Centre for Internet and Society

IRC16 - Proposed Session - #WikiShadows (Techno-Political Contours of Knowledge Production on Wikipedia)

sumandro — 2016-01-03T06:57:02Z

This is a session proposed for the Internet Researchers' Conference (IRC) 2016 by Tanveer Hasan and Rahmanuddin Shaik.

Session

Wikipedia is a group project, and people in the group need to have separate pages to discuss changes and improvements to Wikipedia's content, be that an article, a policy, a help page, or something anything else. Reading these discussion pages is a vastly rewarding, slightly addictive, experience. Sometimes reading Wikipedia can ruffle feathers.

E.g. 1:

The song, Jana-gana-mana, composed originally in Bengali by Rabindranath Tagore, was adopted in its Hindi version by the Constituent Assembly as the National Anthem of India on January 24, 1950. It was first sung on December 27, 1911 at the Calcutta session of the Indian National Congress. [1]

Whereas Wikipedia entry of National anthem mentions thus:

"Jana Gana Mana is the national anthem of India. Written in highly Sanskritised (Tatsama) Bengali." [2]

E.g. 2:

Are these beautiful waterfalls on the Kaveri River located in Tamil Nadu – or on the border between Tamil Nadu and Karnataka – or in Tamil Nadu on its border with Karnataka? Or is it really the Cauvery river, and Hogenakal Falls? [3]

Whatever you believe, be sure to bring a (Google) map to the debate, and point out that your opponent's sources are not RS or NPOV!

E.g. 3:

Born of Serbian parents in a part of the Austrian Empire, which a short time later became a part of the Hungarian half of Austria-Hungary and is now in Croatia. He eventually became a naturalized citizen of the US. [4]

So was he Serbian? Croatian? Austrian? Austro-Hungarian? Istro-Romanian? Jewish? American? Martian? You decide! But don't forget to leave an edit summary saying how pathetic it is to choose any other version. (Guess who are we talking about?) Clue: He is inventor par excellence.

In this day and age where information is often a touch and go process, a forgotten mode, a solitary quest towards creating knowledge sounds romantic (almost). Networked collaborations (such as Wikipedia) which have created Knowledge sites have led to democratic interpretation and assimilation of such knowledge. They also as a basic necessity have sprung up various modes of annotation, verifiability of the Knowledge thus produced and utility quotient of the same. After all, why create and hold on to information that no body really cares about.

Plan

In this discussion session, the co-leaders of the session shall attempt to peel out the benign face of the visible Wikipedia page(there is a hidden world out there) and discuss the political, technological and social contours of information available on Wikipedia. We shall take the participants through the various stages of discussion about a Wikipedia page and how discussions tend to alter the course of an article. How false consensus is proposed, consent is manufactured and how these efforts are usually defeated by 'Answer People' and 'Vandal Fighters'. It is no less of a war than the one between information and mis-information. The discussion on, calculus, for instance, was host to some sparring over whether the concept of "limit," central to calculus, should be better explained as an "average."

This discussion session brings to the table questions of legitimisation of knowledge and the inherent hierarchies that operate even within open networks of collaboration and offers a critique on consumption oriented knowledge production. The session also aims to ask questions around knowledge as an agent that has levelled some of the earlier existing contours but has introduced some of its own and how that has changed our usages and shapes our experiences.

The session will involve an edit-a-thon on a topic that will be selected by the co-leaders of the session and live commentary on the discussion pages will be tracked for further analysis. The session intends to build a dialogue towards attempting to problematise the questions of the starkly hierarchical and segmented experiences that have played a significant role in production of knowledge in the era of new knowledge practices. The session also will question the 'best practices' in building consent in the present global techno-economic contours of the internet, and its effect on academic spaces, creative practice and intervention.

Readings

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/irc16-proposed-wikishadows

IRC16 - Proposed Session - #ManyPublicsOfInternet

sumandro — 2016-01-03T07:06:54Z

This is a session proposed for the Internet Researchers' Conference (IRC) 2016 by Sailen Routray and Khetrimayum Monish.

Session

The discussion in this session will focus on the cultures of practices around digital / information networks. The objective would be to open up the understanding around notions of identity and rights in the context of governance on one hand, and the proliferation of various subcultures on the other. The objective is to try and understand the political and cultural imaginations 'of and as the public' enabled by internet and digital technologies. In this, we are trying to connect the whole discussion to the first two questions the conference focuses on:

How do we conceptualise, as an intellectual and political task, the mediation and transformation of social, cultural, political, and economic processes, forces, and sites through internet and digital media technologies in contemporary India?
How do we frame and explore the experiences and usages of internet and digital media technologies in India within its specific historical-material contexts shaped by traditional hierarchies of knowledge, colonial systems of communication, post-independence initiatives in nation-wide technologies of governance, a rapidly growing telecommunication market, and informal circuits of media production and consumption, among others?

Plan

Each discussant will present for 20 minutes after which the session will be thrown open for discussion amongst all the participants of the session.

Abstract I

Internet in India has led to the proliferation of practices and notions of governance and citizenship simulated by information networks and data. On one hand, the internet has captured the imagination of citizens and the reassertion of user agency; on the other, the experiences with the internet reflects the new ways of how the state imagines itself and the citizens. Hence, not only a critical mass replete with the possibilities of user agency, but also one aggregated by the state as part of a political project. Initiatives such as Digital India, the Aadhar project, rural internet and increased emphasis on mobile internet services are some of ways through which the logic of access and participation now operates. The paper will draw perspectives from four case studies in Assam - the Mahanagar Project (internet and mobile services), the National Register of Citizens (NRC) update, the Aadhaar Project and rural internet kiosks (Common Service Centers). With these, it focuses on the larger context of the cultures of digital practices; and techno-politics through the various sites and projects through which the internet operates in India.

