Centre for Internet and Society

Consultation on 'National Geospatial Policy' - Notes and Submission

sinha — 2016-03-29T17:03:31Z

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 03, 2016. Ms. Anubha Sinha represented CIS at the meeting, and shares her notes.

National Geospatial Policy - Pre-Drafting Consultation Meeting

Keeping in mind the importance of geospatial data in the context of national development, the Department of Science and Technology, Government of India, has constituted a National Expert Committee for developing a draft National Geospatial Policy (NGP). The Committee is Chaired by Major General Dr. R Siva Kumar, former Head of Natural Resources Data Management System (NRDMS) and CEO of National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI), and Dr. Bhoop Singh, Head of NRDMS and NSDI Division at Department of Science and Technology, as Member Secretary. The Policy aims at providing 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 by Dr. Valli Manickam, Professor at the Academic Staff College of India, on February 03, 2016, and CIS was invited to take part in it as the only participant from the civil society. The other participants included representatives from the geospatial industry and industry associations (like FICCI and CII), and Ms. Ranjana Kaul, Partner at Dua Associates. Among the drafting committee members, Major General Dr. R Siva Kumar, Dr. Bhoop Singh, Dr. Sandeep Tripathi (IFS), and Wing Commander Satyam Kushwaha were present.

National Geospatial Policy - Concept Note

The purpose of the meeting was to hear the stakeholders' response to a Concept Note on the NGP, circulated prior to the meeting [1]. The Note sets out the principles and concerns of the proposed policy, which plans to guarantee geospatial data availability, accessibility, quality and in consonance with the imperatives of national security and intellectual property rights. The applicability of the policy is aimed at:

all geospatial data created, generated and collected using public funds provided by Central and State Governments and International donor organizations, directly or through authorized agencies.

The note suggests establishment of an "empowered body" to ensure proper creation, updates, management, dissemination, and sharing of the data, and management of an online portal for the same. The institutional mechanism to implement the policy will be composed of an Appellate authority / National High Power Implementation Committee, the NGP Implementation Committee, and the NGP Steering Committee.

Notes from the Meeting

The Welcome Address was delivered by Dr. Bhoop Singh (Head of NRDMS and NSDI Division, DST) who informed the participants that the Expert Committee had already met National Security Council and heard their concerns on the policy. The principles on which the proposed policy is to be based were also shared. The policy resulted from an exercise started two years ago to fix quality and accuracy of geospatial data, which was when it was realised that there were significant gaps that need urgent redressal. It was also identified that in previous initiatives to manage geospatial data at the national level, some data-generating organisations had been left behind. The chief concerns for the Expert Committee are 1) tailoring a policy suited to India's unique security issues, 2) avoiding a blanket open policy that may lead to misuse of low resolution data, 3) heeding restrictions on mapping, considering that 43% of landmass was not represented on maps presently (a probable solution was to do feature based mapping), and 4) clarifying government regulation of drone-based mapping. Security concerns were raised frequently throughout the meeting. The Committee also recognised that for development, data sharing should be made more open. The Committee was keen to have the private industry as a partner in generation of geospatial data.

Private industry representatives agreed with the objectives of the policy and were willing to contribute to geospatial data generation. The Expert Committee mulled over the possibility of creating a Public Private Partnership to cater to data generation. The private industry complained about the lack of efforts in popularising geospatial technologies and making the process of tenders more transparent.

There were suggestions to examine the policies of other jurisdictions facing similar internal security threats as India, and delineating the types of data that could be openly shared (for instance, geospatial data from border regions versus non-border regions). Segregation of restricted and open geospatial data can also be done on the basis of its end-application, such as for military and engineering purposes. Participants also requested the creation of a clear Do's and Don'ts guideline. CIS presented a written submission that raised seven key concerns. These are listed in the section below.

On the question of making an open data policy, it was suggested that the committee needs to decide the fundamental approach of the policy first - whether the policy should be based on prohibition and restriction, or focus on identifying and regulating open and free geospatial. The UN General Assembly document on Principles relating to remote sensing of the Earth from space provides an appropriate international point of reference [2].

After listening to the concerns and comments of the stakeholders, the core committee made the following concluding remarks:

Existing policies of government and defence should be mapped out to avoid conflict or overlap with the proposed NGP policy
The sharing of data vests with government agencies and other organisations recommended by them – there needs to be a transparent mechanism for such recommendation based sharing
Industry should come up with self-regulatory mechanisms, do's and don'ts, and code of conduct
Develop a secure mechanism for providing data on sensitive areas (in terms of national security;
Even the defence agencies sometimes cannot access maps due to policies of the National Remote Sensing Centre and other agencies – such inconsistencies need to be fixed

It was announced that the next consultation will occur in a couple of months, and will be open to the public at large, including representatives of industry, defence, and civil society.

Key Concerns about the NGP Concept Note

1. Complete lack of availability of open geospatial data from Indian government agencies: No government agency in India publish open geospatial data. While maps are often sold, both in printed and in digital form, they are not provided in a machine-readable open format and under an open license. The concept note towards NGP has made strong commitments towards changing this situation. There is an immediate need to participate in the NGP drafting process, with coordination among various civil society actors interested in open geospatial data, to ensure that these principles are carried into and operationalised in the actual NGP document.

2. Need for explicit and comprehensive set of criteria to determine if a set of geospatial data is sensitive for national security reasons: In formal and informal conversations with various agencies collecting and creating geospatial data in India, the role played by security agencies in blocking proactive and reactive public disclosure of geospatial data, and even intra-governmental sharing of such data, has been highlighted. Addressing this issue requires development of an explicit and comprehensive list of criteria that will establish a clear and rule-based system for identifying if a specific geospatial data set is to be categorised as “shareable” or “non-shareable.”

3. No clarity regarding legal status of citizen/crowd-sourced geospatial data, and initiatives to generate them: Open user-contributed geospatial data, especially through the OpenStreetMap platform, has emerged as a key driver of the global geospatial services industry. There is a legal ambiguity created by the National Mapping Policy regarding generation of such data in India, which came into focus when Survey of India filed a case against Google for organising a Mapathon contest, which invited Indian users to add metadata about physical and built features through Google Maps platform.1 The NGP needs to expressly provide legal sanction (and perhaps framework) for citizen/crowd-sourcing of geospatial data.

4. Fragmented institutional structure for collection, management, and distribution of different kinds of geospatial data: Survey of India, Indian Institute of Remote Sensing, and Indian Space Research Organisation are all key government agencies involved in creating and managing geospatial data. Further, Election Commission of India is involved in preparing geospatial data about electoral units and their boundaries. The National Spatial Data Infrastructure was conceptualised to harmonise and centralise the geospatial data management processes, but is yet to be implemented with the backing of a policy or an Act. The NSDI can be institutionalised via the NGP as the national archive, aggregator, and distributor of open geospatial data, being originally collected and created by a range of government agencies.

5. Integration of National Geospatial Policy with National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy (NDSAP): The proactive disclosure of “shareable” geospatial data using open geospatial standards and under open licenses must be carried out under the purview of the NDSAP, and through the open government data platform established through NDSAP. The decisions regarding licensing of open government data, as being discussed by the a committee set up under NDSAP, must also be applicable to open geospatial data that will be published following the instructions of the NGP. Further, instead of multiple online sources of open geospatial data collected by various Indian government agencies, must be identified as the primary and necessary source for publication of open geospatial data.

