Centre for Internet and Society

Openness

Subbiah Arunachalam and Anirudh Sridhar — 2014-05-30T07:59:15Z

The philosophy of openness is one that concerns itself with shifting power from centralized authorities of knowledge like owners to the community with its varied components like users, producers or contributors.

Many people think of openness as being merely about the digitization of pre-existing knowledge or content but it is far more than that. Often, as Nishant Shah puts it in his article “Big Data, People's Lives, and the Importance of Openness”[1] “it (openness) is about claiming access to knowledge and information hidden behind paywalls and gateways that are often produced using public resources.” Openness is important for the same reasons that access to knowledge is important, but it takes many different forms. We will be discussing Open Content, Open Access, Open (Government) Data, Free and Open Source Software and Open Standards.

After a quick narration of what we mean by commons and contents, we move on to open access to science and scholarship. We distinguish openness of knowledge as it prevails today from the public libraries of the print era and then move on to developments that led to the open access movement. We then discuss the status of open access in India and end with the bright future awaiting open access.

The notion of the ‘commons’ (meaning open to all) has been in existence for a very long time. For example, as early as the 4^th Century B C, Aristotle commented “What is common to the greatest number gets the least care!” [1] Ecologist Garret Hardin developed this notion into the ‘tragedy of the commons’ for explaining the numerous environmental crises and ecological dilemmas we face today [2]

Commons is defined as "resources accessible to all members of a society“. A good example of the commons is the village greens in Great Britain around which people reside and have their church and school. Then there are grazing lands for their cattle, and water bodies, which no one owns but everyone can use. The moment someone has a title deed for a piece of land he ‘encloses’ it with a fence. Even here, if that piece of land has been used for long by people to cross to the other side, the owner keeps open a narrow footpath.

It is only three or four decades ago the commons became an object of serious study. The idea of the ‘knowledge commons’ draws upon the work of people like Elinor Orstom on ‘common pool resources,’ ‘natural resource commons’ and ‘public good’ such as forests, water systems, fisheries, grazing fields and the global atmosphere all of which are common-pool resources of immense importance for the survival of humans on this earth [3-5].Ostrom and her colleague Charlotte Hess also contributed to knowledge commons and in particular to our understanding of scholarly communication and cultural resources as commons. Their work brought out the essential role of collective action and self-governance in making commons work [6].

Definitions
Before talking about knowledge commons let us define these terms:

Knowledge includes all useful ideas, information and data in whatever form in which it is expressed or obtained, and useful knowledge can be indigenous, scientific, scholarly, or non-academic. It also includes music and the visual and theatrical arts – humanity’s literary, artistic and cultural heritage.
Ostrom and Hess define a commons as a resource shared by a group of people that is subject to social dilemmas.
Social dilemma in the context of knowledge includes enclosure by intellectual property (IP) regulations, loss due to inadequate preservation or simple neglect, and different laws being applied to print and digital forms.
Open Knowledge Definition defines openness in relation to content and data thus: A piece of content or data is open if anyone is free to use, reuse, and redistribute it without technical or legal restrictions, subject only, at most, to the requirement to attribute and/ or share-alike [http://opendefinition.org]. And ‘digital commons’ is defined as "information and knowledge resources that are collectively created and owned or shared between or among a community and that is (generally freely) available to third parties. Thus, they are oriented to favour use and reuse, rather than to exchange as a commodity."

Free and Open Software

Definition
Free and open-source software (FOSS) is software that is both free and open source. Free software is software for which the source code is released when it is distributed. The users are free to adapt study and distribute the software.[2]Most commercially available software is proprietary software so the free software is mostly developed cooperatively. The free software movement was launched in 1983 which was a social movement for the attaining these freedoms for software users. It basically draws upon the 1970’s hacker culture but the founder of the movement Richard Stallman started the GNU Project in 1983.[3] Open source software (OSS) is released with its source code and the license is one where the copyright holder extends the right for users to study, change and distribute the software to anyone and for any purpose. OSS is also often developed collaboratively in a public endeavor. Free software licenses and open-source licenses are often used by many software packages instead of proprietary software licenses which have restrictive copyrights. Usually all software and bug fixes under this are also made available under the same free and open licenses which creates a kind of living software. These types of software are essential for society moving forward because they help reduce costs, increases productivity, enhance security, and improve compliance standards. FOSS presents the lowest risk among software systems because they have the best long term investment protection.

UNESCO has recognized the importance of FOSS as a practical tool in development and in achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDG).[4]

It recognizes that:

Software plays a crucial role in access to information and knowledge;
Different software models, including proprietary, open-source and free software, have many possibilities to increase competition, access by users, diversity of choice and to enable all users to develop solutions which best meet their requirements;
The development and use of open, interoperable, non-discriminatory standards for information handling and access are important elements in the development of effective infostructures;
The community approaches to software development has great potential to contribute to operationalize the concept of Knowledge Societies;
The Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) model provides interesting tools and processes with which people can create, exchange, share and exploit software and knowledge efficiently and effectively;
FOSS can play an important role as a practical instrument for development as its free and open aspirations make it a natural component of development efforts in the context of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs);
Consistent support plays an important role in the success and sustainability of FOSS solutions;
All software choices should be based upon the solution's ability to achieve the best overall return on technology investments.[5]

Organizations[6]
There is no rule that excludes anyone who wants to support FOSS from doing so. Usually, however, the trend shows that non-profit organizations (NPO), academic institutions, developers and support/service businesses invest their time and resources in these projects. Here are some of the important organizations that have supported FOSS:

FLOSS Manuals -- FLOSS Manuals is a community that creates free manuals for free and open source software.
FOSS Learning Centre – They are an international NPO that is a center for information and training about FOSS.
GOSLING - "Getting Open Source Logic Into Governments" is a knowledge sharing community assist with the introduction and use of free/libre software solutions in the Canadian Federal and other government operations.
International Open Source Network -- "The vision is that developing countries in the Asia-Pacific Region can achieve rapid and sustained economic and social development by using effective FOSS ICT solutions to bridge the digital divide."
Open Source for America – This is a combination of NGO’s, academic institutions, associations, technology industry leaders that advocates and helps raise the awareness of FOSS in the US Government.
Open Source Initiative – This was the organization that first gave mass market appeal to the term “open source. They are the recognized certification authority for whether or not a given software license is FOSS.
Open Source Software Institute – This is another NPO that consists of government, academic and corporate representation and they encourage open-source solutions in U.S. government agencies and academic entities.
OSS Watch – This is a public institution in the UK which provides advice on the development and licensing of FOSS.
SchoolForge – They offer references to references to open texts and lessons, open curricula, and free open source software in education.

Types of Licenses[7]
Source Code: This is a code that is readable by humans. It has statements like:*Simple Hello Button () method.

When a computer is running, a source code is translated into binary code which is not readable or modifiable by humans. It reads something like:01011001101.

The licenses that will illuminate where FOSS licenses stand relatively are GPL licenses (that are the most restrictive) and BSD licenses (which are almost public domain). The primary distinction between these two is the way in which source code is treated as opposed to binary code.

The GPL license differed from prior ones because they stipulated that the source code has to be provided along with the binary code which meant that the licensees could use and change the source code. This requirement was an important part of the domino effect in driving innovation since old industrial standards did not apply to software. However, though this freedom with binaries produced exists, there are no requirements to make the source available. The prime difference between the two being that legally, the release of the BSD source is completely at the discretion of the releasing entity.

The following table compares different kinds of FOSS licenses. In order to be considered as such, the bare minimum is for the licenses to pass the first four tests in the table.[8]

	Source must be free	Must retain copyright notice	Can sell executable without restriction	Modifications covered under license	Prevented from use for software or data locking	Linked code covered under license	New updates to license will apply	Patent retaliation, loss of use if suit brought	Can sell source code
GPL V3	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	N	Y	?	N
Mozilla (V1.1)	Y	Y	Y	Y	N	N	Y	Y	N
BSD	Y	Y	Y	Y	N	N	N	N	Y

Differences[9]
The most salient distinction between the two types of software comes from the principles behind them. For the “open source” movement, the idea that software should be open source is a practical one and isn’t concerned with the ethical dimensions behind the question. For the free software movement, the problem behind software licenses is a social one for which free software is the solution.


Openness poster depicting the 4 freedoms of Free and Open Source Software. By 2016 approximately 86% of all video content will be internet video.

FOSS in India

Many support groups like the Free Software Movement of India and various NGO’s have spawned in order to campaign for FOSS in India.[10]

The National Resource Centre for Free and Open Source Software (NRCFOSS) was an initiative by the DIT in 2005 in order to be the central point for all FOSS related activities in India. Through awareness campaigns, training programs and workshops a large collection of FOSS trained teacher and student communities have been formed across India.[11] In many curricula in technical institutes, FOSS is even offered as an elective. The Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DEITY) boasts of “BOSS – Bharat Operating System Solutions External website that opens in a new windowis a GNU/Linux based localized Operating System distribution that supports 18 Indian languages - Assamese, Bengali, Bodo, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Kashmiri, Konkani, Maithili, Malayalam, Manipuri, Marathi, Oriya, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Tamil, Telegu and Urdu.”[12]

Case Study: Curoverse[13]
Open source software is a mainstream enterprise that can be both beneficial to society, academia and companies. This was the underlying assumption when $1.5 million was invested in an open source genomics tool project at Curoverse, Boston. The Personal Genome Project (PGP) endeavors to sequence 100,000 human genomes in the U.S. The storage of these massive amounts of data is facilitated by Arvados, which is an open source computational platform. Curoverse, which is a product of the PGP is planning to release its commercial products next year and in anticipation, Boston Global Ventures and Common Angels have invested $1.5 M. The PGP, according to George Church (the creator), the database needed to hold almost one Exabyte of data for the researchers to efficiently analyze the data. Some of the functions necessary were the ability to share the data between research centers and to make sure that complex analyses could be reproduced. In order to satisfy these requirements, the software had to open source. Although similar to the new age cloud computing the software Arvados was programmed to hold extremely high amounts of genetic data. It can run on both public and private cloud services, so it’ll be available both on Amazon and other cloud platforms. Although this software was developed in 2006, the project hadn’t officially taken off but this investment in open source software coming from high impact technology companies like Boston Global Ventures.

Case Study: Open-Sorcerers[14]
Many magical tricks can be protected by copyright. For example, Teller from Penn and teller fame is suing a Dutch magician for allegedly stealing his “shadow” illusion. Litigating on these matters is proving to be extremely difficult so magicians, like programmers are taking the route of open-source licenses. This doesn’t mean that they would just share magical secrets in violation of the Alliance of Magicians on a forum like YouTube. This is more congruous with what open source technology activists advocate which is the idea of collaboration. If magicians work with more technologists, artists, programmers, scientists and other magicians, there could be better illusions and a general cross-pollination of magical ideas among various disciplines. For this, the technology behind these illusions needs to be freely available and the licenses have to open up for open sorcerers. Techno-illusionist Marco Tempest and Kieron Kirlkland from a digital creativity development studio in Bristol are the main proponents of open source in magic. Tempest has stated that famous magicians in the status quo contract illusion engineers, technologists or other magicians to design new effects for their acts and make them all sign secrecy agreements and the creators have no ownership of what they have created. This has been detrimental to innovation and perfection of techniques as they are not allowed to refine their work over time. If the ownership is instead shared and freely available to the co-creators and developers, then it would lead to better illusions and speed up the process faster.

Open Standards

Definition
Interoperability has many social, technical and economic benefits and interoperability on the internet magnifies these benefits many fold. Interoperability, unlike a lot of other economically beneficial changes, was not a result of the adapting markets. It came about in what modest existence it has, through a concerted effort from processes and practices by the IETF, the W3C and the Interop conferences among others.[15]

Open standards are applicable to any application programming interface, a hardware interface, a file format, a communication protocol, a specification of user interactions, or any other form of data interchange and program control.[16]

The billions of dollars of capital investment in the past few years since the internet’s advent into the mainstream has come from an understanding of very basic laws of the market. Metcalfe’s law says the value of interoperability increases geometrically with the number of compatible participants. Reed’s law states that a network’s utility exponentially increases as the number of subgroups increase.The problem with having standards for this interoperability is that the open standard either needs to be most open or most inclusive and unlike in many other cases we have discussed, here it can’t be both. If it wants to be inclusive, it should have standards that permit any license that is free, closed or open. It should have standards that have any type of implementation under any implementor.[17] On the other hand, if it to support the idea of openness, the best practices will exclude certain practices in the market like proprietary standards. Though traditionally meant to incentivize compliance by claiming a set of standards to be best practices, under this, some try to be unique in the market by adding on additional properties that are not a part of the open standards but claim that they implement “open standards” for strategic advantage. Others even defy the logic of having standards by claiming that their new additions embody open standards better.

As we have seen, due to the various conceptions of the good in open standards, there isn’t a universally accepted definition of open standards. The FOSS community largely accepts the following definition with contention from the industry.

[S]ubject to full public assessment and use without constraints [royalty-free] in a manner equally available to all parties; without any components or extensions that have dependencies on formats or protocols that do not meet the definition of an open standard themselves; free from legal or technical clauses that limit its utilization by any party or in any business model; managed and further developed independently of any single vendor in a process open to the equal participation of competitors and third parties; available in multiple complete implementations by competing vendors, or as a complete implementation equally available to all parties.[18]

A standard can be considered open if it does the job of achieving the following goals. It has to increase the market for a particular technology by facilitating investment in that technology by both consumers and suppliers. It has to do this by making sure these investors don’t have to pay monopoly rent or deal with trade secret, copyright, patent or trademark problems. In retrospect, we have learned that the only standards that have achieved these goals are ones that encourage an open-source philosophy.

Proprietary software manufacturers, vendors and their lobbyists often provide a definition of open standards that is not in line with the above definitions on two counts (Nah, 2006).

One, they do not think it is necessary for an open standard to be available on a royalty-free basis as long as it is available under a “reasonable and non-discriminatory” (RAND) licence. This means that there are some patents associated with the standard and the owners of the patents have agreed to license them under reasonable and non-discriminatory terms (W3C, 2002). One example is the audio format MP3, an ISO/IEC [International Organisation for Standardisation/International Electrotechnical Commission] standard where the associated patents are owned by Thomson Consumer Electronics and the Fraunhofer Society of Germany. A developer of a game with MP3 support would have to pay USD 2,500 as royalty for using the standard. While this may be reasonable in the United States (US), it is unthinkable for an entrepreneur from Bangladesh. Additionally, RAND licences are incompatible with most FOSS licensing requirements. Simon Phipps of Sun Microsystems says that FOSS “serves as the canary in the coalmine for the word ‘open’. Standards are truly open when they can be implemented without fear as free software in an open source community” (Phipps, 2007). RAND licences also retard the growth of FOSS, since they are patented in a few countries. Despite the fact that software is not patentable in most parts of the world, the makers of various distributions of GNU/Linux do not include reverse-engineered drivers, codecs, etc., in the official builds for fear of being sued. Only the large corporation-backed distributions of GNU/Linux can afford to pay the royalties needed to include patented software in the official builds (in this way enabling an enhanced out-of-the-box experience). This has the effect of slowing the adoption of GNU/Linux, as less experienced users using community-backed distributions do not have access to the wide variety of drivers and codecs that users of other operating systems do (Disposable, 2004). This vicious circle effectively ensures negligible market presence of smaller community-driven projects by artificial reduction of competition.

Two, proprietary software promoters do not believe that open standards should be “managed and further developed independently of any single vendor,” as the following examples will demonstrate. This is equally applicable to both new and existing standards.

Microsoft’s Office Open XML (OOXML) is a relatively new standard which the FOSS community sees as a redundant alternative to the existing Open Document Format (ODF). During the OOXML process, delegates were unhappy with the fact that many components were specific to Microsoft technology, amongst other issues. By the end of a fast-track process at the ISO, Microsoft stands accused of committee stuffing: that is, using its corporate social responsibility wing to coax non-governmental organisations to send form letters to national standards committees, and haranguing those who opposed OOXML. Of the twelve new national board members that joined ISO after the OOXML process started, ten voted “yes” in the first ballot (Weir, 2007). The European Commission, which has already fined Microsoft USD 2.57 billion for anti-competitive behaviour, is currently investigating the allegations of committee stuffing (Calore, 2007). Microsoft was able to use its financial muscle and monopoly to fast-track the standard and get it approved. In this way it has managed to subvert the participatory nature of a standards-setting organisation. So even though Microsoft is ostensibly giving up control of its primary file format to the ISO, it still exerts enormous influence over the future of the standard.

HTML, on the other hand, is a relatively old standard which was initially promoted by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), an international community of techies. However, in 2002, seven years after the birth of HTML 2.0, the US Department of Justice alleged that Microsoft used the strategy of “embrace, extend, and extinguish” (US DoJ, 1999) in an attempt to create a monopoly among web browsers. It said that Microsoft used its dominance in the desktop operating system market to achieve dominance in the web-authoring tool and browser market by introducing proprietary extensions to the HTML standard (Festa, 2002). In other words, financial and market muscle have been employed by proprietary software companies – in these instances, Microsoft – to hijack open standards.

The Importance
There are many technical, social and ethical reasons for the adoption and use of open standards. Some of the reasons that should concern governments and other organisations utilising public money – such as multilaterals, bilaterals, civil society organisations, research organisations and educational institutions – are listed below.

Innovation/competitiveness: Open standards are the bases of most technological innovations, the best example of which would be the internet itself (Raymond, 2000). The building blocks of the internet and associated services like the world wide web are based on open standards such as TCP/IP, HTTP, HTML, CSS, XML, POP3 and SMTP. Open standards create a level playing field that ensures greater competition between large and small, local and foreign, and new and old companies, resulting in innovative products and services. Instant messaging, voice over internet protocol (VoIP), wikis, blogging, file-sharing and many other applications with large-scale global adoption were invented by individuals and small and medium enterprises, and not by multinational corporations.

Greater interoperability: Open standards ensure the ubiquity of the internet experience by allowing different devices to interoperate seamlessly. It is only due to open standards that consumers are able to use products and services from competing vendors interchangeably and simultaneously in a seamless fashion, without having to learn additional skills or acquire converters. For instance, the mail standard IMAP can be used from a variety of operating systems (Mac, Linux and Windows), mail clients (Evolution, Thunderbird, Outlook Express) and web-based mail clients. Email would be a completely different experience if we were not able to use our friends’ computers, our mobile phones, or a cybercafé to check our mail.

Customer autonomy: Open standards also empower consumers and transform them into co-creators or “prosumers” (Toffler, 1980). Open standards prevent vendor lock-in by ensuring that the customer is able to shift easily from one product or service provider to another without significant efforts or costs resulting from migration.

Reduced cost: Open standards eliminate patent rents, resulting in a reduction of total cost of ownership. This helps civil society develop products and services for the poor.

Reduced obsolescence: Software companies can leverage their clients’ dependence on proprietary standards to engineer obsolescence into their products and force their clients to keep upgrading to newer versions of software. Open standards ensure that civil society, governments and others can continue to use old hardware and software, which can be quite handy for sectors that are strapped for financial resources.

Accessibility: Operating system-level accessibility infrastructure such as magnifiers, screen readers and text-to-voice engines require compliance to open standards. Open standards therefore ensure greater access by people with disabilities, the elderly, and neo-literate and illiterate users. Examples include the US government’s Section 508 standards, and the World Wide Web Consortium’s (W3C) WAI-AA standards.

Free access to the state: Open standards enable access without forcing citizens to purchase or pirate software in order to interact with the state. This is critical given the right to information and the freedom of information legislations being enacted and implemented in many countries these days.

