Centre for Internet and Society

Community Capacity Building Workshop at KIIT University

praskrishna — 2014-04-08T05:22:17Z

The Centre for Internet and Society's Access to Knowledge (CIS-A2K) team is organizing a workshop for community capacity building at KIIT University on March 30, 2014.

Experienced Wikimedians and Subhashish Panigrahi from CIS-A2K mentored the community about community building strategies and outreach. They had a discussion about the further steps with students (graduating batch) of the Indian Institute of Mass Communication (IIMC), Dhenkanal who took part in the Odia Wikipedia Education program. Finally there was a discussion on CIS-A2K's Odia language work plan for Wikipedia and WikiSource.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/events/community-capacity-building-workshop-at-kiit

Odisha Day 2014: Coverage in Sambad

praskrishna — 2014-04-11T12:32:39Z

Odia newspaper Sambad covered the Odisha Day 2014 and published a report on March 31, 2014.


Above: Scanned version of the report published in Sambad on March 31, 2014.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/sambad-march-31-2014-odisha-day-2014

NASA International Space Apps Challenge 2014

praskrishna — 2014-04-08T16:49:48Z

As part of the NASA Open Government Plan , the NASA International Space Apps Challenge have brought together citizen scientists, FOSS enthusiasts , Data Scientists, Open Hardware hackers and students throughout the world for collaborative problem solving with a goal of producing relevant open-source solutions to address global needs applicable to both life on Earth and life in Space.

Event Flier

And once again on April 12th and 13th, 2014, the event will be organized by the Centre for Internet and Society, with a special focus on Open Data, Open Science and Citizen Science, in collaboration with Team Indus, one of 3 teams to be selected globally amidst thousands, to launch a moon rover for the Google Lunar X-Prize 2015.

The event shall start on Saturday, 12th of April, with the following morning talks:

Keynote Speaker: Dr.Jayant Murthy, Professor, Indian Institute of Astrophysics, will be addressing the gathering on Open Science, Open Data and Computing within the Indian context.
Title of Talk : Open Data , Open Science and Computing in the Indian Context: 10:30 a.m.
Abstract: As Big Science gets bigger and yields massive amounts of data, we are left with a host of insurmountable problems from the physical - How do we store and access so much data? - to the computational - How do we process the data with increasingly complex models? - to the sociological - How do we change our paradigm so that we efficiently use the data with a limited pool of skilled manpower. I will also touch on some philosophical aspects of this problem - Should all data be free and what are the implications of this on policy and on individuals.
Speaker : Narayan Prasad, Co-Founder, Dhruva Space: 11:30 a.m.
Abstract: Narayan will talk about issues surrounding Open Data, Citizen Science and Governance whilst taking us on a journey of Bangalore based Dhruva Space, one of the world's few start-ups, looking at solutions ranging from small satellite development (CUBESAT, ARDUSAT), near space environmental design, high altitude balloon imaging and internet -- many of these using open source hardware devices like the Arduino.

We will then get into break out sessions to review and sign-up for existing challenges or propose new ones amongst those listed at : https://2014.spaceappschallenge.org/challenge/

The hackathon will end on Sunday, April 13, 2014 by 6 p.m.

Registration is free and you are requested to confirm your participation for the event here : https://2014.spaceappschallenge.org/location/bangalore/

Participants are requested to bring their own laptops.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/events/nasa-international-space-apps-challenge-2014

Emphasis on developing vernacular encyclopaedias

praskrishna — 2014-04-15T10:22:04Z

emphasis-on-developing-vernacular-encyclopaedias.

This article published in the Hindu on March 30, 2014 quotes Rehmanuddin Sheikh.

It is imperative to make efforts to develop encyclopaedias in all vernacular languages, S. Rehmanuddin, programme officer, Centre of Internet Society - Access To Knowledge, said.

In a guest lecture on Telugu Wikipedia organised by the Computer Science department in JNTU College of Engineering, Pulivendula, he explained the way Wikipedia works - the wiki model and the Wiki mark-up language.

Students were also told about the workings of the media wiki framework, which forms the backend of Wikipedia and several similar projects.

Head of Computer Science, A. Suresh Babu, explained that the guest lecture was organised to enlighten CSE students about Wikipedia, the largest encyclopaedia ever.