6. Integration of National Geospatial Policy with Right to Information (RTI) Act: Geospatial data must be treated as a special category of information under the RTI Act, which necessitates that if an Indian citizen requests for geospatial data from a government agency under the purview of RTI Act, the agency must provide the data in a human-readable and machine-readable open geospatial standard, and not only in the printed format, as key qualities of digital geospatial data can be substantially lost when printed in paper.

7. Need for special infrastructure for management and publication of real-time geospatial (big) data, and governance of the same: With increasing number of government assets being geo-referenced for the purpose of more effective and real-time management, especially in the transportation sector, the corresponding agencies (which are often not mapping agencies) are acquiring a vast amount of high-velocity geospatial data, which needs to be analysed and (sometimes) published in the real-time. The need for special infrastructure for such data, as well as its governance, has not been discussed in the concept note for NGP, which is a major omission.

Endnotes

[1] See: https://github.com/cis-india/website/raw/master/docs/DST_National-Geospatial-Policy_Concept-Note_2016.01.21.pdf.

[2] UNGA 41/65. Principles Relating to Remote Sensing of the Earth from Space: http://www.unoosa.org/pdf/gares/ARES_41_65E.pdf.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/consultation-on-national-geospatial-policy-03022016

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

Kiran AB — 2017-01-02T14:12:58Z

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 first 7 Goals, while the next post will cover the last 10.

The second part of the post can be accessed here.

Monitoring Sustainable Development Goals

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are an internationally agreed upon set of developmental targets to be achieved by 2030. These are universal goals and targets which involve the entire world, developed and developing countries alike. They aim at integrating and balancing the three dimensions of the sustainable development – economic development, social inclusion, and environmental sustainability. There are 17 SDGs with 169 targets, and each target is mapped to one or more indicators as a measure of evaluation, covering a broad range of sustainable development issues [1].

To initiate the visioning process for the SDGs, the United Nations established a High Level Panel in the year 2012, comprising of 27 members. The notion of "data revolution for sustainable development" has been one of the most remarkable categories of imagination and operational requirement to emerge from the final report of this High Level Panel. It identified a significant need for massive restructuring of infrastructures for generating global, reliable, comparable, and timely data. The Independent Expert Advisory Group (IEAG) on "data revolution for sustainable development" has also raised the need for opening up development data. It proposes that open data must be considered as an instrument of ensuring transparency and accountability of the government [2]. Further, in a recent post from the World Economic Forum meeting, Stephen Walker and Jose Alonso have noted that "Not only will governments that embrace open data improve their public accountability and efficiency, they will also reap the social and economic benefits of opening up data for citizens" [3]. Opening up of government data is expected to transform the relationship between the government and the various stakeholders.

Currently the data is used by the governmental institutions for self-monitoring and making only a limited data available for public access and usage. But SDGs are not only for the government to monitor and realise, the responsibility lies with various other actors as well.

Open data has a major role to play in transforming the vision of the SDGs into reality, by enabling the informed participation of multiple actors – private companies, non-government organisations, academic and research institutes, civic activists, etc. To plan, monitor, and actualise the path being traversed by a country, open data becomes essential. Also to facilitate public participation in the governance.

In this and the next blog post, I am documenting the availability and openness of data sets in India, which are relevant for the indicators identified for monitoring of targets under the 17 SDGs. This post offers the findings for the first 7 Goals, while the next post will cover the last 10. Along with questions of availability and openness, I have also documented the technical format of the available data, the level of granularity, and also the frequency of its collection, when applicable. The chart below describe the overall situation of availability and openness of data for monitoring SDGs in India.

Goal #01: End poverty in all its forms everywhere

The data is available for most of the indicators either directly or need to be derived, however, data doesn't exist for one of the indicators.

The data exists at the national level and at the state level or both, but data availability at the district/city level would give a better picture. Though NSSO sample survey data includes representative data at the state/UT level, such data is often not made freely accessible. Not all data which have been collected, i.e., from agencies like NSSO, National Family Health Survey, etc., are open in the public domain.

Also, the frequency of data collected for most of the indicators are either decennial or quinquennial, rather an annual survey would facilitate better/close monitoring. Health is an important measure associated with poverty, but the data is decennially collected. There is a need for regular data updation, while considering those data which are supposed to be collected annually.

In this context, to derive certain indicators, say Indicator 1.3.1., there is a cross agency dependency on data, and lacks disaggregation of data. The disaggregation is a key to measure inequality, especially incidences like poverty. So to monitor poverty we need to identify the different strata of poverty and policy can be formulated accordingly.

Data Not Available:

Indicator 1.3.1. Percentage of population covered by social protection floors /systems disaggregated by sex, and distinguishing children, unemployed, old age, people with disabilities, pregnant women/new-borns, work injury victims, poor and vulnerable

Goal #02: End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture

Indicators and the data corresponding to them reflects two things, what has been done and what has to be done. The data for fifteen indicators mapped to the targets in goal 2 are available for thirteen of the indicators. The data which are available are likely to match the indicator directly or the data has to be derived for most of the indicators. And for the remaining two indicators the data is not available.

For most of the indicators that have to be derived, there is a strong dependency on the dataset from NSSO sample survey for arriving at the requirement. This dependency comes at a cost, as NSSO sample data are not freely available in the public domain, thus making the overall monitoring dependent on closed data. There is a cross agency reliance on data, for arriving at the indicator, and the data on public platform are not up to date.

Also, the data for majority of the indicators are measured at the national as well as state level, but a goal like ending hunger – providing food security, would definitely require data in the order of district/village level. Though data is available for the Indicator 2.2.1: Prevalence of stunting (height for age <-2 SD from the median of the WHO Child Growth Standards) among children under five years of age, but, the data is from eight states only and the national data is derived from it, too small sample size to extrapolate as the nation's data.

On the frequency of data collection, Indicator 2.c.1: Indicator of (food) Price Anomalies (IPA), are collected monthly and some of the data are quinquennial or decennial. However, most of them are annually collected, enabling better accountability and close monitoring of the goals and to frame actionable policy steps.

Data Not Available:

Indicator 2.5.1: Ex Situ Crop Collections Enrichment index
b. Indicator 2.5.2: Percentage of local crops and breeds and their wild relatives, classified as being at risk, not-at-risk or unknown level of risk of extinction

Goal #03: Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages

Data is available for all the twenty-five indicators corresponding to the thirteen targets set to measure goal 3 on health and well-being. Some of the data are direct to the indicator, while some have to be derived from various data set to arrive at the indicator.

Data is open and accessible freely in the public domain for all the indicators, most of the data are from World Health Organisation (WHO) database. However, for finer tunings and up to date data there is dependency on National Family Health Survey (NFHS) which is collected decennially.

The WHO data lacks updation and ones which are available are pertaining to an year, thus making the analysis of the annual trend difficult. While the frequency of data collected for most of the data are annual.

The dataset available are at the national and state level, and two of the data set is measured in the order of cities. Most of the WHO dataset provides data at the national level, whereas NFHS, District Family Health Surveys and other agencies provide data at the lowest order, but such dataset are not freely accessible on the public domain. The updated data on health are not made available freely accessible in the public domain which are derived through health surveys.

Goal #04: Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all

Education in India is a fundamental right of every citizen, therefore achieving inclusive, equitable and quality education for all becomes necessary. Said this, to monitor goal 4, data is available for nine indicators out of eleven indicators, and for the remaining two indicators, the data is not accessible or in public domain for free access, and for the sub-part of the indicator on proficiency level. Though data exists for all the indicators, however, for most of the indicators we need to derive from multiple sources. Data does not exist for subparts like psychosocial wellbeing, in the Indicator 4.2.1 and proficiency in functional literacy and numeracy skills as in the Indicator 4.6.1.

