Centre for Internet and Society

October 2011 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2012-07-25T04:53:06Z

Welcome to the Centre for Internet and Society newsletter! In this issue we bring you the updates of our research, events, media coverage and videos of some past events organized by us during October 2011.

Digital Natives

Digital Natives with a Cause? examines the changing landscape of social change and political participation in light of the role that young people play through digital and Internet technologies, in emerging information societies. Consolidating knowledge from Asia, Africa and Latin America, it builds a global network of knowledge partners who critically engage with discourse on youth, technology and social change, and look at alternative practices and ideas in the Global South:

Key Research

On Fooling Around: Digital Natives and Politics in Asia
by Nishant Shah, Director-Research
Youths are not only actively participating in the politics of its times but also changing the way in which we understand the political processes of mobilisation, participation and transformation, writes Nishant. The paper was presented at the Digital Cultures in Asia conference at the Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan.

Links in the Chain

Analog Relics in the Digital Age, volume 8, issue 4
Guest Editor: Nilofar Ansher
“The scale of inventions has not really leaped, so much as mutated. We had Twitter and Facebook ... (remember notice boards, community centers and pamphlets); they just weren’t so instant, hyperlinked and global in scale. We still use the medium of a mouthpiece and speaker to talk to each other long distance, the difference is in the changed aesthetics of the 21st century – it’s all squarish curves and scratch-proof glass that are more appealing today. Blackboards, writing material, listening devices and memory aids have undergone unprecedented transformations of function and usage, but it’s still about having a blank canvas to write upon with a chalk, pen, paper or iClick”, writes Nilofar in this issue of the Digital Natives newsletter.

Articles/Columns

In Search of the Other: Decoding Digital Natives: Nishant Shah charts the trajectories of our research at the Centre for Internet and Society (Bangalore, India) and Hivos (The Hague, The Netherlands) to see how alternative models of understanding these relationships can be built. This blog post by Nishant Shah was published in DML central on 24 October 2011.

Staff Quoted in the Media

The Write Stuff , Deccan Chronicle, 14 November 2011. Nishant Shah has been quoted in this article.

Accessibility

Publication

e-Accessibility Policy Handbook for Persons with Disabilities (Russian Version)
Edited by Nirmita Narasimhan
The e-Accessibility Policy Handbook for Persons with Disabilities is now available in Russian. The handbook is a joint publication of ITU, G3ict and the Centre for Internet and Society, in cooperation with the Hans Foundation. Dr. Hamadoun I. Toure, Secretary-General, International Telecommunication Union wrote the preface, Dr. Sami Al-Basheer, Director, ITU-D wrote the introduction and Axel Leblois, Executive Director, G3ict wrote the foreword.

Blog Entry

The case for Accessible Banking by Dinesh Kaushal.

Access to Knowledge

The Access to Knowledge programme addresses the harms caused to consumers, developing countries, human rights, and creativity/innovation from excessive regimes of copyright, patents, and other such monopolistic rights over knowledge:

Key Research

Of Jesters, Clowns and Pranksters: YouTube and the Condition of Collaborative Authorship
by Nishant Shah, Director-Research, Centre for Internet and Society
The idea of a single author creating cinematic objects in a well-controlled scheme of support system and production/distribution infrastructure has been fundamentally challenged by the emergence of digital video sharing sites like YouTube, writes Nishant in this essay published in the Journal of Moving Images.

Openness

The 'Openness' programme critically examines alternatives to existing regimes of intellectual property rights, and transparency and accountability. Under this programme, we study Open Government Data, Open Access to Scholarly Literature, Open Access to Law, Open Content, Open Standards, and Free/Libre/Open Source Software:

Featured Research

Know Your Users, Match their Needs!
As Free Access to Law initiatives in the Global South enter into a new stage of maturity, they must be certain not to lose sight of their users’ needs. This blog post gives a summary of the “Good Practices Handbook”, a research output of the collaborative project Free Access to Law — Is it Here to Stay? undertaken by LexUM (Canada) and the South African Legal Institute in partnership with the Centre for Internet and Society. Rebecca Schild and Prashant Iyengar from CIS were part of the research team.

Event Organised

Open Access to Academic Knowledge, organised by the Indian Institute of Science and CIS at National Centre for Science Information, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore on 2 November 2011. Tom Dane participated in this event.

Event Participated

3rd Canadian Science Policy Conference, organised by Canadian Science Policy Conference from16 to 18 November 2011 at the Ottawa Convention Centre. Sunil Abraham spoke in the session on Global Implications of Open and Inclusive Innovation.

Announcement

The Wikimedia India Program Trust. A new entity, the “Wikimedia India Program Trust”, has been registered in Delhi. Sunil is a trustee.

Internet Governance

The Internet Governance programme conducts research around the various social, technical, and political underpinnings of global and national Internet governance, and includes online privacy, freedom of speech, and Internet governance mechanisms and processes:

Comments / Submissions

CIS Comments on Finance Committee Statements to Open Letters on Unique Identity: The Parliamentary Finance Committee responded to the six open letters sent by CIS through an email on 12 October 2011. CIS has commented on the points raised by the Committee.
Comments on the National Policy of Information Technology: The NPIT 2011 has the laudable goal of making India a ‘knowledge economy with a global role’ by developing and deploying ICT solutions in all sectors to foster development within India and at a global level. CIS appreciates this initiative of the Department of Information Technology and offers brief comments to strengthen the draft.
CIS Comments on the Draft National Policy on Electronics: CIS submitted its comments to the request for comments put out by the Department of Information Technology on its draft 'National Policy on Electronics'.

Statement

India's Statement Proposing UN Committee for Internet-Related Policy: India made its statement at the 66th session of the United Nations General Assembly, its proposal for the UN Committee for Internet-Related Policy was presented.

Podcast

Professor Balaram talks Open Access : Tom Dane spoke with Professor P Balaram, Director of the Indian Institute of Science about the Open Access movement. A podcast of the interview is available for download.

Event Report

The 2nd IJLT-CIS Lecture Series — A Post-event Report : The 2nd IJLT-CIS Lecture Series was organised by the Indian Journal of Law and Technology and CIS on the 21st and 22nd of May 2011 at the National Law School of India University, Nagarbhavi, Bangalore. The main theme for this year was Emerging Issues in Privacy Law: Law, Policy and Practice.

Peer Review

Material Cyborgs; Asserted Boundaries
by Nishant Shah, Director-Research
Nishant explores the possibility of formulating the cyborg as an author or translator who is able to navigate between the different binaries of ‘meat–machine’, ‘digital–physical’, and ‘body–self’, using the abilities and the capabilities learnt in one system in an efficient and effective understanding of the other. The essay was published in the European Journal of English Studies, Volume 12, Issue 2.

Articles / Columns

What is Dilligaf? On the web, time moves at the speed of thought: Groups emerge, proliferate and are abandoned as new trends and fads take precedence. Nowhere else is this dramatic flux as apparent as in the language that evolves online. While SMS lingo – like TTYL (Talk To You Later) and LOL (Laughing Out Loud)– has endured and become a part of everyday language, new forms of speech are taking over. This article by Nishant Shah was published in GQ India.
The Book of Jobs The man who made the computer personal, who changed the face of the digital media industry, who was inspired by Zen philosophy to create an eight-billion-dollar empire, Steve Jobs, died last month. Just a few weeks before his death, in the midst of his painful illness, he told Walter Isaacson, the man chosen to write his authorised biography, “I really want to believe that something survives”. And Isaacson wrote him a fairy tale which will make sure that Jobs will be remembered beyond the gizmos and gimmicks, writes Nishant Shah in this article published in the Indian Express on 12 November 2011.

Staff Quoted in the Media

Is Facebook tracking your virtual footprints? by Sheetal Sukhija in MidDay, 22 November 2011. Sunil Abraham was quoted in this article.
M-governance gains momentum by Vasudha Venugopal in the Hindu, 20 November 2011.
Learn it Yourself: The peer-to-peer world of online learning encourages conversations and reciprocal learning, writes Nishant Shah. The article was published by the Indian Express on 30 October 2011. Nishant Shah is quoted in this article.
SOPA: The bill that could kill the Internet by Suw Charman-Anderson in Firstpost.Technology, 16 November 2011.
Broadband user base still has a long way to go, by Leslie D’Monte & Deepti Chaudhary in Livemint, 15 November 2011. Sunil Abraham has been quoted in this article.
Not mandatory’ but maids, guards get fingerprinted by Hemanth Kashyap in Bangalore Mirror, 9 November 2011. Sunil Abraham has been quoted in this article.
Netizen Report: Transparency Edition by Rebecca MacKinnon in Global Voices Online, 7 November 2011.
Blocking online content: Google gets more requests than govt by Pallavi Polanki in Firstpost.com, 2 November 2011. Pranesh Prakash has been quoted in this article.

Blog Entries

Sources of CIS Funding by Pranesh Prakash on 9 November 2011.

TRAI urged to take action against P2P throttling and DNS hijacking by Anand on 9 November 2011.

Events Organised

Exposing Data: Art Slash Activism organised by Tactical Tech and CIS at CIS office in Bangalore on 28 November 2011. Ward Smith and Stephanie Hankey (Co-founders of TTC), Ayisha Abraham (Filmmaker, Srishti School of Art Design) and Zainab Bawa (Research Fellow, CIS) gave a lecture.
Droidcon India, first Android Conference in Bangalore, organised by CIS in collaboration with Droidcon.com, Bangalore Android User Group, MobileMonday Bangalore and Android Advices on 18 and 19 November 2011 at the MLR Convention Centre, Bangalore.

Events Participated

Western Ghats Portal: Workshop on Biodiversity Informatics organised by the Western Ghats Portal team at the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and Environment, 25 November 2011. Sunil Abraham spoke in the session on Scientific Commons and Policy.
Names Not Numbers Mumbai, 26 November 2011. Nishant Shah spoke in a panel on “The New Digital Individual: Is New Technology Liberating or Enslaving?”. The event was organised by Editorial Intelligence and partners which included the British Council and Financial Times, BBC World News, Mumbai first, Vodafone, Trident and Godrej India Cultural Lab.

Video

Facebook Resistance Workshop at CIS. This was a workshop for people to learn on how to think beyond the rules and limitations of Facebook, to tweak and play around the features and design to generate useful, creative, and funny concepts and explore how this creative intervention can be turned into a real software developed by the Facebook Resistance.

Telecom

While the potential for growth and returns exist for telecommunications in India, a range of issues need to be addressed. One aspect is more extensive rural coverage and the other is a countrywide access to broadband which is low. Both require effective and efficient use of networks and resources, including spectrum:

Article / Column

Telecom Path-Breaker?
Does the draft National Telecom Policy-2011 reflect true brilliance or smoke-and-mirrors? It will be a game-changer if a shared network is implemented effectively, writes Shyam Ponappa in this article published in the Business Standard on 3 November 2011.

Follow us elsewhere

Get short, timely messages from us on Twitter
Join the CIS group on Facebook
Visit our website here

CIS is grateful to 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/october-2011-bulletin

November 2011 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2012-07-24T02:37:09Z

Digital Natives with a Cause?

Key Research

On Fooling Around: Digital Natives and Politics in Asia
by Nishant Shah, Director-Research
Youths are not only actively participating in the politics of its times but also changing the way in which we understand the political processes of mobilisation, participation and transformation, writes Nishant. The paper was presented at the Digital Cultures in Asia conference at the Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan.

Links in the Chain

Analog Relics in the Digital Age, volume 8, issue 4
Guest Editor: Nilofar Ansher
“The scale of inventions has not really leaped, so much as mutated. We had Twitter and Facebook ... (remember notice boards, community centers and pamphlets); they just weren’t so instant, hyperlinked and global in scale. We still use the medium of a mouthpiece and speaker to talk to each other long distance, the difference is in the changed aesthetics of the 21st century – it’s all squarish curves and scratch-proof glass that are more appealing today. Blackboards, writing material, listening devices and memory aids have undergone unprecedented transformations of function and usage, but it’s still about having a blank canvas to write upon with a chalk, pen, paper or iClick”, writes Nilofar in this issue of the Digital Natives newsletter.

Articles/Columns

In Search of the Other: Decoding Digital Natives: Nishant Shah charts the trajectories of our research at the Centre for Internet and Society (Bangalore, India) and Hivos (The Hague, The Netherlands) to see how alternative models of understanding these relationships can be built. This blog post by Nishant Shah was published in DML central on 24 October 2011.

Staff Quoted in the Media

The Write Stuff, Deccan Chronicle, 14 November 2011. Nishant Shah has been quoted in this article.

Pathways for Learning in Higher Education

The Pathways Project for Learning in Higher Education is a collaboration between the Higher Education Innovation and Research Applications (HEIRA) at the Centre for the Study of Culture and Society (CSCS) and the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS). The project is supported by the Ford Foundation and works with disadvantaged students in 9 undergraduate colleges in Maharashtra, Karnataka and Kerala, to explore relationships between Technologies, Higher Education and the new forms of social justice in India.

Article Published by the Media

Learn it Yourself: The peer-to-peer world of online learning encourages conversations and reciprocal learning, writes Nishant Shah. The article was published by the Indian Express on 30 October 2011.

Video of Event Participated

Mobility Shifts 2011 — An International Future of Learning Summit: The summit was organised by the New School and sponsored by MacArthur Foundation and Mozilla. It was held from October 10 to October 16, 2011 at the New School, New York City. Nishant Shah participated in the summit and spoke on Digital Outcasts: Social Justice, Technology and Learning in India. The video of the event is online.

Accessibility

Estimates of the percentage of the world's population that is disabled vary considerably. But what is certain is that if we count functional disability, then a large proportion of the world's population is disabled in one way or another. At CIS we work to ensure that the digital technologies, which empower disabled people and provide them with independence, are allowed to do so in practice and by the law. To this end, we support web accessibility guidelines, and change in copyright laws that currently disempower the persons with disabilities.

Publication

e-Accessibility Policy Handbook for Persons with Disabilities (Russian Version)
Edited by Nirmita Narasimhan
The e-Accessibility Policy Handbook for Persons with Disabilities is now available in Russian. The handbook is a joint publication of ITU, G3ict and the Centre for Internet and Society, in cooperation with the Hans Foundation. Dr. Hamadoun I. Toure, Secretary-General, International Telecommunication Union wrote the preface. Dr. Sami Al-Basheer, Director, ITU-D wrote the introduction and Axel Leblois, Executive Director, G3ict wrote the foreword.

Blog Post

The case for Accessible Banking by Dinesh Kaushal.

Access to Knowledge

Key Research

Of Jesters, Clowns and Pranksters: YouTube and the Condition of Collaborative Authorship
by Nishant Shah, Director-Research, Centre for Internet and Society
The idea of a single author creating cinematic objects in a well-controlled scheme of support system and production/distribution infrastructure has been fundamentally challenged by the emergence of digital video sharing sites like YouTube, writes Nishant Shah in this essay published in the Journal of Moving Images.

Blog Posts

CIS Hosts Scanned Version of George Orwell’s Books vs. Cigarettes

Comments / Statement

CIS Intervention on Future Work of the WIPO Advisory Committee on Enforcement: The seventh session of the World Intellectual Property Organization's Advisory Committee on Enforcement (ACE) is being held in Geneva on November 30 and December 1, 2011. Pranesh Prakash intervened during the discussion of future work of the ACE with this comment.
Comment by CIS at ACE on Presentation on French Charter on the Fight against Cyber-Counterfeiting: The seventh session of the World Intellectual Property Organization's Advisory Committee on Enforcement is being held in Geneva on November 30 and December 1, 2011. Pranesh Prakash responded to a presentation by Prof. Pierre Sirinelli of the École de droit de la Sorbonne, Université Paris 1 on 'The French Charter on the Fight against Cyber-Counterfeiting of December 16, 2009' with this comment.
Statement of CIS on the WIPO Broadcast Treaty at the 23rd SCCR: The twenty-third session of the Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights is being held in Geneva from November 22, 2011 to December 2, 2011. Pranesh Prakash delivered this statement on a new proposal made by South Africa and Mexico (SCCR/23/6) on a treaty for broadcasters.

Openness

The 'Openness' programme critically examines alternatives to existing regimes of intellectual property rights, and transparency and accountability. Under this programme, we study Open Government Data, Open Access to Scholarly Literature, Open Content, Open Standards, Open Access to Law, and Free/Libre/Open Source Software:

Featured Research

Know Your Users, Match their Needs!
As Free Access to Law initiatives in the Global South enter into a new stage of maturity, they must be certain not to lose sight of their users’ needs. This blog post gives a summary of the “Good Practices Handbook”, a research output of the collaborative project Free Access to Law — Is it Here to Stay? undertaken by LexUM (Canada) and the South African Legal Institute in partnership with the Centre for Internet and Society. Rebecca Schild and Prashant Iyengar from CIS were part of the research team.

Event Organised

Open Access to Academic Knowledge, organised by the Indian Institute of Science and CIS at National Centre for Science Information, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore on 2 November 2011. Tom Dane participated in this event.

Event Participated

3rd Canadian Science Policy Conference, organised by Canadian Science Policy Conference from16 to 18 November 2011 at the Ottawa Convention Centre. Sunil Abraham spoke in the session on Global Implications of Open and Inclusive Innovation.

Announcement

The Wikimedia India Program Trust. A new entity, the “Wikimedia India Program Trust”, has been registered in Delhi. Sunil Abraham is one of the trustees.

Internet Governance

Comments / Submissions

CIS Comments on Finance Committee Statements to Open Letters on Unique Identity: The Parliamentary Finance Committee responded to the six open letters sent by CIS through an email on 12 October 2011. CIS has commented on the points raised by the Committee.
Comments on the National Policy of Information Technology: The NPIT 2011 has the laudable goal of making India a ‘knowledge economy with a global role’ by developing and deploying ICT solutions in all sectors to foster development within India and at a global level. CIS appreciates this initiative of the Department of Information Technology and offers brief comments to strengthen the draft.
CIS Comments on the Draft National Policy on Electronics: CIS submitted its comments to the request for comments put out by the Department of Information Technology on its draft 'National Policy on Electronics'.

Statement

India's Statement Proposing UN Committee for Internet-Related Policy: India made its statement at the 66th session of the United Nations General Assembly, its proposal for the UN Committee for Internet-Related Policy was presented.

Podcast

Professor Balaram talks Open Access : Tom Dane spoke with Professor P Balaram, Director of the Indian Institute of Science about the Open Access movement. A podcast of the interview is online.

Event Report

The 2nd IJLT-CIS Lecture Series — A Post-event Report : The 2nd IJLT-CIS Lecture Series was organised by the Indian Journal of Law and Technology and CIS on the 21st and 22nd of May 2011 at the National Law School of India University, Nagarbhavi, Bangalore. The main theme for this year was Emerging Issues in Privacy Law: Law, Policy and Practice.