Privacy/security: Open standards enable the citizen to examine communications between personal and state-controlled devices and networks. For example, open standards allow users to see whether data from their media player and browser history are being transmitted along to government servers when they file their tax returns. Open standards also help prevent corporate surveillance.

Data longevity and archiving: Open standards ensure that the expiry of software licences does not prevent the state from accessing its own information and data. They also ensure that knowledge that has been passed on to our generation, and the knowledge generated by our generation, is safely transmitted to all generations to come.

Media monitoring: Open standards ensure that the voluntary sector, media monitoring services and public archives can keep track of the ever-increasing supply of text, audio, video and multimedia generated by the global news, entertainment and gaming industries. In democracies, watchdogs should be permitted to reverse-engineer proprietary standards and archive critical ephemeral media in open standards.

Principles[19]

Availability:Open Standards should be available for everyone to access.
Maximize End-User Choice:Open Standards should lead to a competitive and fair market and shouldn’t restrict consumer choices.
No Royalty:Open Standards should be free of cost for any entity to implement while there maybe some fee for certification of compliance.
No Discrimination:Open Standards should not show preference to one implementer over another as previously discussed except for the tautological reason of the compliance with the standard. The authorities that are certifying these implementers should offer a low or zero-cost implementation scheme.
Extension or Subset:Open Standards may be allowed in a subset or can allow for extensions form but certifying authorities can decline from certifying subset implementations and have specific conditions for extensions.


HTTP, HTML, TCP/IP, SSL, etc., are all royalty free open standards and are building blocks on the Internet.

OSI Criteria[20]
In addition, to make sure that the Open Standards also promote an open source philosophy, the Open Source Initiative (OSI), which is the steward of the open source definition, has a set of criteria for open standards.

“No Intentional Secrets: The standard MUST NOT withhold any detail necessary for interoperable implementation. As flaws are inevitable, the standard MUST define a process for fixing flaws identified during implementation and interoperability testing and to incorporate said changes into a revised version or superseding version of the standard to be released under terms that do not violate the OSR.
Availability: The standard MUST be freely and publicly available (e.g., from a stable web site) under royalty-free terms at reasonable and non-discriminatory cost.
Patents: All patents essential to implementation of the standard must:
- be licensed under royalty-free terms for unrestricted use, or
- be covered by a promise of non-assertion when practiced by open source software
No Agreements: There must not be any requirement for execution of a license agreement, NDA, grant, click-through, or any other form of paperwork to deploy conforming implementations of the standard.
No OSR-Incompatible Dependencies: Implementation of the standard must not require any other technology that fails to meet the criteria of this Requirement.”

W3C Criteria[21]
The W3C also has a list of criteria in order to be called “Open Standards”.

Transparency (due process is public, and all technical discussions, meeting minutes, are archived and referencable in decision making)
Relevance (new standardization is started upon due analysis of the market needs, including requirements phase, e.g. accessibility, multi-linguism)
Openness (anybody can participate, and everybody does: industry, individual, public, government bodies, academia, on a worldwide scale)
Impartiality and consensus (guaranteed fairness by the process and the neutral hosting of the W3C organization, with equal weight for each participant)
Availability (free access to the standard text, both during development and at final stage, translations, and clear IPR rules for implementation, allowing open source development in the case of Internet/Web technologies)
Maintenance (ongoing process for testing, errata, revision, permanent access)”

Case Study: Digital Colonialism
Imagine back to a world in which a foreign power leases out a piece of land and you grow crops on it. You have produced crops there for many seasons and used the sales to buy a nice windmill. One day, the lease expires and the foreign power come and seizes not only your crops but also your windmill. Now if we apply the same story in a proprietary standards regime, imagine you were to license a copy of Microsoft Office for 28 days. You have stored documents in .doc, .xls and .ppt format. On the day that the license expires, you will not only lose your ability to use Word, Excel and PowerPoint, you will in fact lose all your documents in .doc, .xls and .ppt formats!

Additional Readings

Internet Engineering Task Force, OpenStandards.net,http://www.openstandards.net/viewOSnet2C.jsp?showModuleName=Organizations&mode=1&acronym=IETF
Standards, W3C, http://www.w3.org/standards/
Open Standards, http://www.open-std.org/
Pranesh Prakash, “Report on Open Standards for GISW 2008”, Centre for Internet and Society, 2008, http://cis-india.org/publications-automated/cis/sunil/Open-Standards-GISW-2008.pdf/at_download/file
Sunil Abraham, “Response to the Draft National Policy on Open Standards for e-Governance”, Centre for Internet and Society, 2008, http://cis-india.org/openness/publications/standards/the-response
Pranesh Prakash, “Second Response to Draft National Policy on Open Standards for e-Governance”, Centre for Internet and Society, 2008,http://cis-india.org/openness/publications/standards/second-response
Definition of “Open Standards”, International Telecommunication Union, http://www.itu.int/en/ITU-T/ipr/Pages/open.aspx

Open Content

Definition
The premise of an Open Content license is that, unlike most copyright licenses, which impose stringent conditions on the usage of the work, the Open Content licenses enable users to have certain freedoms by granting them rights. Some of these rights are usually common to all Open Content licenses, such as the right to copy the work and the right to distribute the work. Depending on the particular license, the user may also have the right to modify the work, create derivative works, perform the work, display the work and distribute the derivative works.

When choosing a license, the first thing that you will have to decide is the extent to which you are willing to grant someone rights over your work. For instance, let us suppose you have created a font. If you do not have a problem if people create other versions of it, then you can choose a license that grants the user all rights. If, on the other hand, you are willing to allow people to copy the font and distribute it, but you do not want them to change the typeface or create versions of it, then you can choose a more restrictive license that only grants them the first two rights.

Most open content licenses share a few common features that distinguish them from traditional copyright licenses.

These can be understood in the following ways:

Basis of the license/ validity of the license. (Discussed above)
Rights granted. (Discussed above)
Derivative works.d. Commercial/ non-commercial usage.e. Procedural requirements imposed.
Appropriate credits.
They do not effect fair use rights.
Absence of warranty.
Standard legal clauses

Derivate Works
Any work that is based on an original work created by you is a derivative work. The key difference between different kinds of Open Content licenses is the method that they adopt to deal with the question of derivative works. This issue is an inheritance from the licensing issues in the Free Software environment. The GNU GPL, for instance, makes it mandatory that any derivative work created from a work licensed under the GNU GPL must also be licensed under the GNU GPL. This is a means of ensuring that no one can create a derivative work from a free work which can then be licensed with restrictive terms and conditions. In other words, it ensures that a work that has been made available in the public domain cannot be taken outside of the public domain.

On the other hand, you may have a license like the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) software license that may allow a person who creates a derivative work to license that derivative work under a proprietary or closed source license. This ability to control a derivative work through a license is perhaps the most important aspect of the Open Content licenses. They ensure, in a sense, a self perpetuity. Since a person cannot make a derivative work without your permission, your permission is granted on the condition that s/he also allows others to use the derivative work freely. In Open Content licenses, the right to create a derivative work normally includes the right to create it in all media. Thus, if I license a story under an Open Content license, I also grant the user the right to create an audio rendition of it. The obligation to ensure that the derivative work is also licensed under the terms and conditions of the Open Content license is not applicable, however, in cases where the work is merely aggregated into a collection / anthology / compilation. For instance, suppose that I have drawn and written a comic called X, which is being included in a general anthology. In such a case, the other comics in the anthology may be licensed under different terms, and the Open Content license is not applicable to them and will only be applicable to my comic X in the anthology.

Commercial / Non-Commercial Usage
Another important aspect of Open Content licenses is the question of commercial / non-commercial usages. For instance, I may license a piece of video that I have made, but only as long as the user is using it for non-commercial purposes. On the other hand, a very liberal license may grant the person all rights, including the right to commercially exploit the work.

Procedural Requirements Imposed
Most Open Content licenses require a very strict adherence to procedures that have to be followed by the end user if s/he wants to distribute the work, and this holds true even for derivative works. The licenses normally demand that a copy of the license accompanies the work, or the inclusion of some sign or symbol which indicates the nature of the license that the work is being distributed under, for instance, and information about where this license may be obtained. This procedure is critical to ensure that all the rights granted and all the obligations imposed under the license are also passed onto third parties who acquire the work.

Appropriate Credits
The next procedural requirement that has to be strictly followed is that there should be appropriate credits given to the author of the work. This procedure applies in two scenarios. In the first scenario, when the end user distributes the work to a third party, then s/he should ensure that the original author is duly acknowledged and credited. The procedure also applies when the end user wants to modify the work or create a derivative work. Then, the derivative work should clearly mention the author of the original and also mention where the original can be found.

The importance of this clause arises from the fact that, while Open Content licenses seek to create an alternative ethos of sharing and collaboration, it also understands the importance of crediting the author. Very often, in the absence of monetary incentive, other motivating factors such as recognition, reputation and honour become very important. Open Content licenses, far from ignoring the rights of the author, insist on strict procedures so that these authorial rights are respected. You may copy and distribute the Document in any medium, either commercially or non-commercially, provided that this License, the copyright notices, and the license notice saying this license applies to the document are reproduced in all copies, and that you add no other conditions whatsover to those of this License. You may not use technical measures to obstruct or control the reading or further copying of the copies you make or distribute.

Open content licenses do not effect fair use rights
Under copyright law, there is an exception to infringement and this is known as the fair use exception. Fair use exceptions generally include using portions for critique or review, and certain non-commercial or educational academic uses etc. Open content licenses make it clear that 48 49the terms and conditions of the license do not affect your fair use rights. Thus even if someone is in disagreement with the terms and conditions, and refuses to enter into the open content license, s/he may still have the freedom to use the work to the extent that is allowed by the principles of his/her fair use rights.

Absence of warranty
Since more often than not the work is being made available at no financial cost and also gives the user certain freedoms, most open content licenses have a standard clause which states that the work is being provided without any warranty or on an ‘as is’ basis. The licensor cannot be in a position to provide any warranty on the work. A few licenses however provide the end-user the option of providing a warranty on services, or a warranty on the derivative work so long as that warranty is one between the licensee and the third party.

Standard legal clauses
A few other clauses that appear at the end of most open content licenses are the standard legal clauses that are included in most legal agreements, and you don’t have to worry too much about them while choosing a license.

These generally include:

Severability: This means that even if one portion of the license is held to be invalid the other portions will still continue to have effect.
Limitation on liability: The licenses normally state that the licensor will not be liable for anything arising from the use of the work. Thus, for instance, an end-user cannot claim that he suffered mental trauma as a result of the work.
The licenses do not allow you to modify any portion of the license while redistributing works, etc.
Termination: Most licenses state that the rights granted to the licensee are automatically terminated the moment s/he violates any obligation under the license.

Libraries as Content Providers and the Role of Technology
Content is for people’s use. First it was the library which facilitated access to knowledge for the use by the lay public. The first among the five laws enunciated by the famous Indian librarian Ranganathan [7] emphasizes this point: “Books are for use.” And it was technology which enabled large scale production of content in the form of books and subsequently facilitated ease of access.

Let us take text as content first. Before Gutenberg invented printing using movable types (c. 1436-1440) scribes used to write on vellum by hand. It was a painfully slow process and the reach was very limited. Gutenberg brought about probably the greatest game changing technology which within a very few years revolutionized many aspects of human life and history like never before. Peter Drucker has captured this revolution beautifully in an article in The Atlantic [8]

The public library became the content commons in the print era. Of course, long before Gutenberg there were some great libraries, e.g., Royal Library of Alexandria (Egypt), Taxila University Library, Nalanda University Library (Bihar, India), Bayt Al Hiqma (Baghdad, Iraq) and the Imperial Library of Library of Constantinople (in the capital of the Byzantine Empire). None of these could survive the ravages of time. Thanks to printing, the numbers increased rapidly and the library movement spread to far corners of the globe.

The major public libraries of today are performing a great job with huge collections. The US Library of Congress in Washington DC has 155 million items occupying 838 miles of shelf space, of which 35 million are print material, 68 million are manuscripts, and 5.4 million are maps. Besides these, LoC has 6.5 million pieces of sheet music, 13.6 million photographs and 3.4 million recordings.

The British Library in London has more than 150 million items with 3 million being added annually. If one reads 5 items a day, it will take 80,000 years to complete the current collection. The National Library of Russia stocks more than 36.4 million items. The Russian State Library, the legendary 'Leninka,' comprises a unique collection of Russian and foreign documents in 247 languages, stocking over 43 million items.

Now every major library emphasizes improved access. Here are some excerpts from Mission statements of some large institutions around the world.

British Library: “Enable access to everyone who wants to do research.”
National Library of the Netherlands: “Our core values are accessibility, sustainability, innovation and cooperation.”
German Federal Archives: “legal responsibility of permanently preserving the federal archival documents and making them available for use.”
Danish National Gallery: “Through accessibility, education, and exhibition.”
Victoria & Albert Museum: “To provide diverse audience with the best quality experience and optimum access to our collections, physically and digitally.”

I have included in this sample of galleries, archives, and museums as well as all of them deal with cultural content. Indeed the Open Knowledge Foundation has a major project called OpenGLAM.

In India the first network of public libraries covering a whole state was set up more than a hundred years ago by the Maharaja of Baroda (Sayaji Rao Gaekwad III), a truly benevolent king [9]. In the US though, the public library movement was essentially the gift of a ruthless industrialist who was believed to have been unfair to the workers in his steel mills. But the more than 2,000 libraries Andrew Carnegie helped set up are truly a democratizing force.

Today the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation promotes libraries in the developing and emerging economies and through their Access to Knowledge award they leverage the use of ICT in libraries.

While public libraries opened up a vast treasure of knowledge to a large number of people many of whom could not have had an opportunity to read even a few of the books in their collections, they had not provided ‘open access.’ That has to wait a little longer.

The Internet era not only helped traditional libraries to introduce new services but also gave birth to many free and open libraries such as Internet Archive and Project Gutenberg. The Internet Archive aims to provide ‘universal access to all knowledge’ and includes texts, audio, moving images, and software as well as archived web pages, and provides specialized services for adaptive reading and information access for the blind and other persons with disabilities. Project Gutenberg encourages the creation of ebooks.

The best known examples of more recent initiatives are Europeana and the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) both of which take full advantage of the possibilities offered by the Internet. Europeana provides access to 22.6 million objects (from over 2,000 institutions). These include 14.6 million images – paintings, photographs, etc. and 8.4 million books, magazines, newspapers, diaries, etc. DPLA is not even a year old but it already provides access to more than 5.4 million items from a number of libraries, archives and museums.

In India there are efforts to digitize print material, paintings, images, music, films, etc. The Digital Library of India (DLI) and the Indira Gandhi National Centre for Arts (IGCNA) are two examples. Currently, the Ministry of Culture is toying with the idea of a setting up a National Virtual Library.

Apart from libraries which provide electronic access to millions, a very large number of newspapers and magazines and websites also are freely accessible on the net.

Perhaps one of the most important development in Open Content that has affected people’s access to knowledge worldwide has been Wikipedia. Alexa rans it 6th among all websites globally and approximately 365 million users worldwide read Wikipedia content.

The Creative Commons System
Critiquing a system is merely one side of the coin. Offering viable alternatives or solutions to the lacunae identified in the status quo significantly buttresses critical claims. Alternatives have moved to the internet and understood the logic of its read-write culture. New media such as YouTube and platforms like WordPress have made each one of us not mere consumers of information but potential authors, film makers. Any viable alternative must contemplate this transformation of the read-only culture of the internet to the read-write culture.

Creative Commons (CC) is a non-profit organization that functions across the world to provide licensing tools to authors of creative works. The key distinguishing feature of this system is that the authors have the right to decide under what license they want to make their work available. The system was conceptualized by a number of individuals at the helm of the copyleft movement, of whom the most prominent was Professor Lawrence Lessig.

The creative commons system stands for ‘Some Rights Reserved’, a deviation from the ‘all rights reserved’ model of strict copyright law. The rights to be reserved are left to the discretion of the author.

Types of Licenses
1.    Attribution License – CC BY
2.    Attribution-ShareAlike : CC BY-SA
3.    Attribution-NoDerivatives License : CC BY-ND
4.    Attribution-NonCommercial License : CC BY-NC
5.    Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike : CC BY-NC-SA
6.    Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs- CC BY-NC-ND LICENSE

Exceptions to Open Content
There are two kinds of critiques that have been made about the limitations of Open Content initiatives. The first is a policy - level critique which argues that the voluntary nature of Open Content projects diverts from the larger issue of the need for urgent structural transformations in the global copyright regime. It is argued, for instance, that by relying on copyright, even in a creative variation of it, it still ends up strengthening the copyright system. The larger problem of access to knowledge and culture can only be solved through a long-term intervention in the global copyright regime from the Berne Convention to the TRIPS agreement.

Open Content has also been criticized on the grounds that it privileges the traditional idea of the author at the center of knowledge / culture at the costs of focusing on users. By giving authors the right to participate in a flexible licensing policy, Open Content initiatives end up privileging the notion of the desirability of creating property rights in expressions; cultural and literary products are considered as commodities, albeit ones that the creator can decide to make accessible (or not0, much like a person can decide whether or not to invite someone into his / her house.

A second-level critique asks the question of the relevance of Open Content projects, with their heavy reliance on the Internet. According to the Copysouth group:
It is unlikely that more than a tiny percentage of the works created on a global basis in any year will be available under Creative Commons (CC) licenses. Will the percentage be even less within the Southern Hemisphere? This seems likely. Hence, CC licenses will be of limited value in meeting the expansive access needs of the South in the near future. Nor do CC licenses provide access to already published works or music that are still restricted by copyright laws; these form the overwhelming majority of current material. Focusing on CC licenses may potentially sideline or detour people from analyzing how existing copyright laws block access and how policy changes on a societal level, rather than the actions of individual "good guys", are the key to improving access and the related problems of copyright laws and ideology which are discussed elsewhere in this draft dossier. Nor does it confront the fact that many creators (e.g. most musicians, most academic authors) may be required, because of unequal bargaining power, to assign copyright in their own work to a record company or publisher as a condition of getting their work produced or published.

Finally, a number of Open Content initiatives have an uncomfortable take on other modes through which most people in developing nations have access to knowledge and cultural commodities, namely, piracy, and its critical relation to infrastructure. The emphasis of Open Content on the creation of new content of course raises the question of who uses the new content, and what is the relationship between such content and the question of democratization of infrastructure?

In most cases, the reason for the fall in price of electronic goods, computers, great access to material, increase in photocopiers (the infrastructure of information flows), etc. is not caused in any manner through any radical revolution such as Free Software or Open Content, but really through the easier availability of standard mainstream commodities like Microsoft software and Hollywood. Open Content is unable to provide a solution to the problem of content that is locked up within current copyright regimes. As much as one would like to promote new artists, new books, etc., the fact remains that a bulk of the people do want the latest Hollywood / Bollywood films for a cheaper cost; they do want the latest proprietary software at a cheaper cost; and they do want to read Harry Potter without paying a ransom.

We can either take the moral higher ground and speak of their real information needs or provide crude theories of how they are trapped by false consciousness. Or, we can move away from these judgmental perspectives, and look at other aspects of the debate, such as the impact that the expansion of the grey market for these goods has on their general pricing, the spread of computer/IT culture, the fall in price of consumables such as blank CDs, DVDs, the growing popularity of CD-writing equipment, etc.

There is no point in having a preachy and messianic approach that lectures people on the kind of access that should be given. While in an ideal world, we would also use Free Software and Open Content, this cannot be linked in a sacrosanct manner to the question of spreading access.