The data are collected annually for seven indicators and for the two indicators Indicator 4.3.1 and Indicator 4.6.1, which relies on NFHS and Census data respectively, the data is collected decennially. Also, for some of the indicators the data availability is restricted to particular years or are not up to date.

The data which exists are collected at the national and state level for some of them and for some data set the data exists at the national level only, whereas for the Indicator 4.6.1, the data set is of the order of city. And the disaggregation issue prevails here as well, so to sort data based on the given parameter one has to consult NSSO sample survey or derive from the existing data.

Data Not Available:

Indicator 4.7.1: Percentage of 15-year old students enrolled in secondary school demonstrating at least a fixed level of knowledge across a selection of topics in environmental science and geo science. The exact choice/range of topics will depend on the survey or assessment in which the indicator is collected. Disaggregation: sex and location
Indicator 4.a.1: Percentage of schools with access to (i) electricity; (ii) Internet for pedagogical purposes; (iii) computers for pedagogical purposes; (iv) adapted infrastructure and materials for students with disabilities; (v) single-sex basic sanitation facilities; (vi) basic hand washing facilities

Goal #05: Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls

Gender as a social construct has been deprived of equality and equity, therefore, achieving equality and empowering women and girls lays down the path for an inclusive development. In this direction, to monitor the goal 5, data is available for eleven indicators and do not exist for three indicators out of fourteen indicators. However, the Indicator 5.3.2, is not relevant as India does not acknowledge FGM/C. Also, for most of the indicators, the data need to be derived from the given dataset.

For most of the data, the data is collected at the National or state level. Whereas for the Indicator 5.a.1, the data is available at the district/tehasil level and it is based on Agricultural census of India, carried out once in five years.

The collection of data is annual in most cases, decennial in the cases of NFHS data, quinquennial with regard to data on land ownership and rights based on gender. Also, in cases of proportion of women in parliament or number of legal framework – domestic/international, the frequency cannot be determined as its subject to change.

Regarding openness, though data exists, the data is not available to access freely. These data are either from NSSO sample survey and NFHS. For most of the indicators the data exists in general without disaggregation, but, as the goal demands sex based disaggregation, we need to derive from the existing data.

Data Not Available:

Indicator 5.3.2: Percentage of girls and women aged 15-49 who have undergone female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C), by age group (for relevant countries only)
Indicator 5.6.2. Number of countries with laws and regulations that guarantee women aged 15-49 access to sexual and reproductive health care, information and education
Indicator 5.c.1: Percentage of countries with systems to track and make public allocations for gender equality and women’s empowerment

Goal #06: Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all

Water is a life giving source, but ensuring water and sanitation in a sustainable way is a challenge indeed. Data is available for all the ten indicators to monitor the goal 6. While for most of the indicators the data has to be derived from the given data set or from other data set. The data set available are in absolute numbers, need to modify as per the indicators.

The data is collected annually for most of the indicators, however, for the indicators, Indicator 6.3.2: Percentage of water bodies with good ambient water quality; Indicator 6.4.1: Percentage change in water use efficiency over time, the data pertains to the specific year, without a time series.

Three of the data are measured at the state level, one at the district level – Indicator 6.2.1, and another at the level of cities – Indicator 6.3.1. For most of the indicators, the data are from international agencies like WHO, UNEP, FAO, etc.

The data for four of the indicators are not freely accessible on the public domain, though data exists. Also, for the Indicator 6.a.1, the available data is not specific to it, but gives an overview. Overall, for the close monitoring of the goal 6, the granularity of the data should be at the district/block level, and must be freely accessible.

Goal #07: Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all

Energy is considered one of the basic needs of human life, therefore, providing energy which is reliable and affordable has to ensure sustainability and the kind of energy being produced. The data exists for five of the indicators out of six indicators, however, the data does not exist for one of the indicators. The data for two of the indicators – Indicator 7.2.1, Indicator 7.3.1, have to be derived from the given data set.

For most of the data, the data is collected annually and the data is collected at the national level. However, as to the data availability for the Indicator 7.2.1, the data is available at the state level.

To arrive at the required indicator, there is a dependency over other dataset. Though most of the data are available, for three of the indicators – Indicator 7.2.1: Renewable energy share in the total final energy consumption (%); Indicator 7.3.1. Energy intensity (%) measured in terms of primary energy and GDP; Indicator 7.a.1: Mobilized amount of USD per year starting in 2020 accountable towards the US 100 billion commitment, the data is not freely accessible.

Data Not Available:

Indicator 7.b.1. Ratio of value added to net domestic energy use, by industry

References

[1] "Indicators and a Monitoring Framework for the Sustainable Development Goals." Sustainable Development Solutions Network. March 20, 2015. Accessed February 16, 2016. http://unsdsn.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/150320-SDSN-Indicator-Report.pdf.

[2] "A World That Counts - Mobilising the Data Revolution for Sustainable Development." Report. Independent Expert Advisory Group Secretariat, 2014. Accessed February 19, 2016. http://www.undatarevolution.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/A-World-That-Counts.pdf.

[3] Walker, Stephen, and Jose M. Alonso. "Data Will Only Get Us so Far. We Need It to Be Open." World Economic Forum. January 29, 2016. Accessed February 16, 2016. http://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/01/data-will-only-get-us-so-far-we-need-it-to-be-open.

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-01

National Koha Conclave

praskrishna — 2016-02-19T16:20:23Z

Informatics Publishing organized an event at Fortune Park JP Celestial in Bangalore on February 17, 2016. Sunil Abraham delivered the inaugural address on the occasion.

For more info on the event see this page.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/news/national-koha-conclave

Open Data Hackathons are Great, but Address Privacy and License Concerns

sumandro — 2016-02-05T20:37:18Z

This is to cross-publish a blog post from DataMeet website regarding a letter shared with the organisers of Urban Hack 2015, Bangalore, in response to a set of privacy and license concerns identified and voiced during the hackathon by DataMeet members. Sumandro Chattapadhyay co-authored and co-signed the letter. The blog post is written by Nisha Thompson.

Hackathons are a source of confusion and frustration for us. DataMeet actively does not do them unless there is a very specific outcome the community wants like freeing a whole dataset or introducing open data to a new audience. We feel that they cause burn out, are not productive, and in general don't help create a healthy community of civic tech and open data enthusiasts.

That is not to say we feel others shouldn't do them, they are very good opportunities to spark discussion and introduce new audiences to problems in the social sector. DataKind and RHOK and numerous others host hackathons or variations of them regularly to stir the pot, bring new people into civic tech and they can be successful starts to long term connections and experiments. A lot of people in the DataMeet community participate and enjoy hackathons.

However, with great data access comes great responsibility. We always want to make sure that even if no output is achieved when a dataset is opened at least no harm should be done.

Last October an open data hackathon, Urban Hack, run by Hacker Earth, NASSCOM, XEROX, IBM and World Resource Institute India wanted to bring out open data and spark innovation in the transport and crime space by making datasets from Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation (BMTC) and the Bangalore City Police available to work with. A DataMeet member (Srinivas Kodali) was participating, he is a huge transport data enthusiast and wanted to take a look at what is being made available.

In the morning shortly after it started I received a call from him that there is a dataset that was made available that seems to be violating privacy and data security. We contacted the organizers and they took it down, later we realized it was quite a sensitive dataset and a few hundred people had already downloaded it. We were also distressed that they had not clarified ownership of data, license of data, and had linked to sources like Open Bangalore without specifying licensing, which violated the license.