Essay in Peer Reviewed Journal

Material Cyborgs; Asserted Boundaries
by Nishant Shah, Director-Research
Nishant explores the possibility of formulating the cyborg as an author or translator who is able to navigate between the different binaries of ‘meat–machine’, ‘digital–physical’, and ‘body–self’, using the abilities and the capabilities learnt in one system in an efficient and effective understanding of the other. The essay was published in the European Journal of English Studies, Volume 12, Issue 2.

Articles/Columns

What is Dilligaf? On the web, time moves at the speed of thought: Groups emerge, proliferate and are abandoned as new trends and fads take precedence. Nowhere else is this dramatic flux as apparent as in the language that evolves online. While SMS lingo – like TTYL (Talk To You Later) and LOL (Laughing Out Loud)– has endured and become a part of everyday language, new forms of speech are taking over. This article by Nishant Shah was published in GQ India.
The Book of Jobs The man who made the computer personal, who changed the face of the digital media industry, who was inspired by Zen philosophy to create an eight-billion-dollar empire, Steve Jobs, died last month. Just a few weeks before his death, in the midst of his painful illness, he told Walter Isaacson, the man chosen to write his authorised biography, “I really want to believe that something survives”. And Isaacson wrote him a fairy tale which will make sure that Jobs will be remembered beyond the gizmos and gimmicks, writes Nishant Shah in this article published in the Indian Express on 12 November 2011.

Staff Quoted in the Media

Is Facebook tracking your virtual footprints? by Sheetal Sukhija in MidDay, 22 November 2011. Sunil Abraham was quoted in this article.
M-governance gains momentum by Vasudha Venugopal in the Hindu, 20 November 2011. Nishant Shah was quoted in this article.
SOPA: The bill that could kill the Internet by Suw Charman-Anderson in Firstpost.Technology, 16 November 2011.
Broadband user base still has a long way to go, by Leslie D’Monte & Deepti Chaudhary in Livemint, 15 November 2011. Sunil Abraham has been quoted in this article.
‘Not mandatory’ but maids, guards get fingerprinted by Hemanth Kashyap in Bangalore Mirror, 9 November 2011. Sunil Abraham has been quoted in this article.
Netizen Report: Transparency Edition by Rebecca MacKinnon in Global Voices Online, 7 November 2011.
Blocking online content: Google gets more requests than govt by Pallavi Polanki in Firstpost.com, 2 November 2011. Pranesh Prakash has been quoted in this article.

Blog Posts

Sources of CIS Funding by Pranesh Prakash on 9 November 2011.

TRAI urged to take action against P2P throttling and DNS hijacking by Anand on 9 November 2011.

Events Organised

Exposing Data: Art Slash Activism organised by Tactical Tech and CIS at CIS office in Bangalore on 28 November 2011. Ward Smith and Stephanie Hankey (Co-founders of TTC), Ayisha Abraham (Filmmaker, Srishti School of Art Design) and Zainab Bawa (Research Fellow, CIS) gave a lecture.

Droidcon India, first Android Conference in Bangalore, organised by CIS in collaboration with Droidcon.com, Bangalore Android User Group, MobileMonday Bangalore and Android Advices on 18 and 19 November 2011 at the MLR Convention Centre, Bangalore.

Events Participated

Western Ghats Portal: Workshop on Biodiversity Informatics organised by the Western Ghats Portal team at the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and Environment, 25 November 2011. Sunil Abraham spoke in the session on Scientific Commons and Policy.
Names Not Numbers Mumbai, 26 November 2011. Nishant Shah spoke in a panel on “The New Digital Individual: Is New Technology Liberating or Enslaving?”. The event was organised by Editorial Intelligence and partners which included the British Council and Financial Times, BBC World News, Mumbai first, Vodafone, Trident and Godrej India Cultural Lab.

Upcoming Events

Dialogue Cafe @ Centre for Internet and Society, 2 December 2011, Centre for Internet & Society, 4 p.m. to 6 p.m.
The High Level Privacy Conclave, 3 February 2011, Paharpur Business Centre, Nehru Place Greens New Delhi, 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. This is a closed-door meeting. For participation, get in touch with Elonnai (elonnai@cis-india.org).
All India Privacy Symposium, 4 February 2011, India International Centre, New Delhi. This is a public meeting. For participation, get in touch with Elonnai (elonnai@cis-india.org).

Video

Facebook Resistance Workshop at CIS. This was a workshop for people to learn on how to think beyond the rules and limitations of Facebook, to tweak and play around the features and design to generate useful, creative, and funny concepts and explore how this creative intervention can be turned into a real software developed by the Facebook Resistance.

Telecom

Column

Telecom Path-Breaker? (by Shyam Ponappa): Does the draft National Telecom Policy-2011 reflect true brilliance or smoke-and-mirrors? It will be a game-changer if a shared network is implemented effectively, writes Shyam Ponappa in this article published in the Business Standard on 3 November 2011.

Follow us elsewhere

Get short, timely messages from us on Twitter
Follow CIS on identi.ca
Join the CIS group on Facebook\
Visit us at www.cis-india.org

CIS is grateful to 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/november-2011-bulletin

December 2011 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2012-07-23T08:35:03Z

Welcome to the newsletter issue of December 2011. This issue carries a special section on Freedom of Expression as there was much discussion regarding the Union Minister for Communications and Information Technology, Mr. Kapil Sibal’s proposal for pro-active censorship of social media.

Digital Natives with a Cause?

Digital Natives with a Cause? is a knowledge programme initiated by CIS, India and Hivos, Netherlands. It is a research inquiry that seeks to look at the changing landscapes of social change and political participation and the role that young people play through digital and internet technologies, in emerging information societies. The collaboration has produced a four book collective around ‘digital revolutions’ in a post Arab spring world, a position paper, a scouting report and three international workshops in Taipei, Johannesburg and Santiago.

Blog Entry

The Digital Other: Nishant Shah raises his concerns that increasingly, Digital Natives are acting as pure consumers of technology and gadgets, and seem willing to do so. The blog post was published in DML Central, 14 December 2011.

Events

Digital Native Video Contest, jointly organised by CIS and Hivos. Submission guidelines and FAQs are online. Submit your proposal online by 26 January 2012.
Digital AlterNatives Tweet-a-Review, 17 – 26 December 2011: 'Digital Natives with a Cause?' Project invites readers to review essays from the 'Digital AlterNatives with a Cause', a four-book collective published by Centre for Internet & Society and Hivos.

Book Reviews

Unpacking Digital Natives from their Shiny Packaging: “The ‘Digital Natives’ concept is neither necessarily nor inherently positive, as YiPing Tsou highlights in her chapter Digital Natives in the Name of a Cause: From Flash Mob to "Human Flesh Search.” — Argyri Panezi
On Natives, Norms and Knowledge: “It is a text I strongly recommend, especially to those interested in the reasons behind contemporary policies that try to regulate digital activism such as the US SOPA Act.” — Philip Ketzel
Digital Native: Twin Manifestations or Co-Located Hybrids: “Ben-David’s piece is a well-articulated and informed attempt to resolve two of the several conceptual fuzziness of the term Digital Native. She attempts this in a philosophical manner: trying to move away from the ontological who are Digital Natives? to an epistemological when and where are Digital Natives?” — Samuel Tettner

Pathways for Learning in Higher Education

The Pathways Project for Learning in Higher Education is a collaboration between the Higher Education Innovation and Research Applications (HEIRA) at the Centre for the Study of Culture and Society (CSCS) and the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS). The project is supported by the Ford Foundation and works with disadvantaged students in nine undergraduate colleges in Maharashtra, Karnataka and Kerala, to explore relationships between technologies, higher education and the new forms of social justice in India.

Workshop Report

The Digital Classroom: Social Justice and Pedagogy: Nishant Shah captures some of the questions that were thrown up and discussed at the 2 day Faculty Training workshop for participant from colleges included in the Pathways to Higher Education programme, supported by Ford Foundation and collaboratively executed by the Higher Education Innovation and Research Application and the Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore

Blog Post

Technology, Social Justice and Higher Education by Nishant Shah, 7 December 2011.

Event Organised

Pathways 3rd Faculty Workshop & Regional Facilitators Meeting at CSCS, 8–10 December 2011, CSCS, Bangalore, Nishant Shah participated in the workshop.

Accessibility

India has an estimated 70 million disabled persons who are unable to read printed materials due to some form of physical, sensory, cognitive or other disability. The disabled need accessible content, devices and interfaces facilitated via copyright law and electronic accessibility policies. So far we have organised Right to Read campaigns in the four metro cities of Chennai, Kolkata, Delhi and Mumbai, made a submission to amend the Indian Copyright to the HRD Ministry, researched on accessible mobile handsets in India, analysed the Working Draft of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, and published a policy handbook on e-accessibility and a book on universal service for persons with disabilities.

Publications

Universal Service for Persons with Disabilities: Published by G3ict and CIS in cooperation with the Hans Foundation. The book is co-authored by Axel Leblois, Executive Director, G3ict, Deepti Bharthur and Nirmita Narasimhan.
The Business Case for Web Accessibility: NASSCOM Foundation has published a handbook on web accessibility titled “Understanding Web Accessibility — A Guide to Create Accessible Work Environments”. Nirmita Narasimhan authored a chapter “The Business Case for Web Accessibility”.

Submission

Accessibility in the New Telecom Policy 2011: CIS was part of the 27 organisations that responded to the call for comments on NTP 2011. The submission was made to the Department of Telecommunications, Ministry of Communications & Information Technology, Government of India on 9 December 2011.

Interview

An Interview of Nirmita Narasimhan on ITU Portal: ITU Girls in ICT is now online! ITU interviewed Nirmita and published her profile on their website.

Award

Nirmita receives NIVH Award: Nirmita Narasimhan received the NIVH Excellence Award from Justice AS Anand (retd), former chairman of the National Human Rights Commission, on International Day of Persons with Disabilities at the National Institute for the Visually Handicapped in Dehradun on Saturday, 3 December 2011. The Tribune covered the award ceremony and published this in their newspaper on 3 December 2011.

Upcoming Event

ITU Meeting and Tutorial on Audiovisual Media Accessibility, organized by the International Telecommunication Union, India International Centre, 13 – 15 March 2012. CIS is hosting the workshop in collaboration with the ITU-APT Foundation. More information and registration are available at the ITU website.

Access to Knowledge

Access to Knowledge is a campaign to promote the fundamental principles of justice, freedom, and economic development. It deals with issues like copyrights, patents, and trademarks, which are an important part of the digital landscape. We prepared the India report for the CI IP Watchlist, made submission to the HRD Ministry on WIPO Broadcast treaty, questioned the demonization of pirates, and advocated against laws (such as the PUPFIP Bill) that privatize public funded knowledge.

Comments

CIS Intervention on Future Work of the WIPO Advisory Committee on Enforcement
The seventh session of the World Intellectual Property Organization's Advisory Committee on Enforcement (ACE) was held in Geneva on 30 November and 1 December 2011. Pranesh Prakash participated in the event and made the intervention.
Comment by CIS at ACE on Presentation on French Charter on the Fight against Cyber-Counterfeiting: Pranesh Prakash responded to a presentation by Prof. Pierre Sirinelli of the École de droit de la Sorbonne, Université Paris 1 on 'The French Charter on the Fight against Cyber-Counterfeiting of 16 December 2009 during the seventh session of the World Intellectual Property Organization's Advisory Committee on Enforcement (ACE) held in Geneva.

Blog Post

CIS Hosts Scanned Version of George Orwell’s Books vs. Cigarettes: Verbindingen/Jonctions (V/J), the bi-annual multidisciplinary festival organised by Constant took place on 1 December 2011. CIS hosted the scanned pages of the essay in public domain.

Openness

Innovation and creativity should be fostered through openness and collaboration. The advent of Internet has radically defined what it means to be open and collaborative. The Internet itself is built upon open standards and free/libre/open source software. Our endeavour has resulted in a report on open government data, a report on online video environment in India and a film on oral citations on the Wikipedia.

Award

Inaugural EPT Award for Open Access: The Electronic Publishing Trust for Development is pleased to announce the winners of a new annual award to be made to individuals working in developing countries who have made a significant personal contribution to advancing the cause of open access (OA) and the free exchange of research findings. The winner of the inaugural award is Dr Francis Jayakanth of the National Centre for Science Information, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India.

Internet Governance

The Tunis Agenda of the second World Summit on the Information Society has defined internet governance as the development and application by governments, the private sector and civil society, in their respective roles of shared principles, norms, rules, decision-making procedures and programmes that shape the evolution and use of the internet. CIS partnered with Privacy International and Society in Action Group which has produced outputs in banking, telecommunications, consumer rights, media law, sexual minorities, etc., and submitted seven open letters to Parliamentary Finance Committee on UID covering several aspects, feedbacks on NIA Bill, and IT Rules.

Peer Review

Now Streaming on Your Nearest Screen by Nishant Shah, Journal of Chinese Cinemas, Volume 3, Issue 1.
Internet and Society in Asia: Challenges and Next Steps by Nishant Shah, Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, Volume 11, Number 1.

Book Review

The Historian Wins Over the Biographer “In Walter Isaacson's eponymous biography of Steve Jobs, the multibillion dollar man who is credited with single handedly changing the face of computing and the digital media industry, we face the dilemma of a biographer: how do you make sense of a history that is so new, it is still unfolding.”
Nishant Shah's detailed review of Steve Jobs' biography was published in the Biblio Vol. XV Nos. 11 & 12, November- December 2011

Newspaper / Magazine Articles

Spy in the Web The government’s proposed pre-censorship rules undermine the intelligence of an online user and endanger democracy, Nishant Shah, Indian Express, 18 December 2011.
What is Dilligaf? On the web, time moves at the speed of thought: Groups emerge, proliferate and are abandoned as new trends and fads take precedence. Nowhere else is this dramatic flux as apparent as in the language that evolves online, Nishant Shah, GQ India.
Of Surrogate Futures and Scattered Temporalities: Nishant Shah responds to Michael Edwards through this blog post published in the Broker on 27 December 2011.

Interview

An Interview with Dr. Ann Cavoukian: Elonnai Hickok interviews Dr. Ann Cavoukian, Information and Privacy Commissioner, Ontario, Canada.
When the digital spills into the physical: Nishant Shah tells us why flash mobs are an interesting sign of our times, and not just a passing fad. MidDay published this interview in their newspaper on 18 December 2011.

Video

Phishing Attacks on the Rise: Sunil Abraham was on the TV Channel News 9 on 2 December 2011 speaking about two visual cues to distinguish between the fake and the real websites.

Media Coverage

India’s dreams of web censorship, Financial Time's beyondbrics, 6 December 2011, Sunil Abraham was quoted in this post.
Did He, Didn’t He by Rahul Bhatia, Open Magazine (issue: 7-14 December 2011)
Much at stake for tech sector in UID project by Pranav Nambiar, Economic Times, 12 December 2011. Sunil Abraham was quoted in this article.
On the net, red herring by Javed Anwer, The Times of India, 4 December 2011. Sunil Abraham was quoted in this article.
Twitter, Facebook take the lead in blogosphere as blog searches fall by half by Ameya Chumbhale, Economic Times, 17 November 2011. Pranesh Prakash was quoted in this article.

Event Report

Exposing Data: Art Slash Activism organised by Tactical Tech and CIS in Bangalore on 28 November 2011. Zainab Bawa, Ayisha Abraham, Ward Smith and Marek Tuszinsky gave a talk. Videos of the event are now online.

Upcoming Events

Privacy Matters — Analyzing the "Right to Privacy Bill": Privacy India in partnership with International Development Research Centre, Canada, Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, the Godrej Culture Lab, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai and the Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore is organising "Privacy Matters", a public conference at IIT, Bombay on 21 January 2012.

The High Level Privacy Conclave: Privacy India in partnership with the International Development Research Centre, Canada, Society in Action Group, Gurgaon and Privacy International, UK is organizing the High Level Privacy Conclave at the Paharpur Business Centre, Nehru Place Greens in New Delhi on Friday, 3 February 2012.

All India Privacy Symposium: Privacy India in partnership with the International Development Research Centre, Canada, Society in Action Group, Gurgaon, Privacy International, UK and Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative is organizing the All India Privacy Symposium at the India International Centre, New Delhi on Saturday, 4 February 2012.

Event Organised

Dialogue Cafe @ Centre for Internet and Society, 2 Dec 2011, Kavita Philip gave a talk.

Special Section on Freedom of Expression

We usually cover Freedom of Expression under Internet Governance. However, this month there has been much discussion regarding the Union Minister for Communications and Information Technology, Mr. Kapil Sibal’s proposal for pro-active censorship of social media. This special section covers reportage and original content from CIS:

Newspaper / Magazine Articles

Invisible Censorship: How the Government Censors Without Being Seen by Pranesh Prakash: The Indian government wants to censor the Internet without being seen to be censoring the Internet. The article was translated into Marathi and featured in Lokmat, 18 December 2011.
US Clampdown Worse than the Great Firewall by Sunil Abraham: If you thought China’s Internet censorship was evil, think again. American moves to clean up the Web could hurt global surfers. Sunil Abraham wrote this article in Tehelka, Volume 8, Issue 50, 17 December 2011.
That’s the Unkindest Cut, Mr. Sibal by Sunil Abraham: There’s Kolaveri-di on the Internet over Kapil Sibal’s diktat to social media sites to prescreen users’ posts. That diktat goes far beyond the restrictions placed on our freedom of expression by the IT Act. But, says Sunil Abraham of the Centre for Internet and Society, India is not going to be silenced online. Deccan Chronicle, 11 December 2011.

Blog Posts

Online Pre-Censorship is Harmful and Impractical by Pranesh Prakash: The Union Minister for Communications and Information Technology, Mr. Kapil Sibal wants Internet intermediaries to pre-censor content uploaded by their users. Pranesh Prakash takes issue with this and explains why this is a problem, even if the government's heart is in the right place.
Press Coverage of Online Censorship Row: We are maintaining a rolling blog with press references to the row created by the proposal by the Union Minister for Communications and Information Technology to pre-screen user-generated Internet content.

Radio Broadcast

Social media sites refuse Indian censorship request: Sunil Abraham spoke to Radio Australia. Follow the broadcast here

Live Chat

Is the govt bid to regulate content on the Internet a good thing?: Pranesh Prakash answered questions freedom of expression vis-a-vis objectionable content live on CNN-IBN's chat feature, 7 December 2011.

Media Coverage

Caught in the Web: “As it is the status of freedom of speech in India is in a bad shape. Sibal's new rules will only make it worse.”— Sunil Abraham in Hindu Business Line, 13 December 2011.