Abstract II

Those of us who have jumped or meandered across to the wrong (or perhaps the right) side of thirty by now, first came to consume internet in what were called, and are still called, cyber cafes or internet cafes. Their numbers in big Indian cities is dwindling because of the increasing ubiquity of smartphone, and netbooks and data cards. The cyber café seems to be inexorably headed the way of the STD booth in the geography of large Indian cities. The present paper is a preliminary step towards capturing some of the experience of running and using internet cafes. With ethnographic fieldwork with cyber café owners and internet users in these cafes in the Chandrasekharpur area of Bhubaneswar (where the largest section of the computer industry in the state of Odisha is located), this paper tries to capture experiences that lie at the interstices of ‘objects’ and spaces - experiences that are at the same time a history of the internet as well as a personal history of the city. By doing so it tries to ask and answer the question - what kinds of publics does the consumption of the internet in spaces such as cybercafes create?

Readings

Escobar, Arturo, et al. 1994. Welcome to Cyberia: Notes on the Anthropology of Cyberculture [and Comments and Reply]. Current Anthropology. 35(3): 211-231.

Nayar, Pramod K. 2008. New Media, Digitextuality and Public Space: Reading "Cybermohalla". Postcolonial Text. 4(1):1-12.

Kurian, Renee and Isha Ray. 2009. Outsourcing the State? Public–Private Partnerships and Information Technologies in India. World Development. 37(10): 1163-1173.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/irc16-proposed-manypublicsofinternet

Open Water Data

sumandro — 2017-11-02T09:13:57Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/open-water-data

Steps towards Integrated Open Water Data

sumandro — 2017-11-02T09:58:13Z

Multiplicity of data collection agencies, formats, and disclosure practices and conditionalities make it very difficult to access interoperable and open data about water resources and systems in India. Barriers to accessing water data impede not only academic and applied research on related topics but also public consumption of information and critical decision making. DataMeet and CIS are proud to collaborate on identifying and addressing the challenges to open up and integrate data and information in the water sector. Supported by a generous grant from Arghyam, we are undertaking an initial study of open water data resources in India and taking first steps towards developing a Free and Open Source data portal for water resources information in India. Here is an initial note about the project. The key leaders and contributors of this project are Craig Dsouza, Namita Bhatawdekar, Riddhi Munde, and Jinda Sandbhor, all of whom are members of the Pune Chapter of DataMeet.

Project website: https://datameet-pune.github.io/open-water-data/

Contact: pune@datameet.org

The problem statement

Following devastating precipitation of more than 300mm in 24 hours in early December 2015 the city of Chennai was flooded unlike anything it had seen in recent history. A combination of bad urban planning along with heavy precipitation events had made such eventualities all the more likely. But in the case of such storms what parts of the city are likely to flood? What parts will remain unaffected by the deluge. Specific answers to these questions would help city planners plan better for such emergencies.

Only two months after Chennai was waist deep in water, the city of Latur in 2016 ran dry. The Manjara reservoir, on the river of the same name, the city's source of municipal water supply had not a drop left. With more than 4 months left until the rains would replenish the waters of the dam, the city was now reliant on water being transported in bulk via train tankers from more than 300 kms away, news that made daily headlines. The scale of sugarcane cultivation in the region was being called into question.. Was it possible that lowering the allocation of water to irrigation could have preserved enough water for the city's domestic water needs?

Each of these questions call for answers relating to the exact stock of water resources, and how fast the water flows from one part of the water cycle to another. For example, knowing current soil moisture levels and daily precipitation can we estimate groundwater recharge with a high degree of accuracy? If seasonal groundwater fluctuations and river flows in a watershed or sub-basin is known can we estimate actual quantum groundwater footprint of the crop irrigated with groundwater in that river basin? If new industries are being set up in close proximity to each other what might be the effect of these industries on groundwater stocks in the vicinity.

Towards an (integrated and open) data solution

Deriving cause-effect links between the scale of use of water in a particular region and its possible effect on the status of water resources in the vicinity is an extremely difficult exercise because water stocks and flows are affected by so many causal links which need to be studied and quantified in an integrated manner. An integral part of any water resource study is developing a water balance model to estimate water availability and water demand.

Water availability

Precipitation in the form of rainfall and snowfall,
Live storage capacity in reservoirs,
Soil moisture,
Groundwater levels (and fluctuation), and
Surface water flows in rivers.

Water use/demand

Domestic water use: Human Population x estimated per capita consumption (or prescribed norm for domestic water consumption),
Livestock water use: Livestock population x estimated per capita requirement,
Agriculture and Forests: Evapotranspiration data (derived from temperatures (daily/monthly), wind speeds, humidity (daily/monthly), soil moisture & type, type of Agricultural land use, stage of plant growth, and
Industry: Nature of industry and annual production x water required per unit of production.

Overcoming the data challenge

Unknown to many, reasonably high resolution data does exist of these variables both across space and time, as described in detail below. Much of this data though hasn't been made inter-operable. We need tools to model water data, putting together real-time data for water availability and demand onto one platform that can facilitate discussions around it. However what we have are either proprietary river basin modeling software (expensive) OR free open source tools (programming/skill intensive).

They demand:

knowledge of programming or know-how of technical tools and unavoidably
knowledge of the various data sources (to piece together the puzzle)

What if instead, we had access to a tool, open, free, accessible to everyone through a browser (hence no need to download software) and most importantly intuitive to use and understand to someone with little technical or programming knowledge.

What we propose and who is it for?

To understand and take the first steps towards developing a completely free and open source data portal for water resources information in India.

Different groups would have different kinds of needs for water data. Researchers for instance tend to think of larger scales (river basins, sub-basins) whereas Gram Panchayat members may not think beyond the village or watershed scale. Hence this proposal aims at macro and micro scales, trying to determine needs at each level and enhancing our platform to meet these different needs.