It is the biggest multilingual textual source with over three crore articles in 287 languages including Telugu, students were told.

It has over four million articles on various topics ranging from arts to mythology and science to advanced computing, he added.

He explained to the participants about Media wiki API that would help them understand web services and create applications based on the API data.

IT will help them to create data-driven projects in future, he said.

Automation of tasks in the form of running bot scripts were also demonstrated during the lecture.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/the-hindu-march-30-2014-emphasis-on-developing-vernacular-encyclopaedias

Books are a bridge between generations

praskrishna — 2014-05-05T09:27:05Z

Kannada litterateurs stressed on the importance of books and cultivating the habit of reading on the occasion of ‘World Book Day’ on Wednesday.

The article was published in the Deccan Herald on April 23, 2014. Dr. U.B.Pavanaja was a speaker on the occasion.

Speaking on the sidelines of the event, writer Narahalli Balasubramanya said “We should ensure children emulate great minds if we want them to be responsible citizens. This is possible only if we make them read good books.

Today, we are increasingly finding ourselves in the company of corrupt people. It is through books that we can interact with great literary figures such as Bendre and Kuvempu.”

The event was jointly organised by Karnataka Publishers Association, Kendra Sahitya Akademi, Karnataka Lekhakiyara Sangha and Indian Institute of World Culture.

Balasubramanya maintained that the Kendra Sahitya Academy sold books at affordable rates and also gave a funding of Rs 400 crore to the book publishers, annually. “But not many people are aware of books entering market and the works don’t reach people,” he added.

A series of Kannada works written by authors were released on the occasion. Writer Dr Siddalingaiah who released the books said “Books are bridges between our minds and our ancestors’ minds. Every home should have a small library.”

‘Pustaka Bhagya’

“The State government has introduced Anna Bhagya, Ksheera Bhagya and other schemes. Similarly, they should also implement Pustaka Bhagya,” said M V Nagaraj Rao of Shrungara Prakashana.

Technical writer in Kannada U B Pavanaja maintained that in Kannada Wikipedia there was dearth of information on Kannada literary works. “There is enough information about English works but not on Kannada novels and literary publications. The Kannada publishers should strive to feed information and synopsis of each work into the Kannada wikipedia,” he added.

Public Library Department celebrated the occasion by holding a book exhibition and essay competition for children at City Central Library premises on Wednesday.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/deccan-herald-april-23-2014-books-are-a-bridge-between-generations

April 2014 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2014-07-04T03:38:00Z

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

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

Highlights

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

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

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

Accessibility and Inclusion

Under a grant from the Hans Foundation we are doing two projects. The first project is on creating a national resource kit of state-wise laws, policies and programmes on issues relating to persons with disabilities in India. We compiled the first draft of the kit (29 states and 6 union territories). The chapters along with the quarterly reports can be accessed on the project page. The second project is on developing text-to-speech software for 15 Indian languages. The progress made so far in the project can be accessed here.

NVDA

Monthly Update

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

National Resource Kit

Blog Entry

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

Other

Blog Entry

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

Media Coverage

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

Access to Knowledge

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

WIPO SCCR

Participation in Events

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

Blog Entries

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

Media Coverage

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

Other

Event Organized

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

Blog Entries

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

Wikipedia

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

Announcement

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

Articles

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

Events Organized

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

Participation in Events

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

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

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

Internet Governance

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

NETmundial

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

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

Privacy

Analyses

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

Articles

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

Blog Entry

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

Participation in Events

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

Other

Articles

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

News & Media Coverage

CIS gave its inputs to the following media coverage:

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

Digital Humanities

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

Blog Entries

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

Digital Natives

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

Making Change Project

Blog Entry

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

Telecom

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

Event Organized

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

About CIS

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

► Follow us elsewhere

Twitter: https://twitter.com/CISA2K
Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/cisa2k
Visit us at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Access_To_Knowledge
E-mail: a2k@cis-india.org

► Support Us

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

► Request for Collaboration:
We invite researchers, practitioners, and theoreticians, both organisationally and as individuals, to collaboratively engage with Internet and society and improve our understanding of this new field. To discuss the research collaborations, write to Sunil Abraham, Executive Director, at sunil@cis-india.org or Nishant Shah, Director – Research, at nishant@cis-india.org. To discuss collaborations on Indic language Wikipedia, write to T. Vishnu Vardhan, Programme Director, A2K, at vishnu@cis-india.org.