Online gag: Existing rules give little freedom: “Our criticism is of the policy and not of the websites and Internet entities that are forced to err on the side of caution when faced by such notices.” — Sunil Abraham in the Times of India, 9 December 2011.
Facebook, Google tell India they won’t screen for derogatory content: “Researchers sent mock take-down notices to seven sites, complaining about their content... six sites immediately deleted content. They did not even verify the validity of our flawed complaint. They over-complied.” — Sunil Abraham in Washington Post, 6 December 2011.
‘Any Normal Human Being Would Be Offended’: “Indian law seems to state that it has global jurisdiction but that is not really true. An Indian court might give an order that is unenforceable in the United States or anywhere else.” — Sunil Abraham in the New York Times, 6 December 2011.
IT Inc oppose Sibal’s ‘great’ firewall proposal: “You wouldn’t want to end up with a situation where you are denied access to, say, the website of the University of Sussex because the address contains the word ‘sex’.” — Nishant Shah in Indian Express, 7 December 2011.
Online @ India: “I haven't yet heard of anybody in India going on a rampage because somebody in Pakistan started an 'India hate' page.” — Nishant Shah in the Hindustan Times, 10 December 2011.
How ‘private-censorship’ is making online content disappear, quietly: “Google’s self-reported compliance rate of 51 per cent shows that they are probably over-stepping the law in order to appease the Indian government’s requests.” — Pranesh Prakash in FirstPost, 15 December 2011.
Kapil Sibal to sterilise Net but undercover sting shows 6 of 7 websites already trigger-happy to censor under ‘chilling’ IT Act, Legally India, 7 December 2011. Sunil Abraham was quoted in this blog post.
‘Chilling’ Impact of India’s April Internet Rules by Heather Simmons, New York Times, 7 December 2011.
Govt wants to scrub the Internet clean, Livemint, 7 December 2011. Sunil Abraham was quoted in this article.
India's Techies Angered Over Internet Censorship Plan, NPR, 20 December 2011. Pranesh Prakash was quoted in this blog post.
Internet, social media access should not be blocked: Ban, Oman Tribune, 10 December 2011. Sunil Abraham was quoted in this article.
India entering the Minority Report age?, ioL scietech. Sunil Abraham was quoted in this.
Los internautas indios se oponen a la censura a través de la Red, Diario de Navarra, 7 December 2011. Sunil Abraham was quoted in the Spanish newspaper.
Technological beasts like Facebook, Orkut, YouTube & Google impossible to control by Sunanda Poduwal & Kamya Jaiswal, Economic Times, 11 December 2011. Sunil Abraham was quoted in the article.
Google V/s Kapil Sibal by Sundeep Dougal in Outlook, 8 December 2011. Pranesh Prakash's work at CIS has been extensively quoted in this blog post.
India bid to censor Internet draws flak Phil Hazlewood spoke to Sunil Abraham and published this article for AFP. France 24, Khaleej Times, Physorg.com, TimesLive, Bangkok Post, Yahoo News, MSN News, Emirates 24/7, Business Live and Jakarta Globe also carried the news on their websites, 9 December 2011.

Videos

Censorship — A Death Knell for Freedom of Expression Online: On 8 December 2011, NDTV aired an interesting discussion on internet censorship. Shashi Tharoor, Soli Sorabjee, Shekhar Kapoor, Ken Ghosh and Sunil Abraham participated in this discussion with NDTV's Sonia Singh.
FTN: Should social networking sites be censored?: Telecom Minister Kapil Sibal met the representatives of Facebook, Google and others seeking to device a screening mechanism. Sunil Abraham was on CNN-IBN from 10.00 p.m. to 10.30 p.m. speaking about freedom of expression in India.
Debate: Online content row-1: Sunil Abraham was on Times Now from 9.05 p.m. to 9.45 p.m. on 6 December 2011 speaking about freedom of expression in India.

Event Organised

Free Speech Online in India under Attack? A Panel Discussion, 21 December 2011. Achal Prabhala, Anja Kovacs, Lawrence Liang and Sunil Abraham gave lectures.

Telecom

The growth in telecommunications in India has been impressive. While the potential for growth and returns exist, a range of issues need to be addressed for this potential to be realized. One aspect is more extensive rural coverage and the second aspect is a countrywide access to broadband which is low at about eight million subscriptions. Both require effective and efficient use of networks and resources, including spectrum. In this connection, Shyam Ponappa continues to write his monthly column for the Business Standard.

Newspaper Article

Healing self-inflicted wounds by Shyam Ponappa, Business Standard, 1 December 2011: A spate of dysfunctional actions and retrograde developments has led to an unimaginable mess for India. Can the damage to growth prospects be undone? Does it need to be? If so, how?

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CIS is grateful to 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/december-2011-bulletin

Open Government Data

pranesh — 2012-07-16T12:42:33Z

The Transparency & Accountability Initiative published a book titled “Opening Government: A Guide to Best Practice in Transparency, Accountability and Civic Engagement across the Public Sector”. The Centre for Internet & Society contributed a chapter on Open Government Data.

Openness in relation to information on governmental functioning is a crucial component of democratic governance. There are few things more abhorrent to democracies than a lack of transparency in their functioning, and secrecy in public affairs is generally a sign of autocratic rule. Such transparency is the foundation for the seeking of accountability from those who exercise power over public policy issues and governmental functioning, including not only governments but also large corporations, trade unions, civil society organisations (CSOs), funding agencies and special interest groups. This information would also include all information on private bodies that can be accessed by public authorities.

Transparency helps citizens to independently evaluate governmental functioning and thus hold accountable any instances of corruption or mismanagement, whether at the level of policy formulation or at the level of implementation. Thus, the freedom of speech and expression and the right to receive information, which are seen as two sides of the same right under most international covenants, are both vitally important in ensuring transparent and accountable governance.

Making public information that is produced by the government is slightly different from merely making public information on governmental functioning. While many instances of the former are subsumed within the latter (e.g. information collected by the government), there are also areas where the two categories do not overlap. Openness with respect to government-produced information is part of the right of the public to access any output of taxpayer funding. Thus the category of ‘governmental information’ or ‘governmental data’ can be taken to include information about the government and governmental functioning, as well as information collected and produced by the government.

In addition, there can be two related but independent grounds on which the right of the public to governmental information is often founded. The ‘open government data’ movement – it is now a demand cutting across multiple nations and deserves to be so called – is predicated upon there being a certain degree of transparency in public functioning, notably through the existence of ‘right to information’ or ‘freedom of information’ statutes. Specifically, the open data movement generally understands the public’s right to information to include (1) the proactive disclosure of information; (2) the internet being the primary medium for such disclosure; (3) information being made available for access and for re-use free of charge and; (4) information being made available in a machine-readable format to enable computer-based re-use.

As it would be meaningless to demand the additional components that go to make ‘open government data’ in an environment where the basic right to information does not exist, all recommendations here (including initial steps) presume that such a right exists.

Initial steps

Goal
A commitment by the government to provide proactive disclosure of existing digital data on the web.

Justification
Most governments already rely on computers at least for information storage at most levels even if they often perform information processing and sharing (i.e. conduct governmental transactions whether government-government, government business, or government-civil society) offline. This information that already exists in a digital form – quite often in the form of text documents and spread sheets – can and should be made public, based on a narrow negative blacklist. This blacklist should have a list of categories of information that should not be made available because of a narrow set of concerns such as privacy and properly classified state secrets. While this will undoubtedly result in the haphazard release of files that may be difficult to comprehend or use effectively, this is not a reason for keeping data offline and out of public reach. Once a process has been initiated of continually putting data up online, the data and the process can themselves be bettered through more elaborate technological and process-related improvements. Proactive disclosure steps can and should be taken even without the implementation of a robust procedural back-end
for information gathering, processing and sharing along with the technology that enables it. While such robust information architecture and back-end infrastructure is certainly desirable, it is not necessary for the immediate online release of files that are already in digital format.

Recommendations

The government should create a minimal front-facing infrastructure, in terms of both technology (namely, a website) and human resources (people who are tasked with the responsibility of uploading governmental records, documents, reports and other information).
A negative list of information that may not be shared should be drawn up by each public authority so that all other material can be made publicly available immediately, keeping in mind the more general guidelines that exist in national and sub-national policies and laws on the right to information.
A timeline should be put in place to ensure that proactive disclosure of existing government information continues to happen on a regular basis, until more rigorous steps are taken towards open government data.

More substantial steps

Goal
All government data is made available, in a form that ensures ease of use and reuse.

Justification
Making government data available online is just the first basic step. All information released requires a proper underpinning in informational policy and technological support to realise full transparency, citizen participation and full social and economic value. Governments should use smarter technologies to ensure that the policy commitment to open government data can be realised in practice. In particular, searchability in the system greatly helps to ensure accessibility for persons with disabilities. Such searchability is often easy when it comes to text, but ends up being more complicated in other areas. For this reason, some of the suggestions on this have been kept for the next section (on proposals for most ambitious steps).

Recommendations

Policy and process

An information policy should be formulated that deals comprehensively with best practices with regard to information collection, storage, retrieval and management at the national level, and that allows for the adoption of that policy either with modification or directly by sub-national governments.
- Part of this policy must ensure that most new information is either created in a digital form, or is digitised from paper as soon as is practicable, and that later transactions of this information happen, as far as possible, over electronic modes of communication.
- This policy must also ensure that as much as electronic receipt of governmental information is seen as a right of citizens, so is non-electronic receipt.
A technological policy should be formulated that mandates the use of open standards in all e-governance to promote interoperability and prevent vendor lock-in, with only temporary and limited exceptions.
- This must be accompanied by a document on technological architecture (whether called an e-governance interoperability framework (e-GIF) policy, or a national enterprise architecture (NEA)) that lays down the broad parameters of the technology framework to enable the information architecture policy, including the metadata standards.
The ability to reuse the published data must be guaranteed as part of a public sector information/open government data policy. This is crucial to enable journalists, CSOs and others.
All information must be provided free of cost at least in cases where:
- The government is not monetising the data, nor has plans to do so; or
- The data is for use by individuals and small and medium enterprises; or
- The data is available without any special fees under right to information/freedom of information statutes.

Technology

All public authorities must be made to ensure that they use open standards, such as Unicode, prescribed in the e-GIF/ NEA. In addition, their data processing and publishing processes must comply with those laid out in these architectural documents.
Sector-specific and use-specific metadata must be included in all files and objects made available to the public, so that when they use the services to retrieve objects they can make sense of the objects and manipulate them appropriately.
This metadata must be standardised, as this is a crucial requirement to enable easy categorisation and searching of information. An important part of searching through the data is also searching through the full contents of the datasets.

Most ambitious steps

Goal
To translate the publishing of open governmental data into better data via input from the public.

Justification
Public outreach and citizen-oriented tools are crucial to ensuring a vibrant online and offline public sphere where government data are used and discussed and a feedback loop is created, rather than this being a mere data dump. Using service-oriented architecture will help in ensuring platform independence, better scalability, greater code reuse, higher availability of services, parallel development of different components and many other benefits in terms of provision of data for governments. A robust service-oriented architecture will enable citizens to be treated as yet another client asking for information, and will enable useful application programming interfaces (APIs) to be built that will allow for easy access for power users to the data.

Integration with social media is a must, because it allows governments to reach vast networks of people at once and defray costs. Such integration will allow governments to go where many citizens are, rather than trying to get the citizens to come to them. However, care must be taken to ensure that such integration is done with adequate safeguards for privacy, long-term archival capability and data portability.

Recommendations

Policy and process

The pro-elite bias that is often inherent in online technologies must be actively neutralised through policy. Such a policy must be designed to ensure that there is no elitist capture of the benefits of open government data, and that there is active promotion of ‘offline translation’ of data, especially in technologically divided countries where the gap between those who have access to technology and those who do not is wide.
Governments must allow for correction of data by the public.
Offline translation of data must be facilitated, especially in technologically poorer countries.

Technology

Documents should be structured with semantic mark-up, which allows for intelligent querying of the content of the document itself. Before settling upon a domestic usagespecific semantic mark-up schema, well-established XML schemas should be examined for their suitability and should be used wherever appropriate.
Multiple forms of access must be provided to the data, and it must be made available interactively through the web for non-technical users. For more advanced users, the data must be available for bulk downloads, and it should also be accessible through well-documented open APIs.
There should be a single-point portal (similar to the UK’s Data.gov.uk) to provide access to different public authorities’ data.
All data should be Cloud-based to the extent that it ensures lower overheads for the government.

Download the full report (PDF, 440 Kb)

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/open-government-data-commitments-best-practices

March 2012 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2012-07-09T07:33:44Z

In this month we announced the new clusters from Researchers at Work: Locating the Mobile, Interface Intimacies and Habits of Living.

Research

New series from RAW, new Clusters now Online!

From 2012 to 2015, the RAW series will build 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. We hope to build knowledge networks and production of new knowledge around questions of body, governance and cultural production in the digital times that we live in. Spearheaded by experts in the field of science, technology, society and culture the clusters aim to produce and document new conversations and debates that shape the contours of Digital Humanities in Asia.

Locating the Mobile: An Ethnographic Investigation into Locative Media in Melbourne, Bangalore and Shanghai
Larissa Hjorth (RMIT University, Melbourne), Genevieve Bell (Intel, Shanghai)
As yet we know little about the impact locative media is having, and will have upon people’s livelihoods and identity, or on public policy around privacy, identity, security and cultural production. Discourse in the field has opened up questions of art, innovation and experimentation. But there is a dearth of nuanced research on locative media that provides in-depth, contextual accounts of its socio-cultural and political dimensions. Not much work has been conducted into locative media as it migrates from art to the ‘messy’ area of everyday. The project seeks to address this knowledge gap by studying locative media in Bangalore, Melbourne and Shanghai.

Interface Intimacies
Audrey Yue (Melbourne University) and Namita Malhotra (ALF)
Users of technologies often express their engagement with technologies in affective terms. The interfaces that we see all around us constantly deflect our attention, emotions and desires on to different surfaces, creating flattened universes with the promises of deep immersion. Digging deep into interfaces, to examine peoples’ relationships with the digital interfaces around them the research cluster examines: What are the affective relationships that people have with their interfaces? What goes into anthropomorphising an interface? What are the larger politics of labour, performance and ownership that surround interface design? What are the ways in which people simulate presence and connections through their interfaces? How is the human presumed in computer-human interface design? What aesthetic and political moves are we witnessing with the rise of interface mediated publics? What and who is made opaque when interfaces become transparent? When interfaces get distributed, what are the possibilities and potential for art, theory and practice to move into new forms of politics?

Habits of Living: Global Networks, Local Affects
Wendy Chun (Professor, Brown University), Kelly Dobson, (Chair, Digital + Media, RISD, Providence), Matthew Fuller, David Gee (Reader in Digital Media, Center for Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths College, University of London) and Eivind Rossaak, (Associate Professor, Department of Research, National Library of Norway, Oslo).
This is a global collaborative project to renew the conceptual power of networks. It concentrates on changing the habits of living. The Department of Modern Culture and Media at Brown University will be an important locus. Habits are crucial to understanding networks not simply as broad organizational structures but also as structures created through constant actions that are both voluntary and involuntary.

Digital Natives

Video Contest

Who’s the Everyday Digital Native? A global video contest finds the answer!
CIS and Hivos are excited to announce the top five videos. The finalists will each win EUR 500. According to Nishant Shah, the 12 video proposals show that the everyday digital native does not wake up in the morning and think, ‘today I will change the world’. Yet, in their everyday lives, when they see the possibility of producing a change in their immediate environments, they turn to the digital to find networks that can start a change.

Public Lectures

D:Coding Digital Natives (Nishant Shah, University of California, Los Angeles, March 9, 2012)
"In the last three years of revolutions we have also now witnessed this extraordinary thing where lot of promises were made of different kinds of revolution but which never materialised in terms of what they intended to. Citizen action happens but it doesn’t lead into anything concrete." The lecture is featured in YouTube.

Digital Natives and the Myth of the Revolution: Questioning the Radical Potential of Citizen Action (Nishant Shah, Annenberg School of Communication, University of South California, March 8, 2012): Nishant Shah made a presentation on 'Questioning the Radical Potential for Citizen Action'.
5 Challenges for the Future of Learning: Digital Natives and How We Shall Teach Them (Digital Media and Learning Conference on Beyond Education Technologies, Wyndham Parc 55 Hotel, San Francisco, March 1, 2012). Nishant Shah gave a ignite talk.
Digital Natives and the Myth of the Revolution: Questioning the Radical Potential of Citizen Action (UC Santa Cruz, Monday, March 5, 2012). Nishant Shah gave a lecture. The lecture focused more on the India against Corruption case-study rather than the theoretical framework to understanding revolutions.

Column in Indian Express

Pinning the Badge
Nishant Shah, March 18, 2012
In a world of competition, badging provides a holistic way of grading and learning, where individual talents are realized and the knowledge of the group is used. A peer-2-peer system of badging, which enables learners to be critically aware not only of their own interaction with knowledge but also recognises the ways in which larger communities of knowledge — including the peers and teachers — opens up an extraordinary way of thinking about education.

Book Review...A Few Excerpts

An Experiment in Social Engineering: The Cultural Context of an Avatar
‘Engineering a cyber twin’ is an attempt to inventory the ontological features of an avatar... Ansher’s essay… eschews a simplistic binary of offline/online, preferring to focus on the domain of interaction between the two ‘personae’ of the same self.
Pramod K. Nayar reviews Nilofar Shamim Ansher’s essay ‘Engineering a Cyber Twin’ from Digital Alternatives with a Cause? Book One: To Be.

Accessibility

Analysis

Analysis of Comments by WBU & IPA
Rahul Cherian provides an analysis of the comments by the World Blind Union and the International Publishers Association after the 23rd session of the Standing Committee of Copyright and Related Rights.

Event Organised

ITU Tutorial on Audiovisual Media Accessibility (India International Centre, New Delhi, March 14 to 15, 2012): At the invitation of the Centre for Internet and Society, in cooperation with the ITU-APT Foundation of India, International Telecommunication Union organized a two-day Tutorial on Audio Visual Media Accessibility. The Tutorial was preceded by the fourth meeting of the Focus Group on Audio Visual Media Accessibility on March 13, 2012. Sunil Abraham participated in the event and was the Master of Ceremony on Day 1, March 14, 2012.

Access to Knowledge

Op-ed in Economic Times

Patented Games, Sunil Abraham, March 8, 2012
Some prefer Steve Jobs, patron saint of perfection, others prefer Nicholas Negroponte, messiah of the masses. While Mr. Jobs may be guilty of contributing to the digital divide, Mr. Negroponte may have contributed to bridging it with his innovation: the One Laptop per Child, also known as the $100 laptop or XO.