Wikipedia

History of Wikipedia
January 15^th is known as Wikipedia Day to Wikipedians. On this day 13 years back in 2001, Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger launched a wiki-based project after experimenting with another project called Nupedia. Nupedia was also a web-based project whose content was written by experts to have high quality articles comparable to that of professional encyclopedia. Nupedia approved only 21 articles in its first year, compared to Wikipedia posting 200 articles in the first month, and 18,000 in the first year.

In concept, Wikipedia was intended to compliment Nupedia by providing additional high quality articles. In practice, Wikipedia overtook Nupedia, becoming a global project providing free information in multiple languages.

As of January 2014, Wikipedia includes over 30.5mn articles written by 44 million registered users and numerous anonyms volunteers in 287 languages; including over 20 Indian languages.[1] Wikipedia is the world's sixth-most-popular internet property with about 450 mn unique visitors every month, according to Alexa Internet.[2]

Wikipedia in Indian Language
With one of the globe’s largest populations, world’s largest democracies, dozens of languages and hundreds of dialects, rich heritage, culture, religion, architecture, art, literature and music; India presents a remarkable opportunity for Wikipedia. For the Wikimedia movement, India represents a largely untapped opportunity to dramatically expand its impact and move toward the vision of a world where everyone can freely share in – and contribute to – the sum of human knowledge.

Although the Indian population makes up about 20% of humanity, Indians account for only 4.7% of global Internet users, and India represents only 2.0% of global pageviews and 1.6% of global page edits on Wikimedia's sites. Wikipedia projects in 20 Indic languages, will become increasingly important as the next 100 million Indians come onto the Internet, given that they are likely to be increasingly using the Internet in languages other than English. Demographically, Indic languages represent a good growth opportunity since estimates suggest only about 150 million of the total Indian population of 1.2 billion have working fluency in English.

To drive the growth of Indian language Wikipedias, WMF initiated Access to Knowledge Programme (A2K) with Centre for Internet & Society in 2012.

Challenges Faced by Indian Language Wikipedias
The current challenges of Indian language Wikipedias can be summarized as below:

1.    Indian language Wikipedia’s are under-represented in reader, editor & article counts.
2.    Editor base is relatively low.Further, growth in editors and articles is still relatively low, even on a small base.
3.    Technical barriers exist for use of Indian language Wikipedias, especially for editing.
4.    Internet penetration low (~150mn) – though growing rapidly, and projected to double by 2015. [3]
Hari Prasad Nadig; a Wikipedian since 2004, an active Kannada Wikipedian, sysop on both Kannada Wikipedia and Sanskrit Wikipedia, talks about challenges and opportunities of Indian Language Wikipedias in a video.[22]

Development of Indian Language Wikipedias
Between 2002-04, about 18 Indian language Wikipedias had started. As of Jan 2014, Hindi Wikipedia is the largest project with over 1-lakh articles and Malayalam Wikipedia has the best quality articles amongst all Indian language Wikipedia projects.

In India there are two main organisational bodies that are:

First is Wikimedia India Chapter which is an independent and not-for-profit organization that supports, promotes and educate the general Indian public about the availability and use of free and open educational content, which includes the ability to access, develop and contribute to encyclopaedias, dictionaries, books, images, etc.The chapter helps coordinate various Indian language Wikipedias & other Wikimedia projects and spread the word in India. Chapter's latest updates can be accessed from its official portal wiki.wikimedia.in.

Second is Access to Knowledge Programme at Centre for Internet & Society (CIS-A2K) that provides support to the Indian Wikimedia community on various community-led activities, including outreach events across the country, meetups, contests, conferences, and connections to GLAMs and other institutions. CIS-A2K's latest updates can be accessed from its official portal Wiki.[23]

Some ideas for development of India language Wikipedias (also adopted by India Chapter and CIS-A2K) are:

Content addition/donation in Indian languages
Particular emphasis is placed on generating and improving content in Indic languages. The Indian language Wikipedias can be strengthened by finding content that is relevant and useful to the Wikimedia movement that is (a) already in the public domain and (b) contributed to the movement under an acceptable copyright license. Such content will include, but not be limited to, dictionaries, thesauruses, encyclopedias and any other encyclopedia-like compilations.

A precedent for content addition/donation exists in the gift of an encyclopedia to the Wikimedia movement by Kerala government in 2008 and Goa government in 2013.

Institutional Partnerships
To partner with higher education institutions in developing thematic projects and create a network of academicians that will actively use Indian language Wikipedias as part of their pedagogy. Conduct outreach workshops mainly with an intention to spread awareness and to arrive at possibilities for long-term partnerships.

An example of this would be 1600 students of Christ University undergraduate courses who study a second language as part of the course are enrolled in a program where they are building content on Hindi, Kannada, Tamil, Sanskrit and Urdu Wikipedias.

Strengthening existing community
Facilitate more qualitative interactions amongst current contributors, with an aim to a) foster creation of new project ideas; b) periodic review and mitigation of troublesome issues; c) foster a culture of collective review of the expansion of Indian language Wikipedias.

This is currently been done by capacity building meet-up or advanced user trainings organized for existing Wikimedia volunteers from different language communities.

Tapping into User Interest Groups
Setting up smaller special interest groups by tapping into existing virtual (Facebook pages/groups, bloggers communities, other open source groups/mailing lists), and physical communities and supporting key Wikipedians to bring new Wikipedians on board.

Building ties with DiscoverBhubaneshwar in Odisa [4] and Goa.me in Goa [5], which are photographer’s communities. Useful pictures from different states can feed into Wikipedia articles there by enriching the content. Collaboration with Media lab at Jadhavpur University, Kolkota has helped create articles on Indian cinema and media, Indian film history etc.

Creating awareness
Creation of short online editing videos tutorials and editing guides to be published on Wikimedia commons, YouTube, Facebook and similar websites that could help us reach out to larger audiences. Production of videos in local language will avoid existing issues with global videos such as low comprehensions because of accents and relevance.

Hindi Wikipedia tutorial videos were produced in collaboration with the Christ University students, faculty and staff, as part of the Wikipedia-in-the-UG-Language-Classroom program. A total of 10 videos are thoughtfully produced to teach anyone how to edit Hindi Wikipedia.[24] Video tutorials on Kannada Wikipedia are currently in pipeline.

Technical support
Liaising between language communities and WMF & Language Committee in finding effective solutions for any script issue, input method issue, rendering issues or any bugs.

Case Study: Wikipedians Speak
Netha Hussain is a 21-year-old medical student from Kerala, India. She first began editing Wikipedia in May 2010, contributing to English Wikipedia and Malayalam Wikipedia along with uploading photos to Wikimedia Commons. She said “I started editing Wikipedia every day. In school, we studied subjects like microbiology, pathology, pharmacology and forensic medicine. After class, I'd go straight to Wikipedia. I'd review the information related to the day's lecture, and add a few more facts and sources. It was a lot of work, and I always went to bed tired, but it was worth it. Everybody reads Wikipedia. If they want to learn something, they turn to Wikipedia first. I know I’ve helped a little — maybe even a lot. And that’s the greatest feeling I know.”[25] Image Attribution:Netha Hussain by Adam Novak, under CC-BY-SA 3.0 Unported, from Wikimedia Commons. Poongothai Balasubramanian is a retired Math teacher from Tamil Nadu, India. She began editing Wikipedia in 2010. Since then, she's created 250 articles and recorded pronunciations for 6,000 words. She has created several articles on quadratic functions, probability, charts, graphs and more on Tamil Wikipedia. She has over 7,000 Wikipedia edits. She said, “As a teacher and a mother, I was always busy. But now that I'm retired and my children are grown, my time is my own — all 24 hours of it! And I spend every day on Wikipedia. I'm a volunteer. No one pays me. But helping edit Wikipedia has become my life's work. Even though I'm not in the classroom, I'm still doing what I care about most: helping a newgeneration of students learn, in the language I love.”[26] Image Attribution: Balasubramanian Poongothai by Adam Novak, under CC-BY-SA 3.0 Unported, from Wikimedia Commons.

Case Study: Wikipedians Speak

Netha Hussain is a 21-year-old medical student from Kerala, India. She first began editing Wikipedia in May 2010, contributing to English Wikipedia and Malayalam Wikipedia along with uploading photos to Wikimedia Commons. She said “I started editing Wikipedia every day. In school, we studied subjects like microbiology, pathology, pharmacology and forensic medicine. After class, I'd go straight to Wikipedia. I'd review the information related to the day's lecture, and add a few more facts and sources. It was a lot of work, and I always went to bed tired, but it was worth it. Everybody reads Wikipedia. If they want to learn something, they turn to Wikipedia first. I know I’ve helped a little — maybe even a lot. And that’s the greatest feeling I know.”[25]

Image Attribution:Netha Hussain by Adam Novak, under CC-BY-SA 3.0 Unported, from Wikimedia Commons.

Poongothai Balasubramanian is a retired Math teacher from Tamil Nadu, India. She began editing Wikipedia in 2010. Since then, she's created 250 articles and recorded pronunciations for 6,000 words. She has created several articles on quadratic functions, probability, charts, graphs and more on Tamil Wikipedia. She has over 7,000 Wikipedia edits. She said, “As a teacher and a mother, I was always busy. But now that I'm retired and my children are grown, my time is my own — all 24 hours of it! And I spend every day on Wikipedia. I'm a volunteer. No one pays me. But helping edit Wikipedia has become my life's work. Even though I'm not in the classroom, I'm still doing what I care about most: helping a newgeneration of students learn, in the language I love.”[26]

Image Attribution: Balasubramanian Poongothai by Adam Novak, under CC-BY-SA 3.0 Unported, from Wikimedia Commons.

Additional Reading

Geert Lovink and Nathaniel Tkacz (eds.), “Critical Point of View: A Wikipedia Reader”, Centre for Internet and Society and the Institute of Network Cultures, http://www.networkcultures.org/_uploads/%237reader_Wikipedia.pdf.
Links to 2 videos
Yochai Benkler

Open Access

Definition
Open-access (OA) literature is digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.

OA removes price barriers (subscriptions, licensing fees, pay-per-view fees) and permission barriers (most copyright and licensing restrictions). The PLoS shorthand definition —"free availability and unrestricted use"— succinctly captures both elements.

There is some flexibility about which permission barriers to remove. For example, some OA providers permit commercial re-use and some do not. Some permit derivative works and some do not. But all of the major public definitions of OA agree that merely removing price barriers, or limiting permissible uses to "fair use" ("fair dealing" in the UK), is not enough.

Here's how the Budapest Open Access Initiative put it: "There are many degrees and kinds of wider and easier access to this literature. By 'open access' to this literature, we mean its free availability on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself. The only constraint on reproduction and distribution, and the only role for copyright in this domain, should be to give authors control over the integrity of their work and the right to be properly acknowledged and cited."

Here's how the Bethesda and Berlin statements put it: For a work to be OA, the copyright holder must consent in advance to let users "copy, use, distribute, transmit and display the work publicly and to make and distribute derivative works, in any digital medium for any responsible purpose, subject to proper attribution of authorship...."

The Budapest (February 2002), Bethesda (June 2003), and Berlin (October 2003) definitions of "open access" are the most central and influential for the OA movement. Sometimes I refer to them collectively, or to their common ground, as the BBB definition.

When we need to refer unambiguously to sub-species of OA, we can borrow terminology from the kindred movement for free and open-source software. Gratis OA removes price barriers alone, andlibre OA removes price barriers and at least some permission barriers as well. Gratis OA is free of charge, but not free of copyright of licensing restrictions. Users must either limit themselves to fair use or seek permission to exceed it. Libre OA is free of charge and expressly permits uses beyond fair use. To adapt Richard Stallman's famous formulation (originally applied to software), gratis OA is free as in 'free beer', while libre OA is also free as in 'free speech'.

In addition to removing access barriers, OA should be immediate, rather than delayed, and should apply to full texts, not just abstracts or summaries.

It is true that many libraries and other content providing organizations provide free access to vast quantities of textual (and other kinds of) information. Today a variety of contents is thrown open by the creators and these include hundreds of educational courses, open government data, open monographs, open images and so on.

But when we talk of ‘open access’ the term is restricted to science and scholarship and especially to research publications and in particular journal articles. Unlike most newspaper publishers, not all publishers of professional journals are ready to allow free use of the material they publish. Indeed, they levy hefty subscription prices and some journals cost in the range of US $ 20-30 thousand per year. Large publishing houses earn a profit of upwards of 35%. ”Elsevier's reported margins are 37%, but financial analysts estimate them at 40–50% for the STM publishing division before tax” [10].

Publishers protect their ‘rights’ with copyright and are ever vigilant in protecting those rights.

Case Study: Aaron Swartz
Let us begin with an extreme example – the case of Aaron Swartz, the hacker-activist, who was forced to end his life early this year after being pursued by the US Department of Justice. What did Aaron do? He downloaded a very large number of full text papers from JSTOR, a database of scholarly journal articles, from an MIT server. Why should anyone think downloading scholarly research articles was a crime in the first place? “Why, twenty years after the birth of the modern Internet, is it a felony to download works that academics chose to share with the world?” asks Michael Eisen, a renowned biologist at UC Berekeley and cofounder of the Public Library of Science [11]. The most important component of the Internet, the World Wide Web, was invented by CERN researchers essentially to help scientists communicate and share their research. Today we can view thousands of videos on Indian weddings and pruning roses. But we are barred from downloading or reading research papers without paying a large sum! These are papers written by scientists, reviewed by scientists, their research often paid for by government agencies. And the knowledge therein is of relevance not only to other scientists but to the lay public as well. Especially, health related research. And yet, JSTOR, a not-for-profit organization founded with support from Andrew Mellon Foundation, and MIT were keen to go to court, and the prosecutor was keen to argue for the severest punishment.

Case Study: Rover Research
Recently, Michael Eisen placed in his website four research papers resulting from the Rover exploration of Mars published in the AAAS journal Science. This is something no one has done before. His logic: the research was funded by NASA, a US government agency, and most of the authors were working in government institutions, and therefore the citizens have the right to access. While everyone was expecting AAAS and the authors to drag Eisen to court for violating copyright, the authors also made the papers freely available on their institutions’ websites! But I wonder if Eisen could have got away so easily had he placed papers published in a journal published by Elsevier or Springer. Possibly not. Recently Elsevier had sent thousands of take down notices to Academia.edu for placing papers published in Elsevier journals (in the final PDF version) in their site. Elsevier had also sent similar missives to many individual scientists and universities including Harvard for a similar ‘offence’ [12].

Scientists do research and communicate results to other scientists. They build on what is already known, on what others have done – the ‘shoulders of giants’ as Newton said. Getting to know the work and results of others’ research is essential for the progress of knowledge. Any barrier, including cost barrier, will hurt science or for that matter production of knowledge in any field.

When it comes to information (and knowledge) scientists everywhere face two problems, viz. Access and Visibility. These problems are acutely felt by scientists in poorer countries.

They are unable to access what other scientists have done, because of the high costs of access. With the nation’s an annual per capita GDP of about US $3,500 (ppp) or even less, libraries in most developing countries cannot afford to subscribe to key journals needed by their users. Most scientists are forced to work in a situation of information poverty. Thanks to spiraling costs many libraries are forced to cancel subscription to several journals making the situation even worse.
Scientists elsewhere are unable to access what developing country researchers are publishing, leading to low visibility and low use of their work. Take for example India. As Indian scientists publish their own research in thousands of journals, small and big, from around the world, their work is often not noticed by other scientists. even within India, working in the same and related areas. Thus Indian work is hardly cited.

Both these handicaps can be overcome to a considerable extent if open access is adopted widely both within and outside the country.

Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities[27]
Due to the changes that have come about in the production and distribution of scientific and cutlural knowledge in the age of the internet, there needed to be an agreement to move towards a global and interactive representation of human knowledge with worldwide access guarunteed. The Berlin Declaration of 2003 was an attempt at just that and it was in accordance with the spirit of the Declaration of the Budapest Open Access Initiative, the ECHO Charter and the Bethesda Statement on Open Access Publishing. The declaration lays down the measures that need to be adopted by research institutions, funding agencies, libraries, archives and museums among others in order to utilize the internet for open access to knowledge. There are more than 450 signatories including various government, funding agencies, academic and other knowledge based institutions. According to the Declaration, open access contributions have to include:

"Original scientific research results, raw data and metadata, source materials, digital representations of pictorial and graphical materials and scholarly multimedia material.

Open access contributions must satisfy two conditions:The author(s) and right holder(s) of such contributions grant(s) to all users a free, irrevocable, worldwide, right of access to, and a license to copy, use, distribute, transmit and display the work publicly and to make and distribute derivative works, in any digital medium for any responsible purpose, subject to proper attribution of authorship (community standards, will continue to provide the mechanism for enforcement of proper attribution and responsible use of the published work, as they do now), as well as the right to make small numbers of printed copies for their personal use.
A complete version of the work and all supplemental materials, including a copy of the permission as stated above, in an appropriate standard electronic format is deposited (and thus published) in at least one online repository using suitable technical standards (such as the Open Archive definitions) that is supported and maintained by an academic institution, scholarly society, government agency, or other well-established organization that seeks to enable open access, unrestricted distribution, inter operability, and long-term archiving."

Open Access – Green and Gold
With the Internet and the Web becoming ubiquitous, we need not suffer these problems. If science is about sharing, then the Net has the potential to liberate the world of science and scholarship and make it a level playing field.

Till a few decades ago scholarly communication was a quite affair. Scientists and professors did research in their laboratories and sent the papers they wrote to editors of refereed journals. These journals were often published by professional societies, academies and in some countries government departments devoted to science. Many societies gave the responsibility to bring out the journals to commercial publishing houses. These publishers found in journal publishing a great business opportunity and started raising subscription prices. Initially no one seemed to notice or bother. But from around 1980, the rise in the cost of journals outstripped the general inflation by a factor of 3 or 4. Members of the Association of Research Libraries felt the pinch; many academic libraries had to cut down on their purchase of books and monographs so as to be able to subscribe to as many journals as possible. Then they had to cut down on the number of journals. Their levels of service to their academic clients fell badly. The ‘serials crisis’ forced them to protest. By then web technologies and online sharing of information had sufficiently advanced. Together these two developments led to the open access movement.

There are two ways research papers published in journals can be made open access: Open access journals and open access repositories.

Open Access Journals - The journal can allow free downloading of papers by anyone, anywhere without paying for it. Such journals are called open access journals. Making papers open by this method is referred to as the Gold route to open access. Traditionally, journals used to charge a subscription fee from libraries (or individuals who may choose to take personal subscriptions) and not charge authors submitting papers for publication. Occasionally, some journals may request authors to pay a small fee to cover colour printing of illustrations. Many open access journals do charge a fee from the authors, which is often paid by the author’s institution. The APC collected by different journals varies from a few hundred dollars to a few thousands.

But not all OA journals levy an article publishing charge, e.g., journals published by the Indian Academy of Sciences, Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR-NISCAIR), Indian Council of Medical Research, and the Indian Council of Agricultural Research do not charge authors or their institutions.As of today, there are more than 9,800 OA journals published from 124 countries and these are listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals, [www.doaj.org], an authoritative database maintained at Lund University. On average four new journal titles are added to DOAJ every day.