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

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

Odia WikiMeetup

praskrishna — 2014-02-03T06:46:33Z

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

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

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

Art in the Open Source Age — A Talk by Gene Kogan

praskrishna — 2012-12-13T06:06:34Z

The Centre for Internet and Society is hosting a talk by Gene Kogan, a programmer and digital artist, at its office in Bangalore on November 30th, 2012, from 5.00 p.m. to 7.00 p.m.

Talk Summary

The open source movement has challenged longstanding assumptions about art practice. Communities of programmers and makers have collaborated online to create mature software development kits such as Processing and OpenFrameworks, as well as websites like Instructables.com where users can document and share their process. The rapid digitization of the blueprints for creative projects have greatly lowered the barrier to getting started.

These new tools and practices have greatly influenced the workflows that artists, designers, and technologists operate with, and have upended traditional notions of authorship and copyright. Techniques manipulating existing digital content have inspired much debate over legitimacy and authenticity. This talk will critically examine this new outlook and attempt to resolve some practical issues.

Gene Kogan

Gene Kogan is an American artist and programmer currently based out of Bangalore. He is interested in performance art, generative systems, and machine learning. He writes free software for negotiating high dimensional spaces to discover the unexpected and serendipitous. He is currently based out of Bangalore.

His work can be seen on his website at www.genekogan.com. You can also follow him on twitter at @genekogan.

VIDOE

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/events/art-in-the-open-source-age

Panel Discussion on Equitable Access to Knowledge

Admin — 2019-02-22T15:32:46Z

Pranesh Prakash was a panelist and moderator in a panel discussion on Equitable Access to Knowledge on October 23, 2018 at Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore. The event was hosted by DST Centre for Policy Research (IISc), Bangalore.

Open Access seeks to return scholarly publishing to its original purpose: to spread knowledge and allow that knowledge to be built upon. Price barriers should not prevent students, researchers (or anyone) from getting access to research they need. Open Access, and the open availability and searchability of scholarly research that it entails, will have a significant positive impact on everything from education to the practice of medicine to the ability of entrepreneurs to innovate.

Panelists

Arul George Scaria - National Law University, Delhi
Carl Malamud - Public.Resource.Org
Pranesh Prakash (Moderator) - Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore
Richard Poynder - Journalist (covering OA movement around the world)
S Nayana Tara - Indian Institute of Management Bangalore
Shahid Jameel - Welcome Trust DBT India Alliance

This event was a part of International Open Access week activities planned at IISc Bangalore, organized by DST-Centre for Policy Research at IISc in association with National Institute of Advanced Studies (NIAS), Karnataka State Library Association (KALA), JRD Tata Memorial Library, Science Policy Group (SPG) and International Scientific and Technological Education Program (i-STEP).

Read more about the event on Facebook page

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/news/panel-discussion-on-equitable-access-to-knowledge

Digital Technology Engaging Pedagogy through Hindi Wikipedia - A Case Study

Dr. George Joseph,Dr. Sebastian K.A, and Kavitha A — 2018-10-28T05:56:25Z

We have published an article in International Journal of English Language, Literature in Humanities. The article is titled "Digital Technology Engaging Pedagogy through Hindi Wikipedia - A Case Study". The authors of the article are Hindi faculty members of Christ University and Ananth Subray from the Centre for Internet & Society provided research assistance.

Abstract

Hindi Wikipedia (Hindi Edition of Wikipedia) in the undergraduate language classroom. Wikipedia or Open Source Learning is a powerful tool in the acquisition of knowledge especiallyin today’s digital context.While many of the European languages have already established afoothold in the digital space, the Indian languages are yet to create a niche for themselves. Even after a decade of its launch,the Hindi Wikipediacould not attire the enabled richness of the English Wikipedia.While there are about fifty lakh articles in English, Hindi Wikipedia has only about a lakh.