The organizers were quite noted and had been involved with hackathons before so it was a little distressing to see these mistakes being made. We were concerned that the government partners (who had not participated in these types of events before) were also being exposed to poor practices. As smart cities initiatives take over the Indian urban space, we began to realize that this is a mistake that shouldn't happen again.

Along with Centre for Internet and Society and Random Hacks of Kindness we sent the organizers, Bangalore City Police and BMTC a letter about the breach in protocol. We wanted to make sure everyone was aware of the issues and that measures were taken to not repeat these mistakes.

You can see the letter here:

We are very proud of the DataMeet community and Srinivas for bringing this violation to the attention of the organizers. As people who participate in hackathons and other data events it is imperative that privacy and security are kept in mind at all times. In a space like India where a lot of these concepts are new to institutions, like the Government, it is essential that we are always using opportunities not only to showcase the power of open data but also good practices for protecting privacy and ensuring security.

Originally posted on DataMeet website: http://datameet.org/2016/02/02/to-hack-or-not-to-hack/.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/open-data-hackathons-are-great-but-address-privacy-and-license-concerns

OER16: Open Culture

praskrishna — 2016-01-30T06:53:26Z

The 7th Open Educational Resources Conference, OER16: Open Culture, will be held on April 19 and 20, 2016 at the University of Edinburgh. The event is organized by Association for Learning Technology.

As a part of the programme committee, Subhashish Panigrahi is currently reviewing the submissions for the 7th Open Educational Resources Conference, "OER16: Open Culture" that is being organised during April 19 and 20, 2016 at University of Edinburgh, UK. See the details of the Programme Committee here. Download a PDF of the flyer for OER16.

The vision for the conference is to focus on the value proposition of embedding open culture in the context of institutional strategies for learning, teaching and research. The conference will be chaired by Melissa Highton, Director of Learning, Teaching and Web Services at the University of Edinburgh, and Lorna Campbell, OER Liaison at the University of Edinburgh and EDINA Digital Education Manager.

OER16 will focus on:

The strategic advantage of open and creating a culture of openness.
Converging and competing cultures of open knowledge, open source, open content, open practice, open data and open access.
Hacking, making and sharing.
The reputational challenges of openwashing.
Openness and public engagement.
Innovative approaches to opening up cultural heritage collections for education.

Follow #oer16 to keep up to date with all conference news. Register for the event Now.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/news/oer16-open-culture

Approaching Open Research via Open Data - Presentation at TERI, December 22, 2015

sumandro — 2016-01-12T14:37:38Z

The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), Delhi, organised a seminar on 'Open Access in Research Area: A Strategic Approach' on December 22, 2015. We supported the seminar as a knowledge partner. Sumandro Chattapadhyay was invited to deliver a special address. Here are the notes and slides from the presentation.

The brief presentation foregrounded open data as a crucial part of open research, and also as an instrument of opening up research for public consumption, discussion, and scrutiny.

The presentation started with reference to the Open Access Dialogues organised by The African Commons Project and the Centre for Internet and Society during November 2012 to March 2013 that explored the global open access agenda from a developing world perspective.

I noted that one of the key findings from the Indian participants of the online consultations organised as part of the Open Access Dialogues was the need for a broader vision of open access. Open research data is a key component of this broader vision of open access and open research.

There was a brief discussion of how to start doing and thinking about open data as an approach to open research. I highlighted the need to get started on 1) getting government to open up data relevant to research, 2) opening up academic research data, and 3) sectoral conversations on data standards (technical and semantic); as well as the need to think about 1) open data as bridge across disciplinary communities, 2) quantification of life and the widening sphere of research data, and 3) academic research and public life.

In next slides, I quickly mentioned the international processes going on in the open data landscape - the conversation on open data and Sustainable Development Data, the possibility of using big (social and telecom) data for purposes of development monitoring, and the International Open Data Charter as a set of global principles for open data.

More about the seminar: http://cis-india.org/openness/teri-seminar-on-open-access-in-research.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/approaching-open-research-via-open-data-2015

Pre-Budget Consultation 2016 - Submission to the IT Group of the Ministry of Finance

sumandro — 2016-01-12T13:34:41Z

The Ministry of Finance has recently held pre-budget consultations with different stakeholder groups in connection with the Union Budget 2016-17. We were invited to take part in the consultation for the IT (hardware and software) group organised on January 07, 2016, and submit a suggestion note. We are sharing the note below. It was prepared and presented by Sumandro Chattapadhyay, with contributions from Rohini Lakshané, Anubha Sinha, and other members of CIS.

It is our distinct honour to be invited to submit this note for consideration by the IT Group of the Ministry of Finance, Government of India, as part of the pre-budget consultation for 2016-17.

The Centre for Internet and Society is (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. We receive financial support from Kusuma Trust, Wikimedia Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, IDRC, and other donors.

We have divided our suggestions into the different topics that our organisation has been researching in the recent years.

Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS) is the Basis for Digital India

We congratulate the policies introduced by the government to promote use of free/libre and open source software and that of open APIs for all e-governance projects and systems. This is not only crucial for the government to avoid vendor lock-in when it comes to critical software systems for governance, but also to ensure that the source code of such systems is available for public scrutiny and do not contain any security flaws.

We request the government to empower the implementation of these policies by making open sharing of source code a necessity for all software vendors hired by government agencies a necessary condition for awarding of tenders. The 2016-17 budget should include special support to make all government agencies aware and capable of implementing these policies, as well as to build and operate agency-level software repositories (with version controlling system) to host the source codes. These repositories may function to manage the development and maintenance of software used in e-governance projects, as well as to seek comments from the public regarding the quality of the software.

Use of FLOSS is not only important from the security or the cost-saving perspectives, it is also crucial to develop a robust industry of software development firms that specialise in FLOSS-based solutions, as opposed to being restricted to doing local implementation of global software vendors. A holistic support for FLOSS, especially with the government functioning as the dominant client, will immensely help creation of domestic jobs in the software industry, as well as encouraging Indian programmers to contribute to development of FLOSS projects.

An effective compliance monitoring and enforcement system needs to be created to ensure that all government agencies are Strong enforcement of the 2011 policy to use open source software in governance, including an enforcement task force that checks whether government departments have complied with this or not.

Open Data is a Key Instrument for Transparent Decision Making

With a wider set of governance activities being carried out using information systems, the government is increasingly acquiring a substantial amount of data about governance processes and status of projects that needs to be effectively fed back into the decision making process for the same projects. Opening up such data not only allows for public transparency, but also for easier sharing of data across government agencies, which reduces process delays and possibilities of duplication of data collection efforts.

We request the 2016-17 budget to foreground the National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy and the Open Government Data Platform of India as two key enablers of the Digital India agenda, and accordingly budget for modernisation and reconfiguration of data collection and management processes across government agencies, so that those processes are made automatic and open-by-default. Automatic data management processes minimise the possibility of data loss by directly archiving the collected data, which is increasingly becoming digital in nature. Open-by-default processes of data management means that all data collected by an agency, once pre-recognised as shareable data (that is non-sensitive and anonymised), will be proactively disclosed as a rule.

Implementation of the National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy has been hindered, so far, by the lack of preparation of a public inventory of data assets, along with the information of their collection cycles, modes of collection and storage, etc., by each union government agency. Specific budgetary allocation to develop these inventories will be crucial not only for the implementation of the Policy, but also for the government to get an extensive sense of data collected and maintained currently by various government agencies. Decisions to proactively publish, or otherwise, such data can then be taken based on established rules.