Events Participated

Consumers International Global Meeting 2012 (Kuala Lumpur, March 8 and 9, 2012): Pranesh Prakash participated in the global meeting organised by Consumers International and spoke on UN Consumer Guidelines. Robin Brown, Tobias Schönwetter and Guilherme Varella were the other speakers in the session.
Expert Meeting on Freedom of Expression and Intellectual Property Rights (London, November 18, 2011): The meeting was organized by ARTICLE 19. Nineteen international scholars, experts and human rights activists met to explore the antagonistic relationship between Intellectual Property (IP) and the rights to freedom of expression and information. Pranesh Prakash was one of the participants.

Openness

Events Organised

Open DataCamp — 2012 (Google, Old Madras Road, Bangalore, March 24, 2012): This was a one-day unconference for people working with data from various sectors to come together and share their projects and ideas. It was organised by the DataMeet group. Pranesh Prakash participated in the event. Google, India Water Portal, Gramener, Microsoft Research, Akshara Foundation, DataMeet, HasGeek and CIS were the sponsors.
Free Arduino Workshop (For Beginners): (CIS, Bangalore, March 3, 2012). The workshop drew participants such as interaction designers, artists and those enthusiastic to get started with creative projects but didn’t have prior experience with electronics. About 20 people participated in the workshop.

Events Participated

Water Data Consultation (Evoma Hotel, Bangalore, March 23, 2012). Pranesh Prakash spoke on Policy Issues and Developments around Open Data. The event was organized by Arghyam.

Internet Governance

Column in FirstPost

Why your Facebook Stalker is Not the Real Problem, Nishant Shah, March 20, 2012:We live in networked conditions. This is a statement that can now be taken at face-value, and immediately explains our highly connected, inter-meshed environments…We need to start looking at larger invasive policies exercises by the different invisible actors like the ISP, ICT ministries, corporate policies, design choices and architecture of interception that sustain the networks we so gladly embrace.

Blog Entries

Statutory Motion against Intermediary Guidelines Rules, Pranesh Prakash:A motion to annul the Intermediary Guidelines Rules was moved on March 23, 2012, by Shri P. Rajeeve, CPI (M) MP in the Rajya Sabha from Thrissur, Kerala. We are very glad that Shri Rajeeve has moved this motion, and we hope that it gets adopted in the Lok Sabha as well, and that the Rules get defeated, notes Pranesh Prakash.

Events Organised

India Explores the Balance Points between Freedom of Expression, Privacy, National Security and Law Enforcement (New Delhi, March 5, 2012). Sunil Abraham participated in this closed-door meeting jointly organised with the Global Network Initiative. Issues relating to freedom of expression and privacy were discussed in the meeting.
Climate Change and Controversy Mapping (Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, March 19 to 21, 2012). The Devechia Centre for Climate Change, the Indian Institute of Science and CIS organized a three-day workshop with Professor Bruno Latour. Doctorate students doing empirical work in various types of ecological crisis participated in the event and experimented with some of the digital tools and methods developed within the "mapping controversies" consortium.
GeekUp with Erica Hagen (CIS, Bangalore, March 1, 2012). HasGeek organized a GeekUp with Erica Hagen of the GroundTruth Initiative. Erica gave a lecture on the theme: "From Information to Empowerment: Unpacking the Equation.
Cartonama Workshop (CIS, Bangalore, March 2 and 3, 2012). HasGeek organized a hands-on training for managing and building location based services. Twenty-two participants attended the workshop.
Global Censorship Conference

Events Participated

The Abrams Institute for Freedom of Expression at Yale Law School is holding a conference on global censorship from March 30 to April 1, 2012, at Yale Law School. The programme is sponsored by the Information Society Project at Yale Law School and Thomson Reuters. Rishabh Dara, Google Policy Fellow who worked at CIS office in Bangalore on freedom of expression and internet-related policy issues is participating in the event as a speaker in the panel on Case Studies of Censorship.

What is Stewardship in Cyberspace? (Innis Townhall, University of Toronto, Canada, March 18 and 19, 2012): Sunil Abraham was a panelist in the session “Plenary Panel and Discussions” at the second annual Cyber Dialogue.
Secure IT 2012 — Securing Citizens through Technology (Claridges, New Delhi, March 1, 2012): The event was co-organised by DST and NSDI, Govt. of India in partnership with Elets Technomedia Pvt. Ltd. Sunil Abraham was a panelist. The video is now online.
International Conference on Mobile Law (ASSOCHAM House, New Delhi, March 1, 2012): Pranesh Prakash spoke in the panel on Mobiles - Privacy and Social Media on March 1, 2012.
Data protection experts slam state for sending mass SMSes

Media Coverage

Data protection experts slam state for sending mass SMSes
"The state government's use of unsolicited SMS a “clear abuse of the powers afforded by elected office... elected representatives would be justified in such measures, and in utilising public funds, in the event of a disaster, or when public order, public health or national security are compromised."
Sunil Abraham, The Statesman, March 25, 2012.

Open access to government data on the cards
"Welcoming the approval for the NDSAP, Pranesh Prakash, said, “None of the criticisms ... CIS had sent in as part of the feedback requested on the draft have been addressed."
Pranesh Prakash, The Hindu, March 25, 2012.

Is your facebook page your mini resume?
"Background checks are common as some companies deal with sensitive information. So it’s not illegal, but intrusive. I think some power relationships can be abused if they cross the social networking barrier — like a boss-employee and teacher-student relationship."
Sunil Abraham, IBN Live, March 26, 2012.

Click, Play, Watch
"Earlier, creative artistes depended on intermediaries like studios, TV channels and theatres to screen their work and connect with viewers. Now, they are looking at the online medium to connect with the audience directly."
Sunil Abraham, MidDay, March 18, 2012.

Save Your Voice — A movement against Web censorship
"Private sector does not protect the freedom of expression."
Daily News & Analysis, March 13, 2012.

India’s Big Bet on Identity
"There are obviously both privacy and security concerns when you’re collecting personal data from more than a billion people. “You can’t change your biometrics,”… so if they become compromised, it’s a difficult problem to fix."
Ieeespectrum. March 2012 edition.

Telecom

Columns in Business Standard

The 2G Supreme Court Judgment
Shyam Ponappa, March 1 and March 4, 2012
The Business Standard published Shyam Ponappa's two-part article deconstructing the assumptions in the Supreme Court's 2G judgment, and suggesting possible ways forward. The first one was published on March 1, 2012, and the second on March 4, 2012.

Blog Entry

Convergence India 2012
Yelena Gyulkhandanyan
Yelena attended an event organised by the Exhibitions India Group from March 21 to 23, 2012. She shares her experiences.

About CIS

CIS was registered as a society in Bangalore in 2008. As an independent, non-profit research organisation, it runs different policy research programmes such as Accessibility, Access to Knowledge, Openness, Internet Governance, and Telecom. Over the last four years our policy research programmes have resulted in outputs such as the e-Accessibility Policy Handbook for Persons with Disabilities with International Telecommunications Union, and Digital Alternatives with a Cause?, Thinkathon Position Papers and the Digital Natives with a Cause? Report with Hivos. With foreign governments we worked on National Enterprise Architecture and Government Interoperability Framework for Govt. of Iraq; Open Standards Policy for Govt. of Moldova; Free and Open Software Centre of Excellence project plan for Saudi Arabia; eGovernance Strategy Document for Govt. of Tajikistan. With the Government of India we have done policy research for Ministry of Communications & Information Technology, Ministry of Human Resource Development, Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions, Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, etc., on WIPO Treaties, Copyright Bill, Interoperability Framework in eGovernance, Privacy Bill, NIA Bill, National Policy on Electronics and IT Act.

CIS is an accredited NGO at WIPO and has given policy briefs to delegations from various countries, our Programme Manager, Nirmita Narasimhan won the National Award for Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities from the Government of India and also received the NIVH Excellence Award.

Follow us Elsewhere

Get short, timely messages from us on Twitter

Join the CIS group on Facebook
Visit us at www.cis-india.org

CIS is grateful to 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/march-2012-bulletin

May 2012 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2012-07-07T06:59:29Z

Welcome to the newsletter issue of May 2012! In the current issue, we bring to you updates of our latest research, event reports, videos, and media coverage:

Access to Knowledge

Copyright Amendment Bill

Analysis of the Copyright (Amendment) Bill 2012
Pranesh Prakash
There are some welcome provisions in the Copyright (Amendment) Bill 2012, and some worrisome provisions. Pranesh Prakash examines five positive changes, four negative ones, and notes the several missed opportunities. The larger concern, though, is that many important issues have not been addressed by these amendments, and how copyright policy is made without evidence and often out of touch with contemporary realities of the digital era. The analysis was reposted in infojustice.org on May 25, 2012.

Op-ed in Indian Express

Copyright Madness (Lawrence Liang and Achal Prabhala, Indian Express, May 22, 2012): India’s Copyright Act allows owners of content the right to prevent infringement through the use of injunctions, but these injunctions have to be narrowly construed and applied only to specific instances of infringement. This is to say, take down the infringing video, not the whole website, and don’t intimidate the host. When injunctions threaten freedom of speech and expression, then free speech should necessarily trump copyright claims — and the courts cannot be used as convenient shopping forums for maladies that don’t exist.

Call for Participation

2012 Global Congress on Intellectual Property and the Public Interest: Call for Participation and Save the Date (FGV Law School, Rio De Janeiro, Brazil, December 15 – 17, 2012): We invite applications to attend the Congress, including proposals to chair workshops or deliver a paper or presentation related to the Congress’s theme.

Event Participated

The International Copyright System and Access to Education: Challenges, New Access Models and Prospects for New Principles (Max Planck Institute, Munich, Germany, May 14 and 15, 2012). The event was organised by the University of Minnesota and Max Planck Institute. Pranesh Prakash participated in the event.

News & Media

Will the Copyright Law Help the Starving Artist?:(by Margherita Stancati, Wall Street Journal, May 28, 2012): "The singers and producers of...unlicensed versions could be jailed under the current India Copyright Act, which allows even non-commercial copyright infringers to be put behind bars."
Pranesh Prakash quoted in the Wall Street Journal.

Did Sibal just get arm-twisted by book publishers? (FirstPost, May 25, 2012): Pranesh Prakash’s article on parallel importation of books is referred in this article.

Accessibility

Blog Entries

Copyright Amendments – Empowering the Print Disabled by Rahul Cherian.
An FAQ on the Copyright Amendment Bill, 2012, for the Benefit of Persons with Disabilities by Dr. Sam Taraporevala and Rahul Cherian.

Openness

Article in the Indian Express

Cancel the Subscription (Prof. Subbiah Arunachalam, Indian Express, May 8, 2012): It has been a slow but steady move to make scholarship freely available... In India, though, there appears to be very little enthusiasm among the leaders of the science establishment. Neither the office of the principal scientific adviser nor the department of science and technology seems to have shown any interest in mandating open access to taxpayer-funded research. The National Knowledge Commission has recommended mandating open access to all publicly funded research, but it is not clear who will implement the recommendation. Right now, it is left to individuals to promote open access in India.

Event Organised

Design!PubliC — Third Conclave in New Delhi (National Museum, New Delhi, April 20, 2012): The event was organized by the Center for Knowledge Societies in collaboration with IBM, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Google and the Centre for Internet and Society. Sunil Abraham was a panelist and spoke in the session on Participation, Collaboration and Innovation.

Internet Governance

Google Policy Fellowship

Google Policy Fellowship Programme: Call for Applications: CIS is inviting applications for the Google Policy Fellowship programme. Google is providing a USD 7,500 stipend to the India Fellow, who will be selected by August 15, 2012. The focus areas for the present fellowship programme include Access to Knowledge, Openness in India, Freedom of Expression, Privacy, and Telecom. The duration of the fellowship will be for about ten weeks starting from August 2012 upto October 2012. CIS will select the India Fellow. Send in your applications for the position by June 27, 2012.

Events Participated

Internet at Liberty 2012: Promoting Progress and Freedom (Newseum, Pennsylvania Avenue Northwest Washington, D.C., May 23 – 24, 2012): Sunil Abraham was a speaker in Plenary IV, Debate 3: In a world where nearly nine out of ten Internet users are not American, what is the responsibility of United States institutions in promoting internet freedom?
Meeting on Internet Governance (Conference Hall No. 4009, Dept. of Electronics & Information Technology, CGO Complex, New Delhi, May 9, 2012): Pranesh Prakash participated in this meeting.

Op-ed in Down to Earth

Beyond Sharing: Towards our Digital Futures (Nishant Shah, Down to Earth, May 31, 2012): The battle is not about file sharing and a petty film producer wanting to rake in the box office earnings. It is about the law’s incapacity to deal with post-analogue practices and processes.

Columns by Nishant Shah

Open letter to Kolaveri Di makers: How Dare You! (Nishant Shah, FirstPost, May 22, 2012): When it comes to piracy, you are sure to have an opinion. You might either make a virtue out of it, talking about cultural commons and collaborative conditions of production. Or you might vilify it as the social fault-line that is destroying the very pillars of commerce and cultural negotiations.
The Private Eye (Nishant Shah, Indian Express, May 14, 2012): As we move towards a data-driven future, we need to be more aware of the different kinds of data sets that we are making public and educate ourselves about the risks of this disclosure, without being carried away by the sway of meme-like behaviour and viral trends online.

Video

Do IT Rules 2011 indirectly leads to Censorship of Internet: Pranesh Prakash along with Dr. Arvind Gupta, National Convener, BJP IT Cell and Ms. Mishi Choudhary, Executive Director, SFLC participated in a panel discussion on censorship of the Internet on May 8, 2012. The discussion was broadcast on Yuva iTV and featured on YouTube.

Letter

Letter for Civil Society Involvement in ITU’s WCIT (by Center for Democracy and Technology): Academics and civil society groups wrote to the ITU Secretary-General Dr. Hamadoun Touré regarding the lack of opportunity for civil society participation in the World Conference on International Telecommunications process.

Blog Entry

Open letter to Hillary Clinton on Internet freedom (by Sunil Abraham): This blog entry is based on a presentation made in the Internet at Liberty conference in Washington DC on May 24, 2012.

Media Coverage

Why this blocking di? (by R Krishna, Daily News & Analysis, May 27, 2012): “Unlike the Calcutta High Court order in March this year, which specified the 104 websites that should be blocked, a John Doe order doesn’t mention any specific website. In some cases, the websites are being blocked without any evidence (of copyright infringement). Courts need to be informed of what people with John Doe orders are doing. We need to be specific about what can be blocked and what can’t be.”
Pranesh Prakash quoted in Daily News & Analysis

Rajeev Chandrasekhar Urges PM To Withdraw India’s Proposal For UN Committee On Internet-Policy (by Anupam Saxena, Medianama, May 16, 2012): An interview that Medianama had with Pranesh Prakash is cited in this blog post.
MPs oppose curbs on internet; Sibal promises discussions (Times of India, May 18, 2012): “The IT minister has promised to hold consultations but the ideal way to do so would have been to scrap the rules and start from scratch... It's not only about language in these rules. There is a problem with provisions like the one that empowers intermediaries to remove content without notifying the user who had uploaded the content or giving users a chance to explain themselves.”
Pranesh Prakash quoted in the Times of India.

Kapil Sibal & Co shoot down motion to kill IT Rules: cite terrorism, drugs (by Prachi Shrivastava, Legally India, May 18, 2012): “Government is not censoring. It has created a system by which anyone can censor with impunity.”
Pranesh Prakash quoted in Legally India.

Vimeo Ban: More Web Censorship (by Preetika Rana, Wall Street Journal, May 18, 2012): “Shutting websites merely on the basis of suspicion amounts to private crackdown on free speech of the web...Why didn’t the telecom ministry repeal or object to the move, knowing that the court didn’t spell out the websites to be blocked?”
Pranesh Prakash quoted in Wall Street Journal.
Taming the Web, are we? (by Javed Anwer, Economic Times, May 13, 2012): "During the revolutions in Arab countries last year, protesters mobilized themselves through Twitter and Facebook. Then there are Wikileaks and Anonymous. This has made governments and politicians jittery."
Sunil Abraham quoted in the Economic Times.

Cordon tightens: Rajya Sabha nod to harsh IT rules (Anil Sharma and Aishhwariya Subramanian, Daily News & Analysis, May 18, 2012): "The trouble with Indian government's proposal to address issues such as network neutrality, privacy and freedom of expression, is top-down. Unlike other countries where internet policies have always been developed with consultation with other stakeholders, here the government imposes its will."
Sunil Abraham quoted in Daily News & Analysis.
"It is an ironical situation where India is not following domestically what it is proposing internationally." Pranesh Prakash quoted in the same article in Daily News & Analysis.

Empires: Individuals in Search of Society (Marc Lafia, Huffington Post, May 18, 2012).
Cyber Appellate Tribunal in Bengaluru (Deccan Herald, May 9, 2012): “The state IT secretary has passed more than 80 orders. They include both cases of phishing and orders against cyber cafes for not adhering to rules under the IT Act. The Adjudicator has held that ‘section 43 of IT Act is not applicable to a body or Corporate’, after the amended IT Act came into force in 2008.” Pranesh Prakash quoted in the Deccan Herald.

Digital Natives

Digital Natives with a Cause? is a research inquiry that looks at the changing landscape of social change and political participation and the role that young people play through digital and Internet technologies, in emerging information societies. Consolidating knowledge from Asia, Africa and Latin America, it builds a global network of knowledge partners who critically engage with discourse on youth, technology and social change, and look at alternative practices and ideas in the Global South:

Columns by Nishant Shah

Digitally Analogue (Nishant Shah, Indian Express, May 27, 2012): While those of us who were not born digital natives — we still remember what an audio cassette looks like and the smell of screen printing — will negotiate with the form of our access to cultural objects, it is also time to realise that being non-digital is no longer an option.
We Are All Cyborgs (Nishant Shah, Indian Express, April 29, 2012): The cyborg reminds us that who we are as human beings is very closely linked with the technologies we use.

Citizen Action

Resisting Revolutions: Questioning the Radical Potential of Citizen Action (Nishant Shah, Development, Volume 55, Issue 2, May 2012): In this peer reviewed journal article, Nishant Shah looks into the radical claims and potentials of citizen action that have emerged in the last few years. He seeks to show how citizen action is not necessarily a radical form of politics and that we need to make a distinction between Resistances and Revolutions. It locates resistance as an endemic condition of governmentality within a State–Citizen–Market relationship and shows how it often strengthens the status quo rather than radically undermining it. He examines a campaign against corruption in India to see how the dissonance between the claims of the future and the practices of the present is produced in citizen action.

Telecom

Course

Building Knowledge and Capacity around Telecommunication Policy in India: Ford Foundation has given a grant of $200,000 to CIS to build expertise in the area of telecommunications in India over a period of two years. The project involves creating a repository comprising information about telecommunications related issues and policies and online course materials designed for a multi-stakeholder audience, organising interactive public lectures and workshops around the country to disseminate information on telecom issues and using traditional and new forms of media to disseminate information to academia, civil society, policy makers and the general public.