Open Access Repositories - Authors of research papers may make them available to the rest of the world by placing them in archives or repositories. This is the ‘Green route’ to open access. There are two kinds of repositories: Central and distributed or institutional. arXiv is a good example of a central repository. Any researcher working in a relevant field can place his paper in arXiv and it can be seen almost instantaneously by other researchers worldwide. Developed in 1991 as a means of circulating scientific papers prior to publication, arXiv initially focused on e-Prints in High Energy Physics (HEP). In time, focus broadened to related disciplines. All content in arXiv is freely available to all users. Currently, it provides access to more than 900,000 “e-prints in Physics, Mathematics, Computer Science, Quantitative Biology, Quantitative Finance and Statistics.” There are other central repositories such as SSRN (Social Science Research Network;[28] abstracts on over 521,000 scholarly working papers and forthcoming papers and an Electronic Paper Collection of over 426,600 downloadable full text documents ), Research Papers in Economics[29] (and ideas.RePEc.org; 1.4 million items of which 1.3 million are downloadable full texts), and CiteSeerX (for computerand information science).[30]

Then there are institutional repositories. Registry of Open Access repositories[31] lists more than 2,900 repositories from around the world. The Directory of Open Access Repositories[32] lists more than 2,550 repositories, linking to more than 50 million items, growing at the rate of 21 thousand items per day, which can be searched through the Bielefeld Academic Search Engine search options. A database called SHERPA-RoMEO lists open access and self-archiving policies of journals.

These repositories are different from the usual websites that individual scientists may maintain. They have to use one of many standard software such as EPrints, DSpace, Fedora, or Greenstone. And they are all interoperable and ‘OAI-compliant’ which means that anyone searching for information need not know about a particular paper and the repository in which it is deposited; a mere keyword search will find the paper if it is relevant.

The Prophets of Open Access
The Net and the Web have not merely replaced print by speeding up things but have inherently changed the way we can do science (e.g. eScience and Grid computing), we can collaborate, we can datamine, and deal with datasets of unimaginable size. But the potential is not fully realized, largely because most of us are conditioned by our past experience and are inherently resistant to change. Our thinking and actions are conditioned by the print-on-paper era. Added to that is the apathy of science administrators.

Three individuals have made seminal contributions to realizing the potential of the Net in scholarly communication and may be considered pioneers in ushering in an era of open access. Tony Hey calls them ‘prophets of open access.’

Paul Ginsparg, creator of arXiv, an open access repository for preprints of much of the physics and astronomy literature.
Lipmann, Director of the NCBI, known for his leadership in making biomedical data and health information publicly and easily available to all, including scientists, medical professionals, patients, and students.By organizing and integrating genomic data for developing diagnostic and clinical applications, NCBI serves as a bridge from research to the medical community. Each day, more than 3 million users access NCBI's 40 interlinked genomic and bibliographic databases and download more than 30 terabytes of data. NCBI is home to PubMed Central and PubChem, two essential databases for biomedical researchers. PMC is a full text (ePrints) database of published research papers and PubChem is a database of about 31 million biologically important chemical compounds and their bioassays.
Stevan Harnad, author of the subversive proposal, founder of Cogprints and tireless evangelist for Green Open Access [13]. Harnad has been writing frequently on all aspects of scholarly communication and open access in his blog ‘Open Access Archivangelism,’ addressing conferences and answering questions sent to him. There are also some institutions which have contributed substantially and these include the Open Society Institute (OSI), now rechristened Open Society Foundations, which facilitated the formulation of Budapest Open Access Initiative and the Budapest Declaration, and Association of Research Libraries.Surprisingly, Microsoft, not a great admirer of open source software, is promoting eScience through its External Research Division, especially formed for this purpose under the leadership of Prof. Tony Hey, former dean of Southampton University.

Open Access in India
The situation with accessing overseas journals has improved considerably thanks to many consortia which facilitate access to large groups of scientists in India (especially those in CSIR laboratories, Indian Institutes of Technology and Indian Institute of Science). Many universities have benefited through INFLIBNET. ICMR labs and selected medical institutions have formed ERMED, their own consortium. Rajiv Gandhi Health Sciences University, Bangalaore, provides access to literature through HELINET Consortia to a number of medical colleges in the South.

But the increased availability has not been taken full advantage by our researchers. A study of IISc in 2008 showed that the faculty and students have not used not even half the journals subscribed in their work – either for publishing their research or for quoting papers published in them. We seem to be paying for journals we do not use. Many of these journals are published by commercial publishers and they make huge profits. Publishers force consortia to buy journals as packages (bundling).

On the open course ware front the NPTEL programme under which top notch IIT and IISc professors produce both web-based and video lessons in many subjects, which are available on YouTube as well, has a huge worldwide following.

Many physicists in the better-known institutions use arXiv, which has a mirror site in India, both for placing their preprints and postprints and for reading preprints of others. But many others are not aware of it. What we need is advocacy and more advocacy.

Open access is gaining traction in India. For example, professors at National Institute of Technology, Rourkela, the first Indian institution to mandate open access for all faculty (and student) research publications, have received invitations to attend international conferences and for collaboration after their papers were made available through the institutional repository. Indian journals which embraced open access model started recording higher impact factors, e.g. Indian Journal of Medical Research and Journal of Postgraduate Medicine. MedKnow, publisher of JPGM, and Bioline International, have plenty of data to show the advantages of going open access.

And yet many researchers are reluctant to embrace OA. They fear that the journal publishers may sue them if they deposit their published papers in IRs. They have concerns about copyright violation.

Organizations such as the Open Society Foundations, ARL, SPARC and JISC (UK) and the seven research councils of UK are championing open access. Unfortunately some professional societies, notably ACS, are trying to stall the march of open access.

The best way to promote open access in India is to encourage self-archiving.

As Alma Swan says, we can do that by highlighting the increased visibility and impact, requiringauthors to self-archive and requiring them to self-archive in an institutional repository [14].

Why an institutionalrepository? Because it fulfils an institution’s mission to engender, encourage and disseminate scholarly work; an institution can mandate self-archiving across all subject areas. It enables an institution to compile a complete record of its intellectual effort; it forms a permanent record of all digital output from an institution. It enables standardised online CVs for all researchers. It can be used as a marketing’ tool for institutions [14].

An institutional repository provides researchers with secure storage (for completed work and for work-in-progress). It provides a location for supporting data yet to be published. It facilitates one-input-many outputs (CVs, publications) [14].

First, we must help institutions build an archive and teach researchers including students how to deposit (do it for them in the beginning if necessary) [14].

Eventually, in fact pretty soon, OA will be accepted by the vast majority of scientists and institutions. For only with OA scientific literature and data can be fully used. OA, making scientific literature and data free, is the only way to liberate the immense energy of distributed production. The moral, economic and philosophical imperatives for open access are indeed strong.

Even pharmaceutical companies like Glaxo SmithKline, Novartis and Novo Nordisk have started sharing their hard earned data in the area of drug development.

The openness movement in science and scholarship does not end with OA journals and OA repositories – both central and distributed. It includes the open data initiatives, escience and open science.

To learn more about open access please visit the Open Access Tracking Project led by Peter Suber, EOS [www.openscholarship.org/] and OASIS <openoasis.org> and join the GOAL discussion group moderated by Richard Poynder.

To know more about open science, read the articles by Paul David and Tony Hey.

What is Already There?
Thanks to the initiatives taken by Prof. M S Valiathan, former President of the Indian National Science Academy, the journals published by INSA were made OA a few years ago.

The Academy also signed the Berlin declaration. The Indian Academy of Sciences converted all its eleven journals into OA. The Indian Medlars Centre at the National Informatics Centre brings out the OA version of about 40 biomedical journals published mostly by professional societies.

All journals published by CSIR- NISCAIR (17), ICAR (2), ICMR and AIIMS are OA journals. No one needs to pay either to publish or read papers in these journals.

A Bombay-based private company called MedKnow brings out more than 300 journals, most of them OA, on behalf of their publishers, mostly professional societies. This company was acquired by Wolter Kluwers and they have decided to keep the journals OA.

Current Science and Pramana, the physics journal of the Indian Academy of Sciences, were the first to go open access among Indian journals. In all, the number of Indian OA journals is about 650.

The Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, was the first to set up an institutional repository in India. They use the GNU EPrints software. Today the repository has about 33,000 papers, not all of them full text. IISc also leads the Million Books Digital Library project's India efforts under the leadership of Pro f. N Balakrishnan.

Today there are about 60 repositories in India (as seen from ROAR and OpenDOAR) including those at National Institute of Oceanography, and the National Aerospace Laboratories, Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute, Central Food Technology Research Institute, CECRI and the Raman Research Institute. The National Institute of Technology, Rourkela, was the first Indian institution to have mandated OA for all faculty publications.

Both ICRISAT and NIO have also mandated OA.

A small team at the University of Mysore is digitizing doctoral dissertations from select Indian universities under a programme called Vidyanidhi.

Problems and the Future
Despite concerted advocacy and many individual letters addressed to policy makers, the heads of government's departments of science and research councils do not seem to have applied their minds to opening up access to research papers. The examples of the research councils in the UK, the Wellcome Trust, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and NIH have had virtually no impact. Many senior scientists and directors of research laboratories and vice chancellors of universities do not have a clear appreciation of open access and its advantages and implications.

Among those who understand the issues, many would rather like to publish in high impact journals, as far as possible, and would not take the trouble to set up institutional archives.

Most Indian researchers have not bothered to look up the several addenda (to the copyright agreement forms) that are now available. Many scientists I spoke to are worried that a publisher may not publish their papers if they attach an addendum! Publishing firms work in subtle ways to persuade senior librarians to keep away from OA initiatives. There have been no equivalents of FreeCulture.org among Indian student bodies and no equivalent of Taxpayers‘ Alliance to influence policy at the political level.

Both the National Knowledge Commission and the Indian National Science Academy have recommended OA. IASc has set up a repository for publications by all its Fellows and it has more than 90,000 papers (many of them only metadata + abstracts). The Centre for Internet and Society has brought out a status report on OA in India. The Director General of CSIR has instructed all CSIR labs to set up and populate institutional repositories as soon as possible. Director general of ICAR has come up with an OA policy. Dr Francis Jayakanth of IISc is the recipient of the EPT Award for Advancing Open Access in the Developing World in its inaugural year. That should encourage many librarians to take to promoting OA.

The government should mandate by legislation self-archiving of all research output immediately upon acceptance for publication by peer-reviewed journals. The self-archiving should preferably be in the researcher's own institution's Institutional Repository.

The mandate should be by both institutions and funders.

Science journal publishers in the government and academic sectors should be mandated to make their journals OA (This can be achieved through adopting Open Journal Systems software developed at the University of British Columbia and Simon Fraser University and already in use by more than 10,000 journals. Expertise is available in India, or some journals can join Bioline International).

We should organize a massive training programme (in partnership with IISc, ISI-DRTC, NIC, etc.) on setting up OA repositories.

Authors should have the freedom to publish in journals of their choice; but they should be required to make their papers available through institutional repositories. In addition, they should use addenda suggested by SPARC, Science Commons, etc. while signing copyright agreements with journal publishers and not surrender copyright to (commercial) publishers. Some OA journals charge for publication. The Indian government or funders or institutions should definitely not offer to pay for journal publication charges.

Again, OA for all India's research output is covered by simply mandating OA self-archiving of all articles.

Brazil and the rest of Latin America have made great strides in open access. The excellent developments in Brazil, especially the government support (particularly in the state of Sao Paulo) and of the work of SciELO (for OA journals) and IBICT in supporting OA repository network are worthy of emulation in India and other developing countries.

Argentina has enacted a law that mandates OA to all research publications. India can follow their example.

Office of Science and Technology Policy Director John Holdren has issued a memorandum to make all research funded by major government funding agencies in the US insist on open access to government-funded research in USA. Indian funding agencies can do the same.

While our focus should be on digitizing and throwing open the current research papers and data, we may also make available our earlier work.

In particular, we may create an OA portal for the papers of great Indian scientists of the past: Ramanujan, J C Bose, S N Bose, M N Saha, K S Krishnan, Y Subba Rao, Sambhu Nath De, Mahalanobis, Maheshwari. C V Raman’s papers are already available on open access.

We may proactively advance OA in international forums such as IAP, IAC, ICSU and UNESCO. Two things can hasten the adoption of OA in India:

If the political left is convinced that research paid for by the government is not readily available to the people freely and what is worse the copyright to the research papers are gifted away to commercial publishers from the advanced countries, then they may act. The same way, the political right will come forward to support open access if we impress upon them that copyright to much of the knowledge generated in our motherland is gifted away to publishing houses in the West.
If the students are attracted to the idea that fighting for open access is the in thing to do, then they will form Free Culture like pressure groups and fight for the adoption of open access.

References

Aristotle, “Politics”, Book2, Part 3,Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1946, 1261b.
G. Hardin,“The Tragedy of the Commons”, Science, Dec 13, 1968.
Vincent Ostrom and Elinor Ostrom, “Public Goods and Public Choices,” in E. S. Savas (ed.), Alternatives for Delivering Public Services: Toward Improved Performance, Boulder, Co: Westview Press, 1977, p. 7–49.
Elinor Ostrom, “Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action”, Cambridge University Press, 1990.
E. Ostrom, “The Rudiments of a Theory of the Origins, Survival, and Performance of Common Property Institutions”, in D W Bromley (ed.),Making the Commons work: Theory, practice and policy, San Francisco, ICS Press, 1992.
Charlotte Hess and Elinor Ostrom (eds.), “Understanding Knowledge as a Commons: From Theory to Practice”, MIT Press, 2006, http://mitpress.mit.edu/authors/charlotte-hessandhttp://mitpress.mit.edu/authors/elinor-ostrom.
S.R. Ranganathan, “Five Laws of Library Science”,Sarada Ranganathan Endowment for Library Science, Bangalore,1966.
Peter F. Drucker, “Beyond the Information Revolution”, The Atlantic, October 1, 1999.
M.L.Nagar “Shri Sayajirao Gaikwad, Maharaja of Baroda: The Prime Promoter of Public Libraries”, 1917.
Richard Van Noorden, “Open Access: The True Cost of Science Publishing”, Nature, 495 (issue 7442), 27 March 2013
Michael Eisen, “The Past, Present and Future of Scholarly Publishing”, It Is Not Junk, March 28, 2013, http://www.michaeleisen.org/blog/?p=1346
Kim-Mai Cutler, “Elsevier’s Research Takedown Notices Fan Out To Startups, Harvard, Individual Academics”,TechCrunch,December 19, 2013, http://techcrunch.com/author/kim-mai-cutler/, http://techcrunch.com/2013/12/19/elsevier/
S. Harnad, “A Subversive Proposal” in Ann Okerson and James O'Donnell (Eds.) Scholarly Journals at the Crossroads; A Subversive Proposal for Electronic Publishing,Association of Research Libraries, June 1995.
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/subvert.html
A. Swan, “Policy Guidelines for the Development and Promotion of Open Access”, UNESCO, Paris, 1995.
Glover Wright, Pranesh Prakash, Sunil Abraham and Nishant Shah, “Open Government Data Study”, Centre for Internet and Society and Transparency and Accountability Initiative, 2011, http://cis-india.org/openness/blog/publications/open-government.pdf

Open (Government) Data

Definition
“Open data is data that can be freely used, reused and redistributed by anyone – subject only, at most, to the requirement to attribute and share alike.”[33] This has become an increasingly important issue in the age of the internet when governments can gather unprecedented amount of data about citizens and store various kinds of data which can actually be made available to people in an easier fashion.

Types of Government Data

[34]

This does not necessarily mean that all the government’s data should open according to the definition laid out above. There have been many arguments articulated against this.

Since the government is responsible for the efficient use of tax payers money, data that is commissioned and useful only for a small subsection (eg: corporations) of society should be paid for by that subsection.
There may be privacy concerns that limit the use of data to particular users or sub-sets of data.
Often times, the data may not be usable without further processing and analysis that requires more investment from other sources. Groups that would usually commission such projects lose their incentive to do so because everyone has access to the information. Eg: Biological, medical and environmental data.

However, this kind of utilitarian calculus is not possible while deciding which data should be open and which ones should not. Some theorists make the argument that government data should be open.[35]

An open democratic society requires that its citizens should know what the government is doing and that there is a high level of transparency. Free access is essential for this and in order for that information to be intelligible; the data should be reusable as well so it can be analyzed further.
In the information age, commercial and even social activity requires data and having government data open can be a way to fuel economic and social activity within the society.
If public tax payer money was used to fund the government data, then the public should have access to it.

The open data handbook lays out the steps required in order to start making government data more open.[36] The summarized gist of it is to:

1.    Chose the data sets that need to be made open.
2.    Apply an open license:
a.    Find out what kind of intellectual property rights exist on that data.
b.    Select an appropriate open license that would incorporate all of the criteria (usability, reusability etc) discussed above.
3.    Make the data available either in bulk or in Application Programming Interface (API) formats.
4.    Make this open data discoverable by posting on the web or adding it to a list.
Application Programming Interface (API) vs. Bulk Data[37]

Bulk is the only way to ensure that the data is accessible to everyone.
Bulk access is a lot cheaper than providing API access. (API specifies how some software components should interact with each other) Therefore, it is acceptable for the provider to charge for API access as long as the data is also provided in bulk.
An API is not a guarantee of open access but it is good if it’s provided.

Open Government Data in India
At an annual summit in London recently where an open government data report was produced, India ranked 34th among 77 countries.

[38]

In India, open government data is currently about closing the loopholes and gaps in the Right to Information Act (RTI) and its promise of transparency as envisioned by the Knowledge Commission. In its 10th 5 year plan (2002-2007) the Indian Government announced its plan to become SMART (Simple, Moral, Accountable, Responsible and Transparent).[39]

In 2012, India launched an Open Government Platform, which is a software platform that attempted to enhance the public’s access to government data. This was jointly developed by India and the US as a part of their Open Government Initiative.[40] Data.gov.in is a platform under this which provides a single-point access to datasets and apps published by the government’s ministries, departments and organizations and it was in compliance with the National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy (NDSAP).[41]

The Right to Information Act, 2005[42]
Around 82 countries around the world currently have laws in place that force the government to disclose information to its citizenry but this has been a rather recent phenomenon. In India, the RTI was passed in 2005 after a prolonged struggle from civil society. This act effectively replaces and overrides many state level RTI acts, the Freedom of Information Act (2002) and the Official Secrets Act, 1923. We have come to learn based on the responses of RTI requests that the government is not obliged to provide access to some pieces of information such as the minutes to a cabinet meeting.

The RTI Act defines information as:

‘Any material in any form, including records, documents, memos, e-mails, opinions, advices, press releases, circulars, orders, logbooks, contracts, reports, papers, samples, models, data material held in any electronic form and information relating to any private body which can be accessed by a public authority under any other law for the time being in force.’

This capacious vision of the Act indicated a shift in the government’s philosophy from secrecy to transparency. According to the Global Integrity report, in the category ‘public access to government information’ India went from 78 points to 90 points from 2006-2011. During the same time frame, the United States has only gone from 78 points to 79 points. However, according to a study conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers, 75% of the respondents said they were dissatisfied with the information provided by the public authorities.

Government Copyright
The government owns the copyright to any work that is produced by the government or government employees in India as well any material produced by an Indian legislative or judicial body. This provision is laid down in the Copyright Act, 1957[43](section 17(d) read with 2(k)) which gives a lifespan of 60 years for the copyright (section 28). The exceptions to the copyright are small and laid down in section 52(1)(q):

‘52(1) The following acts shall not constitute an infringement of copyright, namely: (q) the reproduction or publication of — (i) any matter which has been published in any Official Gazette except an Act of a Legislature; (ii) any Act of a Legislature subject to the condition that such Act is reproduced or published together with any commentary thereon or any other original matter; (iii) the report of any committee, commission, council, board or other like body appointed by the Government if such report has been laid on the Table of the Legislature, unless the reproduction or publication of such report is prohibited by the Government; (iv) any judgement or order of a court, tribunal or other judicial authority, unless the reproduction or publication of such judgment or order is prohibited by the court, the tribunal or other judicial authority, as the case may be.’