Availability of such open data, as mentioned above, creates a wider possibility for the public to know, learn, and understand the activities of the government, and is a cornerstone of transparent governance in the digital era. But making this a reality requires a systemic implementation of open government data practices, and various agencies would require targeted budget to undertake the required capacity development and work process re-engineering. Expenditure of such kind should not be seen as producing government data as a product, but as producing data as an infrastructure, which will be of continuous value for the years to come.

As being discussed globally, open government data has the potential to kickstart a vast market of data derivatives, analytics companies, and data-driven innovation. Encouraging civic innovations, empowered by open government data - from climate data to transport data - can also be one of the unique initiatives of budget 2016-17.

For maximising impact of opened up government data, we request the government to publish data that either has a high demand already (such as, geospatial data, and transport data), or is related to high-net-worth activities of the government (such as, data related to monitoring of major programmes, and budget and expenditure data for union and state governments).

Promotion of Start-ups and MSMEs in Electronics and IT Hardware Manufacturing

In line with the Make in India and Digital India initiatives, to enable India to be one of the global hubs of design, manufacturing, and exporting of electronics and IT hardware, we request that the budget 2016-17 focus on increasing flow of fund to start-ups and Medium and Small-Scale Manufacturing Enterprises (MSMEs) in the form of research and development grants (ideally connected to government, especially defense-related, spending on IT hardware innovation), seed capital, and venture capital.

Generation of awareness and industry-specific strategies to develop intellectual property regimes and practices favourable for manufacturers of electronics and IT hardware in India is an absolutely crucial part of promotion of the same, especially in the current global scenario. Start-ups and MSMEs must be made thoroughly aware of intellectual property concerns and possibilities, including limitations and exceptions, flexibilities, and alternative models such as open innovation.

We request the budget 2016-17 to give special emphasis to facilitation of technology licensing and transfer, through voluntary mechanisms as well as government intervention, such as compulsory licensing and government enforced patent pools.

Applied Mathematics Research is Fundamental for Cybersecurity

Recent global reports have revealed that some national governments have been actively involved in sponsoring distortion in applied mathematics research so as to introduce weaknesses in encryption standards used in for online communication. Instead of trying to regulate key-length or mandating pre-registration of devices using encryption, as suggested by the withdrawn National Encryption Policy draft, would not be able to address this core emerging problem of weak cybersecurity standards.

For effective and sustainable cybersecurity strategy, we must develop significant expertise in applied mathematical research, which is the very basis of cybersecurity standards development. We request the budget 2016-17 to give this topic the much-needed focus, especially in the context of the Digital India initiative and the upcoming National Encryption Policy.

Along with developing domestic research capacity, a more immediately important step for the government is to ensure high quality Indian participation in global standard setting organisations, and hence to contribute to global standards making processes. We humbly suggest that categorical support for such participation and contribution is provided through the budget 2016-17, perhaps by partially channeling the revenues obtained from spectrum auctions.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/pre-budget-consultation-2016-submission-to-the-ministry-of-finance

Seminar on Open Access in Research Area: A Strategic Approach

sumandro — 2015-12-22T05:37:44Z

The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), Delhi, is organising a seminar on open access in research on Tuesday, December 22, 2015. The seminar will focus on: 1) wider access to scientific publications and research data, 2) access to scientific information, and 3) challenges and opportunities of research data. The Centre for Internet and Society is supporting the event as a Knowledge Partner.

Background

Open Access has become central importance to advancing the interests of researchers, scholars, students, business, and the public as well as librarians. Increasingly, research institutions require researchers to publish articles that report research findings openly accessible in open domain.

Open Access pursues to yield scholarly publishing to spread knowledge and allow that knowledge to be built upon. Price barriers should not stop researchers from getting access to research data. Open Access, and the open availability and search ability of scholarly research that it entails, will have a significant positive impact on everything from education to the research practice in various fields.

To explore why Open Access is so important to a number of groups, TERI Library along with The Centre for Internet & Society (CIS) as Knowledge Partner is organizing a half day seminar on Open Access in Research Areas: a Strategic Approach on December 22, 2015 at TERI Seminar Hall, IHC, Lodhi Road, New Delhi.

The Seminar will focus on:

wider access to scientific publications and research data
access to scientific information, and
challenges and opportunities of research data.

Schedule

No registration is required to attend the seminar. Seats are limited, and will be provided on first-come-first-served basis.

13:45 - 14:00		Registration and Networking
14:00 - 14:10		Welcome Address - Mr. Prabir Sengupta, Distinguished Fellow and Director, Knowledge Management Division, TERI
14:10 - 14:20		Special Address - Sumandro Chattapadhyay, Research Director, The Centre for Internet and Society
14:20 - 14:35		Keynote Address - Dr. K.R. Murali Mohan, Advisor, Big Data Initiatives Division, Department of Science and Technology
14:35 - 14:50		Inaugural Address - Dr. Chandrima Shaha, Director, National Institute of Immunology, New Delhi
14:50 - 15:00		Setting the Theme and Vote of Thanks - Dr. P.K. Bhattacharya, Fellow and Area Convenor, Knowledge Management Division, TERI
15:00 - 15:30		Tea and Refreshments
15:30 - 17:15		Plenary Session Chair: Dr. Ramesh Sharma, Director, CEMCA Puneet Kishor, Researcher and Independent Consultant - "Science, Data, and Creative Commons" Dr. Beth Sandore Namachchivaya, Associate Dean of Libraries and Professor University of Illinois - "Developing Services, Infrastructure, and Best Practices to Conserve and Provide Access to Research Data: Challenges and Opportunities" Dr. Usha Mujoo Munshi, Librarian, Indian institute of Public Administration

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/teri-seminar-on-open-access-in-research

30 Books of Odia Author and Historian Jagannath Prasad Das to Come Online on Odia Wikisource

subha — 2016-01-03T11:19:12Z

The article was published in Discover Bhubaneswar, a web portal on Odisha on December 4, 2015.

Odia author and cultural historian Jagannath Prasad Das has recently permitted to re-license under a free license Creative Commons Share-Alike 4.0 or CC-BY-SA 4.0 for 30 volumes of his notable works. The author, popularly known as “J P” or “JP Das” has been honored with Saraswati Samman and Sahitya Academy award for his significant contribution in fiction, historical research of Odisha’s cultural heritage in his books Puri Paintings, Chitra-Pothi and Palm-leaf Miniatures apart from his Odia books “Prathama Purusa” and “Bhabanatha O Anyamane”.

“I made a rather late and hesitant entry into the internet and digital world, but it has since become an integral part of my life. My introduction to digital books was through Srujanika’s digitised version of Purnachandra Odia Bhashakosha – all of 95,00 pages in seven volumes — which was impossible to handle on the writing table. That made me think how wonderful it would be to have all Odia books available on the internet that could be easily accessible to every interested reader”, says Das.

“As a beginning I decided to put my own writings on the internet. Many of our young Odia writers are are quite active on the social media. I hope they will take the initiative to get more and more Odia books available on the internet with the help of Odia Wikisource”, he adds.

This contribution opens up a whole new window to his books being accessible to readers for free online. Recently the scanning of the original books were made by the Bhubaneswar based non-profit and science education research organization Srujanika which will now be made available after converting them into text form.

Apart from Dr Das, many other notable individuals like Padma shree Debi Prasanna Pattanayak, Dr Subrat Prusty, Manoj Panda, Bharat Majhi and organisations like Aama Odisha, Manik Biswanath Smrutinyasa have taken the noble step of sharing their works online with free licenses using Odia Wikisource as a platform.