Column in Business Standard

The Coming Telecom Monopoly (Shyam Ponappa, Business Standard, May 3, 2012): “The 2G judgment and Trai spectrum pricing recommendations have led to a policy that makes sense for only one survivor.”

Event Organised

3rd IJLT-CIS Lecture Series at NLSIU, Bangalore (National Law School of India University, Bangalore, May 27, 2012): Organised by CIS in association with the Indian Journal of Law and Technology. Professor Rohan Samarajiva delivered a lecture on Tariff Regulation in South Asia.
The Awesome Contracts Project (Geekup @ CIS, May 18, 2012): CIS co-organised the event with Has Geek. Vivek Durai, co-founder at Awesome Contracts gave a public lecture. Amith Narayan participated through Skype.

About CIS

CIS was registered as a society in Bangalore in 2008. As an independent, non-profit research organisation, it runs different policy research programmes such as Accessibility, Access to Knowledge, Openness, Internet Governance, and Telecom. Over the last four years our policy research programmes have resulted in outputs such as the e-Accessibility Policy Handbook for Persons with Disabilities with ITU and G3ict, and Digital Alternatives with a Cause?, Thinkathon Position Papers and the Digital Natives with a Cause? Report with Hivos. With foreign governments we worked on National Enterprise Architecture and Government Interoperability Framework for Govt. of Iraq; Open Standards Policy for Govt. of Moldova; Free and Open Software Centre of Excellence project plan for Saudi Arabia; eGovernance Strategy Document for Govt. of Tajikistan. With the Government of India we have done policy research for Ministry of Communications & Information Technology, Ministry of Human Resource Development, Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions, Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, etc., on WIPO Treaties, Copyright Bill, Interoperability Framework in eGovernance, Privacy Bill, NIA Bill, National Policy on Electronics and IT Act.

Follow us elsewhere

Get short, timely messages from us on Twitter
Join the CIS group on Facebook
Visit us at http://cis-india.org

CIS is grateful to 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/may-2012-bulletin

April 2012 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2012-07-07T06:26:40Z

In this issue of our newsletter, we bring you updates of our latest research, event reports, videos, news and media coverage during the month of April 2012:

Internet Governance

Google Policy Fellowship

Intermediary Liability in India: Chilling Effects on Free Expression on the Internet
Rishabh Dara, Google Policy Fellow
CIS in partnership with Google India conducted the Google Policy Fellowship 2011. This was offered for the first time in Asia Pacific as well as in India. Rishabh Dara was selected as a fellow. He researched upon issues relating to freedom of expression. The results of the paper demonstrate that the ‘Information Technology (Intermediaries Guidelines) Rules 2011’ notified by the Government of India on April 11, 2011 have a chilling effect on free expression.

Announcement

The Centre for Internet & Society Joins the Global Network Initiative
CIS officially joined the Global Network Initiative. CIS would bring to GNI in-depth expertise on global internet governance as well as online freedom of expression and privacy in India. GNI Executive Director Susan Morgan said “We are delighted to add our first member based in India and welcome CIS’s engagement in support of transparency and accountability in technology.”

Op-ed in the Hindu

Chilling Effects and Frozen Words (Lawrence Liang, Hindu, April 30, 2012): “What if the real danger is not that we lose our freedom of speech and expression but our sense of humour as a nation?...One hopes that our lawmakers, even if they are averse to reading the Indian Constitution, will be slightly more open to the poetic licence granted by Kautilya.”

Columns in the Indian Express

The Idea of the Book (Nishant Shah, Indian Express, April 8, 2012): “Its future lies in a trans-media format that is ever evolving... The form of the book is going to change as it has over the last 500 years. However, the idea of the book — a receptacle that contains and records collective wisdom, information, ideas, knowledge, experiences and imagination of humankind – is here to stay.”
India's Broken Internet Laws Need a Shot of Multi-stakeholderism by Pranesh Prakash. (An edited version of this article was published in the Indian Express as "Practise what you preach" on Thursday, April 26, 2012.)

Event Reports

The All India Privacy Symposium (India International Centre, New Delhi, February 4, 2012): The symposium was organised around five thematic panel discussions: privacy and transparency, privacy and e-governance initiatives, privacy and national security, privacy and banking and health privacy. Privacy India in partnership with CIS, International Development Research Centre, Privacy International, Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative and Society in Action Group organised this event.
The High Level Privacy Conclave (Paharpur Business Centre, Nehru Place Greens, New Delhi, February 3, 2012): The conclave was organised around two panels: national Security and privacy and internet and privacy. Malavika Jayaram moderated the first panel discussion on national Security and privacy. Sunil Abraham moderated the second panel discussion on internet and privacy. Privacy India in partnership with CIS, International Development Research Centre, Privacy International, Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative and Society in Action Group organised this event.

Events Organised

Resisting Internet Censorship: Strategies for Furthering Freedom of Expression in India (Bangalore International Centre, TERI Complex, Domlur, April 21, 2012): CIS co-organised this event with the Foundation for Media Professionals. Members of Parliament, P. Rajeeve and Rajeev Chandrashekar and Member of Legislative Council, Karnataka, V.R. Sudarshan participated in the event.
Konkan Corridor Project — A Lecture by Vasant Gangavane (Ashoka Innovators for the Public, Bangalore, April 16, 2012): Well known social worker Vasant Gangavane gave a lecture.
Braitenberg Cybernetic Vehicles: Workshop, Film Screening & Discussion (Metaculture Media Lab, CIS, Bangalore, April 14, 2012): There was a short presentation about Braitenberg vehicles.

Events Participated

GIGA International Conference Series - 1 (NALSAR University of Law, Justice City Campus, Shameerpet, Hyderabad, April 5 and 6, 2012): The Institute of Global Internet Governance and Advocacy and Department of Electronics and Information Technology organised the conference. Sunil Abraham gave a lecture on Digital Natives vs. Digital Naivety in the session on Internet Governance & Society.
Expert-Group on Privacy Issues (New Delhi, April 13 and 14, 2012): The Planning Commission constituted this expert group under the chairmanship of Justice AP Shah. Sunil Abraham participated in the first meeting of the sub-group on privacy issues.

Video

Privacy International's Trip to Asia (by Emma Draper in Privacy International blog): In February 2012, the Privacy International team travelled to India, Bangladesh and Hong Kong to meet with local partners in the region and speak at four conferences they had organized. The team got a chance to interview its partners in India and Bangladesh on the privacy issues facing them at the moment. This is captured in a video about contemporary privacy issues in India and Bangladesh.

Media Coverage

It’s mainstream vs social (Guest column by Mahima Kaul, Sunday Guardian, April 30, 2012): “If the video is judged to be 'obscene', then under s.67 of the Information Technology Act, 'causing [obscenity] to be transmitted', is also a crime,”...Sunil Abraham quoted in the Sunday Guardian.
From Cyber India to Censor India: Groups challenge didactic govt (by Satarupa Paul, Sunday Guardian, April 29, 2012): “Instead of a court deciding what makes content illegal, private intermediaries get to decide. And there is no penalty for anyone abusing the take-down notice system,”...Sunil Abraham quoted in the Sunday Guardian.
Social Media 1, Indian Government 0 (by Heather Timmons, New York Times, April 26, 2012): “Because India does not have a bilateral cyber-crime agreement with the United States (as the European Union does), getting American companies like Facebook and Google to take down or investigate the source of content that offends Indian government officials can be a slow and cumbersome process,”...Sunil Abraham quoted in the New York Times.
Private sector censors (by Salil Tripathi, LiveMint, April 25, 2012): “Companies which have no interest in free speech are now taking these decisions. They have the power to do so and they are using it without any sense of responsibility,”...Sunil Abraham quoted in LiveMint.
Views | Why the Left may for once be right (by Pramit Bhattacharya, LiveMint, April 23, 2012): “It has become much easier in India to ban an e-book than a book,”...Pranesh Prakash quoted in LiveMint.
Campaign against curbs on websites gathers steam (by Arpan Daniel Varghese, IBN Live, April 23, 2012): “If a company wants to target your organization’s social media network, they can keep sending fraudulent emails to you and you will have to keep deleting it unless you are ready to face litigation or government action...Sunil Abraham quoted in IBN Live.
Expect anti-net censorship echo in house (by Arpan Daniel Varghese, IBN Live, April 25, 2012): “why should freedom of speech and expression be any different on the Internet?”...Sunil Abraham quoted in IBN Live.
Mobilising support for freedom on the Web (by Deepa Kurup Hindu, April 22, 2012): Rishabh Dara’s research published as part of the Google Policy Fellowship is quoted.
MPs to be taught ‘draconian’ IT Act Rules as India.net support galvanises for annul motion (by Prachi Shrivastava, Legally India, April 23, 2012): Prachi has blogged about the Resisting Internet Censorship co-organised by CIS and the Foundation for Media Professionals in Bangalore.
India arrests professor over political cartoon (by Rama Lakshmi, Washington Post, April 13, 2012): “The state’s new-found aversion to non-believers has gone a bit too far,”...Pranesh Prakash quoted in Washington Post.
A beauty’s blog creates furore (by Lakshmi Krupa, Deccan Chronicle, April 10, 2012).

Digital Natives

Public Lecture

5 Challenges for the Future of Learning: Digital Natives and How We Shall Teach Them (Wyndham Parc 55 Hotel, San Francisco, California, March 1, 2012): Nishant Shah gave a ignite talk. The video is now online.

Book Review...a few excerpts

Immigrants not Natives: “‘To Be’, ‘To Think’, ‘To Act’ and ‘To Connect’ provides many fascinating and thought-provoking insights into the possibilities for reflection, action and interaction,”... Sally Wyatt, eHumanities Group, Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts & Sciences/Maastricht University.

Accessibility

Event Report

ITU Tutorial on Audiovisual Media Accessibility (India International Centre, New Delhi, March 14 – 15, 2012): CIS in cooperation with the ITU-APT Foundation of India organised a two-day tutorial on Audio-Visual Media Accessibility. Sunil Abraham was the Master of Ceremony on Day 1. Ravi Shanker, Administrator, Universal Service Obligation Fund, Dr. Govind, CEO, National Internet Exchange of India, Swaran Lata, Director and Head of Department, TDIL Programme, DIT, R.N. Jha, Deputy Director General (International Relations), Department of Telecommunications and Archana Gulati, Financial Advisor, National Disaster Management Authority participated in this event.

New Fellow at CIS

Rahul Cherian joins CIS: Disability policy activist, lawyer and co-founder of Inclusive Planet, Rahul Cherian has joined CIS as a Fellow. Rahul will be working on disability policy reform and advocacy.

Access to Knowledge

New Event

2012 Global Congress on Intellectual Property and the Public Interest (FGV Law School, Rio De Janeiro, Brazil, December 15 – 17, 2012): We are pleased to announce the Second Global Congress on Intellectual Property and the Public Interest. The theme for this year’s Congress will be “Setting the positive agenda in motion,” and will have a special focus on developments and opportunities in the so-called “BRICS” group of emerging economies. CIS is one of the six members of the Global Congress Planning Committee..

News & Media Coverage

Hacking, Modding & Making (by Brendan Shanahan): “If something has been made technologically possible, we cannot make it illegal and hope that everyone will now pretend that this is no longer technologically possible...We can't have the government checking everyone's iPod and laptop. The better move is to change the model,”...Sunil Abraham quoted in GQ.

Openness

Event Reports and Video

Arduino Workshop at CIS (CIS, Bangalore, March 3, 2012). Video is now online.
Hejje — Together with Kannada & Technology (Bangalore, January 22, 2012): The event marked the first step to bring everyone working in Kannada in the IT field to brainstorm the ideas for future steps, and create a space for technological collaboration in Kannada. CIS co-organised the event with Sanchaya.net, Vishwakannada.com and Chanda Pustaka.

Events Organised

Bangalore Meet-up for the Open Government Partnership Brasilia (CIS, Bangalore, April 17, 2012): Ananya Panda and Pranesh Prakash participated in the first annual meeting of Open Government Partnership remotely.
Design!PubliC – Event in Delhi (New Delhi, April 19 and 20, 2012): The event was co-organised by Centre for Knowledge Societies in partnership with IBM, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Google, HeadStart, India@75, LiveMint and CIS.
International Space Apps Challenge (CIS, Bangalore, April 21 and 22, 2012): An international codeathon-style event took place in seven continents, CIS organised the event in Bangalore.

Telecom

Column in Business Standard

China 3: Build Comprehensive Ecosystems (Shyam Ponappa, Business Standard, April 5, 2012): “Failures in electricity, transport and broadband have common strands. China's approach offers a possible alternative.”

About CIS

Follow us elsewhere

Get short, timely messages from us on Twitter
Join the CIS group on Facebook
Visit us at www.cis-india.org

CIS is grateful to 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/april-2012-bulletin

February 2012 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2012-07-09T07:48:11Z

Welcome to the Centre for Internet and Society newsletter! In this issue we bring you the updates of our research, events, media coverage and videos of the events organized by us during the month of February 2012!

Accessibility

Around 70 million disabled persons in India are unable to participate in information societies as lack of compliance with accessibility standards make interfaces impossible to use, and retrograde copyright and patent policies make it impossible to access knowledge. Accessibility is denied in banking services, web and mobile interfaces, etc. Material for the disabled therefore needs to be converted into accessible formats. The programme has resulted in outputs such as Web Accessibility Policy Making, Making Mobile Phones and Services Accessible for Persons with Disabilities, Accessibility Policy Making: An International Perspective, e-Accessibility Policy Handbook for Persons with Disabilities, Universal Service for Persons with Disabilities: A Global Survey of Policy Interventions and Good Practices, etc.

Featured Research

Web Accessibility Policy Making: An International Perspective: G3ict and the Centre for Internet and Society are pleased to announce the publication of a new, improved edition of the Web Accessibility Policy Making: An International Perspective. The report published in cooperation with the Hans Foundation provides an updated synopsis of the many policies that governments have implemented around the world to ensure that the Internet and websites are accessible to persons with disabilities.

Event

ITU Tutorial on Audiovisual Media Accessibility (India International Centre,New Delhi, March 14 to 15, 2012): At the invitation of the Centre for Internet and Society, in cooperation with the ITU-APT Foundation of India, International Telecommunication Union is organizing a two-day Tutorial on Audio Visual Media Accessibility. The Tutorial will be preceded by the fourth meeting of the Focus Group on Audio Visual Media Accessibility on March 13, 2012. The meeting will take place in the same venue and will be hosted by the Centre for Internet and Society in cooperation with the ITU-APT Foundation of India.

Access to Knowledge

With the emergence of digital technologies and the unprecedented growth of the Internet and other related technologies, intellectual property rights (IPRs) the questions of ownership and control of information have become crucial. The programme focuses on the inequitable distribution of IPR, royalty, outflows, and beneficiaries of intellectual property regimes, the lack of balance in current IPR regimes [local, national and international] between consumer rights and IPR-owners’/corporation’s rights. The programme has produced analyses such as WIPO Treaty for the Print Disabled, WIPO Broadcast Treaty, Copyright Amendment Bill and Parallel Importation of Books.

Blog Entry

Analysis of Copyright Expansion in the India-EU FTA (July 2010) by Snehashish Ghosh.

Video

Recently, the Centre for Internet and Society organised a public lecture in its office, the video is now online.

Gandhi, Freedom, and the Dilemmas of Copyright: (Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore, January 30, 2012). Prof. Shyamkrishna Balganesh from the University of Pennsylvania gave a lecture on Gandhi, Freedom, and the Dilemmas of Copyright.

Openness

The advent of the Internet has radically defined what it means to be open and collaborative. Even the Internet is built upon open standards and free/libre/open source software. The broad rubric of the ‘Openness’ programme focuses to provide evidence based research that will help inform policy and practice of the local, national, regional, bilateral and international policies and practices around Open Government Data, Open Access to Scholarly Literature, Open Access to Law, Open Content, Open Video, Open Standards and Free/Libre/Open Source Software. The programme has resulted in reports such as Open Government Data Study, Online Video Environment in India, a reader on the Wikipedia titled Critical Point of View: A Wikipedia Reader and a film titled People are Knowledge – Experimenting with Oral Citations on Wikipedia.

Comments

Comments on Technical Standards for Interoperability Framework for E-Governance in India (Phase II), submitted to the e-Governance Standards Division.

Event Report

Francis Bags EPT Award for Open Access in Developing World, (Sambasivan Auditorium, MS Swaminathan Research Foundation, Chennai, February 14, 2012). The award function was organized by the Electronic Publishing Trust for Development and the Centre for Internet and Society. Prof. Subbiah Arunachalam gave the welcome address. View the video of the award function.

Interview

An Interview with Dr. Francis Jayakanth: The Centre for Internet and Society conducted an email interview with Dr. Francis Jayakanth, recipient of the inaugural EPT Award for Open Access in Developing World.

Events

Free Arduino Workshop (For Beginners): (Centre for Internet and Society,Bangalore, March 3, 2012). The Centre for Internet and Society organised the Arduino workshop in Bangalore.

Internet Governance

Governments and private corporations are engaging in human rights violations online. Many different rights are impacted by internet governance policy changes. The growing phenomenon of illegal electronic surveillance by state and non-state actors and censorship of speech online are some specific problems that the Internet Governance programme seeks to address by providing evidence based research that will help inform policy and practice of the local, national, regional, bilateral and international privacy regime in the interests of the public in sectors key to information societies with a particular focus on information technology, privacy and freedom of expression. The programme has resulted in outputs such as Banking, Telecommunications, Consumer Protection, IT Act, Limitations, Copyright, Internet Protocol, Media, Sexual Minorities, UID and policy submissions such as, NIA Bill, IT Act, National Policy on Electronics, Cyber Café Rules, Security Practices Rules, and Intermediary Due Diligence Rules.

Featured Research

Privacy India in partnership with Privacy International, UK, the Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore, and Society in Action Group, Gurgaon is pleased to bring you the draft chapters of its book on Privacy in India. These include the Country Report, Telecommunication and Internet Privacy, E-Governance Identity and Privacy, Finance and Privacy, Health and Privacy, Transparency and Privacy. The chapters are an early draft which is in the process of being reviewed and updated. We greatly appreciate your comments and feedback:

Privacy in India — An Early Draft.

Media Coverage

Personal Data, Public Profile: “Whether we like it or not, we live in a world that is rapidly being Googlised”, writes Nishant Shah in the Financial Express, February 13, 2012.
Do we need the Aadhar scheme?: “Decentralisation and privacy are preconditions for security. Digital signatures don’t require centralised storage and are much more resilient in terms of security”, writes Sunil Abraham in the Business Standard, February 1, 2012.