The project will generate:

A web app prototype that will collate secondary data,
A paper that outlines sources of data, type of data, level to which available (GP, village, etc.) and nature of the source (Paid/ unpaid/ format available etc.), and
A model WSP format, along with indications for what data already exists in secondary sources.

The users of this work will be:

Researchers/Journalists in the water sector, and
Gram Panchayat Members (to effectively develop water security plans, monitor and govern their local water resources).

Project Team

The project team is supported by Nisha Thompson (Director, DataMeet) and Sumandro Chattapadhyay.

Craig Dsouza

Craig is an independent researcher in the development sector with a keen interest in water resources and agriculture. He has a Master’s degree in Energy and Environmental Policy (2013) and has worked as a researcher with the Society for Promoting Participative Ecosystem Mgmt, undertaking river basin studies in central and eastern India. Craig believes that the democratization of data and tools to derive insights from it holds tremendous potential for addressing issues of inequity and environmental sustainability in India. He contributes to these efforts as co-ordinator of Datameet-Pune, a city chapter of datameet.org.

GitHub: https://github.com/craigdsouza
Twitter: https://twitter.com/dsouza_craig
Website: http://unravellingindia.in/

Namita Bhatawdekar

Namita is a web developer with 10 years of experience developing web applications and web-based data visualizations. She has worked on developing data Visuaizations for corporate businesses as well as in the research sector. She worked with Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Development (MIT's research lab in Singapore) as a Data Visualization expert where she visualized simulation outputs of autonomous vehicles to evaluate urban transport policies. Her work was showcased in many national and international conferences. She has a keen interest in solving social problems using data and is part of Datameet Pune, city chapter of datameet.org.

GitHub: https://github.com/bnamita
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/namitabhatawdekar/
Website: https://bnamita.github.io/Portfolio/

Riddhi Munde

Riddhi is a GIS and Remote Sensing professional with 2.5 yrs of experience. She has a Master's degree in Geoinformatics and Earth Observation from ITC, University of Twente, The Netherlands. Her project experience includes implementing GIS and remote sensing solutions across a number of industries. She is interested in location and remote sensing analytics, ML, Image processing, web based visualizations and is proficient in ArcGIS, QGIS, PostGIS, Web mapping, algorithm development in Python and R and cloud computing. At Datameet she contributes with her know how of remote sensing to further improve data access in water and agriculture.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/riddhimunde/

Jinda Sandbhor

Jinda Sandbhor is an action researcher associated with Manthan Adhyayan Kendra, Pune, where he works to document and analyze issues related to the water and energy sectors in India. He actively supports socio-political movements in Maharashtra, Odisha and North Karnataka. In the past he has conducted research studies on water conflicts around rivers and major dams, socio-economic impacts of droughts, impacts of coal based thermal power on water and the local environment. He has been associated with the Datameet-Pune chapter since its beginning in 2015 and here seeks to improve access to data on social and environmental subjects.

Website: http://jinda.manthan-india.org/author/jinda/

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/steps-towards-integrated-open-water-data

Web Cultures

sumandro — 2016-05-05T09:56:57Z

This cluster focuses on questions arising from the social, political, and material dimensions of the web-based interactions, communities, and cultures. Our interests range across the topics of digital activism and practices and discourses of social change, forms and norms of online communities, experiences of body and intimacy, structures of violence and affect, and device cultures and materiality of interfaces.

Projects

Publications

Digital Activism in Asia Reader edited by Nishant Shah, P.P. Sneha, and Sumandro Chattapadhyay
Between the Stirrup and the Ground: Relocating Digital Activism by Nishant Shah and Fieke Jansen
Material Cyborgs; Asserted Boundaries: Formulating the Cyborg as a Translator by Nishant Shah
Digital Natives with a Cause? A Report by Nishant Shah and Sunil Abraham
Digital Natives with a Cause? Thinkathon: Position Papers edited by Nishant Shah, Josine Stremmelaar, and Fieke Jansen
Digital Natives without a Cause?, a book series edited by Nishant Shah and Fieke Jansen

Network Economies

sumandro — 2016-07-08T13:46:02Z

This cluster responds to the range of transformation and restructuring of the economy emerging with, and emergent with, the proliferation of internet and internet-mediated transactions. The term 'network,' in this case, refers to the following: 1) the connectivity (network) infrastructures that underlie and make possible this economy, 2) the economic power and implications of the 'network effect,' and 3) the assemblage of digital and non-digital components and actors that make possible the functioning of such economies. The issues we are interested in include but are not limited to 'sharing economy' and peer-to-peer transactions; digital labour, electronic commerce, and platform economies; digital money and mobile-based banking; and automation, robotics, and 'industry 4.0.'

Protecting the Territory, Killing the Map

sumandro — 2016-05-17T10:37:14Z

The politics of making and using maps in India has taken a sudden and complex turn with the publication of the draft Geospatial Information Regulation Bill, 2016. Contrary to the expectations arising out of several government schemes that are promoting the development of the new digital economy in India – from start-ups to the ongoing expansion of connectivity network – the Bill seems to be undoing various economic and humanitarian efforts, and other opportunities involving maps. This article by Sumandro Chattapadhyay and Adya Garg was published by The Wire on May 16, 2016.

Published by and cross-posted from The Wire.

The global history of cartography is intimately linked with political needs and economic interests, from the public depiction of sovereign territories to navigating treacherous seas to (wrongly) ‘discover’ the land of spices. In India, the politics of making and using maps has taken a sudden and complex turn with the publication of the draft Geospatial Information Regulation Bill, 2016. Contrary to the expectations arising out of several government schemes that are promoting the development of the new digital economy in India – from start-ups to the ongoing expansion of connectivity network – the Bill seems to be undoing various economic and humanitarian efforts, and other opportunities involving maps, by imposing strict guidelines and harsh penalties on the use of maps by private actors, commercial or otherwise.