Odia Wikisource, a sister project of the Odia Wikipedia, is available online at or.wikisource.org. There are over 238 books already and all of the books are either under Public Domain or under the above mentioned Creative Commons Share-Alike license which gives the freedom of accessing the works for free, reuse them and even correct if any mistakes found, of course following the guidelines made by the Wikisource community. Currently about 10 Wikisourcers are actively contributing to digitize books of various genre, ranging from science to fiction to even the Odia classics.

With more authors generously opening up their work online, it feels like they are worried of the books becoming obsolete from the new generation leaving them with no way to learn about their own language and literature. Regional languages like Odia are facing the struggle to selling more books with the growing trend of English-centric education and rat race for jobs. In such a tough situation more popular Odia literary content is certainly going to give a boost to readership and will take the language to more people.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/discover-bhubaneswar-30-books-of-odia-author-and-historian-jagannath-prasad-das-to-come-online-on-odia-wikisource

Open access in the Marathi language expands by a thousand books

Subhashish Panigrahi and Abhinav Garule — 2016-01-03T11:26:49Z

As the Maharashtra Granthottejak Sanstha (MGS) celebrated its 121st anniversary recently, the organization re-licensed 1000 books under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license so that the books could be digitized and be made available on the Marathi Wikisource for millions of Marathi readers.

This was published in Wikimedia Blog on December 3, 2015.

As the Maharashtra Granthottejak Sanstha (MGS) celebrated its 121st anniversary recently, the organization re-licensed 1000 books under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license so that the books could be digitized and be made available on the Marathi Wikisource for millions of Marathi readers.^[1]

MGS is a non-profit organization working for the preservation of Maharashtra’s linguistic and cultural heritage. It was founded in Pune, India in 1894. Being an important archive for the preservation of many hundreds of years old manuscripts and historical artifacts from the Peshwa era, the institution is open to public for study and research.

During the four-day anniversary celebration, the Centre for Internet Society’s Access to Knowledge program (CIS-A2K)—an organization that supports the Wikimedia movement in India—opened a Wikipedia stall there where Marathi Wikimedians were present. Around 600 people visited the stall and learned about the news of MGS’s book donation.

Many active and new Marathi Wikimedians were present at the exhibition stall along with Abhinav Garule from the CIS-A2K program to share the incredible work Marathi Wikipedia and Wikimedia community at large are doing. Autographs of eighteen notable writers who received awards from Sanstha for different genres of writings were collected for uploading to the Wikipedia pages about them. While meeting the authors, Wikimedians also approached them to relicense some of their works under Creative Commons licenses so that they could be digitized on Wikisource and/or enrich Wikipedia—and some of the authors expressed a good deal of interest in opening up their books for Wikisource.

Some of the major books donated are Peshwa Rojnishi (diary of Peshwa), Benjamin Franklin Charitra (The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin), Kekavali, S M Paranjape Charitra (autobiography), Letters Exchanged between the Sanstha and the British Government, Shinde Gharanyacha Padmamay Itihas (manuscript), and Marathwadyatil Arvachin Marathi Vangmay (modern Marathi literature from Marathwada, a region in Maharashtra) are some of the popular books read by Marathi speakers that are going to be part of the books donated by the organization.

We reached out to Avinash Chaphekar, the joint secretary of the organization, to know more about the state of book publication and readership.

Subhashish Panigrahi (SP): Could you share your ideas of opening these invaluable books for Wikisource? How they are going to be useful for the online readers to learn about the Peshwas?

Avinash Chaphekar (AC): These books are of historical importance and contain information that needs to reach more people; they cover topics that are rarely covered well anywhere else. Right after India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi recommended the autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, as it contains a lot of messages for a common person, a lady walked up to and asked if she could read it in Marathi. Be it such autobiographies or a poetry book like “Kekavali”, such books that were published by the MGS should not be kept closed—many readers are searching for them. We donated 800 of these old books to the Marathi Wikisource because we don’t have large presence in the media or the Internet, so how would any reader who does not know us buy a book? If these books are available online, they can at least find and read them.

SP: Where do you think there is gap between publishers and readers today? Many Marathi books get published every year and if you search on the Internet, which many people today do, you would hardly find much.

AC: Online readership is increasing every day, but when you look at Marathi readers, the majority of them are still buying books. During the exhibitions here (even this year!), there is always quite a rush to buy books. Only the youth and tech-savvy people read online. But most people we meet say that they feel more comfortable holding and reading physical books. Moreover, there is no concrete research validating that most of the youngsters here are accessing information only online. I still feel reading books in a conventional way by holding books in your hands will continue to exist as there is some kind of satisfaction that lies in it.

SP: Did you know that we are going to get these books retyped, meaning that readers will not just be able to read them in their smartphones or computers but they could use the text for republishing the same books in the future? How do you think such a model will be useful for publishers?

AC: At the MGS, we don’t have funds to republish these books, and publishers are not ready to do it no matter how historically valuable the books are—even an incredibly valuable reference book called Marathi Grantha Nirmiti Watchal (the history of creation of Marathi books in Marathi), authored by SG Tulpule and published by us in 1973. This book has detailed information about Marathi publications, even those that existed before printing technology existed. As many such books are not being reprinted, we cannot leave the remaining few copies to perish. Let them go online and reach millions of people.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/wikimedia-blog-subhashish-panigrahi-december-3-open-access-in-marathi-language-expands-by-thousand-books

Design!Public (6th Edition)

praskrishna — 2015-11-30T02:11:45Z

The sixth edition of Design Public conceptualized and hosted by CivicLabs, an initiative of the Center for Knowledge Societies was held at Vihara Innovation Campus, New Delhi. Sumandro Chattapadhyay was a panelist.

The event created a platform through which urban administrators could engage with a wide range of expertise representing innovation, public policy, development, technology and entrepreneurship. The event brought together leading global and Indian practitioners representing these fields, to share and exchange best practices, learnings, approaches and philosophies in an attempt to chart a way forward for an ecosystem for civic innovation for India’s cities.

For more information see the Design Public website. Also see the blog post by Khusbhoo Dixit on this.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/news/design-public-6th-edition

Guerrilla GLAMː An alternate way of doing GLAM in indie-way

subha — 2015-12-16T03:09:47Z

I have been working on a concept called the Guerrilla GLAM. Here is a very quick summary about the concept that was published in the GLAM-wiki newsletter for November.

GLAM stands for cultural institutions like Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums. It is a globally acclaimed free knowledge movement for opening up cultural data using various free software platforms as a tool. GLAM activities include collaboration with cultural institutions, data mining, meta data and other documentation of institutional collections, digitization of published works, records and artifacts, and publishing the collected information in both human and machine readable forms with open standards. Building partnership with GLAM institutions is a great way of funneling the cultural content acquisition and bringing open access to such valuable data. But it is not that easy given the complications each country have in terms of formal agreement, organizational framework, and dissemination of information. "Guerrilla GLAM" techniques are based on the learning curve of institutional partnership building for large scale GLAM projects and leveraging personal contacts in small scale GLAM projects. It bring in several frugal strategies for cutting cost implication and operating in flexible modes. Guerrilla GLAM's range of work aims to accommodate people of different core expertise and it targets small to large orgaizations.

Guerrilla GLAM appeared first as a public presentation during Wikimania which I presented this year. It later interested many GLAM practitioners of New Zealand who organized a webinar which provided a great platform to add many interesting ideas to my existing set of ideas. Guerrilla GLAM is still a budding concept that aims for being implemented by many cultural enthusiasts especially those who would like to document much about the artifacts, digitize old text from archives and manuscripts, and create meta data for institutional collections. Guerrilla GLAM operates with zero or with some informal institutional partnership with the institution and carried on the shoulders of the Wikimedians. The Wikimedians seek out for support from local communities, leverage the permissible access to institutional property and to some extent the personal relations with the institutions keeping the legal restrictions in mind, and do their best to acquire as much data as possible. Often times, near to zero cost Guerrilla GLAM projects with detailed planning with right kind of people on-board could yield more or less the same like any conventional GLAM project.