Event Reports

The High Level Privacy Conclave (Paharpur Business Centre, Nehru Place Greens, New Delhi, February 3, 2012): India is in dire need of privacy law; experts say government is ironically creating huge national security risks in attempts to prevent crime and terrorism. The event was organized by Privacy India in partnership with the International Development Research Centre, Canada, Privacy International, UK and Society in Action Group, Gurgaon. Sunil Abraham was a Conclave Advisor and the moderator for the session on Internet and Privacy, Malavika Jayaram moderated in the panel on National Security and Privacy, and Elonnai Hickok spoke in the session "The Way Forward".

All India Privacy Symposium: (India International Centre, New Delhi, February 4, 2012): Experts gathered in Delhi for a public symposium on privacy, transparency, e-governance and national security in India. The event was organized by Privacy India in partnership with the International Development Research Centre, Canada, Privacy International, UK, Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative and Society in Action Group, Gurgaon. The webcast of the event is online. Sunil Abraham was a Symposium Advisor and moderated in the panel on Privacy and Transparency. Elonnai Hickok gave the welcome address and spoke in the session, “The Way Forward”. Prashant Iyengar was the moderator for the panel on Privacy and Banking. Malavika Jayaram spoke in this panel.

Event Hosted

GeekUp with Erica Hagen (Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore, March 1, 2012). HasGeek organized a GeekUp with Erica Hagen of the GroundTruth Initiative. Erica gave a lecture on the theme: "From Information to Empowerment: Unpacking the Equation.

Blog Entry

Unique ID System: Pros and Cons, by Natasha Vaz.

Other Events

Cartonama Workshop (Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore, March 2 and 3, 2012). HasGeek organized a hands-on training for managing and building location based services. The Centre for Internet and Society was a partner for this event.

Climate Change and Controversy Mapping (Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, March 19 to 21, 2012). The workshop is being organised in collaboration with the Devechia Centre for Climate Change, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. Bruno Latour, Dean for Research at Sciences Po, Paris will speak in this event.

Videos

View the videos of some of the recent events organised by us:

All India Privacy Symposium, (India International Centre, New Delhi, February 4, 2012). Privacy India in partnership with the International Development Research Centre, Canada, Privacy International, UK, Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative, and Society in Action Group, Gurgaon, organized the event.

Whose Data is it Anyway?, (Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore, January 24, 2012). Centre for Internet and Society and Tactical Tech co-organised the second round of discussions of the Exposing Data series. Siddharth Hande and Hapee de Groot spoke in the event.

Privacy Matters — Analyzing the "Right to Privacy Bill", (Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay). Privacy India in partnership with International Development Research Centre, Canada, Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, the Godrej Culture Lab, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai and the Centre for Internet and Society organised this event.

Free Speech Online in India under Attack?, (Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore, December 22, 2011). The event was co-organised with the Internet Democracy Project. Achal Prabhala, Lawrence Liang and Anja Kovacs gave a lecture on freedom of expression online in India.

Telecom

The growth in telecommunications in India has been impressive. While the potential for growth and returns exist, a range of issues need to be addressed for this potential to be realized. One aspect is more extensive rural coverage and the second aspect is a countrywide access to broadband which is low at about eight million subscriptions. Both require effective and efficient use of networks and resources, including spectrum. The programme has resulted in reports such as India's untapped potential: Are a billion people losing out because of spectrum?, India Study Tour - Report: The South African Telecommunications Sector: Poised for Change and the Unlicensed Spectrum-Policy Brief for Government of India NTP '11.

Featured Research

Unlicensed Spectrum-Policy Brief for Government of India NTP '11 by Satyen Gupta, Sunil Abraham and Yelena Gyulkhandanyan: The research paper aims to recommend unlicensed spectrum policy to the Government of India based on recent developments in wireless technology, community needs and international best practices, and seeks to demonstrate the need for and importance of unlicensed spectrum as a medium for inexpensive connectivity in rural/remote areas, as well as catalyzing innovation by being a barrier-free and cost-effective platform for the testing and implementing of new technologies.

Interview

An Interview with Stephen Song: Yelena Gyulkhandanyan interviewed Stephen Song, the founder of Village Telco, an initiative to bring practical and inexpensive communication network infrastructure to rural and remote areas. He spoke about factors that catalyzed the initiative, the benefits of the network, some challenges, and the Mesh Potato.

Job Announcement

Content Developers/Trainers: The Centre for Internet and Society is looking for a content developer/trainer to work on an upcoming project Building Knowledge and Capacity around Telecommunication Policies in India. This is a full-time position. To apply, please email your curriculum vitae along with three writing samples to yelena@cis-india.org.

Digital Natives with a Cause?

Digital Natives with a Cause? is a knowledge programme initiated by the Centre for Internet and Society, India and Hivos, Netherlands. It is a research inquiry that seeks to look at the changing landscape of social change and political participation and the role that young people play through digital and internet technologies, in emerging information societies. The programme has resulted in a four-book collective titled Digital AlterNatives with a Cause? and reports such as Digital Natives with a Cause? A Report and Digital Natives with a Cause? Thinkathon: Position Papers.

Events

Digital Natives Video Contest: Twenty-one candidates have been shortlisted, videos will be online soon. Voting begins from March 10, 2012. The Centre for Internet and Society is co-organising the video contest with Hivos, Netherlands.

Essay Review: Digital AlterNatives with a Cause: The monthly essay review for the four book collective of Digital AlterNatives with a Cause? was held from February 17 to February 26, 2012. The Centre for Internet and Society co-organized the “Essay Review” with Hivos, Netherlands.

Book Review

How to Put Up a Facebook Resistance: “The current discussion about Facebook's timeline is only the tip of the iceberg, a symptom of a larger conflict that lurks behind it: how much direct marketing are Facebook users willing to take? How many drastic top-down changes of the user's Facebook experience are possible unless they understand that their presence on this site and what they do there is in tension with the company's goals that provides this digital environment?”, Oliver Leistert reviews Marc Stumpel’s essay, "Mapping the Politics of Web 2.0: Facebook Resistance", in Digital Alternatives with a Cause Book 2: To Think, pp.24-31.

Privacy, Piracy and the Wiki Way of Web: “Privacy is about having more control over the personal information that we have disclosed. As we disclose more information online, we must ask who might access it and why.” Nishant Shah in the Digital Natives Newsletter, volume 9, issue 2.

News and Media Coverage

What is Stewardship in Cyberspace?: The second annual Cyber Dialogue forum takes place March 18-19, 2012 in Toronto, Canada. Sunil Abraham is a panelist in the session on Plenary Panel and Discussions.

Secure IT 2012 — Securing Citizens through Technology: The event was co-organised by DST and NSDI, Govt. of India in partnership with Elets Technomedia Pvt. Ltd. on March 1, 2012 at Claridges in New Delhi. Sunil Abraham was a panelist in the event.

Digitisation is making e-learning simple: “Learning should not be restricted to the Internet and interactive classroom sessions but should be made available on mobile phones through audio files as mobile penetration is much higher compared to Internet reach”, Sunil Abraham in Deccan Herald, February 13, 2012. The article was written by Shayan Ghosh.

India debates limits to freedom of expression: “The government’s proposals on Web censorship would kill the vibrancy of the Internet in India”, Sunil Abraham in the Washington Post, February 13, 2012. The article was written by Simon Denyer.

Developing location-based services, Hindu, February 26, 2012.

Grooming the geek: “Children have to learn fine motor and social skills; tablets and other technology hinder the development of these skills”, Sunil Abraham in LiveMint, February 24, 2012. The article was written by Gopal Sathe.

FUEL Kannada - Workshop on Kannada Computing Terminology: A two days workshop on the standardization of Kannada computing terminologies was organized on January 28 and 29, 2012 at the Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore under the FUEL project. The workshop was organised by Sanchaya and sponsored by Red Hat.

Will open access replace costly commercial publishing models?: “Most scientists in India are forced to work in a situation of information poverty. Others are unable to access what Indian researchers are doing, leading to low visibility and low use of their work. 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”, Subbiah Arunachalam in the Hindu, February 19, 2012. The article was written by Vasudha Venugopal.

Research papers will be available in public domain: “A research produced by the Tuberculosis Research Centre in Chennai which would be of great relevance to researchers, say in a university in Maharashtra, may not be even noticed by the scientists there. Both groups receive funds from the same source - Government of India - and yet what one does is not easily accessible to the other. Open Access would bridge that gap and make information available to everyone”, Subbiah Arunachalam in the Hindu, February 15, 2012. The article was written by Vasudha Venugopal.

OurSay: how India’s technology is cutting into corruption: “Print and cinema reflected the views of citizens and informed them of the visions and changes that the country was going through”, Nishant Shah in Crikey, February 17, 2012. The blog post was written by Gautam Raju, co-founder and creative director, OurSayAustralia.

India won't censor social media: Telecom Minister: “Glad that Sibal does not believe in censorship and that companies operating in India should follow local laws.” “But on the other hand he has asked them to evolve new guidelines and actively monitor user content which is not legally sanctioned. This makes him look two-faced”, Pranesh Prakash in the Tribune. The article written by Salil Panchal was originally published by AFP and reproduced in the Tribune on February 14, 2012.

Govt set to gain ‘back-door’ access to corporate email: “There are no allegations of terrorists using BES or any indication that any of the 5,000 enterprises have any links to terrorists or other banned outfits in India”, Pranesh Prakash in LiveMint, February 14, 2012. The article was written by Shauvik Ghosh.

Indian law caught in web: “The Internet needs regulation but it cannot be treated as a gigantic newspaper or media channel”, Pranesh Prakash; “In liberal democracies like India and the US, information was taken for granted and not perceived as central to the understanding of society”, Nishant Shah. Nishant and Pranesh are quoted in an article by Moyna published by Down to Earth magazine.

Prometheus bound and gagged: The article by Adarsh Matham was published in the New Indian Express on 20 January 2012. Pranesh Prakash is quoted in this article.

Internet Curbs: Sunil Abraham’s article “The Quixotic Fight to Clean Up the Web” which was published in Tehelka is referred to by Rishi Majumder in this article also published in Tehelka, Vol. 9, Issue 07, February 18, 2012.

Tweeple say it pithily with hash tags: “Our social networking sites and writing platforms are performances of a certain kind... they allow us to convert our everyday lives into games — with rewards, actions, punishments or rules”, Nishant Shah in the Hindu, February 11, 2012. The article was written by Deepa Kurup.

New Bill to decide on individual’s right to privacy: “Tesco, a major retail chain in England, is now into E-banking… There are numerous examples of such private banking entities sharing customer information with insurance policy firms. These details are often used as markers for the kind of premium that will be set for a person”, Malavika Jayaram in Tehelka, February 6, 2012.

A new domain name, but concerns remain the same: “The rhetoric is that the Internet is global, but we've been seeing [governments say] how this information has to be regulated”, Nishant Shah in the Hindu, February 5, 2012. The article was written by Karunya Keshav.

Common man as crusader: “The movement targeted at the middle-class for whom corruption is a big issue was also the first middle-class movement in a long time.” Nishant Shah in the Hindustan Times, February 4, 2012.

5 things you need to know about online privacy policies: “India needs to have a broad and horizontal law that establishes online privacy as a right. Unlike in European countries, India doesn't have a privacy commissioner who can state the principles, interpret the data and question the online providers”, Sunil Abraham in the Economic Times on February 6, 2012. The article was written by Indu Nandakumar.

India needs an independent privacy law, says NGO Privacy India: “India doesn't have a privacy law, but there are provisions for it in different laws. During the course of the research, we found that the Indian judiciary has not been very strict in overseeing the implementation of the privacy clauses in various laws,”, Prashant Iyengar in the Economic Times, February 2, 2012.

Privacy, speech at stake in cyberspace: “The clampdown on online free speech and the roll-out of a multi-tiered blanket surveillance regime via the draconian IT Act and its associated rules in India is part of a global trend”, Sunil Abraham in LiveMint, February 3, 2012. The article was written by Leslie D’Monte.

Freedom of Expression in Community Media and on the Internet Understanding Connections, Finding Common Ground: A meeting co-organised by the Internet Democracy Project (Delhi) and Maraa (Bangalore) with the support of the Community Radio Forum in New Delhi on 3 February 2012. Pranesh Prakash participated in this event. Anja Kovacs gave the welcome address and spoke in the session on “The Internet and Freedom of Expression.”

Google move is not good for netizens, say experts: “Google is doing what is good for shareholders. This is not positive for netizens,” Sunil Abraham in the Hindu Business Line, January 31, 2012.

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For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/feb-2012-bulletin

January 2012 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2012-07-09T09:36:46Z

Welcome to the Centre for Internet and Society newsletter! In this issue we bring you the updates of our research, events, media coverage and videos of events organized by us during the month of January 2012!

Digital Natives with a Cause?

Digital Natives with a Cause? is a knowledge programme initiated by CIS, India and Hivos, Netherlands. It is a research inquiry that seeks to look at the changing landscape of social change and political participation and the role that young people play through digital and internet technologies, in emerging information societies. The major outputs have been a four book collective asking questions about theory and practice around 'digital revolutions' in a post MENA (Middle East - North Africa) world, a position paper, a scouting study and three international workshops.

Events Organised

Digital AlterNatives Video Contest: The Everyday Digital Native — To Be, To Think, To Act, To Connect

Digital AlterNatives Tweet-a-Review

'Digital Natives with a Cause?' project invites readers to review essays from the 'Digital AlterNatives with a Cause', a four-book collective published by Centre for Internet & Society and Hivos.

Digital AlterNatives: Book Reviews

Alternative Approaches to Social Change

“Observations about intangible aspects of a movement will keep a research from clinging to activism with a capital A, and start seeing a gradation in the social movement practices. It is constructive and opens the door to analyses of multi-dimensional movements such as the Blank Noise initiative (India). Drawing on methods of identifying new developments to the field of social movement, Maesy examines some aspects of it: the issue, strategy, site of action, and internal mode of organization.”
Nuraini Juliastuti, Co-founder, KUNCI Cultural Studies Center

Accessibility

India has an estimated 70 million disabled persons who are unable to read printed materials due to some form of physical, sensory, cognitive or other disability. This includes persons with blindness, learning disabilities such as dyslexia, cerebral palsy and persons who do not have full control over their limbs. For these people, the material needs to be converted into alternate formats such as Braille, audio or video or electronic formats (text document, word document or PDF) which they can access using assistive technologies. Our key research has focused on a submission to amend the Indian Copyright to the HRD Ministry, publishing a policy handbook on e-accessibility, research on accessible mobile handsets in India and an analysis of the Working Draft of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2010.

Journal Article

Technology for Accessibility in Higher Education, published in the Journal: Enabling Access for Persons with Disabilities to Higher Education and Workplace. Nirmita Narasimhan wrote an article.

Featured Research

Making Mobile Phones and Services Accessible. CIS researched, edited and published this report in partnership with G3ict and ITU. The report contains a foreword, eleven chapters, a bibliography and glossary with contributions from Deepti Bharthur, Nirmita Narasimhan and Axel Leblois.

Upcoming Event

ITU Tutorial on Audiovisual Media Accessibility, organized by the International Telecommunication Union, India International Centre, 14-15 March 2012. CIS is hosting the meeting. The Tutorial will be preceded by the fourth meeting of the Focus Group on Audio Visual Media Accessibility (FG AVA) on 13 March 2012. This meeting will take place at the same venue and will also be hosted by CIS, in cooperation with the ITU-APT Foundation of India.

Access to Knowledge

Access to Knowledge is a campaign to promote the fundamental principles of justice, freedom, and economic development. It deals with issues like copyrights, patents and trademarks, which are an important part of the digital landscape. We prepared the India report for the Consumers International IP Watchlist, made submission to the HRD Ministry on WIPO Broadcast Treaty, questioned the demonization of pirates, and advocated against laws (such as PUPFIP Bill) that privatize public funded knowledge.

Event Organised

Gandhi, Freedom, and the Dilemmas of Copyright: To commemorate Mahatma Gandhi's death anniversary, CIS organised a public lecture. Prof. Shyamkrishna Balganesh of the University of Pennsylvania gave a lecture.

Openness

The advent of the Internet has radically defined what it means to be open and collaborative. Even the Internet is built upon open standards and free/libre/open source software. CIS has been committed and actively campaigned for promotion of open standards, open access and free/libre/open source software.

Workshop Reports

Summary of the Minutes of the Workshop on Biodiversity Informatics, organized by the Western Ghats Portal team to explore the contemporary state of biodiversity informatics at Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and Environment (ATREE), Bangalore on 25 November 2011.
Design!PubliC — Innovation and the Public Interest: On the 14th of October, 2011, the Center for Knowledge Societies organized the second edition of the Design Public Conclave, a conversation on how innovation can serve the Public Interest. The conclave was held at the National Gallery of Modern Art in Bangalore.
Report on the 'Open Access to Academic Knowledge' workshop: On Wednesday the 2nd of November, during Open Access Week, the Indian Institute of Science in conjunction with the Centre for Internet and Society held a workshop on Open Access at the National Centre for Science Information, in Bangalore. We recorded the meeting and published it online.

Event Organised

Geekup on Open Data in Bangalore: Hapee de Groot, Hivos, Netherlands gave a talk on Open Data and its use for citizen engagement.

Media Coverage

Wikipedia turns 11 today: The Bangalore event, open to all Wikipedia users, contributors and enthusiasts, is being held at the Centre for Internet and Society at Domlur.
The Hindu, 15 January 2012

Internet Governance

The Tunis Agenda of the second World Summit on the Information Society has defined internet governance as the development and application by governments, the private sector and civil society, in their respective roles of shared principles, norms, rules, decision-making procedures and programmes that shape the evolution and use of the internet. CIS partnered with Privacy International and Society in Action Group which has produced outputs in banking, telecommunications, consumer rights, etc., submitted open letters to Parliamentary Committee on UID, feedbacks on NIA Bill, and IT Rules.

Newspaper / Magazine Articles

Keeping it Private
As we disclose more information online, we must ask who might access it and why, writes Nishant Shah in the Indian Express, 15 January 2012.

Click to Change
From organising political protests and flash mobs to uploading their versions of Kolaveri Di, people brought about change with the help of the internet, Nishant Shah, Indian Express, 1 January 2012.

The Quixotic Fight to Clean up the Web
The ongoing attempt to pre-screen online content won’t change anything. It will only drive netizens into the arms of criminals, writes Sunil Abraham, Tehelka Magazine, Vol 9, Issue 04, 28 January 2012.

Sense and Censorship
The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA) bills, at the US House of Representatives and Senate, respectively, appear to enforce property rights, but are, in fact, trade bills, Sunil Abraham in the Indian Express, 20 January 2012.

Interview

Our Internet and the Law
Nishant Shah was interviewed by the BBC Channel 5 (Radio) for its Outriders section. Jamillah Knowles reports this. Listen to the podcast online, BBC Radio, 24 January 2012.