The introductory note to the Bill clearly states its primary objective is to ensure the protection of ‘security, sovereignty and integrity of India.’ The concern around ‘security’ is not new when it comes to regulating cartographic activities. It is prominently addressed across the current set of policies and guidelines that govern mapping in India: 1) the National Map Policy, 2005 (“NMP”) and associated guidelines issued by the Survey of India, 2) the Remote Sensing Data Policy, 2011 that regulates satellite-based mapping, and 3) the Civil Aviation Requirement, 2012, which regulates mapping and photography using flights and drones. Protection of ‘sovereignty and integrity,’ however, does not find a mention in any of these map-related policies.

There have of course been several incidents where the government has taken steps (including the temporary blocking of service) against companies that have represented Indian national boundaries that are not in accordance with official maps. Such companies include Google, The Economist, and Al Jazeera. Two companies that have gotten away with no consequences after publicly showing maps of India without certain border regions, interestingly, are Facebook and CCTV.

In the absence of such provisions in the existing map-related policies, thus far, the government has pursued legal action against such ‘anti-national’ depiction of Indian territory under Section 69A of the IT Act, 2000, the Official Secrets Act, 1923 (restricting the collection and sharing of information about ‘prohibited places’), the Customs Act, 1962 (prohibiting the export and import of certain maps), and the Criminal Law (Amendment) Act, 1990.

Though this present Bill has come into public attention rather suddenly, the Indian State has been planning for a comprehensive legal framework for both enabling and restricting mapping, since the coming of the NMP itself. The first avatar of this effort was the Indian Survey Act that was heard about in 2007, but was never made public. More recently, the first report towards the National Geospatial Information Policy (now called the National Geospatial Policy) came out in 2012. Instead of waiting for this comprehensive policy to be discussed and notified, the Bill seems to have come in a hurry to propose a narrowly designed legal instrument. As is often the problem with such precise devices that also want to be exhaustive, the Bill promises much more collateral damage than actual solutions – it ends up killing the map in the name of protecting the territory.

A quick look at case law on map-related disputes informs us about the motivations of the state in enacting this Bill. A major controversy around ‘sovereignty’ in the field of mapping has been about the depiction of international boundaries of India by Google. After several incidents of conflicts between Google’s map makers and the Indian State regarding the depiction of India’s national boundary, the Survey of India filed a police complaint in 2014. As a result, Google presently shows different map tiles to users from India (according to the boundary specified by the Indian State) and different tiles to users from elsewhere. This geo-targeted solution to the depiction of international borders under dispute has been practiced by Google in the case of other countries too, most notably for Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Ukraine and (independent) Crimea.

The internal security concerns have also fuelled conflicts with mapping companies. In 2013, the ‘mapathon’ organised by Google faced a lawsuit for not asking for prior permission from the Survey of India for this exercise in user-contributed mapping. This was preceded by a petition filed by J. Mohanraj in the Madras High Court seeking a complete ban on the Google Earth and Bhuvan (run by ISRO) map applications on the ground that they were both providing information that could be used for planning acts of terror. The petitioner’s argument referred to the provisions of the NMP, and also alleged that such mapping practices violated the individual rights of a person under Article 21 of the Constitution. The court, however, held (2008) that the petitioner was unable to produce any specific “Guidelines/Rules/Law laid down by the Central/State Governments, prohibiting the private organisations or any other individuals to Interactive Mapping Program, covering vast majority of the Planet”.

The trouble with Google re-opened earlier this year as the Pathankot air base was attacked. Incidentally, Vishal Saini, the winner of the 2013 mapathon by Google, contributed to mapping the features of the very same city. Promptly after the attack in January, Lokesh Kumar Sharma filed a case in the Delhi High Court alleging that the availability of sensitive information (from an internal security point-of-view) on Google Maps created security vulnerabilities. In a rather curious manner, the court disposed of the case on February 24, claiming that it has learned from the Additional Solicitor General that ‘steps are in progress to regulate the publication of aerial/satellite geospatial data.’ In hindsight, we see that this was in reference to the draft Bill.

This Bill, evidently, is a product of the Indian State’s inefficient attempts at regulating the making and circulation of maps and geospatial data in digital times. The Bill ends up disregarding the actual features of digital geospatial data and how it forms a fundamental basis (and asset) for today’s digital economy, and, instead, decides to settle for a form of regulation that is much better suited (if at all) to a pre-digital and pre-liberalisation condition. The regulatory measures proposed by the Bill do not only cause worry but also bewilderment. Take for example Section 3 that states that ‘no person shall acquire geospatial imagery or data including value addition of any part of India’ without being expressly given permission for the same or being vetted by the nodal agency set up by the Bill. If implemented strictly, this may mean that you will have to ask for permission and/or security vetting before dropping a pin on the map and sharing your coordinates with your friend or a taxi service. Both involve creating/acquiring geospatial information, and potentially adding value to the map/taxi service as well.

Let’s take an even more bizarre hypothetical situation – the Security Vetting Agency being asked to go through the entire geospatial data chest of Google everyday (or as soon as it is updated) and it taking up to ‘ three months from the date of receipt’ of the data to complete this checking so that Google Maps can tell you how crowded a particular street was three months ago.

Further, a key term that the Bill does not talk about is ‘big data.’ The static or much-slowly-changing geospatial data such as national boundaries and which-military-institute-is-located-where are really the tiny minority of the global geospatial information. The much larger and crucial part is of course the fast-moving big geospatial data – from geo-referenced tweets, to GPS systems of cars, to mobile phones moving through the cities and regions. Addressing such networked data systems, where all data can quite easily be born-georeferenced, and the security and privacy concerns that are engendered by them, should be the ultimate purpose of, and challenge for, a future-looking Geospatial Information Regulation Act.