This paper is an attempt to show how a whole new concept of productive activity for faculty andstudents can be opened through a study of basics in Indian language computing typing and editing Wikipedia articles.It explains the value of Wikis for teaching and learning as compared to traditional teaching and physical paper assignment model, showing the power of Open Source Learning and Wikipedia.Most importantly, it shows how Wikipedia and Global Peer Review can directly and immediately influence the quality and relevance of Teaching and Learning in classrooms and learning spaces today.This pilot study ofstudents’ use of sources in authoring Wikipedia articles shows, how students processed texts from sources to compose their own texts transforming classrooms from a place of knowledge deliveryto a place of creativity and research.Through Wikipedia, students are being empowered tobecome creative writers, efficient editors and successful researchers. Article creation and editingof articles in Hindi for Wikipedia is bound to transform the students’ ability to interpret, analyze,create new knowledge and develop their Research Aptitude. This article addresses the importance of Digital Learning through Wikipedia as Pedagogy in Christ University’s UG language classrooms and discusses the prospects and possibilities of using Wikipedia as a learning tool through a case study.

Read the peer reviewed article published by the International Journal of English Language, Literature in Humanities, Volume 6, Issue 8, August 2018

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/digital-technology-engaging-pedagogy-through-hindi-wikipedia-a-case-study

Lecture on Open Access and Open Content Licensing at ICAR (short course)

Admin — 2018-12-05T16:19:56Z

The ICAR-Indian Institute of Horticultural Research (IIHR) a constituent establishment of Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) organised a short course on 'ICTs for Improving Efficiency and Effectiveness in Agricultural Research, Education and Extension of NARES' during November 13-22, 2018 in Bangalore. Anubha Sinha delivered a lecture to the participants.

Read for more information about the programme.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/news/lecture-on-open-access-and-open-content-licensing-at-icar-short-course

Seminar on Open Access in Research Area: A Strategic Approach

sumandro — 2015-12-22T05:37:44Z

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

Background

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

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

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

The Seminar will focus on:

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

Schedule

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

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

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

Open Access Dialogues - Report and Policy Recommendations

sumandro — 2015-12-22T06:52:58Z

The Open Access Dialogues were a series of global electronic debates facilitated by Eve Gray and Kelsey Wiens, in partnership with The African Commons Project (South Africa) and the Centre for Internet and Society (India), during November 2012 to March 2013. It was supported by the Institute of Development Studies, Sussex, and was hosted at WSIS Knowledge Communities Discussion Forum.

Report: Download (PDF)

Policy Recommendations (as below): Download (PDF)

Is Open Access Only for Rich Countries?

Authors: Eve Gray, Sumandro Chattapadhyay, Kelsey Wiens and Alistair Scott

It is not unusual for analysis of research systems in the developing world to provide startlingly low figures for the participation of developing countries in world research. For example, the Times of India last October cited a report that claimed that India produced only 3.5% of the world’s research – a shocking statistic, the newspaper commented. The commonly accepted figure for Africa’s contribution is even worse, at 0.3%. In reality, these figures do not reflect at all the size and shape of the national research systems in these count ries nor their productivity. Rather, they are a measure of how many journal articles are published in journals in the global North and particularly in journals in the Thomson Reuters ISI indices.

The developing world has been badly served by the scholarly publishing system inherited from the 20th century. The commercialization and consolidation of scholarly publishing over the last 60 years has progressively put the publication of the bulk of the world’s research in the hands of a small number of giant co rporations, in an environment characterized by very high and continuously escalating subscription charges, putting access to the world’s research out of the reach of most developing countries. If Harvard complains, as it did recently, that it cannot afford the subscriptions to the major journals, then what could be said for universities in Africa or India?

To add to this, the impact of the dominant systems for measuring the quality and impact of global research have a perverse effect in the developing world, consigning its research to the periphery and categorizing it as of ‘local’ interest rather than being ‘global’, or ‘international’ in its importance.

Global Open Access Policy

Global Open access policy moved forward decisively from late 2011 to early 2013, with UNESCO’s launch of its Open Access to Scientific Information Programme [1] and the World Bank’s launch of its Open Knowledge Platform [2]. At national and regional levels, the Finch Group Report in the United Kingdom [3], the White House Memorandum on Access to Federally Funded Research [4] in the US A and the announcement of the open access provisions of the Horizon 2020 Framework for Research and Innovation [5] in the European Union all marked a global move to entrench open access to publicly funded research. These policies commit political weight and financial support to policy implementation, based on an understanding of the contribution that OA can make to innovation and thus to social and economic development across the world. In the face of these developments, the developing countries, which currently tend to have fragmented OA and research communication policies, face the risk of falling even further behind in finding their place in global and locally relevant research production.