Event Reports

Privacy Matters — Analyzing the Right to "Privacy Bill"
On January 21, 2012 a public conference “Privacy Matters” was held at the Indian Institute of Technology in Mumbai. It was the sixth conference organised in the series of regional consultations held as “Privacy Matters”. The present conference analyzed the Draft Privacy Bill and the participants discussed the challenges and concerns of privacy in India.

Future of Integrated Science Education in Higher Education in India
The Higher Education Innovation and Research Application (HEIRA) at the Centre for the Study of Culture and Society (CSCS) and the Centre for Contemporary Studies (CCS) at the Indian Institute of Sciences (IISc) hosted a two day workshop on 2 and 3 January 2012 on the Future of Integrated Science Education in Higher Education in India at the Centre for Contemporary Studies, IISc. Nishant Shah participated in the workshop.

Media Coverage

Twitter’s Censorship Move Aimed at Regaining China?
"The region-specific blocking was already being used on video hosting websites like YouTube and Hulu, where due to the wishes of copyright owners many videos are not available in India. Twitter is extending this technology to its tweets.”
Pranesh Prakash in International Business Times, 28 January 2012.

Google's privacy policy raises hackles (Times of India, January 26, 2012)
“Storing data makes it prone to misuse by authorities as well as corporations... I don't want my bakery shop owner to know what kind of medicines I buy from the nearby medical store.”
Sunil Abraham in the Times of India, 26 January 2012.

Google to change privacy policy to use personal info of users
“New changes are not good for a consumer's privacy.”
Sunil Abraham in Punjab Newsline, 27 January 2012.

Tangled Web
“We did a policy sting operation wherein we sent fraudulent notices to big web sites...in one case where we asked for the removal of three comments, they removed all 13. So there is already a private censorship underway.”
Sunil Abraham in the Week, 21 January 2012.

POV: Should user-generated content be monitored?
“We should not fool ourselves into thinking that private sector companies like Google will defend our fundamental rights. The next Parliament session is the last opportunity for parliamentarians to ask for the revocation of the rules for intermediaries, cyber-cafes and reasonable security practices.”
Sunil Abraham in afaqs, 19 January 2012.

Indian Internet Lawsuit Puts Spotlight on Freedom of Expression
“These rules have the potential to curtail debate and discussion on the net... They allow for all sorts of subjective tests by private parties and we predicted they would have a chilling effect on freedom of expression online.”
Sunil Abraham in the Voice of America, 19 January 2012.

India: obscene pics of gods require massive human censorship of Google, Facebook
“It’s difficult to establish exactly what is anti-religious: for example, the Hindu profession of belief in multiple gods is blasphemous to Muslims, Christians and Jews.”
Sunil Abraham in ars technica, 14 January 2012.
Is India Ignoring its own Internet Protections?
“The I.T. Act provides immunity to (Internet companies) and that should be the default starting position.”
Sunil Abraham in the Wall Street, 16 January 2012.

India internet: clean-up or censorship?
Sunil Abraham was quoted in Financial Time’s beyondbrics, 13 January 2012.

Twists and turns of the SOPA opera
“In terms of infrastructure, the U.S. controls critical web resources. Contrasting this to the Chinese firewall that blocks content for users within its jurisdiction, the U.S. decision to redirect a link can act as a ‘global block’.”
Sunil Abraham in the Hindu, 15 January 2012.

Activists cry foul against Aadhaar
Sunil Abraham participated in the meet on Aadhaar convened by the Indian Social Action Forum.
The Telegraph, 12 January 2012.

NGO questions people's privacy in UID scheme
“The UID project was allowed to march on without any protection being put in place.”
Sunil Abraham in the Times of India, 11 January 2012.

Revealed: Bangalore’s Basic Instincts
“If you look at the Google trend or any other website, Bangalore does not figure among the top 10 cities that surfs for porn. But that does not mean that Bangalore does not surf porn. It only means that we have a very sophisticated surfer with a very specific type. They don’t go through Google or other websites. They know how to go about it. But whether it affects their personal lives is lot more complicated.”
Sunil Abraham in the Bangalore Mirror, 8 January 2012.

Facebook, Google face censorship in India
“Traditional intellectual property rights holders like movie studios, music companies and software vendors are trying to protect their obsolete business models by pushing for the adoption of blanket surveillance and filtering technologies.”
Sunil Abraham in SmartPlanet, 5 January 2012.

Trail of the Trolls
“Trolling provokes a non-productive argument and as of now it is not considered a criminal offence anywhere in the world.”
The Telegraph, 4 January 2012.

Constitution of Group of Experts to Deliberate on Privacy Issues
It has been decided to constitute a Small Group of Experts under the Chairmanship of Justice A.P. Shah, Former Chief Justice, Delhi High Court, to identify the privacy issues and prepare a paper to facilitate authoring the Privacy Bill. Pranesh Prakash is one of the members.
Published by the Planning Commission, New Delhi.

2011: The year India began to harness social media
“We saw an increased sharing of digital content whether photos, videos, songs, news or blogs pointing to the Why This Kolaveri Di video, which went viral on YouTube with over 1.3 million views within a week of its release.”
Nishant Shah in the Sunday Guardian, 1 January 2012.

Blog Posts

Section 79 of the Information Technology Act by Pranesh Prakash
How India Makes E-books Easier to Ban than Books (And How We Can Change That) by Pranesh Prakash. This was reproduced in Medianama.

Upcoming Events

The High Level Privacy Conclave
Privacy India in partnership with the International Development Research Centre, Canada, Society in Action Group, Gurgaon and Privacy International, UK is organizing the High Level Privacy Conclave at the Paharpur Business Centre, Nehru Place Greens in New Delhi on Friday, 3 February 2012.

All India Privacy Symposium
Privacy India in partnership with the International Development Research Centre, Canada, and Society in Action Group, Gurgaon, Privacy International, UK and Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative is organizing the All India Privacy Symposium at the India International Centre, New Delhi on Saturday, 4 February 2012.

Events Organised

Workshop on the Standardization of Kannada Computing Terminology, 28-29 January 2012, Centre for Internet & Society, Bangalore.
The Curious Case of Whose Data is it Anyway? The second round of discussions of the Exposing Data Series was co-organized by Tactical Tech and CIS. Siddharth Hande and Hapee de Groot gave lectures.
"ಕನ್ನಡ ಮತ್ತು ತಂತ್ರಜ್ಞಾನದ ಜೊತೆ ಜೊತೆಗೆ..." organised in TERI, Bangalore, 22 January 2012.

Telecom

Article by Shyam Ponappa

Reversing India's Downward Trajectory
The country can regain growth momentum with rate cuts and telecom reforms, writes Shyam Ponappa in this column published in the Business Standard on 5 January 2012.

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CIS is grateful to 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/january-2012-bulletin

Wiki goes the oral citation way

praskrishna — 2012-06-18T06:18:58Z

In a way to overcome lack of any citable sources in print on several interesting, but lesser-known topics, an Indian researcher on the Advisory Board of the Wikimedia Foundation, has evolved The Oral Citations Project.

This blog post by Chokkapan S was published in Cyber Media on June 11, 2012

Limpopo, South Africa. What does it remind you of? The northernmost province of the Rainbow Nation? The river that snakes through SA, Botswana, Zimbabwe and Mozambique?

There is more to Limpopo than one might have imagined. Many local women in the region are experts in brewing a unique beer from the Marula fruit.

Or, for that matter, how many of us would have heard about Dabba Kali? It's a traditional game played by children in North Kerala, which even many Malayalis from the southern districts of the state may not be well aware of.

In both the cases, there is lack of any citations on official sources, either in print or on the Web, despite them being utterly interesting topics.

This is where Achal Prabhala, an Indian researcher and writer based out of Bangalore, has stepped in to look for a solution. A member of the Advisory Board of the Wikimedia Foundation, he is working on The Oral Citations Project, a strategic research work funded by a grant to help overcome lack of published material in emerging languages on Wikipedia.

The Advisory Board is an international network of experts who have agreed to give the Wikimedia Foundation meaningful help on a regular basis in many different areas, including law, organizational development, technology, policy, and outreach.

"I began to get interested in Wikimedia in 2005. I think Wikipedia, especially in English, doesn't reflect exactly the world we live in. There is some degree of a gap; a huge disparity between what is published and where it is published from," says Prabhala, settling down in his chair at his Cooke Town residence.

"I am more interested in knowing everyday things and conversations, which are not recorded in books," he adds, even as he concedes that the printed book has become the final authority, because of the rigorous, scholarly processes involved in validating the contents.

To put it in better perspective, the number of books published in India and South Africa are nowhere close to the number of books churned out in the United Kingdom. About seven years ago, the UK had 161,000 books published benefiting its 60 million people, whereas India had about 97,000 books for a population of 1.1 billion and South Africa mere 6,100 for 48 million people. That should explain the wide chasm.

Prabhala says, "The amount of media in non-English languages (vernacular) in India is tremendous, but there is not much scholarly content, other than developing news." Basically, in countries like ours and South Africa, there is very little citable, printed material in local languages.

So, oral citations from the local populace naturally fit in as a viable alternative. As a part of this project, Prabhala and his video directors, Priya Sen and Zen Marie, spoke to people in African and Indian villages and recorded the conversations on several niche, but unexplored topics.

Later, the audio interviews were uploaded and linked to the article as sources, which served as oral citations, good to be quoted anywhere.

They worked on three languages: Hindi, Malayalam and Sepedi, which is formally listed under the language category Northern Sotho in South Africa. But why these three languages, in particular? "These are the linguistic communities that evinced interest and came forward to work together on this project," replies Prabhala.

As for Hindi, he says that there are so many articles, but less number of authors and in Malayalam, slightly less articles, but a lot of professional editors available.

Ultimately, the entire project turned out to be quite organic. "People are looking at it in a universal way. We want to converge people to make their own audio citations. There are huge oral archives being used around the world," says Prabhala, who also serves on the board of the Centre for Internet and Society.

Wikimedia Foundation has over 19 million articles written by about 90,000 editors across the world. Would you be contributing to this unique project?

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/oral-citations-project-on-wikimedia

Design!PubliC — Third Conclave in New Delhi

praskrishna — 2012-05-30T07:03:33Z

On the 20th of April 2012, the third Design Public Conclave, organized by the Center for Knowledge Societies in collaboration with IBM, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Google and the Centre for Internet and Society, was held at the National Museum, New Delhi. The Conclave brought together thought-leaders and decision makers from the government, the media, multinational organizations and academic institutions for a conversation about transforming India into an Innovation Society.

Sunil Abraham was a panelist along with Aditya Dev Sood, Arun Maira, Aditya Mishra, Sukumar Ranganathan, Bhairavi Jani, Ashwin Mahesh, Yamini Aiyar, Scott Burnham, Samanth Subramanian, Shanker Annaswamy, Ashok Alexander, Jeby Cherian, Pankaj Jhunja, Chakshu Roy, Ekta Ohri, James Crabtree, Theo JJ Groothuizen, Sam Pitroda, Darshana Gothi Chauhan, and spoke in the session on Participation, Collaboration and Innovation. The varied audience included representatives from the Planning Commission, the Embassies of Netherlands and Sweden, the American Center, the Ford Foundation, Premsela, DFID, PRS, Lirneasia, Sir Dorabji Tata Trust, Financial Times, Carnegie Mellon, Cambridge, NID, Asian Paints, Yes Bank, MTS, and many others.

The conclave began with three panel discussions exploring the relationship between trust, participation and innovation.

Participation, Collaboration, Innovation

The discussions touched upon different means to generate citizen participation in key decision making, including using social media, mobile phones and other technological platforms. These new networking technologies help create spaces for discourse, debate, and an opportunity for collective organization and activity. They also have the capacity to transform the agency and voices of previously remote societies. However, despite their potential to garner massive public participation, they have not really been utilized by most private, public or social institutions.

Mere participation is not enough. It is necessary to moderate the conversation and make respondents accountable for their comments, so that it does not lapse into a meaningless cacophony of anonymous voices. The challenge that remains, then, is to design a platform where both citizens and the government can engage in a meaningful way, without the barriers of language and literacy, and collaboratively arrive at meaningful, actionable solutions.

Imagining India as an Innovation Society

This conversation dove deeper into ways in which the necessary elements of trust and participation could be better incorporated in all the sectors of society in order to enable an innovation culture in India. Existing conceptions of innovation in India, including price-pointing innovation, and the need to move beyond this and create a culture that values systematic, routinizable innovation processes were discussed. When innovating in the public sector and designing systems and processes that affect the larger public, it is especially important to respond to the specific needs of the people. This is where avenues for civil society participation and the design of public spaces become especially crucial, as they function as interfaces between decision-makers and the public. Each panelist spoke about different aspects of this large challenge, touching upon user needs, education systems, intellectual property laws and methods of innovation.

It was clear, as the conversation ended, that a lot more work and planning is needed to even begin to articulate and come to a consensus on what an innovation society looks like.

Click to download the full report (published by Center for Knowledge Societies) [PDF, 2.18 MB]

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/design-public-delhi-event-report

Google Policy Fellowship Programme: Call for Applications

praskrishna — 2012-05-24T15:38:28Z

The Centre for Internet & Society (CIS) is inviting applications for the Google Policy Fellowship programme. Google is providing a USD 7,500 stipend to the India Fellow, who will be selected by August 15, 2012.

The Google Policy Fellowship offers successful candidates an opportunity to develop research and debate on the fellowship focus areas, which include Access to Knowledge, Openness in India, Freedom of Expression, Privacy, and Telecom, for a period of about ten weeks starting from August 2012 upto October 2012. CIS will select the India Fellow. Send in your applications for the position by June 27, 2012.

To apply, please send to google.fellowship@cis-india.org the following materials:

Statement of Purpose: A brief write-up outlining about your interest and qualifications for the programme including the relevant academic, professional and extracurricular experiences. As part of the write-up, also explain on what you hope to gain from participation in the programme and what research work concerning free expression online you would like to further through this programme. (About 1200 words max).
Resume
Three references

Fellowship Focus Areas

Access to Knowledge: Studies looking at access to knowledge issues in India in light of copyright law, consumers law, parallel imports and the interplay between pervasive technologies and intellectual property rights, targeted at policymakers, Members of Parliament, publishers, photographers, filmmakers, etc.
Openness in India: Studies with policy recommendations on open access to scholarly literature, free access to law, open content, open standards, free and open source software, aimed at policymakers, policy researchers, academics and the general public.
Freedom of Expression: Studies on policy, regulatory and legislative issues concerning censorship and freedom of speech and expression online, aimed at bloggers, journalists, authors and the general public.
Privacy: Studies on privacy issues like data protection and the right to information, limits to privacy in light of the provisions of the constitution, media norms and privacy, banking and financial privacy, workplace privacy, privacy and wire-tapping, e-governance and privacy, medical privacy, consumer privacy, etc., aimed at policymakers and the public.
Telecom: Building awareness and capacity on telecommunication policy in India for researchers and academicians, policymakers and regulators, consumer and civil society organisations, education and library institutions and lay persons through the creation of a dedicated web based resource focusing on knowledge dissemination.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the Google Policy Fellowship program?
The Google Policy Fellowship program offers students interested in Internet and technology related policy issues with an opportunity to spend their summer working on these issues at the Centre for Internet and Society at Bangalore. Students will work for a period of ten weeks starting from July 2012. The research agenda for the program is based on legal and policy frameworks in the region connected to the ground-level perceptions of the fellowship focus areas mentioned above.

I am an International student can I apply and participate in the program? Are there any age restrictions on participating?
Yes. You must be 18 years of age or older by January 1, 2012 to be eligible to participate in Google Policy Fellowship program in 2012.

Are there citizenship requirements for the Fellowship?
For the time being, we are only accepting students eligible to work in India (e.g. Indian citizens, permanent residents of India, and individuals presently holding an Indian student visa. Google cannot provide guidance or assistance on obtaining the necessary documentation to meet the criteria.

Who is eligible to participate as a student in Google Policy Fellowship program?
In order to participate in the program, you must be a student. Google defines a student as an individual enrolled in or accepted into an accredited institution including (but not necessarily limited to) colleges, universities, masters programs, PhD programs and undergraduate programs. Eligibility is based on enrollment in an accredited university by January 1, 2012.

I am an International student can I apply and participate in the program?
In order to participate in the program, you must be a student (see Google's definition of a student above). You must also be eligible to work in India (see section on citizen requirements for fellowship above). Google cannot provide guidance or assistance on obtaining the necessary documentation to meet this criterion.
I have been accepted into an accredited post-secondary school program, but have not yet begun attending. Can I still take part in the program?
As long as you are enrolled in a college or university program as of January 1, 2012, you are eligible to participate in the program.
I graduate in the middle of the program. Can I still participate?
As long as you are enrolled in a college or university program as of January 1, 2012, you are eligible to participate in the program.

Payments, Forms, and Other Administrative Stuff

How do payments work?*

Google will provide a stipend of USD 7,500 equivalent to each Fellow for the summer.

Accepted students in good standing with their host organization will receive a USD 2,500 stipend payable shortly after they begin the Fellowship in August 2012.
Students who receive passing mid-term evaluations by their host organization will receive a USD 1,500 stipend shortly after the mid-term evaluation in September 2012.
Students who receive passing final evaluations by their host organization and who have submitted their final program evaluations will receive a USD 3,500 stipend shortly after final evaluations in October 2012.

Please note: Payments will be made by electronic bank transfer, and are contingent upon satisfactory evaluations by the host organization, completion of all required enrollment and other forms. Fellows are responsible for payment of any taxes associated with their receipt of the Fellowship stipend.

*While the three step payment structure given here corresponds to the one in the United States, disbursement of the amount may be altered as felt necessary.

What documentation is required from students?

Students should be prepared, upon request, to provide Google or the host organization with transcripts from their accredited institution as proof of enrollment or admission status. Transcripts do not need to be official (photo copy of original will be sufficient).

I would like to use the work I did for my Google Policy Fellowship to obtain course credit from my university. Is this acceptable?

Yes. If you need documentation from Google to provide to your school for course credit, you can contact Google. We will not provide documentation until we have received a final evaluation from your mentoring organization.

Host Organizations

What is Google's relationship with the Centre for Internet and Society?

Google provides the funding and administrative support for individual fellows directly. Google and the Centre for Internet and Society are not partners or affiliates. The Centre for Internet and Society does not represent the views or opinions of Google and cannot bind Google legally.

Important Dates

What is the program timeline?

June 27, 2012	Student Application Deadline. Applications must be received by midnight.
July 18, 2012	Student applicants are notified of the status of their applications.
August 2012	Students begin their fellowship with the host organization (start date to be determined by students and the host organization); Google issues initial student stipends.
September 2012	Mid-term evaluations; Google issues mid-term stipends.
October 2012	Final evaluations; Google issues final stipends.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/google-policy-fellowship

Cancel the Subscription

Subbiah Arunachalam — 2012-05-09T03:44:50Z

It has been a slow but steady move to make scholarship freely available, writes Prof. Arunachalam in an article published by the Indian Express on May 8, 2012.

