Centre for Internet and Society

ICT for Development

praskrishna — 2014-12-28T03:26:03Z

Dr. U.B. Pavanaja was a speaker at this event organized by Christ University on December 3, 2014 in Bangalore.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/news/ict-for-development

Centre should partner local communities in 'Digital India': Expert

praskrishna — 2015-01-16T02:34:54Z

The central government needs to partner communities at the grassroots level and integrate the country's vernacular component to make the Digital India initiative a success, an expert said here Friday.

The blog entry originally published by IANS was mirrored in Zee News on January 9, 2015. T.Vishnu Vardhan was quoted.

"Whatever money it (Centre) is spending on culture, heritage conservation and preservation etc., it is always a very centralised activity.

"It is very, very essential to partner local communities," T. Vishnu Vardhan, programme director (Access to Knowledge), The Centre For Internet and Society, Bengaluru, told IANS here.

Vardhan was attending the 10th anniversary celebrations of Athe Bengali Wikimedia community at the Jadavpur University here.

Aiming to turn the country into a digitally empowered society and knowledge economy, the Narendra Modi government has envisaged the Rs.1 lakh crore Digital India project.

Global IT giant Microsoft and Google have offered to help with the programme.

Vardhan said that while going forward with the project, the Centre must integrate the vernacular components. Else it will be restricted to Delhi and metro cities. Access to culture on digitised platforms should not be limited, he observed.

"The current government talks about Digital India. But when you talk about digital India, the key thing that one needs to take into consideration is not the India but the Bharat -- the vernacular imagination of India, the regional imagination of India.

"Otherwise whatever grand plans they have will only be limited to Delhi and other metropolitan cities," said Vardhan.

He suggested that the central government take note of examples like Wikipedia's regional language domains to further the Digital India project.

"Wikipedia or wikisource where you put up the original prints source in digitised form and make it searchable... these are the examples that the government should look at because these are done with the help of local volunteers who come from the remotest regions," said Vardhan.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/news/zee-news-january-9-2015-centre-should-partner-local-communities-in-digital-india

January 2015 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2015-02-26T17:02:23Z

Our newsletter for the month of January can be accessed below.

The Centre for Internet & Society (CIS) welcomes you to the first issue of the newsletter (January 2015). Archives of our newsletters can be accessed at: http://cis-india.org/about/newsletters.

Highlights

Forbes India in an article titled “Minds that (should) matter” names Sunil Abraham as one of the Thinkers who best explain a rapidly-changing India to the world (and the world to India).

Subhashish Panigrahi won the 2015 Opensource.com Community Awards under the category 'People's Choice Awards'.
Sumandro Chattapadhyay has joined CIS team as Research Director. Sumandro has replaces Nishant Shah who stepped down from the position.
Rishika on behalf of CIS prepared an analysis of the disability exceptions in Copyright Legislations . The blog post provides in detail the country-wise exceptions in copyright legislations.
NVDA team conducted a training programme on Malayalam eSpeak with NVDA in Thiruvananthapuram on January 24 and 25, 2015. Chakshumathi's main trainer Akhil M. took eSpeak Malayalam classes and Dr. Homiyar took classes on NVDA and accessible equipment.
The Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion, Government of India invited comments on the First Draft of India's National IPR Policy. CIS made its submission.
As part of the Pervasive Technologies project, Nehaa Chaudhari has produced a research methodology document which maps the existing literature around questions of competition law intersecting with intellectual property law on the specific issue of enabling access to sub hundred dollar mobile devices .
Maggie Huang, an intern at CIS as part of the Pervasive Technologies project has written a blog entry which documents, synthesizes, and analyses learnings from attending various music industry trade conferences.

CIS-A2K team on December 28, 2014 organized a MediaWiki hackathon event for Telugu Wikimedia community members to enhance their skills and understanding of technical matters related to MediaWiki usage. The theme of the workshop was “Mediawiki, its extensions and tools to work around” and it aimed at allowing Wikipedians to use MediaWiki tools more effectively.

Subhashish Panigrahi authored an op-ed that highlights the need for taking Odia language to the international fora instead of keeping it confined in the books. The op-ed was published in the Samaja on January 30, 2015.

A journal article by Subbiah Arunachalam, Perumal Ramamoorthi and Subbiah Gunasekaran the steps taken by scientists and librarians in the West to reclaim ease of access to research findings with what is happening in India along with a few suggestions was published by the Indian National Science Academy Journals.
The Supreme Court, in Sabu George v. Union of India and Ors. (WP (C) 341/2008), is looking into the presence of material regarding pre-natal sex determination on search engines such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo that has been falling foul of section 22 of the Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques Act, 1994 as amended in 2002. Geeta Hariharan and Balaji Subramanian analyse this in their blog post.
As part of its Making Methods for Digital Humanities project, CIS-RAW organized two consultations on new figures of learning in the digital context. For a proposed journal issue on the theme of 'bodies of knowledge' which draws upon these conversations, participants were invited to write short sketches on these figures of learning. Tejas Pande wrote an abstract which examines the figure of the visual designer, and emerging practices of mapmaking.