Click to read the original published on Wikimedia Blog on November 25, 2015.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/guerrilla-glam-an-alternate-way-of-doing-glam-in-indie-way

Design Public Conclave, 6th Edition

amber — 2016-06-18T16:45:05Z

The 6th edition of the Design Public Conclave was hosted by Civic Labs, an initiative of the Center for Knowledge Studies, and part of the Vihara Innovation Network, in partnership with Social Innovation Exchange, Okapi, Business World, Business World for Smart Cities, and the Delhi Jal Board.

This edition of the conclave was focused on the challenges and opportunities faced by Indian cities. It sought to explore new mechanisms for integrating collaborative dialogue and problem solving into processes of government and citizen interaction. Participants included individuals from organisations such as Okapi, Hyderabad Urban Labs, Fields of View, Innovation Academy, Hewlett Packard, LIRNEasia, among others.

The conclave began with a round of light yoga before moving into the introductory session. Namit Arora, a member of the Delhi Dialogue Commission, who gave the opening remarks introduced some of the subjects to be discussed and raised issues of citizen engagement, massive migration, pollution, unplanned growth, housing, water and power shortage, social problems like sectarianism and crime as some of the challenges faced in civic innovation. He stressed the lack of engagement between public and private parties and the issue of having no sense of commons in civic life in India.

What is Civic Innovation?

The first panel titled “What is civic innovation?” comprised Diastika Rahwidiati from Pulse Lab, Pavan Srinath from Takshashila Institution, Sriganesh Lokanathan from LIRNEasia and Aditya Dev Sood from Vihara Innovation Network. Pavan raised questions about how more people can be involved in civic issues, and spoke about the training program for public governance run by the Takshashila Institution as a means towards that. He also shared the example of Bangalore Political Action Committee, a citizen’s collective that includes several eminent personalities from the city that aims to improve the quality of life in the city. The panel continued to discuss how technology can be harnessed for social activism, and how the data revolution and data sciences can be used for civic innovation. Questions were asked about whether digital activism, such as civic hackathons, is not just a passing fad. A lot of solutions that are only technological in nature, can be misinformed, and so it is essential that other actors are involved along with technologists.

The Vision of a Smart City

Next, Sumit D. Chowdhury from the Ministry of Urban Development, Karuna Gopal from Foundation for Futuristic Cities, Parvathi Menon from Innovation Alchemy, Debashish Rao from HP, Bharath Palavalli from Fields of View and Namrata Mehta from CivicLabs spoke about how smart cities can be built. Parvathi Menon kicked off the conversation by saying that while it is impossible to design smart cities, it is possible to design smart communities. Sumit Chowdhury shared some of the factors that, in his opinion, make a smart city—the creation of scalable infrastructure, transparency in governance, velocity of business and quality of life. A city that can measure itself and use that knowledge to improve itself is a true smart city. Bharat Palavalli chimed in that while technology can make cities more efficient, efficiency can be dangerous. It can become easy to forget who the city is becoming more efficient for. Here, Sumit brought up the example of Shivpur in Maharashtra, where there are water meters in every village, public consciousness about planning and services and timely payment of taxes by citizen to drive the point that smart cities are driven by communities, and technology plays a role in enabling processes and the State in institutionalizing successful solutions. Finally, it was pointed out that under the 100 Smart Cities Initiative, the MoUD does not have a consistent understanding of what smart cities should be.

Dialogue between Society and State

This panel was followed by Elizabeth Elson’s keynote talk, “The dialogue between society and the state.” She spoke about the the power struggle between citizens and the government even in the case of technological application about who brings about change. She shared her experiences from the MAMPU programme. She pointed out some issues faced during the programme like too much focus on symptoms without really understanding the underlying causes, the use of intermediaries, creating mutually empowering coalitions. Elizabeth Elson pointed out that the terms, innovation and technology are used interchangeably . She pointed out that this was problematic as all technological solutions were not innovative. Another important issue that she raised was the need for technological intervention make media more accountable to the society. This session was followed by lunch.

Changing Society and Governments

The next session was moderated by Sumadro Chattapadhyay of Centre for Internet and Society. This panel included Garima Agarwal from Ashoka Innovators, Bangalore and Maesy Angelina from MAMPU programme, Jakarta. The session focussed on what were the appropriate modes of dialogues between civil society, private sector and government. Maesy Angelina focussed on design thinking as one of key methodologies for social innovation. Garima Agarwal emphasised on the importance of developing empathy as an institution. The panel said that while civil society and private sector could continue to point out the issues to the government, very often there is a failure of the government apparatus in that they do not know how to respond to these issues.

Civic Tech Demos

After lunch, there was a small session of brief pitches of examples of civic technological innovations. These include Local Circles, Meri Awaaz, SocialCops, On Track Media and BusBud. The issues that the solutions sought to addressed ranged from citizen engagement, awareness about reproductive issues, MNREGA, public transport and parking. I was reminded of the words of Pia Mancini who felt that she had failed in leveraging technology to solve governance issues as those problems were not technological but cultural. Having said that, a number of the ideas and the desire of use technology to solve social problems were laudable and one hopes to see more applications like these in future.

Breakout Sessions

This was followed by three simultaneous breakout sessions on the following topics – 1) Form and Function: Data Protocols for Civic Innovation, 2) Water Management for Improved Urban Health, and 3) Gaming for Decentralized Waste Management. I was part of the group discussing data protocols for civic innovation. Various question were raised with the implications of open data. One of the recurring themes was the question of ownership of data and who had a rightful claim over it. We broke the discussion down into two heads – risks of data and opportunities for governance and solutions. Among risks, we discussed issues such as privacy risks, chilling effects on free speech, reliability of data, profusion of data without clear insights, social profiling and re-identification of anonymised data. We look at different forms and opportunities for governance including licensing and control, cross linking of data silos, clear guidelines on who controls and owns data. The failure of conventional data protection principles like collection limitation and data minimisation principles were also considered and alternate models which involved having hierarchies of different kinds of data based on potential harm through misuse were discussed. After the breakout sessions, each group made a presentation of their observation.

Concluding

The final session was on accelerating civic innovation. The panel comprised Kartik Desai from ASHA Impact, Delhi, Nishesh Mehta from Water Co-Lab, Ahmedabad, AIyong Paul Seong from USAID, Delhi, Santosh Singh from World Bank, Delhi and Aditya Dev Sood from Vihara Innovation Network. The discussion was focussed on what kinds of services can have an impact on the way citizens interact with the state. Elizabeth Elson’s keynote on the dialogues between the state and the citizens is also relevant with regard to this discussion. Different actors including citizens, civil society actors, government institutions and industry were discussed as agents who may create the new platforms for interaction. The conclave concluded with dinner and drinks in the lawns of the Vihara Innovation Campus.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/design-public-conclave-6th-edition

CIS Participated in T20 Mumbai, Regional Consultation Meeting, October 19, 2015

praskrishna — 2015-10-20T13:54:39Z

This is the first time that a T20 event, which is a series of preparatory meetings towards G20 summits, is taking place in India. Sumandro Chattapadhyay represented CIS in this consultation, and was a discussant in the session on Technology, Services, and Skills.