Although this exception is small, in practice the government has rarely the government has rarely prosecuted to enforce copyright when data is requested by an individual or group even when the reason for request is commercial in nature.

IP Protection for the Government

Most of data compiled by or commissioned for by the government is raw data in the form of figures and statistics. Generally, non-original literary works are not protected by copyright law and this issue was decided upon in a landmark Supreme Court case in 2007. The standard of originality was changed from the labor expended on compiling the information (also known as the ‘sweat of the brow’ doctrine)[44] to the creativity, skill and judgment required in the process. This meant that most of the government’s data would not qualify as creative enough to hold a copyright.

Case Study: The Department of Agriculture, Maharashtra
The Department of Agriculture (DoA) in Pune started using ICTs in 1986 itself when it used a computerized system to process census data. The DoA currently uses ICT for internal administrative word and also for processing and disseminating data to farmers across Maharashtra both online and through SMSs. The website is bilingual in both Marathi (the local language of the State) and English. Some of the information available includes[45] The participation of Maharashtra farmers in the National Agriculture Insurance Scheme Annual growth rates of agriculture and animal husbandry Rainfall recording and analysis Soil and crop, horticultural, soil/water conservation, agricultural inputs, statistical and district-wise fertility maps. Farmers can sign up for SMS’s that give information specific to the crop requested. Even though information in 2010 was available on 43 different crops which was sent to 40,000 farmers, people don’t have the technology to access all this information. Usually this is because of a lack of reliable electricity, internet and mobile phone access. The question is whether the open data responsibility ends as long as the data is made available by the government. Sometimes, the government has to make a discretionary decision to not make certain data available to the common man in the interest of public order. An example is if there is a crop that is infested with a disease or a pest, then it could cause a mass panic not only among farmers but also among the general consumers.

Case Study: Indian Water Portal
The Indian Water Portal[46] in Bangalore claims that it is an open, inclusive, webbased platform for sharing water management knowledge amongst practitioners and the general public. It aims to draw on the rich experience of watersector experts, package their knowledge and add value to it through technology and then disseminate it to a larger audience through the Internet."[47] Based the recommendations of the National Knowledge Commission (NKC), the IWP has established the best practices. It has been running on the open source software Drupal Software since 2007, and it is available in Hindi, Kannada and English. This portal also has an educational aspect to it as it provides reading material to students who wish to learn about water issues. Although this website was set up with the support of the national government, it hasn’t gotten much support from ministries and departments which is problematic as they produce the most amount of information on water and sanitation. This is, however, a great example of a partnership between private and public that has led to accessible open government data. The only problem here is that it is only accessible to people with access to the web but that may be a problem better solved by increasing access to the web.

[2]. For more see GNU Operating System, “The Free Software Definition”, available at http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html, last accessed on January 26, 2014.

[4]. For more see Millennium Development Goals, United Nations, available at http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/bkgd.shtml, last accessed on January 26, 2014.

[5]. For more see “Free and Open Source Software”, Communication and Information, UNESCO, available at http://www.unesco.org/new/en/communication-and-information/access-to-knowledge/free-and-open-source-software-foss/, last accessed on January 26, 2014.

[8]. See citation 6 above.

[9]. For more see GNU Operating System, Why “Free Software” is better than “Open Source” https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-for-freedom.html, last accessed on January 26, 2014.

[10]. For more see Free Software Movement of India, available at http://www.fsmi.in/, last accessed on January 26, 2014.

[11]. See the Department of Electronics and Information Technology, Ministry of Communications & Information Technology, Government of India, Free and Open Source Software available at http://deity.gov.in/content/free-and-open-source-software, last accessed on January 26, 2014.

[12]. See citation above.

[13]. For more see Curoverse Gets $1.5M to Develop Open Source Genomics Tool, available at http://www.xconomy.com/boston/2013/12/18/curoverse-gets-1-5m-develop-open-source-genomics-tool/2/, last accessed on January 26, 2014.

[14]. For more see The Open-Sorcerers, available at http://slate.me/18NNx4x, last accessed on January 24, 2014.

[15]. For more see “Open Standards Requirements for Software – Rationale”, Open Source Initiative, available at http://opensource.org/osr-rationale, last accessed on January 26, 2014.

[16]. See citation above.

[17]. Ibid.

[18]. For more see “An emerging understanding of Open Standards”, available at http://blogs.fsfe.org/greve/?p=160, last accessed on January 26, 2014.

[19]. http://perens.com/OpenStandards/Definition.html

[20]. For more see Open Standards Requirements for Software – Rationale, available at http://opensource.org/osr, last accessed on January 26, 2014.

[21]. See “Definition of Open Standards”, available at http://www.w3.org/2005/09/dd-osd.html, last accessed on January 27, 2014.

[22]. Hari Prasad Nadig talking about Wikipedia Community building at Train the Trainer Program organised by CIS, November 29, 2013, available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=scEZewFJXUU, last accessed on February 1, 2014.

[23]. India Access to Knowledge meta page available at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Access_To_Knowledge , last accessed on February 1, 2014.

[24]. What is Hindi Wikipedia?, CIS-A2K, available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96Lzxglp5W4&list=PLe81zhzU9tTTuGZg41mXLXve6AMboaxzD, last accessed on February 1, 2014.

[25]. Interview with Netha Hussain at WikiWomenCamp in Buenos Aires 2012, available at http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:WWC-Netha-Hussain.ogv , last accessed on February 2, 2014.

[26]. See interview of Poongothai Balasubramanian at http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Thank_You/Poongothai_Balasubramanian, last accessed on February 1, 2014.

[27]. For more see Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities, available at http://openaccess.mpg.de/286432/Berlin-Declaration, last accessed on February 1, 2014.

[28]. See Social Science Research Network, available at http://www.ssrn.com/, last accessed on January 27, 2014.

[29]. RePEc, available at http://www.repec.org/, last accessed on January 26, 2014.

[30]. Cite Seer X, available at http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/, last accessed on January 26, 2014.

[31]. Registry of Open Access Repositories, available at http://roar.eprints.org/, last accessed on January 26, 2014.

[32]. The Directory of Open Access Repositories, available at http://www.opendoar.org/, last accessed on January 26, 2014.

[33]. For more see Why Open Data, available at http://okfn.org/opendata/, last accessed on January 26, 2014.

[34]. Image obtained from http://okfn.org/opendata/

[35]. For more see Glover Wright, Pranesh Prakash, Sunil Abraham, Nishant Shah and Nisha Thompson, “Report on Open Government Data in India, Version 2 Draft”, Centre for Internet and Society, available at http://cis-india.org/openness/publications/ogd-draft-v2/, last accessed on January 25, 2014.

[36]. For more see Open Data Handbook, available at http://opendatahandbook.org/en/ , last accessed on January 29, 2014.

[37]. For more see Janet Wagner, “Government Data: Web APIs vs. Bulk Data Files”, programmable web, available at http://blog.programmableweb.com/2012/03/28/government-data-web-apis-vs-bulk-data-files/, last accessed on January 31, 2014.

[39]. For more see Glover Wright, Pranesh Prakash, Sunil Abraham and Nishant Shah, “Open Government Data Study: India”, Centre for Internet and Society, available at http://cis-india.org/openness/publications/open-government.pdf, last accessed on January 26, 2014.

[41]. Read the guidelines at http://data.gov.in/sites/default/files/NDSAP_Implementation_Guidelines-2.1.pdf

[42]. See the Right to Information Act, 2005, available at http://rti.gov.in/rti-act.pdf, last accessed on January 25, 2014.

[43]. See the Copyright Act, 1957, available at http://www.indiaip.com/india/copyrights/acts/act1957/act1957.htm, last accessed on January 25, 2014.

[44]. See note above.

[45]. See note above.

[46]. For more see Glover Wright, Pranesh Prakash, Sunil Abraham and Nishant Shah, “Open Government Data Study: India”, Centre for Internet and Society, available at http://cis-india.org/openness/publications/open-government.pdf, last accessed on January 26, 2014.

[47]. For more see India Water Portal, available at http://www.indiawaterportal.org/, last accessed on January 26, 2014.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/telecom/knowledge-repository-on-internet-access/openness

Comments on the Open Licensing Policy Guidelines of the National Mission on Education through Information and Communication Technology

nehaa — 2014-06-30T11:26:44Z

The Centre for Internet and Society submitted its comments on the Open Licensing Policy Guidelines to the National Mission on Education through Information and Communication Technology (NMEICT), Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India, on May 28, 2014. The comments were prepared by Sunil Abraham and Nehaa Chaudhari.

I. PRELIMINARY

1.1 This submission presents comments from the Centre for Internet and Society (“CIS”)[1] on the Open Licensing Policy Guidelines (“Guidelines”) of the National Mission on Education through Information and Communication Technology (“NMEICT”).

1.2.The Guidelines provide a set of recommendations and procedures to ensure that content produced under the NMEICT is openly licensed.

1.3 CIS commends the NMEICT for this initiative, and appreciates the opportunity to provide feedback on the Guidelines. CIS’ comments are as stated hereafter.

II. SECTION-WISE COMMENTS

2.1 Preamble

2.1.1 Recognizing the role of intergovernmental agencies in promoting the use of open licenses, the Preamble makes a reference to the 2012 Paris OER Declaration.[2] CIS appreciates this inclusion and suggests that reference may also be made to another important declaration, i.e., the Cape Town Open Education Declaration, released in 2008,[3] which encourages the publishers and governments to make available, at no charge, via the internet, publicly funded educational materials.

2.2 Principles of Openness

2.2.1 The first principle[4] requires the treatment of information products as “national resources.” The phrase “national resource” most often used in connection with rivers, forests, mines and minerals or spectrum would imply specific legal connotations and might therefore prove to be a misnomer for information products. It is suggested that “national resources” be replaced with “commons” or, alternatively, the sentence be restructured to state that content, software and technology would be treated as “information commons”.

2.2.2 The third principle[5] states that “information and knowledge resources” shall be available “freely”. “Freely” has a wide array of connotations including the absence of restrictions and the absence of payment/costs. It is suggested that “freely” be further clarified and perhaps be replaced with “on a gratis basis”.

2.2.3. The fifth principle deals with the transfer of “all intellectual property rights” to the Government of India and the retention of “moral rights” with the contributor. Intellectual property rights is a wider term including among others copyright and related rights, patents, trademarks and industrial designs. There are two types of right under copyright- moral rights (of attribution for the work) and economic rights (which allow the owner to derive financial benefit and reward from the use of her/his work).[6] It is submitted that the intention behind the fifth principle is seemingly to transfer all economic rights to the Government of India while ensuring due credit to the author/contributor for her/his work. “Intellectual property rights” being a wider term would be a misnomer in this sense, as would the use of “copyright”, since this does not appreciate the distinction between economic and moral rights. Therefore, it is suggested that “intellectual property rights” be replaced with “economic rights” for the applicable branch of copyright law.

2.2.4. The sixth principle deals with the release of information and knowledge resources in a “suitable open licence”. “Suitable open licence” could include both indigenously developed as well as existing licences. It is submitted that in the interests of interoperability, one of the fundamental principles of open access, it would be appropriate to adopt an existing system of licensing. It is recommended therefore, that the Creative Commons approach could be adopted for content and the GNU or BSD licenses could be considered for software. It is strongly suggested that “suitable open licence” be replaced with a specific license framework to ensure interoperability, particularly between information and knowledge resources produced by other nations also funding and adopting OER.

2.3 Guidelines

2.3.1 The second guideline mandates a single portal/gateway for all knowledge resources under this project. It is suggested that this be replaced with the adoption of the principle ‘lots of copies keep stuff safe’, the basis for the LOCKSS Program of Stanford University.[7] The LOCKSS Program allows participating libraries to take custody of and preserve access to the content to which they have subscribed. It is suggested that a similar approach be adopted towards the content being developed under the NMEICT OER project.

2.3.2. The fourth guideline makes a reference to the possible adoption of a CC-BY-SA licence to make content available. The rationale behind a Share-Alike clause could be to prevent the appropriation of the education market by ‘rent seekers’. However, it is necessary to examine this further. The danger of appropriation and subsequent monopolization of content is one that needs to be addressed provided that the process of content creation itself is dependent on contributions from subsequent utilizers of content. Content under the NMEICT model is developed as a result of government contributions and is not dependent on subsequent utilizers feeding back into the system, thus invalidating the need for a Share -Alike clause. Additionally the absence of a Share-Alike clause is likely to incentivise private participation. Private players would have the freedom to utilize the content generated under this scheme, modify and develop it further and make it available in the market for sale. This would be extremely useful in meeting the last mile connectivity and ensuring the wider availability of content. It is therefore submitted that that the licence to be adopted should be CC-BY.

2.3.3. The fifth guideline places a requirement on the grantee/creator to intimate the NMEICT about the use of other open license materials. It is submitted that this could be excessive regulation. It is suggested that this guideline be modified and a two- fold requirement be placed on the content creator/grantee- one, to specify clearly and explicitly the licence being used and the licensing conditions in her/his work, and two, to attribute any and all content used to the rightful creator and holder of copyright.

2.3.4. The eighth guideline mandates the use of “open formats” for delivery of outputs. It is suggested that “open formats” be replaced with the mandatory adherence to “open standards” and a reference be made to the National Policy for Open Standards notified in 2010. The eighth guideline also discourages the use of proprietary software. It is submitted that the requirements of sharing the source file along with the relevant APIs need a more detailed explanation. It is suggested that the difference between a development platform/environment and the software written subsequently over this platform be clarified. Notwithstanding that the former may be proprietary if no other alternative is available, developers/creators/licensees would be obligated to openly license any code/software they create using the platform. It is suggested that it ought to be made explicit that there shall be no choice for the latter and that the choice was limited to the type of platform being employed.

2.3.5. It is suggested that a ninth guideline be included. This guideline would deal with accessibility for persons with disabilities. The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0[8] may be referenced and invoked.

CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS

3.1. CIS welcomes the initiative of the NMEICT towards the adoption of an OER Policy. These Guidelines, while indeed addressing the important issues associated towards the end of adoption of an OER Policy, would be further strengthened by addressing the concerns enumerated above.

3.2. CIS is thankful to the NMEICT for the opportunity to provide feedback on this Policy. As a non-governmental research organization working in the areas of Openness and[9] and Access to Knowledge,[10] CIS appreciates this effort by the NMEICT, and would be privileged to work with the Government on this and other matters in these areas.

[1].See www.cis-india.org (last accessed 26 May, 2014).

[2].See http://www.unesco.org/new/fileadmin/MULTIMEDIA/HQ/CI/CI/pdf/Events/Paris%20OER%20Declaration_01.pdf (last accessed 26 May, 2014).

[3].See http://www.capetowndeclaration.org/read-the-declaration (last accessed 26 May, 2014).

[4].See 2(a), Principles of Openness of the Guidelines.

[5].See 2(c), Principles of Openness of the Guidelines.

[6]. See illustratively http://www.wipo.int/freepublications/en/intproperty/909/wipo_pub_909.html#moral_rights (last accessed 26 May, 2014); http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/property/library/moralprimer.html (last accessed 26 May, 2014); http://www.ipo.gov.uk/types/copy/c-otherprotect/c-moralrights.htm (last accessed 26 May, 2014).

[7]. See http://www.lockss.org/about/what-is-lockss/ (last accessed 26 May, 2014).

[8].See http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20/ (last accessed 28 May, 2014).

[9].See http://cis-india.org/openness (last accessed 26 May, 2014).

[10].See http://cis-india.org/a2k (last accessed 26 May, 2014).

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/comments-on-open-licensing-policy-guidelines-of-national-mission-on-education-through-information-and-communication-technology

Indic Language Wikipedias as Open Educational Resources

subha — 2014-06-04T03:32:57Z

The Open Education Working Group sees supporting multilingual activities such as translation to and from languages which are not often used as one of its key future roles. Subhashish Panigrahi’s post while dwelling upon the growth of Indic Wikimedia communities critically examines Wikipedia as an educational resource.

The article by Subhashish Panigrahi was published in Open Education Working Group website on May 27, 2014.

Subhashish Panigrahi is an an educator and open source activist based in Bangalore, India. He is a long time Wikimedian and is involved in many activism and policy level debates around open education. Currently he is working at the Centre for Internet and Society’s Access To Knowledge program where he is working on designing implementation projects for catalyzing growth of Indic Wikimedia communities and content acquisition.

In the past, he has worked on building partnership with universities, language research organizations, government departments, GLAM institutions and individuals for bringing more scholarly and encyclopedic content on language, culture and history under free licenses. He is excited about experimenting on new methodologies in education, building interactive educational resources and bringing knowledge producing institutions, resourceful experts and scholars under one roof. He has been involved in various language related conferences and spoken in both policy and implementation discourses around open knowledge and open source.

Since the inception of four Indic language Wikipedias: Assamese, Malayalam, Odia and Punjab in 2002, the focus of Wikimedia Foundation has been diverse in many aspects.

Wikipedia’s focus oriented from Latin to non-Latin projects which was high-risk but revolutionary specifically in four of the aforementioned languages besides the other language Wikipedias that came a little later. It is quite obvious that the number of contributors to the Indic language Wikimedia projects were very few. Indic input in Unicode standard was less popular. Wikipedia struggled back then and still continues to struggle in terms of getting voluntary contributions and quality content because of these reasons.


Above: A screen shot of Assamese Wikipedia page

In its initial phase of community building the language projects faced difficulties in teaching people about typing in their own scripts. It was a painful exercise – starting from scratch to building language input tools and tutorials, conducting outreach for mass-awareness and educating them of the importance of building content for their future generation and other such activities. Today, about 12 out of the 20 Indic language Wikipedias are active in terms of growth in the size of the contributor community and quality content. However, since the available resources are more or less limited in general and also lacking more in regional languages, there has been dependence on text books as useful educational resources. There is a complete dearth of peer reviewed journals and research documents in Indic languages. If there are some, they have not been digitized and some of the digitized resources are not available in accessible formats. With this there is a need to rethink about the potential to open Wikipedia up for more contribution from the academia and researcher communities.


Odia Wikipedia workshop, IIMC, Dhenkanal 18-19 November 2013 [Source Wikmedia Commons]

Conventionally educational resources are created by subject experts in a limited time frame and reviewed for factual accuracy. Wikipedia, on the contrary could be edited by anyone at any point of time and the content is ever changing. Many-a-times stub class articles get created. Not all of the articles are also of good quality. All of these result in a mixed spectrum of articles of varied quality. So, the entire Wikipedia, per se cannot be taken as OER.. It is quite challenging to get dedicated volunteers to devote their time to enhance the quality and keep the articles updated.

The ever changing nature of Wikipedia could be a potential opportunity to look at it as an educational resource that is more dynamic and upgradable in nature. Some of the subjects such as science or humanities in our education syllabi have content that is perpetually true in nature. If well written, then these kind of articles could be taken as OER as these do not need constant change. However, many other study programs including the applied disciplines are not up to date because of the conventional mode of education. There is a need to revamp the educational system and bring a more dynamic and informative system. Wikipedia, for sure will be a good platform for specific areas of education like these. However, this could be attained only if there are a group of contributors while implementing mass-scale WikipediaEducation Programs.