What these events have added to the policy debate about open access over the last year is not only the recognition of the need for government - level logistical and financial support for open research communication, but also a widening of the mandate for open access. Early formulations of open access policy focused on opening up ‘the peer reviewed journal literature’, as the founding document on Open Access, the Budapest Open Access initiative, defined it in 2002 [6]. The principle was that these publications should be freely available to readers, to read, to download and data-mine.. It is this approach that largely informs the UNESCO’s Policy Guidelines for the Development and Promotion of Open Access (2012) [7]. The World Bank policy, on the other hand, takes a broader view of open access, applying a Creative Commons CC-BY licence to the work that it commissions, thus allowing for reuse and repurposing of content in order to reach the widest possible audience and have the maximum development impact [8].

Open Access Dialogues

A number of policy issues emerged from the Open Access Dialogues (OAD), facilitated by Eve Gray, The African Commons Project and the Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore, India, in late 2012 and early 2013 with participants from South Africa, India and Latin America. The overriding policy outcome was an expressed desire to expand the concept of open access to include other kinds of openness, such as open education and open development and to expand beyond journal articles in leveraging the benefits of openness in developing countries, as well as involving outside - university knowledge producers and distributors in the OA agenda. O ver - reliance on the ISI Impact Factor was also a key aspect of the present OA system that came in for criticism , leading to demands for the formulation of research reward systems that are better aligned with national and institutional research strategies and development of alternative metrics for evaluating research success.

The discuss ion took place on the UNESCO/WSIS Knowledge Communities discussion forum, where a total of 19 discussants, excluding the core team, took part. Additionally, the OAD Facebook page was ‘liked’ by 116 people (as of 1 March 2013), with the most common age grou p being 25 - 34 and the gender bias being towards female users at 60%. Two (one hour - long) Twitter discussions were also organised, which attracted 83 unique users in total, who shared 530 tweets using the #developOA hashtag.

Strategic Issues and Policy Recommendations

Beyond the Impact Factor

The ISI Impact Factor (IF) remains the dominant measure for research evaluation and determining academic rewards and promotions in the Anglophone world and beyond. The discussants identified the extreme preference for publication in ('closed') journals with high Impact Factors (IF) as a central obstacle to effective research communication aligned with national and regional goals. Of particular concern was the role this system has had in aligning developing country research activities with academic interests in the universities of the global North, and thus di verting developed country research away from local challenges and opportunities. This model also renders invisible much of the research that is actually produced that addresses local/national/regional concerns. Another concern was bibliographic malpractices including bias against citing works from developing country scholars and work published in non - 'prestigious' journals. Strong argument s were made for the use of article-level metrics as opposed to journal - level impact measurement . Studies were suggested to argue that article-level impact increases with OA journals.

Policy recommendations:

Replacing reliance on bibliometric s and journal-level citation indexes with article-level metrics and emerging alternative metrics that take into consideration the circulation and usage of knowledge beyond higher education institutes.
Developing education policies and guidelines to evaluate res earch and researchers in their specific contexts of relevance and impact, and aligning academic rewards with national, regional and local development strategies.

Uneven Geographies and the Need for Sustainable Models

Attention was drawn to the unfortunate lack of awareness about the nature and potential of OA across developing countries, even in scholarly communities. Simultaneously, the discussants highlighted several success stories of OA journals in developing countries, though mostly from science disciplines. Thus the developing world experiences an uneven geography of OA awareness and adoption, where the OA agenda is being pursued successfully by specific scholarly communities but not translating into widespread support across the higher academia landscape nor into coherent national policy development.

The role played by the global commercial businesses of scholarly works in impeding the Open Access agenda in developing countries was mentioned by most of the commentators. Simultaneously, the complicity of developing country academics in reinforcing the culture of 'prestigious' journals published by global publishers was also criticized. The increasing embracing of Author Processing Charges (APC), the discussants feared, will further entrench this uneven geography of OA adoption and research visibility. This issue is crucial since it is generating a sense of cynicism about OA as yet another incarnation of commercial exploitation of scholarship that advantages the rich countries. The use of fee waivers was criticised for being only an exceptional measure that serves to reinforce exclusion of researchers outside of or new to the dominant scholarly publishing system. There is a need, it was argued, to develop a sustainable business model that is functional in making knowledge circulate in ways that are useful to society, and not solely driven by profit-making needs of publishers.