"On 19 October 2015, over 50 experts from foreign and Indian think tanks, business leaders from India, and government representatives from the G20 countries will gather at Gateway House in Mumbai to discuss issues of global economic governance and foreign economic policy at India’s first Think20 (T20) meeting. The keynote address for the meeting, “Global Economy and Challenges for Multilateral Policies” will be delivered by Dr. Raghuram Rajan, Governor, Reserve Bank of India. This is a Think-20 (T20) regional consultation meeting. The G20 is a multilateral forum comprising the world’s 20 major economies, and is recognized as the “premier global economic governance platform”. This year, Turkey is the president of the G20 forum (2015). The T20 is an official sub-forum of the G20 process, responsible for contributing ideas and research to the G20 on global economic issues.

The T20 Mumbai event will be co-hosted by Gateway House, in collaboration with the leading Turkish think tank – Economic Policy Research Foundation of Turkey (TEPAV). TEPAV is the official Turkish Think Tank responsible for coordinating the activities of the T20 in 2015 with think tanks from all the G20 member countries.

India will join the T20 group for the first time, by hosting the meeting in Mumbai, and Gateway House is honoured to initiate this select event. Observations and recommendations from the dialogue will be officially submitted to the Turkish G20 presidency, and incorporated into the discourse for the G20 Leaders Summit scheduled for 15-16 November, 2015, Antalya, Turkey."

This meeting is significant for India: it reinforces India’s role as a key participant in multilateral economic fora and contributor of solutions for global economic issues...

Participants will include Gateway House members comprising business leaders and individuals from India. The Indian government will be represented by the Ministry of Finance, Ministry of External Affairs, the Reserve Bank of India, and EXIM Bank. Diplomatic representation is expected from G20 countries, SAARC countries and several multilateral financial institutions.

The sessions will commence with a keynote by Dr. Raghuram Rajan, Governor, Reserve Bank of India, followed by a joint think tank and business session on the impact of geopolitics and business. Starting at noon will be five working sessions for the think tank experts to discuss a range of global economic issues under the G20 mandate such as global trade and investments, inclusive business models, financing sustainable infrastructure and building skills for a technology and services-driven economy."

Press release: http://www.gatewayhouse.in/press-release-indias-first-think20-t20-meeting/

Event page: http://www.gatewayhouse.in/t20mumbai/

Agenda: http://www.gatewayhouse.in/t20mumbai/agenda/

Notes from Sumandro's Statement

The problem of creating meaningful and sustainable employment opportunities in today's technology-mediated global economy is not simply one of skill-enabling the existing and emerging workforce to take part in the growing service sector.
It is crucial to recognise that the contemporary growth of service sector in economies across countries is being fundamentally shaped by access to technology, and access to information and services via technological devices and networks.
A key barrier to effective access to technology in the developing world is the rent-seeking business strategies that permeate global technological industries: from technologies of communication, to those of agriculture, to those of medicine.
Apart from removing such barriers, global and national strategies towards skill development for achieving meaningful and sustainable employment must focus on two things: 1) enabling self-learning through open educational resources, and public infrastructures supporting the same, and 2) a broad-based national innovation system that incentivises businesses to create and effectively use intellectual properties, as appropriate for the local context.
Skill-enabling of new entrants to the labour market (or existing one) must not be understood in terms of special purpose vocational training, that is narrow education for presently existing job opportunities. Neither can online self-learning programmes succeed without building public infrastructures for social learning.
Various recent commentators, most famously The Economist, have flagged the ineffectiveness, and even negative impacts, of the global intellectual property rights regime. An effective and democratic national innovation system must neither treat innovation in a sector-specific manner, nor as a general strategy driven by the needs of particular industries in a particular stage of their development of operations and IP ownership.
Skilling of the existing and emerging workforce must enable them to take part in the global knowledge economy, and its technological basis, in a holistic way.
Openness in policy-making and collaborative implementation, not only between public and private agencies but also between public agencies, are absolutely essential for the success of any such initiative to develop skills of the national workforce.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/news/cis-participated-in-t20-mumbai-oct-19-2015

OCR and OER – update

subha — 2016-06-18T17:09:22Z

We welcome this short posting from Subhashish Panigrahi which updates a 2014 posting of his on Indic Language Wikipedias as Open Educational Resources at http://education.okfn.org/indic-language-wikipedias-as-open-educational-resources/

To read the blog post published by Open Education Working Group, see here.

Subhashish Panigrahi (@subhapa) is an educator, author, blogger, Wikimedian, language activist and free knowledge evangelist based in Bengaluru (often called Bangalore), India. After working for a while at the Wikimedia Foundation’s India Program he is currently at the Centre for Internet and Society‘s Access To Knowledge program. He works primarily in building partnership with universities, language research and GLAM (Gallery, Library, Archive and Museums) organizations for bringing more scholarly and encyclopedic content under free licenses, designs outreach programs for South Asian language Wikipedia/Wikimedia projects and communities. He wears many other hats: Editor for Global Voices Odia, Community Moderator of Opensource.com, and Ambassador for India in OpenGLAM Local. Subhashish is the author of a piece “Rising Voices: Indigenous language Digital Activism” in the book Digital Activism in Asia Reader.

Google’s OCR and its use by Wikimedians in South Asia

Some time back on the OCR project support network, Google had announced that the Google drive could be used for Optical Character Recognition (OCR). The software now works for over 248 world languages (including all the major South Asian languages). Though the exact pattern of development of the software is not clear, some of the Wikimedians reported that there is improvement over time in the recognition of their native languages Malayalam and Tamil. The recent encounter has been with a simple, easy to to use and robust software that can detect most languages with over 90% accuracy.

The OCR technology extracts text from images, scans of printed text, and even handwriting to some extent, which means that the text can be extracted pretty much from any old book, manuscript, or image. This certainly brings hope to most Indian languages as there is a lot to digitize. Most of the major Indian languages have plenty of non-digitized literature and the existing OCR systems are not as good as Google when so many languages are concerned as a whole.

Google’s OCR engine is probably using aspects of Tesseract, an OCR engine released as free software, or OCRopus, a free document analysis and optical character recognition (OCR) system that is primarily used in Google Books. Developed as a community project during 1995-2006 and later taken over by Google, Tesseract is considered one of the most accurate OCR engines and works for over 60 languages. The source code is available on GitHub.

The OCR project support page offers additional details on preserving character formatting for things like bold and italics after OCR in the output text.

When processing your document, we attempt to preserve basic text formatting such as bold and italic text, font size and type, and line breaks. However, detecting these elements is difficult and we may not always succeed. Other text formatting and structuring elements such as bulleted and numbered lists, tables, text columns, and footnotes or endnotes are likely to get lost.

The user-end interaction of the OCR software currently is rather simple. The user has to upload an image of the scan in any image format (.jpg, .png, .gif, etc.) or PDF to the Google Drive. Upon completion of the uploading, opening the file in Google Drive shows both the image and the converted text in the same document.

One of the most popular free and open digitization platforms, Wikisource currently hosts hundreds or thousands of free books which are either out of copyright or under Creative Commons licenses (CC-by or CC-by-SA) allowing users to digitize.

While OCR works quite well for Latin based languages, many other scripts do not get OCRed perfectly. So, the Wikisourcers (Wikisource contributors) often have to type the text.

Thus the new Google OCR might be useful both for the Wikisource community and many others who are in the mission of digitizing old text and archiving them.

The image below shows a screen from a tutorial to convert text in the Odia language from a scanned image using Google’s OCR.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/education-okfn-subhashish-panigrahi-september-25-2015-ocr-and-oer-update