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. CIS in partnership with CLPR (Centre for Law and Policy Research) compiled the National Compendium of Policies, Programmes and Schemes for Persons with Disabilities (29 states and 6 union territories). The publication has been finalised and is being printed. The draft chapters and 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 and eSpeak

Monthly Update

January 2015 Report (Suman Dogra; January 31, 2015).

Event Organized

Training of Malayalam eSpeak with NVDA (Co-organized by CIS, DAISY Forum of India and Chakshumathi Assistive Technology Centre; Thiruvananthapuram; January 24-25, 2015).

Other

Blog Entries

Disability Exceptions in Copyright Legislations (Rishika; January 12, 2015).
Response to RTI Applications from Different States on Accessibility (Anandhi Viswanathan; January 31, 2015).

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.

Pervasive Technologies

As part of the Pervasive Technologies project, Maggie Huang conducted interviews with fabless semiconductor industry professionals in Taiwan. The findings from the samples are highlighted in four part series. The third and fourth parts have been published:

Blog Entries

Pervasive Technologies Project Working Document Series: Document 2 Literature Review on Competition Law + IPR + Access to < $100 Mobile Devices (Nehaa Chaudhari; January 1, 2015).
Relationship between App Developers and App Platforms: An Intellectual Property Perspective (Anubha Sinha; January 7, 2015).
Beyond Alcohol and Angel Investors: Building Business Models in an Age of Mobile Music Streaming (Conference Learnings) (Maggie Huang; January 20, 2015).
National IPR Policy Series: The Development of the National IPR Policy (Nehaa Chaudhari; January 22, 2015).
RTI Responses - MHRD IP Chairs: Details of Funding & Expenditure (Nehaa Chaudhari; January 31, 2015).
National IPR Policy Series: CIS Comments to the First Draft of the National IP Policy (Nehaa Chaudhari; January 31, 2015).

Participation in Events

Global Intellectual Property Convention (Organized by ITAG Solutions; Mumbai; January 15 - 17, 2015). Rohini Lakshané attended the event.
Library and Information Professionals Summit (LIPS) 2015 (Organized by Society for Library Professionals, National Law University Delhi with UN Information Centre for India & Bhutan and Special Library Association (USA), Asian Chapter; January 23 - 24, 2015; New Delhi). Nehaa Chaudhari was on a panel discussing Internet Technology and Challenges for Libraries in IPR Regime. She made a presentation on Technology (Internet?), Libraries and the Law (?).

Upcoming Event

Announcing the Institutional Partner for the Global Congress on Intellectual Property and the Public Interest 2015 (Organized by the National Law School of India University; New Delhi; December 2015).

Wikipedia

As part of the project grant from the Wikimedia Foundation we have reached out to more than 3500 people across India by organizing more than 100 outreach events and catalysed the release of encyclopaedic and other content under the Creative Commons (CC-BY-3.0) license in four Indian languages (21 books in Telugu, 13 in Odia, 4 volumes of encyclopaedia in Konkani and 6 volumes in Kannada, and 1 book on Odia language history in English).

Op-ed

ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଭାଷା ପାଇଁ ଅନ୍ତର୍ଜାତୀୟ ପ୍ରକଳ୍ପ (Subhashish Panigrahi; The Samaja, January 31, 2015).

Blog Entries

Telugu Wikimedia Hackathon 2014 (Rahmanuddin Shaik; January 31, 2015).

Telugu Wikimedia Hackathon 2014 (Rahmanuddin Shaik; January 31, 2015). The event was conducted on December 28, 2014. However, the blog post was published in January 2015.

News and Media Coverage

CIS-A2K team gave its inputs to the following media coverage:

Works of Veerasalingam Pantulu on web (Hans India; January 1, 2015).
Centre should partner local communities in 'Digital India': Expert (IANS and mirrored in Zee News; January 9, 2015).
Musician donates Gwalior Gharana songs to free e-library (Times of India; January 20, 2015).

Announcement

2015 Opensource.com Community Awards : Every year, Opensource.com awards people from our community who have excelled in contributing and sharing stories about open source. Subhashish Panigrahi from the CIS-A2K team won the award under the category 'People's Choice Awards'.
CIS-A2K team also published the Telugu Wikipedia Stats tables. Most metrics have been collected from a partial dump (aka stub dump), which contains all revisions of every article, meta data, but no page content.

Participation in Event

Citizen Media Summit 2015 (Organized by Global Voices; January 24 - 25, 2015). Subhashish Panigrahi was a speaker.