The present Bill imposes an undesirable bureaucratic structure of licenses and permits upon the GIS industry in the country in particular, and on all sections of the economy using networked devices in general. This will only end up restricting the size of the GIS industry to a few dominant players. For all creators and users of maps for non-commercial, developmental, and humanitarian interests, this Bill appears to be an imminent threat, even if it is never actually applied.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/protecting-the-territory-killing-the-map

Workshop on Open Data for Human Development - Sessions Report

sumandro — 2015-08-28T08:16:09Z

CIS facilitated a workshop on open data policy and tools for government officials from Sikkim, Meghalaya, and Tripura, and those from Bhutan and Maldives, in June 2015. The workshop was co-facilitated with Akvo, DataMeet, and Mapbox, and was supported by International Centre for Human Development of UNDP India. Here we share the workshop report and other related documents. The report is written by Sumandro, along with Amitangshu Acharya of Akvo.

Day 01, June 03, 2015

The first day of the workshop began with Mr. Prem Das Rai, Honourable MP, Loksabha, Sikkim, briefly addressing the participants. He contextualised the workshop against the background of technological changes and emerging opportunities of governance through effective usages of data. Dr. A.K. Shiva Kumar, Director of the International Centre for Human Development (IC4HD), UNDP India, welcomed the participants and initiated a panel discussion on data, ICTs and governance. The panel had three speakers: Mr. Srivatsa Krishna, IAS and Secretary, Department of Information Technology, Biotechnology, and Science and Technology, Government of Karnataka; Dr. B. Gangaiah, Additional Director General, Centre for Good Governance, Hyderabad; and Sunil Abraham, Executive Director, the Centre for Internet and Society, Bengaluru and Delhi.

Mr. Krishna spoke about the strategies adopted in setting up IT and ITES clusters in Cyberabad, Andhra Pradesh and in Bengaluru, Karnataka. He noted that tax cuts and accelerated land allocation are key to incentivising the private sector to set up IT and ITES units. Another major concern is that of ensuring supply of good quality IT workers. He also emphasised on the need for governments to build effective public facing electronic services - either in the form of Nemmadi Kendras, where people can physically go to access various government services, or in the form of mobile applications that bring different civic services into one digital interface, like Bangalore One and Karnataka Mobile One.

Dr. Gangaiah gave an extensive overview of the idea and applications of open data in the contexts of governance and development. He noted that government data (in India) often suffers from criticisms related to quality, as well as the lack of availability of the same in public domain. The key problems, he identified, for opening up government data in India are that most often the data is collected by a government agency for a very specific purpose, and the steps required to ensure wider circulation and use of the same is not taken (such as lack of documentation and interoperability of data); and that the government agencies most often consider the collected data as a source of power, and hence as something to be retained and not disclosed in full details. The slides from Dr. Gangaiah’s presentation can be accessed here.

Mr. Abraham’s presentation highlighted several areas of concern when deploying data-driven techniques and solutions for human development challenges. He described how the current phase of open data discussions by central and state governments in India represent the third phase of ‘openness’ in governance in India. While the first phase focused on usage of Free/Libre Open Source Softwares in building electronic governance applications and information systems, the second phase involved embracing of open software standards and formats across government information systems and IT solutions. It is very important to note that with the third phase of openness focusing on opening up of data and information, both of these earlier foci of free and open source softwares, and open standards and interoperability are returning as complementary components to ensure seamless publication of open government data. However, he argued, when deploying data-driven techniques and solutions for human development challenges, it is imperative to remember three things: 1) collection of data is a time- and effort-consuming task, and hence must be optimised so as to not to take away time and effort from actual developmental interventions, 2) bad quality of development data is a structural problem, often emanating from the data being not useful to the person actually collecting it, and 3) availability of data does not automatically change or open up the process of decision-making.

The second session of the day started with a detailed presentation by Mr. T. Samdup, Joint Director, Department of Information Technology, Government of Sikkim, on the context, the making, and the salient features of the Sikkim Open Data Acquisition and Accessibility Policy (SODAAP), 2014. He explained that the Policy mandates setting up of an online state data portal that will host all data sets generated by various agencies of the Government of Sikkim, and making such data available, subject to concerns of privacy and security, across all state government agencies and the citizens in general. The key needs driving this Policy have been that for availability of accurate and timely data on various aspects of human development in the state, as well as for reducing expenses and confusions due to duplication of data collection efforts. The slides from Mr. Samdup’s presentation can be accessed here.

The presentation by Mr. Samdup was followed by one by Mr. Sumandro Chattapadhyay of the Centre for Internet and Society on an initial set of questions and concerns that should be addressed by the implementation plan of the SODAAP. He took a detailed look at the four objectives mentioned in the Policy document, and discussed what tasks, decisions, and deliberations are needed to achieve each of those. In conclusion, he listed a set of core components of the implementation process that must also be discussed in the implementation plan document, namely: 1) governance and oversight structure for implementation, 2) incentivising government personnel for opening up data across departments, including financial support for the same, 3) metadata, documentation of data collection process, and implementing unique identifiers, and 4) developing processes of sharing of data between the Union and the state government, especially in reference to national Management Information Systems. The slides from Mr. Chattapadhyay’s presentation can be accessed here.

These presentations were followed by a general discussion on various aspects of the SODAAP and the challenges to be overcome during its implementation. This session provided a general introduction to the SODAAP, especially for workshop participants who are not from Sikkim, and also set up the key questions to be discussed and answered while preparing the first draft of the SODAAP implementation plan.

After the second session ended, the participants were asked to individually write down the key challenges they identify for the implementation process of SODAAP. These responses were compiled by Sumandro and made available as a reference document for the implementation plan. The chart below summarises these responses.