Most of us spend a few hundred rupees a year on the magazines we buy for leisure reading or for keeping abreast of current affairs. But if you are a scientist, you may be shelling out a few thousand rupees for the journal your professional society publishes for its members. Of course, if you are a serious researcher, you may have to read or refer to many journals, not two or three. And you will depend on your institution’s library for those journals.

Till 20-30 years ago, most academic libraries, at least in the West, did not find it difficult to subscribe to most journals needed by the scientists in their institutions. Then things started changing and journal subscription prices started skyrocketing — some costing $20,000-40,000 — leading to what librarians call the serials crisis. Much of the price rise was caused by commercial publishers, such as Elsevier, Springer and Wiley. These three control most of the 24,000 science, technology and medicine journals and publish more than 40 per cent of all journal articles today. Elsevier reported a profit of 37 per cent of its revenue in 2011 (up from 36 per cent in 2010); the profit of the other two is no less than 30 per cent despite the recession.

A few years ago, academic librarians, even in the US, had to cut down their budgets for books and monographs to keep journal subscriptions going. Early this year, Harvard, reputed to have the richest endowment among universities, announced that it was finding it to difficult to hold on to its subscriptions and requested its faculty to publish their work in “open access journals” which would be free to read and to resign from publications that keep articles behind paywalls. The irony of it all was summed up nicely by Professor Robert Darnton, director of libraries at Harvard: “We faculty do the research, write the papers, referee papers by other researchers, serve on editorial boards, all of it for free, and then we buy back the results of our labour at outrageous prices.”

A few months ago, a Fields Medal winner, mathematician Timothy Gowers of Cambridge, made it publicly known that he had stopped publishing in, refereeing for and being on the editorial boards of journals published by Elsevier. Gowers created a website called The Cost of Knowledge and close to 11,000 scientists from around the world have signed it already, pledging to boycott Elsevier journals.

Cost, however, is only part of the issue. A more serious issue is the exclusive control enjoyed by publishers over how research gets distributed and shared. They demand that authors surrender copyright to the papers they publish and use it to throttle scholarly communication and hinder the progress of science. It is common sense that if we make scholarly information freely available it will reach a larger audience and help advance further research and lead to wider economic benefits.

The boycott had a salutary effect. Elsevier withdrew its lobbying for the rather absurd Research Works Act, which, if passed in the US Congress, would kill public access to federally funded research and reverse the mandate of the National Institutes of Health putting in one go all the 21 million freely available records in the PubMed library into a fee-to-see system.

Long before Gowers’s boycott of Elsevier and Harvard’s request to its faculty, there have been many stellar initiatives to usher in an era of open access to science and scholarship. For example, all seven research councils in the UK have mandated open access to research funded by them. So has the Wellcome Trust, the world’s largest private-sector funder of life science research. Apart from these funder mandates, there are many institutional mandates, including the ones at ICRISAT, Hyderabad, the National Institute of Oceanography, Goa, and the National Institute of Technology, Rourkela. All these developments have been meticulously chronicled by the philosophy professor, Peter Suber, in the US and the technology writer, Richard Poynder, in the UK.

Recently, the British government enlisted the cooperation of Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales to help make all taxpayer-funded academic research in Britain available online to anyone who wants to read or use it. Says David Willetts, minister for universities and science: “Giving people the right to roam freely over publicly funded research will usher in a new era of academic discovery and collaboration, and will put the UK at the very forefront of open research.”

In India, though, there appears to be very little enthusiasm among the leaders of the science establishment. Neither the office of the principal scientific adviser nor the department of science and technology seems to have shown any interest in mandating open access to taxpayer-funded research. The National Knowledge Commission has recommended mandating open access to all publicly funded research, but it is not clear who will implement the recommendation. Right now, it is left to individuals to promote open access in India.

The writer is with the Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore

Read the original article in the Indian Express

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/cancel-the-subscription

Arduino Introductory Workshop at CIS

Priya Kuber — 2012-05-01T07:50:08Z

The Centre for Internet & Society organised a hands-on-free Arduino workshop in its office on March 3, 2012. Video is now online!

The month of March in 2012 has been an eventful month for hardware enthusiasts in Bangalore. With open source hardware catching up in a big way, a free workshop on "An introduction to Arduino" seemed to be the perfect choice. Its announcement drew a considerable response. The audience was filtered from various backgrounds. Pramode CE[1] of Recursive Labs[2] covered most of the basics, beginning with the basics of arduino to how the code interacts with the sensors. Starting with flashing LEDs to the use of serial port to basic sensors like LDRs he took around the whole basic system with ease. Click for more details.

About 20 people participated in this workshop. These included interaction designers, artists and those enthusiastic to get started with creative projects but with no prior experience with electronics, interfacing and all that hack talk. The workshop provided a general understanding of instructional programming languages, and served as a platform for creative people who didn't have a technical background but wanted to translate their wildest techno-ideas to reality in a snap.

The event also marked the beginning of the CIS hack-lab.

VIDEOS

[1].https://twitter.com/#!/pramode_ce
[2]. http://recursive-labs.com/

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/arduino-workshop-report

Bangalore Meet-up for the Open Government Partnership Brasilia

praskrishna — 2012-04-12T13:18:28Z

The international Open Government Partnership (OGP) is holding its first annual meeting on April 17 and 18, 2012. Representatives from over 50 member countries will gather in Brasilia to celebrate the progress that has been made to date, to exchange best practices, and to grow and strengthen the global collaborative network of open government leaders. Bangalore meet-up at CIS on April 17, 2012 from 5.30 p.m to 7.30 p.m.

Those who work on open government initiatives but unable to attend in person, can still participate remotely. OGP has tied-up with a number of external partners to make arrangements for people to participate in the event online. There will be live webcasts, interviews and chats. Viewers will be able to pose questions to those being interviewed and will be polled in real-time to see who is watching, where they are, what their interests are and what are their thoughts on the programme.

The two day meeting offers an opportunity for open government advocates throughout the world to connect with local civic activists and public officials as well as those working on similar problems in other countries.

The Centre for Internet & Society is hosting the Bangalore meet-up on April 17 and 18, 2012. Get together to watch the live video stream, engage in conversations via live chat, or on Twitter and Facebook for discussing plans to move open government forward in your region.

Click for the full list of countries participating in the event.

8:30-9:30 am Registration & Coffee

9:15-9:30 am Official photo of OGP Member Government Heads of Delegation and Steering Committee Members

9:30-10:15 am Opening Remarks and Welcome

The Honorable Dilma Rousseff, President of the Federative Republic of Brazil
The Honorable Hillary Rodham Clinton, Secretary of State of the United States of America
The Honorable Jakaya Kikwete, President of the United Republic of Tanzania
The Honorable Nika Gilauri, Prime Minister of Georgia

10:15-10:45 am Setting the Stage for the Age of Open: OGP 2012

Minister Jorge Hage, Brazil
Under Secretary of State María Otero, United States
Warren Krafchik, International Budget Partnership

10:45-11:15 am Coffee and Networking

11:15-12:30pm Plenary: Using Transparency to Transform Lives Online and Offline

Secretary of the Interior Kenneth Salazar, United States
Gautam John, Akshara Foundation and TED Fellow, India
Elisabeth Ungar Bleier, Transparency International, Colombia
Juliana Rotich, Co-Founder of Ushahidi, Kenya

Moderated by Samantha Power, The White House, United States

12:30-1:30 pm Innovation Village of Regional Government, Private Sector, and Civil Society organizations advancing Open Government

1:30-2:45 pm Lunch and Networking.

Lunch will be provided onsite at the conference center.

2:45-5:30 pm Open Government on the Move: The OGP Country Action Plans in Two Parts

In Part I and Part II of regional breakout sessions, government ministers and leading civil society activists will discuss country action plans and how to promote a race to the top on open government in each region. Highlights from each panel will be transcribed. Moderators will encourage discussion with the audience following comments from panelists. Governments not presenting in Part I will present in Part II of the regional sessions, from 4:30 to 5:45pm. Participants presenting in Part II are encouraged to attend the session of their choice during Part I and vice versa.

2:45-4:00pm Country Action Plans PART I

South America, I

Government of Chile
Government of Colombia
Government of Uruguay
Government of Brazil
Maria Ferrari Fontecilla, Participa, Chile
Edison Lanza, CAInfo, Uruguay

Moderated by Juan Pardinas, IMCO, Mexico

Central America and Caribbean

Government of Honduras
Government of Guatemala
Government of El Salvador
Government of Dominican Republic
Jose Ricardo Barrientos Quezada, ICEFI, Guatemala
Carlos Hernandez, Asociación para una Sociedad más Justa, Honduras

Moderated by Vonda Brown, Open Society Foundation, United States

Africa, I

Government of Liberia
Government of Ghana
Government of South Africa
Alison Tilley, Open Democracy Advice Center, South Africa
Vitus Azeem, Ghana Integrity Initiative, Ghana

Moderated by Rakesh Rajani, Twaweza, Tanzania

Asia

Government of Mongolia
Government of the Republic of Korea
Government of Indonesia
Government of Philippines
Dorjdari Namkhaijantsan, Open Society Foundation, Mongolia
Vincent Lazatin, Transparency and Accountability Network, Philippines

Moderated by Suneeta Kaimal, Revenue Watch Institute

Central Europe

Government of Romania
Government of Bulgaria
Government of the Slovak Republic
Government of Czech Republic
Gergana Jouleva, Access to Information Program Foundation, Bulgaria
Andra Teodora, Fundatia Soros Romania

Moderated by Martin Tisne, Omidyar Network, United Kingdom

Western Europe, I

Government of Norway
Government of Sweden
Government of Denmark
CSO Representative TBD
CSO Representative TBD

Moderated by Tim Kelsey, Cabinet Office, United Kingdom

Southern Europe, I

Government of Albania
Government of Montenegro
Government of Croatia
Government of Macedonia
Katarina Ott, Institute of Public Finance, Croatia
Vuk Maras, MANS, Montenegro

Moderated by Warren Krafchik, International Budget Partnership

Baltics

Government of Latvia
Government of Lithuania
Government of Estonia
Rura Mrazauskaite, Transparency International, Lithuania
Linda Austere, Center for Public Policy, Latvia

Moderated by Liia Hanni, E-Governance Academy, Estonia

4:00-4:30 pm Coffee and Networking

4:30-5:45 pm Country action plans PART II

South America, II

Government of Peru
Government of Paraguay
Government of Mexico
Miguel Pulido, Fundar, Mexico
Samuel Rotta, Proetica, Peru

Moderator TBD

North America

Government of Canada
Government of the United States
Patrice McDermott, Openthegovernment.org Coalition, United States
Toby Mendel, Center on Law and Democracy, Canada

Moderated by Tara Hidayat, Government of Indonesia

Africa, II

Government of Tanzania
Government of Kenya
John Ulanga, The Foundation for Civil Society, Tanzania
George Kegoro, International Commission of Jurists, Kenya

Moderated by Zohra Dawood, Open Society Foundation South Africa

Middle East

Government of Israel
Government of Jordan
Professor Tamar Hermann, Israeli Democracy Institute, Israel
CSO representative TBD

Moderated by Anthony Richter, Transparency and Accountability Initiative

Northeastern Europe

Government of Ukraine
Government of Moldova
Serghei Ostaf, National NGO Council, Moldova
Khmara Oleksii, Civic Partnership for Supporting OGP in Ukraine

Moderated by Tom Blanton, National Security Archive, United States

Western Europe, II

Government of the United Kingdom
Government of the Netherlands
Government of Spain
Government of Italy
Rufus Pollock, Open Knowledge Foundation, United Kingdom
Marjan Besuijen, Hivos, Netherlands

Moderated by Alan Hudson, ONE Campaign

Southern Europe, II

Government of Greece
Government of Malta
Government of Turkey
CSO representative TBD
CSO representative TBD

Moderated by Håkon Arald Gulbrandsen, Government of Norway

South Caucasus

Government of Armenia
Government of Georgia
Government of Azerbaijan
Eka Gigauri, Transparency International Georgia
Galib Abbaszade, National Budget Group, Azerbaijan
Liana Doydoyan, FOI Centre, Armenia

Moderated by Jonas Moberg, Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, Norway

5:45-6:30 pm First Day Closing Remarks

7:00-9:30 pm Celebrating Open Government: A Reception hosted by the Government of Brazil and Omidyar Network.

The reception is onsite at the Convention Center.

Wednesday, April 18, 2012

9:00-10:00 am OPENING Plenary: Responsibility and Challenges that Come with Openness

Walid al-Saqaf, YemenPortal.net & Alkasir, Yemen
Minister Francis Maude, United Kingdom
Secretary of State Ben Abbes, Tunisia
Fernando Rodrigues, Folha de São Paulo, Brazil

Moderated by Alex Howard, O’Reilly Media, United States

10:00-10:30 am Coffee and Networking

10:30-12:30 pm Thematic Breakout Sessions: Paths to Openness

Participants choose one of five breakout sessions to attend in the morning block of thematic discussions. Follow Sessions 1 or 2 in the morning and afternoon blocks for in-depth discussions on one topic, explored from three perspectives: government, civil society, and the private sector.

Access to Information: Government Perspectives

Vania Vieira, CGU, Government of Brazil
Dr. Ali M. Abbasov, Minister of Communications and Information Technologies, Government of Azerbaijan
Government of Liberia
Pierre Boucher, Deputy Chief Information Officer, Government of Canada

Moderated by Laura Neuman, The Carter Center, United States

Lessons Learned in Service Delivery: Government Perspectives

Minister Mathias Chikawe, Government of Tanzania
Ms. Marie Munk, Deputy Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Economy and the Interior, Government of Denmark
Government of Estonia (invited)
Permanent Secretary Dr. Bitange Ndemo, Government of Kenya

Moderated by Mark Robinson, DFID/Transparency and Accountability Initiative, UK

Networking Mechanism Affinity Group: Open Data Portals

Steve Davenport, AidDATA, United States
Tim Kelsey, Director of Transparency & Open Data, Cabinet Office, United Kingdom
Marko Rakar, Windmill, Croatia
Eric Gunderson, Development Seed, United States

Moderated by Abhinav Bahl, Global Integrity/OGP Networking Mechanism

Networking Mechanism Affinity Group: Public Finance Management and Fiscal Transparency

Iara Pietricovsky, INESC, Brazil
Secretary Butch Abad, Government of Philippines
Dr. Brian Wrampler, Boise State University, United States

Moderated by Nicole Anand, Global Integrity/OGPNetworking Mechanism

Advancing Open Government through Knowledge Exchange

Roberto Perez, IACC, Latin America, invited
Ms. Stela Mocan, Director e- Government Center, Government of Moldova
Miguel Pulido, Fundar, Mexico
Prayoga Wiradisuria, President's Delivery Unit, Government of Indonesia
Eric Braverman, McKinsey, United States

Moderated by Han Fraeters, World Bank Institute

12:30-2:00 pm Lunch and Networking.

Lunch will be provided onsite at the conference center.

2:00-4:00 pm Thematic Breakout Sessions: More Paths to Openness

Participants choose one of five breakout sessions to attend in the afternoon block of thematic discussions.

Access to Information: Civil Society and Private Sector Perspectives

Panel I: Civil Society Perspectives

Karin Lissakers, Revenue Watch Institute
Alison Tilley, Open Democracy Advice Center, South Africa
Ivan Pavlov, Freedom of Information Foundation, Russia
Karina Banfi, Alianza Regional Por La Libre Expresion e Informacion, Latin America

Moderated by Helen Darbishire, AccessInfo Europe, Spain

Panel II: Private Sector Perspectives

Alexandre Gomes, SEA Technologia, Brazil
Chris Taggart, Open Corporates, United Kingdom
Jose Francisco Compagno, Ernst and Young
Ginny Hunt, Google, United States

Moderated by Rufus Pollock, Open Knowledge Foundation, United Kingdom

Lessons Learned in Service Delivery: Civil Society and Private Sector Perspectives

Part I: Civil Society Perspectives

Jose Ricardo Barrientos Quezada, ICEFI, Guatemala
Felipe Heusser, Ciudadano Inteligente, Chile
Nikhil Dey, MKSS, India
Harvey Lowe, Canadian Council on Social Development, Canada

Moderated by Rakesh Rajani, Twaweza, Tanzania

Part II: Private Sector Perspectives

Philip Ashlock, OpenPlans/Open311, United States
Jorge Soto, Citivox, Mexico
Tom Steinberg, MySociety, United Kingdom, invited
Michael Gurstein, Center for Community Informatics Research, Development and Training, Canada

Moderated by Rakesh Rajani, Twaweza, Tanzania

Open Government and Legislatures

Part I: Legislative Perspectives

Representative Paulo Pimenta, Brazil
Denis Russo,Votenaweb, Brazil
Laura Alonso, Legislature of City of Buenos Aires, Argentina
Cristiano Ferri Soares de Faria, e-Democracy Program Director, Brazilian House of Representatives, Brazil

Moderated by Gherardo Casini, Head of Global Center for ICT in Parliaments, United Nations

Part II: Civil Society Perspectives

Andrew Mandelbaum, National Democratic Institute, United States
John Wonderlich, Sunlight Foundation, United States
Danardono Siradjudin, Indonesian Parliamentary Center, Indonesia
Melissa Ortiz Masso, Latin American Network on Legislative Transparency, Latin America

Moderated by Tiago Peixoto, World Bank Open Government Specialist

Measuring for Impact: How to build the case for Open Government

Rolf Alter, OECD, France
Nikos Passas, Northeastern University, United States/Greece
Jorge Garcia-Gonzalez, Director of Technical Secretariat of MESICIC, Organization of American States, Latin America
Harlan Yu, Princeton University, United States

Moderated by Martin Tisne, Omidyar Network, United Kingdom

Learning from Country Consultations to Date: New Strategies for Public Engagement

Samuel Rotta, Proetica, Peru
Chris Vein, The White House, United States
Khmara Oleksii, Civic Partnership for Supporting OGP in Ukraine
Government of Philippines, invited

Moderated by Warren Krafchik, International Budget Partnership, United States

4:00-4:30 pm Coffee and Networking

4:30-5:00 pm Report from Working Group on Meeting Outcomes

5:00-6:00 pm OGP at Home: Closing Remarks with OGP Leadership

Vice-Minister Luiz Navarro, Brazil
Samantha Power, White House, United States
Warren Krafchik, International Budget Partnership
Tim Kelsey, Director of Transparency and Open Data, Cabinet Office United Kingdom

Note: Brazil's local time is approximately eight and half hours behind us. The welcome address on April 17th starts at 9:30 A.M (B.R.T) which is approximately 5:00 P.M (I.S.T).

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/open-government-partnership-brasilia-bangalore-meetup