Openness

Journal Article

Heads I Win, Tails You Lose: The Intransigenc of STM Publishers (Subbiah Arunachalam, Perumal Ramamoorthi and Subbiah Gunasekaran; Indian National Science Academy Journals, Proc Indian Natn SciAcad 80 No. 5 December 2014 pp. 919-929).

Internet Governance

Articles and Blog Entries

Indians Plead for #NetNeutrality as Airtel Raises Data Charges (Subhashish Panigrahi; Global Voices; December 30, 2014). The article was published in the month of December but mirrored on CIS website in January.
Indian Netizens Criticize Online Censorship of 'Jihadi' Content (Subhashish Panigrahi; Global Voices; January 6, 2015).
Security and Surveillance - Optimizing Security while Safeguarding Human Rights (Elonnai Hickok; January 19, 2015).
Search Engine and Prenatal Sex Determination: Walking the Tight Rope of the Law (Geetha Hariharan and Balaji Subramanian; January 29, 2015).

Event Co-organized

Security, Governments, and Data: Technology and Policy (Organized by CIS and Observer Research Foundation; January 8, 2015, New Delhi). Sunil Abraham, Pranesh Prakash, Elonnai Hickok, Bhairav Acharya and Nehaa Chaudhari participated in this event.

Participation in Events

Symposium on Human Rights and the Internet in India (Organized by the Center for Communication Governance at National Law University, Delhi in collaboration with the UNESCO Chair on Freedom of Communication and Information at the University of Hamburg; New Delhi; January 17, 2015). Bhairav Acharya was a panelist.
Winter School on Privacy, Surveillance and Data Protection (Organized by the Centre for Communication Governance (CCG) in collaboration with the UNESCO Chair on Freedom of Communication and Information at the University of Hamburg and the Hans Bredow; Delhi; January 19 - 23, 2015). Bhairav Acharya was a facilitator.
ASSOCHAM National Council on IT / ITes (Organized by ASSOCHAM; New Delhi; January 30, 2015). Geetha Hariharan participated in the event.

Blog Entries

Overview of the Constitutional Challenges to the IT Act (Pranesh Prakash; December 15, 2014).
Reply to RTI filed with BSNL regarding Network Neutrality and Throttling (Tarun Krishnakumar; December 22, 2014).

News & Media Coverage

CIS gave its inputs to the following media coverage:

Government blocks 32 websites to check ISIS propaganda (Kim Arora; The Times of India; January 1, 2015).
Internet users fume as govt blocks 32 sites (Jaison Lewis; Mumbai Mirror; January 1, 2015).
India 'jihadi' web blocking causes anger (BBC; January 2, 2015). This was also mirrored in Puffington Post.
Govt cracks down on cyber jehad network, blocks access to 32 websites (India Today, January 1, 2015).
Indian Government still blocks 20+ websites - Indian Censorship on Internet (Times of Assam; January 2, 2015).
350% surge in Cyber crimes in last 3 years (Devanik Saha & Indiaspend.org; Hindustan Times; January 20, 2015).
TOI literary festival kicks off today (The Times of India; January 31, 2015).

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:

Staff Movement

Sumandro Chattapadhyay has joined CIS as Research Director. His academic interests span over topics of history and politics of informatics in India, new media and technology studies, and data infrastructures and economies. He is also keenly interested in questions and techniques of digital humanities. Recently, Sumandro has completed a study on policy and practices of open data in India as part of the Open Data Research Network managed by the World Wide Web Foundation. He is an involved member of DataMeet, a leading community of open data and data science enthusiasts from India. Sumandro studied economics in Visva-Bharati, Shantiniketan, and in Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He has variously worked on topics of urban development, information technology in governance, data visualisation, and early electronic governance in India with MOD Institute, Azim Premji University and the Sarai Programme at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies.

Blog Entry

Figures of Learning: The Visual Designer (Tejas Pande; January 30, 2015).

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. 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/january-2015-bulletin

Cultural knowledge needs to be more open

praskrishna — 2015-03-12T16:41:05Z

Subhashish Panigrahi is an educator and open source activist based in Bangalore, India. He is currently working at the Centre for Internet and Society's Access To Knowledge program where he builds partnership with universities, language researchers, and GLAM organizations.

The blog post by Jen Wike Huger was published on the website of OpenSource.com. It can be read here.

Their goal is to bring more scholarly and encyclopedic content under free licenses. During his work at the Wikimedia Foundation's India Program, Subha was involved in designing community sustaining and new contributor cultivation models.

For his effort to share and spread open source far and wide, this year he was awarded a 2015 Opensource.com People's Choice Award.

His most recent articles include: Digitize any book in the public domain, on his work to with Indian poetry important to the culture. Books and more are relicensed to Creative Commons, about news from the Wikimedia Foundation. Mozilla brings Indian communities together, about the Indic FirefoxOS L10n Sprint 2014. And, Open access platform to save the Odia Indian language, on his work to preserve his native culture.

