Portal for Teachers, National Environment Portal, National Biodiversity Portal, Quality of Life, and worked on compiling the final report of the Commission. At NKC, she also worked with State Governments for implementation of NKC recommendations and preparing blueprints for action. She has also worked with IL&FS Education and Technology Services Ltd in Delhi. Currently she is working at the Office of Mr Sam Pitroda, Adviser to the Prime Minister of India on Public Information Infrastructure and Innovations.

Gautam John - Gautam used to be a lawyer with a focus on copyright laws and has also been an entrepreneur. He is passionate about education, equality and equity and focuses on 'access' as a way to achieve these. Gautam was a TED India Fellow in 2009 and is a Creative Commons supporter. He works with the Akshara Foundation where he manages the Karnataka Learning Partnership project, Pratham Books and is an advisor to Inclusive Planet. He is a founder member of Wikimedia Chapter (India) and currently serves as Secretary on the Executive Committee.

The Karnataka Learning Partnership is a multi-party, multi-stakeholder platform to bring transparency in the public preschool and primary education space. Karnataka Learning Partnership is also a public space where citizens can contribute to the cause of ensuring better schools and schooling for our children.

Raman Jit Singh Chima - is a senior analyst, Public Policy and Government Affairs at Google, India.

Pranesh Prakash - Pranesh Prakash is a programme manager with the Centre for Internet and Society, a Bangalore-based non-profit research and advocacy organization. He is a lawyer by training who's comfortable at a bash prompt. He works mostly around issues of intellectual property rights reform, promoting IP alternatives and transparency through different kinds of 'opennesses'—open standards, free/open source software, open government data, open access to law—as well as issues of freedom of speech and expression and privacy that relate to the Internet.

Last year, Pranesh along with Glover Wright, Sunil Abraham and Nishant Shah, prepared a report around open government data (OGD) in India as part of a series of studies commissioned by the Transparency and Accountability Initiative . In that report they looked at the existing ecosystem in terms of data practices, the policy environment (RTI, copyright, standards, NeGP, NKC's recommendations, etc.) , and specific OGD case studies of governmental organizations, civil society organizations, public-private partnerships, and civic hackers. The report then charts out challenges any campaign for OGD in India must address, as well as observations on how the very conceptualization of OGD must be different in India, and strategic recommendations on how to grow the OGD movement in India.

Rishabh Verma - A Python enthusiast, FOSS contributor,loves data mining and is always upto finding unusual patterns in large datasets. Organizer of Tech & Entrepreneurial events, he digs data-contextualization books when he should rather be preparing for his board exams.

Thejesh N - Thejesh GN is a Technologist. His area of interests are web, Open Data and Open Source technologies. He moonlights visualizing public data. He loves blogging and hacking open source software. You can find more about him here.

Chakshu Roy - Chakshu is a lawyer who specialised in real estate law and commercial agreements before joining PRS. He has earlier worked in corporate law with the Chamber of Law, New Delhi. He holds bachelors degrees in Commerce and Law from Delhi University. Chakshu Roy heads technology initiatives at PRS Legislative research, developing a comprehensive technology strategy to engage large sections of the Indian population in policy making.

Vinay Kumar - Vinay Kumar is the chief strategist at Digital Greens. He currently manage operations of Digital Green and contribute to its organizational development. He is also a consultant to Translational Health Science & Technology Institute (THSTI) at Department of Biotechnology. Prior to this he was at India Operations Director at PATH and Regional Operations Manager for Asia / Near East with IntraHealth International. Earlier he was with the Reserve Bank of India. I have an MA in Political Science and M. Phil. in International Relations from JNU and MBA from FMS.

Manu Srivastava - Manu Srivastava works as Vice President - Delivery at eGovernment Foundation, a not-for-profit trust that was founded in Feb 2003 by Nandan Nilekani & Srikanth Nadhamuni with a goal of creating an eGovernance system to improve the functioning of City Municipalities leading to better delivery of services to their citizens. He has been in the field of Municipal Governance for the last 7 years and focusses on supply side, with the Municipal Governments, to create sustainable, efficient, transparent and accountable Municipalities. eGovernments Solutions have been deployed in more than 250 municipalities across the country.

Dinesh Shenoy - Dinesh Shenoy is a business developer at Palantir. Palantir is a firm believer in the fact that well-informed citizens lead to better government, and making government data available is certainly an important first step. In practice, however, information is scattered across countless domains, and combining such widely dispersed knowledge in a meaningful way is a technical challenge beyond any private citizen's capabilities. Palantir has eliminated this barrier, democratizing the data and providing the tools to place a new world of analysis at your fingertips.

Palantir has developed AnalyzeThe.US which allows anyone to to explore vast amounts of data, including key datasets from www.data.gov. It brings critical knowledge together on a single stage, while providing rich analytical applications that enable anyone to develop an intuitive picture of the complex flow of resources, money, and influence that affect how our government functions. Ultimately, by allowing citizens to analyze our democracy, AnalyzeThe.US democratizes analysis.

Paul Culmsee - Paul Culmsee is a dialog mapper based in Perth, Australia. He has faciliated a number of meetings and done lot of dialog mapping particularly for the public sector in the areas of urban planning and health. He is the only certified dialog-mapper in the Southern hemisphere. He has also dialog-mapped politicians. His work has culminated in soon to be released book called "Beyond Best Practices", which outlines IBIS based techniques - a radically inclusive approach to knowledge management that allows groups to capture and make sense of unstructured knowledge during project meetings. and case studies. The book goes beyond the tool of mapping and the concept of wicked problems to look at what is needed to create and maintain a "holding environment".