In the third session of the day, Joy Ghosh and Amitangshu Acharya of Akvo talked about the challenges of collecting structured born-digital data from the grassroots level, and how using mobile-based applications, like Akvo FLOW, can address such challenges. Akvo FLOW runs on all Android-based smartphones, and allows ground level development workers to directly feed data into the phone, as well as collect related materials like GPS location and photographs, based upon a form that is centrally designed and downloaded into their phones by the development workers. The data is then kept in the phone till it is sent back to the main server, where data coming from all different surveyors using the same form is shown on a map-based interface for easy navigation of the data across space and time. In this session, Mr. Acharya first introduced the participants to the issues around digital data collection, touching upon issues of ethics, capacity, prioritisation of data collection process along with tools. Mr. Ghosh then took over to describe the functioning of the tool, and then distributed several smartphones, pre-loaded with Akvo FLOW, among the participants for an applied data collection exercise where the participants walked around the NIAS campus and collected data using the FLOW interface. They returned to see their data mapped and analysed on the online dashboard. Their presentation can be accessed here.

Day 02, June 04, 2015

The second day started with two consecutive presentations by Mr. Thejesh GN of DataMeet, and Mr. Sivaram Ramachandran of Mapbox on the tools and techniques for working with statistical data and with geospatial data, respectively. The former presentation took the participants through the stages of working with statistical data: from collecting and finding data, to cleaning and validating, and finally analysing the data. Various free and open source tools for each of these stages were also discussed in brief, such as PDF Tables and Tabula for converting PDF tables to spreadsheets, Open Refine for cleaning data, and RAW and DataWrapper for generating web-based dynamic charts. The latter presentation explored the various ways in which geospatial data can be used to inform and support decision-making, and the tools that can be used to render and present geospatial data in forms that are accessible for decision-makers within government and also for individual users. Mr. Ramachandran presented the various free and open source tools available for working with geospatial data, such as Mapbox Studio, Quantum GIS, and Leaflet JS. He also gave a brief introduction to OpenStreetMap, the wiki-like user-contributed global map data platform. Both the presentations can be accessed here and here, respectively. After this session, the participants were divided into two groups. One group engaged further with tools and techniques of working with statistical and geospatial data. The second group took part in a series of exercises to identify and document the current data flows and bottlenecks thereof across several key departments of Government of Sikkim.

The group engaging in applications of various software tools for working with statistical and geospatial data was facilitated by Mr. Thejesh and Mr. Ramachandran. This group worked with a sample statistical data set, taking it across the stages of finding, cleaning, analysing, and visualising as discussed earlier. The participants used the online version of Tableau to create dynamic charts. Afterwards, they were introduced to various methods of contributing and downloading data from the OpenStreetMap, including directly adding data points through the online editor named iD. The participants went out in the NIAS campus to collect geospatial data about various natural and human-made features of the campus, such as trees, pathways, etc.

The second group working on documenting data flows and identifying bottlenecks was facilitated by Mr. Chattapadhyay, Mr. Acharya, and Ms. Rajashi Mukherjee from Akvo. The group was further divided into department-wise teams, one each for the Department of Health, the Department of Economic Statistics, Monitoring, and Evaluation (DESME), the Human Resource Development Department (HRDD), and representatives from Gram Panchayat Units. The exercise began with each of the teams discussing and drawing the flow of data for one of the major data set maintained by the agency concerned. The data flows were drawn by identifying key moments of its processing (such as primary collection, verification, digitisation, analysis, storage, reporting, etc.), the actors involved in that moment, the tools and data formats relevant for each moment, and which agency finally stores and uses the data. Once these processes were described on paper, the next part of the exercise focused on identifying which challenges exist at which part of these data flows. This was followed up by a ranking of all these challenges, in terms of how critically they affect the ability of the agency concerned to use and share the final data. All the teams worked separately, and conversed with the facilitators as needed, to develop the data flow diagrams and identify the key challenges.

The major common challenges noted by these teams were: 1) delays in collection, verification, and digitisation of data, 2) inability of state government agencies to access data collected as part of centrally-funded welfare schemes, and 3) parallel systems of data collection employed by different departments leading to duplication of efforts and data.

Several interesting insights came through in this exercise. For example, data related to education is collected both by the HRDD, and the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyaan (SSA). However, SSA data is not shared with the HRDD. Also, the HRDD publishes all its data, including the name of students, on their website, making it publicly available. One of the data challenges identified by the HRDD was their difficulty in tracking if scholarship money is reaching the suitable students. When a student moves from one school to another, the records do not get updated easily. This leads to different schools continuing to receive funds for the same scholarship. Aligning school records is important to prevent such leakages.

After these two grouped exercises, all the participants gathered back so that the data flows diagrams and identification of key challenges documented by departmental teams could be presented to the entire group. Each team presented their data flow diagram, and discussed challenges and opportunities. This created a context for different departments to discuss what kind of data they often needed from each other, and how there was neither a platform for inter-departmental discussion on such issues, nor systems that facilitate the same. There was an agreement that an open data platform could address this issue to a great extent. The discussion also highlighted that the most significant data collecting government agency in Sikkim is DESME, however, it does not publish any data in machine-readable formats, and does not even have a website.

This data flow and bottleneck exercise made it very clear that there are several data production and collection processes in place in Sikkim, and also systems that are digesting, processing, and reporting data. Hence, implementing the open data policy will need to negotiate with such complexity.

In the final session of the day, Dr. Shiban Ganju made a presentation on applications of open data in healthcare. His talk focused on how converting medical information about a patient being stored at various locations to a combined and shareable Electronic Health Record can save the patient as well as the medical practitioners from duplication of medical tests, easier mobility from one medical institute to another, and a clearer macro-level understanding of key public health indicators. Dr. Ganju discussed the open health data initiatives in the United States, in the United Kingdom, and in Sweden, before discussing the challenges faced in implementing interoperable standards for open health data in India. The slides from Dr. Ganju’s presentation can be accessed here.