While working with two different batches of masters students of journalism at Indian Institute of MassCommunication at Dhenkanal in Odisha, I experienced the multitude of such fast pace of information flow that does not exist in many other disciplines. In general, people working on current issues of the world remain in a high information zone. If such talents could be tapped by bringing Wikipedia into their zone of action, then something great could be leveraged. Similarly, many researchers and people that are involved in work related documentation could be tapped when looking at specific subject areas for creating a subset of educational resource building exercise from Wikipedia.


Screenshot of the Chatasabha which is a help desk on Odia Wikipedia

The drawback in the existing text book compilation process is that a fixed number of people might make it a monotonous process. Things like visual appeal and user experience, the layers of reuse, remix and reproduction that Wikipedia offers will be lacking. The process of bringing Indic language Wikipedias into the curricula also unleashes the opportunity of creating an inclusive community of experts and passively absorbing information from the existing resources including books that are currently the only educational resources. The constant discourse that a language or academic community that are subsets of a Wikipedia community, cross-pollination of ideas, information, experiments from inter-related and interdisciplinary collectives adds many additional layers of complexity to the way information get on to Wikipedia. This very complexity makes it stand out as a completely different system altogether that learns, changes the ways of approach, preserves learning and presents itself is an institution.

So far, most of the Indic languages Wikipedias are the largest reservoirs of knowledge despite the challenges of sustaining the contributing community. To take them to a new level needs the risk of allowing potential vandals of taking it to the larger audience as a contributor and taking to the knowledge seeking mass as an Open Educational Resource. As Wikipedia itself, this would be another happening journey if the challenges and mistakes are accepted. Otherwise, bringing the right balance and opening up the existing system might just take centuries and that is alarming for this society that cannot wait inside the cocoon of being completely perfect but outdated and afford to walk slower.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/open-education-working-group-may-27-2014-subhashish-panigrahi-indic-language-wikipedias-as-open-educational-resources

CIS Signs MoU with Shri Dharmasthala Manjunatheshwara College

pavanaja — 2014-05-27T10:56:52Z

The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) has inked a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Shri Dharmasthala Manjunatheshwara (SDM) College on April 21, 2014. On behalf of CIS, Dr. U.B.Pavanaja signed the MoU.

As part of the MoU, CIS and SDM College will work together to introduce "Indian Language Wikipedias in the Indian Under Graduate and Post Graduate Classroom" at the SDM College, Ujire. This will help the students to develop the following skills:

Writing skills (ability to write in an objective fashion;
Digital information literacy skills;
Ability to critically engage with a concept/theme;
Language proficiency skills.

CIS and SDM college will co-design and jointly develop and implement relevant training programs to achieve this.

Click to download the MoU here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/cis-signs-mou-with-sdm-college

GLAM in India: 10 tips for successful GLAM projects

subha — 2014-05-27T09:13:42Z

GLAM initiatives work as a gateway to unleash knowledge, decode archived documentation to build modern wonders and also educate people about their past cultural and scientific journey.

This was published in OpenGLAM on May 22, 2014.

In 2012, India celebrated its first GLAM project on Hindi Wikipedia at the National Handicrafts and Handlooms Museum, New Delhi. This museum houses a vast majority of Indian crafts - Pattachitra from Odisha, Bidri from Karnataka, colorful and intricate Banarasi sari from northern India and Saura art from indigenous tribes of Eastern India to name a few. It is also a workshop and home to many artisans and folk artists who live, paint, carve, sell, sing, perform and make a living being based in the museum as resident artisans.


A weaver weaving a shawl using handloom (Anil Bhardwaj / CC-BY-SA 3.0)

For this project, Wikimedia India and the India Program were roped in to plan, design and have the Wikimedia community train staffers on how to document Indian crafts, from royal lineage to folk. This resulted in the creation of many Indian craft-related articles in the Hindi Wikipedia and English Wikipedia as well as images on Wikimedia Commons.

Based upon my first hand experience of working closely with the staffers and the Wikimedia community during this project, I would like to share a few tips that might help you while planning and implementing a GLAM project:

1. Show what is it in for them

Large, public entities like museums, archives and libraries can be hesitant to open their doors for free public access. While discussing the potential of a GLAM project, it is wise to explain how the project will bring popularity, highlight the work that institutes are doing and will in turn benefit the government in preserving the state’s culture. Give examples of other such GLAM institutions which have gained public attention by adopting open strategies or by holding public events.

2. Show the institutions the big picture

Institutions often see their success in terms of number of visitors, number of media mentions or the number of sales (if they have some publications or a sales desk selling handicrafts or postcards for example). Tell them how an online presence could bring them local, national as well as international visitors, especially when they have an online presence in popular sites like Wikipedia or Wikitravel.

3. Push beyond your limits

Institutions operate in their own ways and often you might feel like you get stuck. Working with new staffers in a new institution is a big challenge and the pace of work cannot be smooth. What really matters is how much you impart your knowledge among the staffers and educate them about things that will be beneficial for the institution for continuing more GLAM projects in the future.

4. Track work-in-progress

It is always crucial to have smart trackers. These could be as simple as a spreadsheet (Excel, Google, …) or a wiki table for a team’s online tracking. You can of course always design your own. A database containing participant details with different colours for indicating progress in a project is a great way for assigning work, knowing strengths and learning about areas for improvement. Evaluating work internally by making use of smart charts and keeping deadlines is a must when there is a set of activities to be done.

5. Start with claps, swags in the middle, award at the end

Mobilizing volunteer contributors, especially government staffers, is always challenging. Outreach coordinators play a key role in keeping a group motivated enough to work collaboratively for a GLAM project. Participating staff members need to be given special attention during In real life meetups and gatherings, as well as specific guidance during training sessions. Fun games and activities that engage people help breaking communication barriers and build friendship. Swags also excite people to join. When a project starts rolling, keep different levels of excitement by giving different kinds of customized swags like caps, pens, stickers and buttons etc. Printed handouts that work like cheat-sheets are also useful. Creating levels to achieve and awarding the best achievers is another way of keeping people excited. Recognition drives!


Staff being trained by GLAM coordinators (Anil Bhardwaj / CC-BY-SA 3.0)

6. Bring media attention towards the middle of the project

When a significant amount of work is done, break it to the media. Regional and national media coverage and few blog posts covering a project gives a lot of visibility to the institution and the people involved. This is in fact the best way to get internal administration level support for implementing a project. Interview some of the achievers, put them up on the project page and blogs and show those posts to them. Many people love to see audio-visual and printed news, and showing the participants their video interviews and published blogs is another way of letting them know about their great contribution.

7. Fail fast, think long term

If a GLAM project does not result in substantial success or sustains for long, it is essential to realize the fact that it is not an easy task to make changes to the system that is set over centuries. It takes time to mobilize and be brave to admit the failure. But it is also never really a failure when there is plenty of learning which others could benefit from before starting similar projects. Starting a new GLAM project is always an investment for the future. Milestones and even scars caused during the course of mobilizing an institution to open up its treasures for the public count and they, over time become parameters others consider.

8. Exit with a few leaders and chuck out way forwards

While working with a group of people, seek out for people who could lead a group and do specific work. This will not just reduce your workload, but will help to have a more decentralized focused work.

9. Document the flow

It is really really essential to document the work in a human manner. If resources permit, bring a professional to take candid shots, shoot a few interviews and B-rolls. You can also be frugal or hire a professional from the open source community for free and do the same. Documentation of learning, challenges and tips for others are essential things that you, as a good samaritan-community member could bring other GLAMers.

10. Empathy is the key

Over and above, empathy is the only key while dealing with real people in a real space. Connect to every person in a group, put yourself in their shoes and try being one of them: nothing works better in implementing a huge project. Knowledge transfer is a subset of the process of building a cordial relationship. Not all GLAM institutions have a system in place to educate their staff about technical aspects of archiving or renovating or developing skill-sets in general. Your presence should leverage the learning and knowledge that you would acquire from multiple levels.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/open-glam-may-22-2014-subhashish-panigrahi-glam-in-india-10-tips-for-successful-glam-projects

Subhashish Panigrahi joins Open GLAM Working Group

praskrishna — 2014-05-27T09:40:40Z

Subhashish recently joined the OpenGLAM Working Group (a global network of people who work to open up cultural data and content.) as a member and OpenGLAM Local (a local affiliate of OKFN's OpenGLAM project) as an ambassador for India. Both the positions will be voluntary.

OpenGLAM Working Group

The OpenGLAM Working Group is a global network of people who work to open up cultural data and content. We run workshops and provide documentation for cultural institutions wanting to open up their data as well as organise events bringing together groups that are committed to building an open cultural commons. The Working Group Members act as a bridge between different organisations and initiatives, and the global network. We meet every month virtually to discuss relevant updates, pressing issues, and next steps to be taken. If you are interested in joining, please get in touch with openglam@okfn.org.

Read the full details on this page.

Open GLAM Local

OpenGLAM has established several local groups as well as OpenGLAM ambassadors to serve as the local point of contact in their area. They are closely connected to the Local Groups of the Open Knowledge Foundation and work on open culture in these local groups. Subhashish Panigrahi is the local contact in India.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/open-glam-working-group-members-subhashish-panigrahi

Tulu Wikipedia Workshop at Udupi

praskrishna — 2014-06-02T08:11:56Z

The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS-A2K) and the Regional Research Centre, MGM College, Udupi invites you to a workshop on Tulu Wikipedia in Udupi on May 25. Anyone interested in contributing to Tulu Wikipedia is welcome to join the workshop.

Tulu Wikipedia is in incubation stage. Pictures of the event can be downloaded here.


Above: Participants at the Tulu Wikipedia Workshop. Pictured by Dr. U.B. Pavanaja under CC-BY-3.0 Share Alike License

The venue was sponsored by Regional Research Centre, MGM College, Udupi. Dr. U.B.Pavanaja from CIS-A2K conducted the workshop. There were 13 participants for this workshop.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/events/tulu-wikipedia-workshop-udupi

Community led Konkani Wikipedia Outreach

nitika — 2014-06-10T08:44:22Z

Goa University students organised the first ever community led Konkani Wikipedia outreach on May 14, 2014. Fifteen first year M.A. students from Konkani Department participated in the six hour long workshop.

The primary focus of this workshop was to educate the MA first year students about contributing to Konkani Wikipedia which is currently in incubation.

The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) took this up as an assignment to build capacity of interested community members to conduct effective outreach sessions in Konkani. By way of supporting and mentoring such workshops CIS wants to make sure that we do not reach a situation where Konkani Wikipedia community is entirely dependent on CIS-A2K for its growth. The community should be able to sustain even if CIS-A2K pulls out of its Konkani work.

The workshop was organised by, User: Darshan kandolkar , User: Konknni mogi 24, User: Supriya kankumbikar and User: John Noronha. The presenters were trained, mentored and supported by CIS-A2K to organise this workshop. This included:

Helping the trainers get physical space to organise this workshop at Goa Central State Library.

Training the presenters on how to best organise the workshop and divide it into different sections such as a) Introduction to Wikipedia b) Introduction to Basic Editing c) Hands on workshop on basic editing d) Advance Editing e) Hands on workshop on advance editing

Providing all the training documents such as presentation and presenters note.

Providing registration and feedback forms.

Helping in getting the IP released from '7 accounts creation per IP rule'.

Helping the trainers to design customised energisers, Wikipedia quiz and Wikipedia games to keep the participant's enthusiasm high.


Above: Participants take part in Wiki editing at the workshop.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/konkani-wikipedia-outreach

Wikipedia in UG Education program at Christ University

praskrishna — 2014-05-27T10:19:48Z

On May 15, 2014, Prajavani published an article about Wikipedia in UG Education program in Christ University.

Click to read the online version published by Prajavani here.

A scanned version of the article is given below:

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/prajavani-may-15-2014-wikipedia-ug-education-christ-university

Pushing the Boundaries in Open Governance: Insights from OGP Asia Pacific Regional Conference in Bali, Indonesia (Day 1)

praskrishna — 2014-05-27T11:16:06Z

Sunil Abraham is quoted. He said that open governance is more about citizens checking on what government leaders are doing than on government coding its citizens to exercise surveillance.

This post originally appeared on the Open Data Research Network and has been republished with permission from the author. For the republished post on OGP website, see here.

The plenary room of Bali Nusa Dua Convention Center was jam-packed at 845 in the morning, with representatives from different countries in the Asia-Pacific region and all over the globe joining the first regional conference on open data hosted by the Government of Indonesia. The conference stage backdrop depicts a million colourful cranes moving in one direction towards the OGP logo, perhaps signalling an unprecedented wave of aspirations, commitments, plans, and actions towards a more ‘open’ governance within the region. Then a few minutes later, President Yudhoyono arrived and the two-day gathering (6-7 May 2014) of roughly 500 people started.

The program was impressive. It tried to cater to the different voices of what ideally should make an open government community – government leaders, journalists, right-to-information activists, business representatives, academia, researchers, civil-society groups, funding agencies, programmers, among others. The over-arching theme of the conference “Unlocking Innovative Openness: Impetus to Greater Citizen Engagement” speaks to both the supply side and the demand side of open data where governments can make openness more innovative to which citizens can proactively engage. The people in attendance reflected this multi-dimensionality and the kind of discussions on open governance that happened in Day 1 reflects the several, differentiated, yet somehow united view and interests of the many people that were there.

The first day of the conference brings me to four main realisations, prompted by the excellent presentations of the speakers and the lively discussion at the break-out session that I attended.

Openness is not an option but an imperative. Aruna Roy, founder of Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathanaof India, and considered one of the most influential thinkers of this decade put it more vividly using her organization’s slogan – “right to know, right to live”. While bureaucrats, like Minister Francis Maude of the UK argued that openness improve transparency, enhance public service, and stimulate growth, civil society groups claimed that openness is not something the government can do, but must do, to benefit right holders by ensuring that they are not only aware of what the government is doing but by ensuring that government leaders, to whom citizens entrust sovereignty, execute the will of the governed.
Open governance is about relations, about people, not just about technology, transparency, or data provision. Ms. Nwe Zin Win, of Myanmar National NGOs Network emphasized that as Myanmar moves towards Open Government Partnership (OGP) membership, the process should create a space for civil society groups to proactively participate. In his remarks, Director General Yoon Soon-Gu of the Republic of Korea emphasized that when his government embarked on the process of crafting Gov 3.0 as a development agenda, with the end-goal of making Koreans live a happy life, citizen consultations were conducted all across government to ensure that this plan is responsive and relevant and reflects the people’s aspirations. Anne Jellema, CEO of World Wide Web Foundation highlighted the fact that open governance is not only good for vertical accountability (government-governed) but also about horizontal accountability (agencies within the same government) and ensures that systems are working with government – judiciary, legislative, audit, executing agencies – for the common good. Open governance then, is about building that relationship of trust between government and citizens, between business and government, and between agencies in the government.
Open government has many challenges, but these are not insurmountable. Malou Mangahas of the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism emphasized five “I”s in her plenary speech that she said are the main challenges to the open government story in the Philippines and in the region – implementation, inclusiveness, information, institutionalisation, and interconnectedness. In the area of inclusiveness, one of the challenges is on how to ensure that people can participate in a context when there is a large digital divide, where internet penetration is low, and broadband speed is slow to a crawl. Mr. Samadhi of the Government of Indonesia emphasized that there are many examples in his country where government information is translated to accessible formats by infomediaries so that citizens without internet connection became aware, informed, and knowledgeable. In one of the coffee breaks, Redempto Parafina of the Affiliated Network for Social Accountability in East Asia and the Pacific shared to me that non-government organizations, concerned individuals, and universities translate information in the CheckmySchool portal to information materials for distribution and use by communities without internet.
Open governance narrative should focus on making governments more responsive and accountable. President Yudhoyono uses Facebook and Twitter, apart from the traditional media as text and snail mail, to listen to the demands of his constituents. The Government of New Zealand, according to Minister Peter Dunne, sets goals on basic public services as health, education, and employment and demands regular public reporting on these goals; reports that can be accessed and challenged by the people to whom the services are intended. Sunil Abraham of the Centre for Internet and Society argued that open governance should not veer away from this narrative. He made an example regarding India’s Unique Identification System, where the implementation is couched within the open data narrative. He believed that open governance is more about citizens checking on what government leaders are doing than on government coding its citizens to exercise surveillance.

It was a productive day. I am thankful that I was afforded the opportunity to attend the conference. One message that profoundly affected me was Aruna Roy’s exhortation at the end of her presentation – that we should make truth powerful, and that we should make power truthful.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/open-government-partnership-michael-canares-may-6-2014-pushing-the-boundaries-in-open-governance

OGP Asia Pacific Regional Conference

praskrishna — 2014-06-03T12:03:55Z

Open Government Partnership is organizing this conference in Bali on May 6 and 7, 2014. Sunil Abraham is a speaker for this event.

This was published on the website of Open Government Partnership

Below are the speakers and moderators that will participate in the Asia Pacific Regional Conference on 6-7 May 2014 per 5th of May 2014.

Plenary 1: 10.25 – 11.10

Reflective statements by Heads of Delegations and CSO Representatives of OGP Asian Participating Countries, followed by Q&A

Ms. Natalia Soebagjo, Chair, Executive Board, Transparency International Indonesia

Hon. Peter Dunne, Minister of Internal Affairs, New Zealand

Mr. Yoon Soon-Gu, Director-General Ministry of Security & Public Administration (MOSPA), Republic of Korea

Mr. Gan-Ochir, Advisor of Prime Minister, Cabinet Secretariat, Government of Mongolia

Ms. Malou Mangahas, Executive Director, Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism

Ms. Suneeta Kaimal, Support CSO Chair of OGP (Moderator)

Plenary 2: 11.10 – 11.55

Reflective statements by Heads of Delegations and CSO Representatives of Non-OGP Participating Countries, followed by Q&A

H.E. Mr. Ahsan Iqbal, Federal Minister for Planning, Development and Reforms, Pakistan

Ms. Nwe Zin Win, Chairperson, Myanmar National NGOs Network

H.E. Mr. Rimbink Pato, Minister for Foreign Affairs, Trade, and Immigration, Papua New Guinea

Ms. Aruna Roy, Founder, Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathana

H.E. Mr. Francis Maude, Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General, United Kingdom

Mr. Wicaksono Sarosa, Executive Director, Kemitraan/Partnership for Governance Reform (Moderator)

Breakout Session: 14.15 – 16.15

Topic 1 Opening up: Inspiring Stories from Transparent and Accountable Local Governments

A panel on how local governments become open governments; experiences from local governments in the Asia Pacific region.

Co-organized by: Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH and UKP-PPP

Ridwan Kamil, Mayor of Bandung, Government of Indonesia

Sad Dian Utomo, Executive Director, PATTIRO

Thy Try, Executive Director Open Development Cambodia

Vidyadhar Mallik, former Minister for Local Government and Federal Affairs, Nepal

Aparna Daz, GIZ Sustainable Urban Habitat Programme

Dr. Birgit Kerstan (Moderator)

Topic 2 Open Data in Asia-Pacific: a Cross-Country Learning Discussion

The session seeks to contribute to a better understanding of the key enablers and obstacles in unlocking the benefits from open data in the region.

Co-organized by: Web Foundation, World Bank, and UKP-PPP

T. Nirarta Samadhi, Deputy Head President's Delivery Unit on Development Monitoring and Oversight, Government of Indonesia (UKP-PPP)

Ivygail Ong, Department of Budget and Management, Philippines

Anne Jellema, CEO, World Wide Web Foundation

Sunil Abraham, Executive Director, Centre for Internet and Society

Soong Sup Lee, Lead Information Officer, Development Economics Data Group, World Bank

Andreas Pawelke, Project Manager, World Wide Web Foundation (Moderator)

Topic 3 Perfecting Openness: Bridging Open Government Partnership and Traditional Access to Information Law

The session seeks to elaborate on implementation of law on freedom of information (FOI)/ access to information (ATI) in the region.