Frederick Noronha - Frederick Noronha is a journalist, writer, publisher and photographer from Goa, India. He is known for online community building, and for promoting the cause of Free Software in India. Among the other campaigns he has been actively associated with are the successful community radio campaign, right to information initiatives, sharable content (including the information commons, Creative Commons, Wikipedia). He has been active in mailing lists within India, and has undertaken blogging assignments in Uganda, Malaysia and Thailand. He is on twitter at @fn and shares his links via Facebook and del.icio.us (fredericknoronha)

Nikhil Pahwa - Nikhil Pahwa is a media junkie, journalist and a blogger. He has covered the digital media business for more than 3 years. He has helped bringing a pan-media perspective to digital media reportage, highlighting industry issues, identifying opportunities and problems, and questioning the efficacy of decisions being made by some large media companies. Nikhil Pahwa undoubtedly is one of the popular names in the business of digital media coverage. Companies referMedianama for the latest breaking news in the digital media industry.

Kohl Singh Gill - Dr. Kohl S. Gill is the President and founder of LaborVoices, Inc. Dr. Gill served as an AAAS Science and Technology Policy Fellow for the U.S. Departments of Energy and State, most recently as the South Asia and Middle East Labor Affairs Officer for the Office of International Labor and Corporate Social Responsibility in the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor. Prior to federal service, Dr. Gill was an Indicorps Fellow in the slum areas of Delhi, India, serving as a volunteer paralegal with local residents, using transparency legislation to fight both petty and grand corruption at the local level. Dr. Gill is a graduate of the California Institute of Technology and received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Santa Barbara, for his work in quantum computing and semiconductor physics.

Aaditya Dar, Dhruv Suri and Ritwik Agrawal - Aaditya, Dhruv and Ritwik are interested in exploring and evolving innovative interventions to improve governance in India. They have varied backgrounds - economics, policy research, law, advocacy [and even math!] and have worked together in the past on education and governance related issues as part of United Students.

Vijay Pratap Singh Aditya is a development professional with hands-on experience in institution development, development research, communication systems and grassroots networking. He has considerable experience in developing systems and platforms for enabling enterprise support. Vijay is an Electrical Engineering Graduate with a Post-Graduation in Management from the Indian Institute of Forest Management, Bhopal, M.P., India. Vijay is co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Ekgaon.

The other speakers were:

Vivek Joshi
Siddhant
Mudit Tuli
Ankit Rastogi
Nirmesh Singh
Manish Shekhar
Shashank S
Mandira
Tonushree
Shomikho Raha

The rationale behind the camp

Founded in 2008, AI is a research initiative that aims to improve the quality of public services in India by promoting informed and accountable governance. To this end, one of AI's key efforts is to develop innovative models for tracking government led social sector programs in India. The Centre for Policy Research, an independent and non-partisan research institute and think-tank, is the institutional anchor for this initiative.

It is now widely accepted that greater transparency – access to information and data on the day to day functioning of government – is key to creating accountable and effective governance systems. The Right to Information Act (2005) has played a significant role in strengthening transparency by committing the government to both proactively providing citizens with information and also responding to specific information requests. While the Act has met much success – RTI applications are growing by the day - there remain concerns related to quality, and reliability of information and data provided. Moreover, there are still many gaps in the Government’s efforts to proactively disclose information and data of public relevance.

Technology is one of many tools that can help address these gaps. There are some incredible initiatives taking place across the world on opening government data and on getting data to work for ordinary citizens. [See below for a sample of initiatives] Through the bar camp, we hope to create a platform for technologists to share these technologies and contribute to the debate on strengthening accountability and transparency.

Equally, we believe that technology solutions can be significantly enhanced if they are developed in consultation with people working on the ground, people who deal with the challenges of our current governance systems in India. By organizing a bar camp, we at AI want to initiate a conversation between technology specialists and people working on the ground. Through the bar camp, we intend to create a space where people can share their knowledge about how best to use new technologies to make our government really work for the people.

Online conversations

To faciliate conversations between interested people and for people who are interested in being a part of the planning process, we created a Google-Group. To send in your suggestions for the camp, both on what you would like to hear, and on what sessions you would like to take, you can use the google-group or send in your entries through our Facebookpage, our Twitter handle or through comments on this blog post. Our entry on the official bar-camp page is here. To tweet about us please use the hash-tag #TAC1.

Do you need more ideas?

To spark your thought processes, we consolidated a list of websites which deal with "Technology, Accountabilty and Transparency". Have fun!

A compendium of ideas from across the world can be found here.
The Sunlight Foundation does some excellent work on technology and transparency issues.
The technology for transparency network maps technology initiatives across the world.
Code for America brings together techies from across the world to use their skills for the greater common good.
Civics Common is another organization working on using technology for common good, and this involves a lot of transparent data.

For any other information, please contact lemmanuel @ accountabilityindia.org.

See the entire details on the Accountability Initiative website.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/notices/technology-transparency-accountability

Sailesh Patnaik

sumandro — 2018-08-21T06:35:18Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/Members/sailesh_patnaik.JPG