Policy recommendations:

Promoting a bottom-up strategy for OA adoption in the developing world by focusing on capacity and community building exercises. This could involve scholarly colleagues and advocates gathered around thematic and/or disciplinary forums, facilitated by institutional and governmental recognition and support.
Linking the issue of OA to academic works to the structural problems in developing country academics, adopting a wide-ranging and systematic approach to research capacitation. There is a need to promote OA through curriculum development, knowledge dissemination, training and advocacy, engaging actors ranging from senior administrators to young scholars.
Addressing and involving non-university circuits of learning, of both institutional (primary and secondary education) and non-institutional (informal learning groups around MOOC courses) varieties, and also non-governmental organisations working o n education in particular, and development in general.

A Broader Vision for Open Access

A number of discussants argued for a broader mandate for OA than the traditional journal focus. There were two aspects to this recommendation: firstly, OA should align with other forms of ‘open’ agendas , such as open science, open education and open development, and secondly, OA policies should support distribution and re - usage of a wider range of research outputs. Thus the scope of OA needs to be broadened to focus on the needs of potential consumers of research findings rather than only on the scholar-to-scholar discourse that journals constitute. This wider agenda could include research data, multimedia, 'grey literature ’ such as research and briefing papers, and policy papers. In the context of developing countries, it was argued that 'translations' of research for communities outside academia were important, especially ' recognizing the importance of publishing in a format that most appropriately meets the information and knowledge needs of those who can use the research to improve society's development', as a leading public health academic argued in the OA dialogue.

This broader vision of OA challenges the conventional hierarchy of basic research over applied research, proposing that OA can provide a communicative continuum between scholar - to - scholar discourse, teaching and learning needs, and the mobilization of research for development.

Policy recommendations:

Build on the present governmental acceptance of the OA agenda by strategically using it as an entry point to promote the broader 'open' agenda, including open sharing of research data, bibliographic data, policy papers etc.
Recognize, support and reward OA initiatives and systems that facilitate sharing of a wide range of academic outputs, from journals, books and other scholarly publications to development - focused research outputs targeted at communities outside of higher academia.
Financial and logistical support for the creation and maintenance of websites, repositories, archives and other (offline/outreach) initiatives aimed at hosting and sharing a wide-range of academic outputs, including data and multimedia, and mandating licences that allow for re-use of scholarly materials ( such as CC-BY), for development and educational needs.
A comprehensive (national and international) institutional policy approach, ensuring a central role for research communication in universities and research institutes and for integrated administrative, technology and skills infrastructure to support these roles.

Notes

[1] See: http://www.unesco.org/new/en/communication-and-information/access-to-knowledge/open-access-to-scientific-information/

[2] See: https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/

[3] The Finch Report: http://www.res earchinfonet.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Finch-Group-report-executive-summary-FINAL-VERSION.pdf

[4] The White House Open Access Memorandum: https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/response/increasing-public-access-results-scientific-research

[5] http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-12-790_en.htm

[6] http://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/openaccess/read

[7] http://www.unesco.org/new/en/communication-and-information/resources/publications-and-communication-materials/publications/full-list/policy-guidelines-for-the-development-and-promotion-of-open-access/

[8] http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/NEWS/0,,contentMDK:23164491~pagePK:64257043~piPK:437376~theSitePK:4607,00.html

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/open-access-dialogues-report

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

subha — 2016-01-03T11:19:12Z

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

sumandro — 2016-01-12T13:34:41Z

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

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

The Centre for Internet and Society is (CIS) is a non-profit organisation that undertakes interdisciplinary research on internet and digital technologies from policy and academic perspectives. The areas of focus include digital accessibility for persons with diverse abilities, access to knowledge, intellectual property rights, openness (including open data, free and open source software, open standards, open access, open educational resources, and open video), internet governance, telecommunication reform, digital privacy, and cyber-security. We receive financial support from Kusuma Trust, Wikimedia Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, IDRC, and other donors.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Open Data is a Key Instrument for Transparent Decision Making

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Applied Mathematics Research is Fundamental for Cybersecurity

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

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

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

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