Co-organized by: PATTIRO and UKP-PPP

Claudia Taya, Office’s Director for Corruption Prevention, Office of Comptroller General of Brazil
John Fresly, Information Commission Indonesia
Under Secretary Abigail Valte, Deputy Presidential Spokesperson, Office of the President, Philippines
Zahid Abdullah, Program Manager, Centre for Peace and Development Initiatives
Maryati Abdullah, Publish What You Pay Indonesia, OGP Steering Committee Member (Moderator)

Topic 4 Roundtable on Open and Good Governance in Post-2015 Development Agenda

The roundtable aims to brainstorm and discuss the central role of transparency, public participation and accountability to achieve sustainable development in various contexts, with a focus of Asia-Pacific region.

Organized by: UKP-PPP

Noeleen Heyzer, Special Adviser of the United Nations Secretary General for Timor-Leste

Iftekhar Zaman, Executive Director, Transparency International, Bangladesh

Sugeng Bahagijo, Executive Director, INFID

Beate Trankmann, Country Director, United Nations Development Programme, Indonesia

Yanuar Nugroho, Special Advisor to the Indonesian President's Delivery Unit for Development Monitoring and Oversight (Moderator)

Topic 5 Measuring Civic Engagement for Better Open Government Policies and Services

The session aims to present and discuss international principles and good practices on how to measure citizens’ participation throughout the full cycle of governance in the Asia-Pacific Region.

Organized by: OECD and UKP-PPP

Ms. Inda Loekman, Program Manager for Indonesia Governance Index (IGI), Kemitraan

Mr. Juan Carlos Botero, Executive Director, The World Justice Project

Mr. Toby Iles, Senior Analyst, Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU)

Ms. Dra. RD Siliwanti, Direktur Politik dan Komunikasi, Bappenas

Mr. Paul Maltby, Director of Open Data and Government Innovation, Cabinet Office, UK

Ms. Keitha Booth, Programme Leader, Open Government Information and Data Programme, Land Information, New Zealand

Mr. Zeric K. Smith, Deputy Director, Office of Democratic Governance, USAID Indonesia

Mr. Alessandro Bellantoni, Policy Analyst and Project Manager, OECD (Moderator)

Topic 6 OGP-GIFT Fiscal Openness Working Group Session

The session aims to share experiences and lessons learned from Asian countries who have noticeably improved their fiscal openness policies, institutions, and practices especially in utilizing government budget transparency for public services solutions and citizen engagement.

Co-organized by: Global Initiative for Fiscal Transparency (GIFT) Fiscal Openness Working Group and UKP-PPP

Malou Mangahas, Executive Director, Philippines Center for Investigative Journalism

Murray Petrie, GIFT Technical Expert

David Gentry, Advisor, International Monetary Fund

Suyoto, Regent of Bojonegoro, Government of Indonesia

Joko Purwanto, Bojonegoro Institute, Indonesia

Dr. Juan Pablo Guerrero, GIFT Network Director (Moderator)

Warren Krafchik, International Budget Partnership (Moderator)

Jim Brumby, World Bank (Moderator)

Topic 7 Building Trust between Private and Public Sectors for a Competitive and Sustainable Economy

The session aims to explore participative strategies for the private sector to express their expectations of government while demonstrating willingness to take shared accountability that encourages openness and transparency.

Co-organized by: Indonesia Global Compact Network (IGCN) and UKP-PPP

H.E. Mr. Stig Traavik, Royal Norwegian Ambassador to Indonesia

Thomas Darmawan, Chairman, AP5I (The Indonesian Fishery Product Processing & Marketing Association)

Erick Stephens, Chief Technology Officer, Microsoft Asia Pacific

Peter Bakker, President, World Business Council for Sustainable Development

David Brain, President & CEO, Edelman Asia Pacific, Middle East & Africa

Andrew Wilson, Co-Chair of the Council on Private Sector Engagement and CIPE Deputy Director, Programs and Strategic Planning

Ahmad Yuniarto, Chairman, Schlumberger Indonesia (moderator)

Topic 8 OGP 101: Everything You Need To Know About Open Government Partnership

This session will introduce participants to the Open Government Partnership and familiarize attendees with key OGP institutional processes, requirements for participation, and resources available to participant countries.

Organized by: OGP Support Unit

Abhinav Bahl, Director, Global Integrity

Jack Mahoney, Program Associate, OGP Support Unit

Patrick Lim, Department of Budget and Management of Philippines and OGP SC member (TBC)

Alejandro Gonzales, GESOC and OGP SC member (TBC)

Plenary 3: 16.45 – 17.45

Topic Keeping an Open Mind: Perspectives from Other Region

This session aims to explore the elements of success in achieving a more open government in other regions and also the unique nature of each region that must be taken into account in moving forward.

H.E. Robert Blake, US Ambassador to Indonesia

Mr. Paul Maltby, Director for Transparency and Open Data for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General, OGP SC Member

Ms. Roberta Solis Ribeiro, Chief International Affairs Advisor, Office of the Comptroller General of Brazil

Mr. Alejandro Gonzalez, Director General, GESOC, OGP SC Member

Mr. Martin Tisne, Director, Policy, Omidyar Network, OGP SC Member

Mr. Warren Krafchik, Director, International Budget Partnership, OGP SC Member (Moderator)

Day 2, Wednesday, 7 May 2014

Lightning Talks Session: 09.12 – 10.1509.12 – 10.15

Topic Lightning Talks on Open Government Solutions

In this session, seven individuals from government, the private sector and civil society will present case studies of innovative and impactful open government reforms in Asia Pacific.

Diah Setiawaty, API Pemilu, Perludem (Association for Elections & Democracy), Indonesia

Jose Solomon Cortez, The Integrity Initiative, Makati Business Club, Philippines

Budiyanto Sidiki, E-Monitoring & Evaluation, Gorontalo Province, Indonesia

Sowmya Kidambi, Society of Social Audit, State of Andhra Pradesh, India

Sayed Ikram Afzali, Community-Based Monitoring Program, Integrity Watch Afghanistan

Undral Gombodorj, Check My Service, Democracy Education Center Mongolia (DEMO)

Fiona Tweedie, GovHack, Open Knowledge Foundation Australia

Wimar Witoelar, Founder, InterMatrix Communication (Moderator)

Breakout Session 1: 10.15 – 10.45

Topic 1 How To (& Not To) Open Data: Lessons on Designing and Implementing Open Data Interventions

The session seeks to present practical recommendations and discuss the key factors that need to be considered when designing and implementing successful and sustainable open data initiatives, or a project that has open data at the core of its design. Co-organized by: Web Foundation, World Bank, and UKP-PPP

Satyarupa Shekhar, Transparent Chennai

Gabriel Baleos, Co-Lead Coordinator Open Data Philippines, Department of Budget and Management

John Taylor, Director, Yayasan Kota Kita

Promita Sengupta, Head of Rule of Law Program, GIZ Bangladesh

Dr. Vijay Pingale, Joint Commissioner, Corporation of Chennai, India

Ramda Yanurzha, Ambassador for Open Knowledge Indonesia

Daniel Dietrich, Steering Committee Member, OGP Open Data Working Group (Moderator)

Topic 2 Be the Change! Social Accountability Success Stories and Obstacles

The session seeks to provide an overview of the topic of citizen empowerment, with leaders sharing insights on lessons learned, success stories, and obstacles.

Co-organized by: Hivos, Omidyar Network, and UKP-PPP

Nikhil Dey, MKSS

Kuntoro Mangkusubroto, Head of Indonesian President's Delivery Unit for Development Monitoring and Oversight

Undersecretary Richard Moya, Department of Budget and Management, Government of the Philippines

Marjan Besuijen, Director, Making All Voices Count

Otgonbayar Chimeddorj, Legal and Procurement Policy Department, Ministry of Finance, Mongolia

Rakesh Rajani, Head, Twaweza (Moderator)

Topic 3 Transparent and Accountable Policing for Safer Community

The panel aims to discuss ways in which transparency and public participation can improve policing policies, practices and outcomes.

Co-organized by: Open Society Foundations (OSF), Tifa Foundation, and UKP-PPP

Brigjen Pol Moch Naufal Yahya, Coordinator for Bureaucracy Reform, Indonesia National Police

Geo Sung-Kim, Chairperson, Transparency International South Korea

Wajahat Habibullah, Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI) India

Monica Tanuhandaru, National Project Coordinator, United Nation on Drugs and Crime (Moderator)

Topic 4 Sustaining the Open Government Partnership: Youth as New Agent of Open Governance

The session aims to provide platforms for young people to exchange views on transparency, public participation and accountability and also to explore meaningful ways to sustain youth participation in OGP.

Organized by: UKP-PPP

Haidy Ear-Dupuy, Social Development Specialist, Asian Development Bank
Zaw Win Than, Chief of Staff, The Myanmar Times
Joel Mark Barredo, ASEAN Youth Movement
Clara Fok, Amnesty International
Ou Ritthy, Oxfam Cambodia
Lia Toriana, Transparency International Indonesia
Emily Swan, Fudan University
Gatra Priyandita, Asia Pacific Youth Organization (Moderator)

Topic 5 Opening Government: Citizen Engagement in Policymaking

This session will explore examples of good practice of citizen engagement in government policymaking and will apply the principles and lessons discussed to the development and implementation of OGP National Action Plans.

Organized by: OGP Support Unit

Tim Hughes, Involve
Shita Laksmi, Program Manager, Southeast Asia Technology and Transparency Initiative (SEATTI), Hivos Regional Office Southeast Asia
Sowmya Kidambi, Society for Social Audit, Accountability and Transparency (SSAAT), India
Patrick Lim, Department of Budget and Management of Philippines and OGP SC member
Maryati Abdullah, Publish What You Pay Indonesia, OGP Steering Committee Member
Linda Frey. Executive Director, OGP Support Unit (Moderator)

Breakout Session 2: 14.00 – 16.00

Topic 1 Co-creation and Partnership: Improving Service Delivery through Social Accountability

This session aims to “dig deep”, focusing on social accountability in service delivery, with a special emphasis on partnerships.

Co-organized by: Hivos, Omidyar Network, and UKP-PPP

Dr. Kemal Siregar, Secretary of the National AIDS Commission (KPAN), Indonesia
Aditya Wardhana, AIDS Coalition, Indonesia
Redempto S. Parafina, The Affiliated Network for Social Accountability in East Asia and the Pacific (ANSA-EAP)
Mr. Michael Macaulay, Transparency International, New Zealand
Gordon Davis, Head of Legal & Integrity Advice Group, New Zealand Government
Maria Ressa, CEO and Executive Director, RAPPLER INC (Moderator)

Topic 2 Civil Society and the Media: Levers for Transparency, Participation, and Accountability

This session seeks to highlight the ways in which citizen empowerment interacts with a lively media, and ways in which a proactive media environment can contribute to accountability.

Co-organized by: Hivos, Omidyar Network, and UKP-PPP

Adnan Pandu Praja, Commissioner of the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK), Indonesia
Umar Idris, Independent Journalist Alliance
Malou Mangahas, Philippines Centre for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ)
Thaung Su Nyein, CEO, Information Matrix
John Wonderlich, Sunlight Foundation
Stephen King, Partner, Omidyar Network (Moderator)

Topic 3 Better Access to Information for Better Accountability and Public Services Delivery

The session will explore some ideas in developing coherent relationship between government and non-government representatives in implementing transparency as well as access to information and the relation of these strategies to quality improvement of public service delivery.

Co-organized by: PATTIRO and UKP-PPP

Sad Dian Utomo, Executive Director, PATTIRO
Juan Pablo Guerrero, Secretary General, Federal Institute for Access to Information & Data Protection, Mexico
Tanka Raj Aryal, Executive Director, Citizen's Campaign for Right to Information, Nepal
Gulbaz Khan, Senior Manager, Governance and Capacity Development Citizen Engagement for Social Service Delivery
Yuli Ismartono, Board of Editors, Tempo (Moderator)

Topic 4 Legislative Openness Working Group Workshop: Building Openness and Citizen Engagement in the Legislative Process

The session will focus on positive examples of legislative openness and citizen engagement projects from the Asia region and around the world, seeking to present options that are at a range of stages of development in terms of their methods for openness and citizen engagement.

Co-organized by: Legislative Openness Working Group and UKP-PPP

Hon. Eva Kusuma Sundari, Member of the House of Representatives, Indonesia
Hon. Peter Dunne, Minister of Internal Affairs, New Zealand
Dante Preisser, Senior Advisor to Senator Arely Gómez González, Senate Member, Chair Committee on the Guarantee of Access to Information and Transparency, Mexico
Lucy Park, Director, Team POPONG, South Korea
Chaksu Roy, Head of Outreach, PRS Legislative Research, India
Dan Swislow, National Democratic Institute (Moderator)

Topic 5 Models of Openness in Sustainable Natural Resources Management

The session aims to discuss and explore options for cooperation and strategies in developing greater transparency and civic participation mechanisms in the natural resources management both at national and sub-national level.

Co-organized by: Indonesian Center for Environmental Law (ICEL), Publish What You Pay (PWYP), RWI (Revenue Watch Institute), and UKP-PPP

Emanuel Bria, Senior Associate for Asia Pacific, Revenue Watch Institute
Lalanath de Silva, Director, The Access Initiative Global Network
Suyoto, Regent of Bojonegoro, Government of Indonesia
Elisea G. Gozun, Board of Trustees, Government Social Insurance System (GSIS), Philippines
Josi Khatarina, REDD+ Agency Special Team (Moderator)

Closing Plenary: 16.30 – 17.30

Topic Take Actions! Innovative Openness in Asia Pacific

The session would feature one representative from each different groups of community that are represented at the Conference who will provide brief impression on their two-day experience and mark their respective action plan to drive further innovative openness.

Maryati Abdullah, OGP Steering Committee Member, Publish What You Pay Indonesia
Dr. Michael James Macaulay, Deputy Director of the Institute of Governance and Policy Studies, Australia
Mr. Ahmad Yuniarto, CEO of Schlumberger Indonesia
Phil Matsheza, Practice Leader, Democratic Governance, Asia-Pacific Regional Centre, UNDP
Joel Mark Barredo, ASEAN Youth Movement
Ms. Czarina Medina, Executive Director, Union of Local Authorities of The Philippines
Wimar Witoelar, Founder, InterMatrix Communication (Moderator)

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/open-govt-partnership-asia-pacific-regional-conference-may-6-7-2014

Books and More are Relicensed to Creative Commons

subha — 2014-05-28T06:29:57Z

This blog post is cross-posted from Opensource.com. It was published on May 2, 2014.

Image by opensource.com

I began working with the Wikimedia Foundation in January 2012 for program and community support in India. With the Centre for Internet and Society's Access To Knowledge program, we focus on open access for scholarly publications to help communities enrich Wikipedia entries for Indic languages.

While I was negotiating with a few authors to relicense their copyrighted books to a Creative Commons license (a license that allows anyone to reuse, modify and use content), I began identifying certain areas of motivation for an author to donate their work as free content.

We worked closely with Goa University, Manik-Biswanath Smrutinyasa Trust, and the Institute of Odia Studies and Research.

Increasing open access for publications gained a lot when the government of India launched the National Repository of Open Educational Resources in August 2013 by the request of Wikimedia India. It generally takes a long time and much effort to negotiate with copyright holders for relicensing material as Creative Commons. But, when we do negotiate it, and win, the content is a permanent and valuable addition to open knowledge and the movement.

So far, authors might be avoiding open licensing because:

They think it might put them out of business because others could plagiarize and republish their work without attribution.
They think if they will lose ownership of the content due to the nature of open licenses, which allow reuse.

Open licensing should be important to authors because as more readers and reviewers get access to their books and other online content, the visibility of their work increases, allowing them to gain more respect and popularity. This can, in turn, help authors sell more of the reprints.

The "one book in every child's hand" campaign by Pratham Books was an initiative by a large publisher to license Indian langage books with a CC BY-SA license. The campaign's mission was to provide access to knowledge and good quality education of native Indian languages to students whose families cannot bear educational costs. Pratham Books gained a lot of attention globally and the campaign proved to be a sustainable model for publishers and free licenses.

Scholarly research publications are less prone to plagiarism because of their low retail value compared to mainstream fiction, self-help books, or travel and lifestyle books. Encyclopedic books have even less retail value. Thus, releasing content online under free licenses would not affect such scholarly works or encyclopedic print publications to a large extent.

Photo by Veethika Mishra, CC-BY-SA 4.0

Relicensing projects

Last year, Goa University applied a CC BY-SA 3.0 license to their four-volume encyclopedia, Konkani Vishwakosh. It is the largest encyclopedia compiled in the language. The book is being digitized on Konkani WikiSource, attracting new volunteers.
Manik-Biswanath Smrutinyasa relicensed eleven of the noted author Dr. Jagannath Mohanty's Odia books under a CC BY-SA 3.0 license.
Classical Odia is a 600+ page book of historical documents and manuscripts on Odia language and literary heritage of more than 2,500 years. The researchers Dr. Debiprasanna Pattanayak and Subrat Prusty moved from copyright to a CC BY-SA 3.0 license.
Two Odia language books by linguist Subrat Prusty have been relicensed to CC BY-SA 3.0. They are Jati, Jagruti O Pragati, and Bhasa O Jatiyata and have been digitized as well using ISCII standard fonts (not Unicode). ISCII standard fonts have glyphs with Indic characters that are actually replacements of the Latin characters by Indic characters.
A recent addition is the relicensing of the Kannada language encyclopedia published and copyrighted by Mysore University to a Creative Commons license.

The community and the publishers of books gain mutual benefits when more Indic language books are digitized, put online, and made freely available. By expanding online content and readership, a new life is given to many South Asian and non-Latin works, creating a revival for these languages and cultures.

Read the original post here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/opensource-education-may-2-2014-subhashish-panigrahi-books-and-more-are-relicensed-to-creative-commons

Access to Knowledge Bulletin — May 2014

praskrishna — 2014-07-04T05:30:05Z

The Access to Knowledge (Wikipedia) newsletter for the month of May 2014:

We from the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS-A2K) thank you all for your support and collaboration. We bring you the details of our work for the month of May 2014:

CIS Signs MoU with Shri Dharmasthala Manjunatheshwara College

CIS-A2K signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Shri Dharmasthala Manjunatheshwara College to introduce “Indian Language Wikipedias in the Indian Under Graduate and Post Graduate Classroom”. Dr. U.B. Pavanaja on behalf of the CIS-A2K team signed the MoU. The signing event took place earlier on April 21, 2014.

Articles

Books and More are Relicensed to Creative Commons (by Subhashish Panigrahi, Opensource.com, May 2, 2014).
GLAM in India: 10 tips for successful GLAM projects (by Subhashish Panigrahi, OpenGLAM, May 27, 2014).
Indic Language Wikipedias as Open Educational Resources (by Subhashish Panigrahi, Open Education Working Group, May 27, 2014).

Blog Entry

Community led Konkani Wikipedia Outreach (by Nitika Tandon, May 16, 2014)

Event Organized

Tulu Wikipedia Workshop at Udupi (co-organized by CIS-A2K and the Regional Research Centre, MGM College, Udupi, May 25, 2014). Dr. U.B.Pavanaja conducted the workshop.