Day 03, June 05, 2015

The final day started with a set of presentations from Mr. Garab Dorji, Deputy Chief IT Officer, Office of the Prime Minister, Thimphu, Bhutan of the Government of Bhutan, Mr. Birendra Tiwari, Senior Informatic Officer, Department of Information Technology, Government of Meghalaya, and Mr. Milan Chhetri of Melli Dara Paiyong Gram Panchayat Unit, Sikkim, on various technological solutions being explored, implemented, and practiced by the respective governments and administrative units.

Mr. Milan Chhetri’s presentation was on the operationalisation of Cyber Villages in Sikkim, which had been initiated in 2013 with support from the Honourable Chief Minister of Sikkim, Pawan Kumar Chamling. Cyber Villages aim to address digital divide, by empowering local village units with handheld data devices to collect data from every household and connect the same to a real time dashboard. All village related data is expected to be available in one place. At the same time as part of e-governance initiative, SMS based updates on Government programmes and services will be sent to all villagers. Mr. Chhetri ended his presentation with a short promotional video of the concept, which is embedded below.

The second session of the day started with a presentation from Mr. D. P. Misra, National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy - Programme Management Unit (NDSAP-PMU), National Informatics Centre, Government of India. The presentation focused on the process of implementation of the National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy approved by the Government of India in 2012. Mr. Misra has played a key role in the NDSAP-PMU that was trusted with development of the national open government data platform of India and in setting up the procedures and standards for publication of government data by various central and state government agencies through that Platform. His talk described the technical solutions designed by the NDSAP-PMU to make data accessible for the end-users in various file formats, to make visualisation of available data easy, and to make it possible for users to comment upon existing data and to request for data that is unavailable at the moment. Further, he emphasised the need for outreach initiatives by the government so as to build awareness and activities around the available open government data. The slides from Mr. Misra’s presentation can be accessed here.

The presentation by Mr. Misra was followed by a group exercise where various teams, self-selected by the participants, worked on different sections of the SODAAP implementation plan to put together ideas and plans for the first draft of the document. Five groups were formed and each of them worked on a separate section of the implementation plan: 1) Governance Framework and Budgetary Support, 2) Data Inventory and Negative List, 3) Data Acquisition and Open Standards, 4) Data Publication Process, Licenses, and Timeframes, and 5) Awareness, Capacity, and Demand of Data. The initial section titled ‘Introduction to the Policy and its Principles’ was put together by Vashistha Iyer on the basis of the SODAAP document. The technical section on the ‘Sikkim Open Data Portal’ was left out of this drafting exercise, as it was decided that the representatives of the Department of Information Technology will prepare this section on the basis of their interactions with the NDSAP-PMU later in June.

The drafting session was followed by presentations by each team working on a separate section, and quick feedbacks from all the participants. These drafts, along with the feedbacks, have been compiled together by Mr. Chattapadhyay, and is shared with the officials from the Government of Sikkim for their further discussion and eventual finalisation of the SODAAP implementation plan document.

The workshop ended with a round of final words and sharing of learning by the participants, and a vote of thanks on the behalf of the organisers.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/workshop-on-open-data-for-human-development-2015-06-report

Blog

sumandro — 2015-08-30T06:52:42Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog

Data Systems - Posts

sumandro — 2019-03-16T04:35:55Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/data-systems-posts

Big Data for Development Network

sumandro — 2019-05-22T11:04:26Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/bd4d

Data Systems

sumandro — 2019-03-16T06:29:37Z

The systems and economies of data has emerged as a key concern of the contemporary 'information'/'informatising' societies. In this cluster we explore the various manifestations and implications of digital data in the context of the Indian society and government – supply, demand, and usages of government data; electronic government and data-driven delivery of services; Internet of things, locative media, and smart cities; infrastructures, systems, and circuits of data collection, storage, sharing, and re-usage; and concerns of ownership and privacy around personal data.

Data Systems: All Posts

Ongoing Projects

Urban Data Justice (2019)

Life of a Tuple: National Register of Citizens (NRC) and the Reform of Citizen Identification Infrastructure in Assam (2018-2019)

In a relational database, a tuple is an ordered set of data constituting a record. Imagine a relational database as a table with pre-defined columns that define the scope of information required for each row. A tuple is a row in this table. Ultimately, in any database designed to ease practices of governance, the life story of a citizen becomes a tuple after the process of data collection, verification, and curation. This tuple has its own life and this project is designed around documenting its life story, which may or may not map seamlessly onto the life of the citizen that it aims to capture, encode, represent, and ultimately, alter.

Our research investigates the process of updating of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) in Assam as a case study to focus on one of the core problems of governance: the unique identification of citizens by the state. The NRC, as a part of the National Population Register (NPR), is a list of only Indian citizens, and is presently in the process of being updated only in Assam [1]. Our effort is geared towards tracing the process of updating the NRC from its conceptualization and design to its current deployment, while also closely attending to current on-the-ground reactions to its implementation.

Project outputs: https://cis-india.org/raw/life-of-a-tuple/

Big Data for Development Network

Big Data for Development (BD4D) Research Network is a Southern-led partnership with the objective of developing policy relevant research on big data for development that is conceptualized and implemented by Southern organizations. The network acts to develop capacity amongst researchers from the Global South, focusing on activities linked to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and to those that address gender related issues. The work encompasses both big data analyses as well as capacity development, while innovating on data partnerships and collaborations with private sector companies and policy makers. The network is supported by a grant from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), Canada.

As part of the BD4D Network, we at the CIS are studying BD4D innovations, policy, practices, and discourse with a focus on the research methods involved; and offering research and pedagogic support towards other hubs of the Network.