News and Media Coverage

CIS gave its inputs to the following media coverage:

Wikipedia in UG Education program at Christ University (Prajavani, May 15, 2014).
Subhashish Panigrahi joins Open GLAM Working Group Subhashish recently joined the OpenGLAM Working Group (a global network of people who work to open up cultural data and content.) as a member and OpenGLAM Local (a local affiliate of OKFN's OpenGLAM project) as an ambassador for India. Both the positions will be voluntary.

Wikimedia Foundation has funded A2K to anchor the growth of Wikimedia movement in India. The A2K team consists of six members, four based in Bangalore: T. Vishnu Vardhan, Dr. U.B. Pavanaja, Subhashish Panigrahi and Rahmanuddin Shaikh. One team member Nitika Tandon is based in Delhi. We also have one Advisor Dr. Tejaswini Niranjana working with us. Archives of our newsletters can be accessed here. Wikipedians from various communities can request for outreach programs, technical bugs, logistics-merchandize and media, public relations and communications here.

About CIS

The Centre for Internet and Society is a non-profit research organization that works on policy issues relating to freedom of expression, privacy, accessibility for persons with disabilities, access to knowledge and IPR reform, and openness (including open government, FOSS, open standards, etc.), and engages in academic research on digital natives and digital humanities.

Twitter: https://twitter.com/CISA2K
CIS group on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/cis.india
Visit us at: https://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, and theoreticians, both organisationally and as individuals, to collaboratively engage with Internet and society and improve our understanding of this new field. To discuss the research collaborations, write to Sunil Abraham, Executive Director, at sunil@cis-india.org or Nishant Shah, Director – Research, at nishant@cis-india.org. To discuss collaborations on Indic language wikipedia, write to T. Vishnu Vardhan, Programme Director, A2K, at vishnu@cis-india.org

CIS is grateful to its donors, Wikimedia Foundation, Ford Foundation, Privacy International, UK, Hans Foundation and the Kusuma Trust which was founded by Anurag Dikshit and Soma Pujari, philanthropists of Indian origin, for its core funding and support for most of its projects.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/access-to-knowledge-bulletin-may-2014

April 2014 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2014-07-04T03:38:00Z

The newsletter for the month of April can be accessed below:

We at the Centre for Internet & Society (CIS) welcome you to the fourth issue of the newsletter (April) for the year 2014. Archives of our newsletters can be accessed at: http://cis-india.org/about/newsletters

Highlights

We have published a compilation of the various central government schemes in a blog post as part of our National Resource Kit project.

The 27^th session of the WIPO Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (WIPO-SCCR) was held in Geneva from April 28 to May 2, 2014. Nehaa Chaudhari participated in the event. CIS made its statements on Technological Measures of Protection on Limitations and Exceptions for Libraries and Archives, Orphan Works, Retracted and Withdrawn Works, and Works out of Commerce on Limitations and Exceptions for Libraries and Archives, and on the WIPO Proposed Treaty for the Protection of Broadcasting Organizations.
CIS signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Mysore University for converting to Unicode and re-releasing their encyclopaedia under Creative Commons License. Dr. U.B. Pavanaja on behalf of the CIS-A2K team signed the MoU.
A two-day global stakeholder meeting on future of internet governance (NETmundial) was organized by the Brazilian Internet Steering Committee in partnership with /1Net at Sao Paulo in Brazil on April 23 and 24, 2014. Achal Prabhala participated in the event. As part of its research to enable productive discussions of the critical internet governance issues at the meeting and elsewhere CIS published a total of 16 blog entries.
We conducted an empirical study of five separate and diverse banks (State Bank of India, Central Bank of India, ICICI Bank, IndusInd Bank, and Standard Chartered Bank) to gain a practical perspective on the existing banking practices and policies in India, and published a Banking Policy Guide.
As part of the Making Change project Denisse Albornoz interviewed Tuhin Paul, an artist and storyteller behind Menstrupedia, an India-based social venture creating comics to shatter the myths and misunderstandings surrounding menstruation around the world. Denisse provides an analysis of ‘menstrual activism’ — a movement that despite its trajectory in feminism remains unnoticed in most accounts of traditional and digital activism.
Six research studies were commissioned by HEIRA-CSCS (over November 2013-March 2014) as part of the collaborative exercise with CIS to map the Digital Humanities within a broad rubric of exploring changes at the intersection of youth, technology and higher education in India. P.P.Sneha in her blog post presents a broad overview of some of the key learnings from these projects.

Jobs
CIS is seeking applications for the post of Programme Officer (Access to Knowledge). There are two vacancies for this post one in Delhi and one in Bangalore. To apply, please send your resume to Sunil Abraham (sunil@cis-india.org), Nirmita Narasimhan (nirmita@cis-india.org) and Pranesh Prakash (pranesh@cis-india.org) with three writing samples of which at least one demonstrates your analytic skills, and one that shows your ability to simplify complex policy issues.

Accessibility and Inclusion

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. We compiled the first draft of the kit (29 states and 6 union territories). The chapters along with 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

Monthly Update

NVDA e-Speak Text-to-Speech Project Update (by Suman Dogra, April 28, 2014).

National Resource Kit

Blog Entry

Central Government Schemes (by Anandhi Viswanathan and CLPR, April 27, 2014).

Other

Blog Entry

Polling Pains (by Amba Salelkar, April 30, 2014).

Media Coverage

Are Elections Fair to People With Special Needs? (by Papiya Bhattacharya, New Indian Express, April 8, 2014).
Enabling Elections (Vijay Karnataka, April 9, 2014). This was published in Kannada.

Access to Knowledge

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.

WIPO SCCR

Participation in Events

Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights: Twenty-Seventh Session (organized by WIPO, Geneva, April 28 – May 2, 2014). Nehaa Chaudhari participated in the event. France, Greece, India and the European Union signed the Marrakesh Treaty. CIS delivered statements on Technological Measures of Protection on Limitations and Exceptions for Libraries and Archives, Orphan Works, Retracted and Withdrawn Works, and Works out of Commerce on Limitations and Exceptions for Libraries and Archives, and on the WIPO Proposed Treaty for the Protection of Broadcasting Organizations. Transcripts of the discussions can be accessed here.

Blog Entries

Report on CDIP-12 (by Puneeth Nagraj, April 22, 2014).
Signing and Ratification of the Marrakesh Treaty to Facilitate Access to Published Works for Persons who are Blind, Visually Impaired, or Otherwise Print Disabled (by Nehaa Chaudhari, April 25, 2014).
Report on the WIPO Director General’s Meeting with NGO’s (by Puneeth Nagraj, April 30, 2014).

Media Coverage

Is the WIPO Treaty for Broadcasters Moving Forward at SCCR 27? (by Manon Ress, Knowledge Ecology International, April 29, 2014).
At WIPO, Authors, Civil Society Watchful of Rights for Broadcasters (by Catherine Saez, IP Watch, May 1, 2014).

Other

Event Organized

NASA International Space Apps Challenge 2014 (CIS, Bangalore, April 12 – 13, 2014).

Blog Entries

Online Survey for Indian Mobile App Developer Startups & Enterprises (by Samantha Cassar, April 9, 2014).
App Developers Series: Services, Products, Dichotomy & IP – Part I (by Samantha Cassar, April 10, 2014).
Report on CDIP-12 (by Puneeth Nagraj, April 22, 2014).
Report on the 31st Session of the Standing Committee on Trademarks (by Puneeth Nagraj, April 29, 2014).

Wikipedia

The following has been done under grant from the Wikimedia Foundation:

Announcement

CIS Signs MoU with Mysore University (by Dr. U.B.Pavanaja, April 16, 2014): for converting to Unicode and re-releasing their encyclopaedia under Creative Commons License. Dr. U.B. Pavanaja on behalf of the CIS-A2K team signed the MoU. The signing event took place earlier on February 22, 2014.

Articles

Vachana Sanchaya: Bringing Access to 11th century Kannada Literature (by Subhashish Panigrahi, April 3, 2014)
୭୯ ବର୍ଷରେ ସ୍ୱତନ୍ତ୍ର ଓଡ଼ିଶା: ଶାସ୍ତ୍ରୀୟ ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଓ କମ୍ପ୍ୟୁଟରରେ ଏହାର ବ୍ୟବ‌ହାର (by Subhashish Panigrahi, Amalekha, April 4, 2014).
ଓଡ଼ିଅା ଭାଷାର ବିକାଶ ଓ କମ୍ପ୍ୟୁଟର (by Subhashish Panigrahi, The Kadambini, April 8, 2014).
Report from India: Relicensing books under CC (by Subhashish Panigrahi, Creative Commons Blog, April 19, 2014).
14 Odia books re-released under Creative Commons license (by Subhashish Panigrahi, DNA, April 26, 2014). The article was edited by Rohini Lakshane.

Events Organized

Tulu Wikipedia Workshop (organized by CIS-A2K, Balmatta Computer Centre, Mangalore, April 5, 2014). Dr. U.B.Pavanaja conducted the workshop.
Konkani Wikipedia Workshop (co-organized by All India Konkani Writers Organization and CIS-A2K, Kalaangann Shaktinagar, April 6, 2014). Dr. U.B.Pavanaja conducted the workshop.
Tulu Wikipedia Editathon (co-organized by Karnataka Theological College and CIS-A2K, Mangalore, April 19, 2014). Dr. U.B.Pavanaja conducted the workshop.

Participation in Events

Wikipedia Session for Trainee Journos (organized by Prajavani, Bangalore, April 28, 2014). Dr. U.B.Pavanaja took a session for the trainee journalists of Prajavani Kannada daily on Wikipedia.
World Book Day (organized by Karnataka Publishers’ Association, Indian Institute of World Culture, Basavanagudi, Bangalore, April 23, 2014). Dr. U.B.Pavanaja was a speaker.
Relevance of Bhagabat Tungi in the evolution of Odia language from Buddha era to digital age (organized by The Intellects, Shree Jagannath Mandir and Odisha Art and Cultural Center, New Delhi, April 24, 2014). Subhashish Panigrahi participated in the event.

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

M'lore: Wikipedia Workshop held for Konkani writers (Daijiworld, April 6, 2014).
Odia Loves Wikipedia (Rising Voices, April 10, 2014). This was also published in Spanish and in Russian.
International Book Day (The Hindu, April 21, 2014).
Books are a bridge between generations (The Deccan Herald, April 23, 2014).
World Book Day Report (Vijaywani, April 23, 2014).
Seminar on Odia Language in New Delhi by the Intellects (Odisha Samachar, April 24, 2014).
Delhi meet focuses on Bhagabat Tungi revival (The Pioneer, April 26, 2014).

Internet Governance

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.

NETmundial

As part of its participation in the NETmundial event organized in Brazil by Brazilian Internet Steering Committee in partnership with /1Net at Sao Paulo on April 23 and 24, 2014 CIS produced a total of 16 outputs:

Sumandro Chattapadhyay produced these visual representations: Comparing Appearance of Fifty Most Frequent Words, Contributions by Countries of Origin, Contributions by Types of Organisation, Which Countries Have Not Submitted Contributions to NETmundial?, Which Governments Have Not Submitted Contributions to NETmundial?, Word Clouds of Contributions by Types of Organisation and Tracking *Multistakeholder* across Contributions. Achal Prabhala participated in the event and wrote these: Day 0, Day 1, and Day 2. Transcript of the NETmundial for archival purposes was made available by Pranesh Prakash. Smarika Kumar produced two research outputs: NETmundial and Suggestions for IANA Administration and Accountability of ICANN. Geetha Hariharan wrote two blog posts: Marco Civil da Internet: Brazil’s ‘Internet Constitution’ and Brazil passes Marco Civil; the US-FCC Alters its Stance on Net Neutrality. Jyoti Panday wrote one blog post: NETmundial Roadmap: Defining the Roles of Stakeholders in Multistakeholderism.

Privacy

Analyses

Report of the Group of Experts on Privacy vs. The Leaked 2014 Privacy Bill (by Elonnai Hickok, April 14, 2014).
Banking Policy Guide (by Elonnai Hickok, April 22, 2014).
The Embodiment of the Right to Privacy within Domestic Legislation (by Tanvi Mani, April 29, 2014).

Articles

Who Governs the Internet? Implications for Freedom and National Security (by Sunil Abraham, Yojana, April 4, 2014).
Privacy Law in India: A Muddled Field – I (by Bhairav Acharya, The Hoot, April 15, 2014).
Very Big Brother (by Sunil Abraham, GeneWatch, January – April 2014 Issue).

Blog Entry

South African Protection of Personal Information Act, 2013 (by Divij Joshi, April 16, 2014).

Participation in Events

Milton Wolf Seminar on Media and Diplomacy: The Third Man Theme Revisited: Foreign Policies of the Internet in a Time Of Surveillance and Disclosure (jointly organized by the Center for Global Communication Studies (CGCS) at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication, the American Austrian Foundation (AAF), and the Diplomatic Academy of Vienna (DA), Vienna, March 30 – April 1, 2014). Nishant Shah participated in the event as a panelist.
GSMA Partners Meeting (organized by Privacy International, London, April 9, 2014). Elonnai Hickok participated in this meeting.
The Critical Life of Information (organized by Yale University, 100 Wall Street, April 11, 2014). Nishant Shah spoke in the panel on Big Data and Governance. Malavika Jayaram spoke in the panel on Big Data and the Arts.
Round-table on User Safety on the Internet (organized by Consumer Voice and Google, Infantry Road, Bangalore, April 24, 2014).
6th Biannual Surveillance and Society Conference (organized by Eticas Research and Consulting, University of Barcelona and CCCB, April 26 – 24, 2014). Malavika Jayaram gave a talk on “Biometrics in beta: experimenting on a nation (while normalising surveillance for 1.2 billion people)”.

Other

Articles

Between the Local and the Global: Notes Towards Thinking the Nature of Internet Policy (by Nishant Shah, cgcsblog, April 1, 2014).
Networks: What You Don’t See is What You (for)Get (by Nishant Shah, April 17, 2014).

News & Media Coverage

CIS gave its inputs to the following media coverage:

Two Indians in Global Commission on Web Governance (April 1, 2014): Sunil Abraham was named as one of the experts. This was published in Outlook, Economic Times, and in Matters India.
The Take Down of Free Speech Online (Newslaundry, April 1, 2014): CIS research on Intermediary Liabilities is quoted.
The politics of Facebook (by Shweta Tiwari, April 1, 2014).
New privacy Bill more refined & has wider ambit, say experts (by Surabhi Agarwal, Business Standard, April 2, 2014).
Should Nandan Nilekani's Aadhaar project, for identity proof and welfare delivery, exist at all? (by M. Rajshekhar, April 3, 2014).
Lok sabha polls: Social media companies launch special pages for polls (by Varuni Khosla, Economic Times, April 10, 2014).
Parties give short shrift to privacy (by Pratap Vikram Singh, GovernanceNow.com, April 12, 2014).
No party's got a clear stand, Aadhaar's fate hangs in balance (by Pratap Vikram Singh, GovernanceNow.com, April 13, 2014).
'India wants core internet infrastructure' (by Indrani Bagchi, April 24, 2014).
India for inclusive internet governance (by Indrani Bagchi, April 25, 2014).
Facebook launches FB Newswire for journalists; loses part of its immunity under IT Act 2000 (by Amrita Madhukalya, DNA, April 26, 2014).

Digital Humanities

CIS is building research clusters in the field of Digital Humanities. The Digital will be used as a way of unpacking the debates in humanities and social sciences and look at the new frameworks, concepts and ideas that emerge in our engagement with the digital. The clusters aim to produce and document new conversations and debates that shape the contours of Digital Humanities in Asia:

Blog Entries

Confession in the Digital Age (by Rimi Nandy, April 14, 2014).
Animating the Archive – A Survey of Printed Digitized Materials in Bengali and their Use in Higher Education (by Saidul Haque, April 14, 2014).
‘Doing’ Digital Humanities: Reflections on a project on Online Feminism in India (by Sujatha Subramanian, April 14, 2014).
The Machinistic Paradigm Collapse (by Anirudh Sridhar, April 14, 2014).
Exploring the Digital Landscape: An Overview (by P.P.Sneha, April 14, 2014).
Digital Humanities and the Problem of Definition (by P.P.Sneha, April 25, 2014).

Digital Natives

CIS is doing a research project titled “Making Change”. The project will explore new ways of defining, locating, and understanding change in network societies. Having the thought piece 'Whose Change is it Anyway' as an entry point for discussion and reflection, the project will feature profiles, interviews and responses of change-makers to questions around current mechanisms and practices of change in South Asia and South East Asia:

Making Change Project

Blog Entry

Multimedia Storytellers: Panel Discussion (by Denisse Albornoz, April 16, 2014).
From Taboo to Beautiful – Menstrupedia (by Denisse Albornoz, April 30, 2014).

Telecom

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:

Event Organized

Tech Talk: Landscape of Wireless Communications & Electromagnetic Spectrum (CIS, Bangalore, April 28, 2014). A. Radha Krishna gave a talk on wireless communication technologies.

About CIS

► Follow us elsewhere

Twitter: https://twitter.com/CISA2K
Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/cisa2k
Visit us at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Access_To_Knowledge
E-mail: a2k@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, and theoreticians, both organisationally and as individuals, to collaboratively engage with Internet and society and improve our understanding of this new field. To discuss the research collaborations, write to Sunil Abraham, Executive Director, at sunil@cis-india.org or Nishant Shah, Director – Research, at nishant@cis-india.org. To discuss collaborations on Indic language Wikipedia, write to T. Vishnu Vardhan, Programme Director, A2K, at vishnu@cis-india.org.

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

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/april-2014-bulletin

Wikipedia Session for Trainee Journos of Prajavani

praskrishna — 2014-05-06T07:50:44Z

Dr. U.B.Pavanaja took a session for the trainee journalists of Prajavani Kannada daily on Wikipedia, Kannada Wikipedia for the media persons.

Dr. Pavanaja explained how they can use Wikipedia in their daily work for reference. He also explained the necessity to add content to Kannada Wikipedia, correct the articles if they find any factual errors, enhance the existing articles, especially stubs, etc.

The event was organized by Prajavani on April 28, 2014.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/wiki-session-for-prajavani-journalists

Centre for Internet and Society

Openness

Free and Open Software

FOSS in India

Open Standards

Case Study: Digital Colonialism

Open Content

Wikipedia

Open Access

Open (Government) Data

Comments on the Open Licensing Policy Guidelines of the National Mission on Education through Information and Communication Technology

I. PRELIMINARY

II. SECTION-WISE COMMENTS

CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS

Indic Language Wikipedias as Open Educational Resources

CIS Signs MoU with Shri Dharmasthala Manjunatheshwara College

GLAM in India: 10 tips for successful GLAM projects

Subhashish Panigrahi joins Open GLAM Working Group

OpenGLAM Working Group

Open GLAM Local

Tulu Wikipedia Workshop at Udupi

Community led Konkani Wikipedia Outreach

Wikipedia in UG Education program at Christ University

Pushing the Boundaries in Open Governance: Insights from OGP Asia Pacific Regional Conference in Bali, Indonesia (Day 1)

OGP Asia Pacific Regional Conference

Books and More are Relicensed to Creative Commons

Relicensing projects

Access to Knowledge Bulletin — May 2014

Articles

Blog Entry

Event Organized

News and Media Coverage

About CIS

April 2014 Bulletin

Highlights

NVDA

National Resource Kit

Other

WIPO SCCR

Other

Wikipedia

NETmundial

Privacy

Other

Making Change Project

Wikipedia Session for Trainee Journos of Prajavani