Network website: http://bd4d.net/

Network blog: https://medium.com/bd4dnet

Project outputs: https://cis-india.org/raw/bd4d/

Previous Projects

Big Data and Development - Field Studies

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/data-systems

Digital Knowledge

sumandro — 2019-03-16T06:31:14Z

In this cluster, we study the digital conditions of production, circulation, consumption, appropriation, storage, and re-usage of various forms of knowledge in India. It brings together our interests in digital literacy, education and pedagogy; technological infrastructures and devices of digital learning; open access, open educational resources, open data, and open knowledge practices in general and their ecosystems; Internet and the emerging authorities, modes, and platforms of knowledge and education; computational methods in arts, humanities, social science, and natural science research; and software and hardware innovations towards knowledge infrastructures and practices.

Digital Knowledge: All Posts

Previous Projects

Sean McDonald - Ebola: A Big Data Disaster

sumandro — 2016-04-21T09:57:26Z

We are proud to initiate the CIS Papers series with a fascinating exploration of humanitarian use of big data and its discontents by Sean McDonald, FrontlineSMS, in the context of utilisation of Call Detail Records for public health response during the Ebola crisis in Liberia. The paper highlights the absence of a dialogue around the significant legal risks posed by the collection, use, and international transfer of personally identifiable data and humanitarian information, and the grey areas around assumptions of public good. The paper calls for a critical discussion around the experimental nature of data modeling in emergency response due to mismanagement of information has been largely emphasized to protect the contours of human rights.

Read

Download the paper: PDF.

Preface

This study titled “Ebola: A Big Data Disaster” by Sean Martin McDonald, undertaken with support from the Open Society Foundation, Ford Foundation, and Media Democracy Fund, explores the use of Big Data in the form of Call Detail Record (CDR) data in humanitarian crisis.

It discusses the challenges of digital humanitarian coordination in health emergencies like the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, and the marked tension in the debate around experimentation with humanitarian technologies and the impact on privacy. McDonald’s research focuses on the two primary legal and human rights frameworks, privacy and property, to question the impact of unregulated use of CDR’s on human rights. It also highlights how the diffusion of data science to the realm of international development constitutes a genuine opportunity to bring powerful new tools to fight crisis and emergencies.

Analysing the risks of using CDRs to perform migration analysis and contact tracing without user consent, as well as the application of big data to disease surveillance is an important entry point into the debate around use of Big Data for development and humanitarian aid. The paper also raises crucial questions of legal significance about the access to information, the limitation of data sharing, and the concept of proportionality in privacy invasion in the public good. These issues hold great relevance in today's time where big data and its emerging role for development, involving its actual and potential uses as well as harms is under consideration across the world.

The paper highlights the absence of a dialogue around the significant legal risks posed by the collection, use, and international transfer of personally identifiable data and humanitarian information, and the grey areas around assumptions of public good. The paper calls for a critical discussion around the experimental nature of data modelling in emergency response due to mismanagement of information has been largely emphasized to protect the contours of human rights.

This study offers an important perspective for us at the Centre for Internet and Society, and our works on Privacy, Big Data, and Big Data for Development, and very productively articulates the risks of adopting solutions to issues important for development without taking into consideration legal implications and the larger impact on human rights. We look forward to continue to critically engage with issues raised by Big Data in the context of human rights and sustainable development, and bring together diverse perspectives on these issues.

- Elonnai Hickok, Policy Director, the Centre for Internet and Society

CIS Papers

The CIS Papers series publishes open access monographs and discussion pieces that critically contribute to the debates on digital technologies and society. It includes publication of new findings and observations, of work-in-progress, and of critical review of existing materials. These may be authored by researchers at or affiliated to CIS, by external researchers and practitioners, or by a group of discussants. CIS offers editorial support to the selected monographs and discussion pieces. The views expressed, however, are of the authors' alone.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/papers/ebola-a-big-data-disaster

Aadhaar Bill 2016 & NIAI Bill 2010 - Comparing the Texts

sumandro — 2016-03-09T11:25:01Z

This is a quick comparison of the texts of the Aadhaar Bill 2016 and the National Identification Authority of India Bill 2010. The new sections in the former are highlighed, and the deleted sections (that were part of the latter) are struck out.

Source: http://cis-india.github.io/aadhaar-bill-2016/

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/aadhaar-bill-2016-niai-bill-2010-text-comparison

Centre for Internet and Society

IRC16 - Proposed Session - #WikiShadows (Techno-Political Contours of Knowledge Production on Wikipedia)

Session

Plan

Readings

IRC16 - Proposed Session - #ManyPublicsOfInternet

Session

Plan

Readings

Open Water Data

Steps towards Integrated Open Water Data

Project website: https://datameet-pune.github.io/open-water-data/

Contact: pune@datameet.org

The problem statement

Towards an (integrated and open) data solution

What we propose and who is it for?

Project Team

Craig Dsouza

Namita Bhatawdekar

Riddhi Munde

Jinda Sandbhor

Web Cultures

Projects

Publications

Recent Posts

Network Economies

Recent Posts

Protecting the Territory, Killing the Map

Workshop on Open Data for Human Development - Sessions Report

Day 01, June 03, 2015

Day 02, June 04, 2015

Day 03, June 05, 2015

Blog

Data Systems - Posts

Big Data for Development Network

Data Systems

Data Systems: All Posts

Ongoing Projects

Urban Data Justice (2019)

Life of a Tuple: National Register of Citizens (NRC) and the Reform of Citizen Identification Infrastructure in Assam (2018-2019)

Big Data for Development Network

Previous Projects

Big Data and Development - Field Studies

Digital Knowledge

Digital Knowledge: All Posts

Previous Projects

Indian Newspapers' Digital Transition (2016)

Mapping Digital Humanities in India (2014-2016)

Pathways to Higher Education

The Digital Classroom in the Time of Wikipedia (2012)

Sean McDonald - Ebola: A Big Data Disaster

Read

Download the paper: PDF.

Preface

CIS Papers

Aadhaar Bill 2016 & NIAI Bill 2010 - Comparing the Texts