The Basics

Name: Subhashish Panigrahi ("Subha")
Opensource.com username: psubhashish
Location: India (Bengaluru and Odisha)
Occupation/Employer/Position: Programme Officer, Centre for Internet and Society
Favorite open source tool or application: Audacity
Favorite Opensource.com channel: Education

Open up to us

I was away from home for my studies and was longing to read and write more in my native language of Odia. That led me to co-found eOdissa.com, a portal to tell stories to the rest of the world about my language, history, and cultural heritage. I was a sporadic editor on Wikipedia; anonymously since 2006. Then, in 2011, I was introduced to editing for Odia Wikipedia by my mentor Shiju Alex and friend Asutosh Kar.

That was my entry point to the free software movement. And it was a trap I could never get out of!

I thankfully began a full-time job with the Wikimedia Foundation in 2012 for its India Program. The program is now housed with their Indian movement partner, Centre for Internet and Society, under the Access To Knowledge program. I work in the Bengaluru office but mostly travel to work with the communities. I work on building capacity for the Indian language Wikimedia communities, building institutional partnerships for long term outreach engagement, negotiating with publishers and copyright holders to bring more content relicensed under Creative Commons licenses, and taking part in policy level discourses around open access and enforcing free software for governance.

What open tools and data help you get things done?

For my day job, I solely rely on Wikimedia Stats to collate data related to Wikimedia projects. I use some Python programming, jQery.ime, and JavaScript for other data-related work. But, I am a people's man and my interaction is mostly with humans rather than tools.

What do you wish were more open?

GLAM (galleries, libraries, archives and museums) and many other cultural institutions have historically been the keepers of cultural knowledge. But I see possessiveness in not opening up their archival for public consumption. I wish more policy level negotiations and open collaborations were happening to open up cultural data.

What are the biggest challenges to openness that you encounter, either at work or in your life?

Community and its growth. Working in a developing nation with historical, cultural, economic, and political hindrances pulls volunteerism down. It's is a huge challenge for me. Tapping into many existing networks and communities, and leveraging ongoing activities for the betterment for the free and open source movement, is something I am struggling for.

Why choose the open source way?

I would like to quote a good friend and activist Michelle Thorne who says, "Human civilization has everything free and open from the beginning, but slowly the problems of restriction start beginning." Furthermore filmmaker Nina Paley says, "Knowledge is not created by us, rather shared by us."

If we are here to share knowledge, why to restrict its free flow?

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/news/opensource-feburary-18-2015-jen-wike-huger-cultural-knowledge-needs-to-be-more-open

Train the Trainer Program

praskrishna — 2015-02-27T02:37:10Z

The Centre for Internet and Society's Access to Knowledge team (CIS-A2K) welcomes you to attend the "Train the Trainer Program" in Bangalore.

Train the Trainer (TTT) is a residential training workshop to groom leadership skills among the Indian Wikimedia community members. CIS-A2K is organizing the Wikipedia Train the Trainer Program 2015 (TTT 2015). This is the second iteration of this program. TTT 2015 will be conducted by CIS-A2K during 26 February to 1 March 2015 in Bangalore, India.

Note: All selected participants will be expected to reach the event venue the previous night (i.e. February 25) and leave by the evening of March 1, 2015. The selected participants are requested to kindly confirm their participation by writing to tanveercis-india.org. Registration for TTT 2015 is closed. Please do not register.. Please note that registration does not confirm participation. Selection by CIS-A2K will be final. Before registering here please go through the selection criterion.

Programme Schedule

Thursday, February 26, 2015

Timing	Session	Topics to be Covered	Coordinator / Resource Person

7:30am - 8:30am	Breakfast
8:30am - 9:00am	Registration
9:00am - 10.30am	Welcome & Introduction	Introductions (activity based) Creating name tags for yourself and your friends Energiser/Activity. Meet and greet Wikimedians	T. Vishnu Vardhan (VV) and Tanveer Hasan (TH)
10:30am - 11 am	Why TTT?	Design and Objectives of the TTT	VV
11 am - 11.30 am	☕ Tea/Coffee Break
☼ 11.30 am - 1 pm	Participant presentations	Individual presentation based on pre-work	TTT Participant
1 pm - 2 pm	Lunch
2 pm - 3.30 pm	Participant presentations	Individual presentation based on pre work	TTT Participant
3.30 pm - 4 pm	☕ Tea/Coffee Break
4 pm - 5 pm	Presenting with impact	Effective Communication Forceful Introduction Organizing your speech (Opening, Body Closing) Get to the point (General purpose and specific purpose) Communicate clearly, accurately and vividly Body Language (Stance, Movement, Gestures, Facial expression and eye contact) Vocal Variety (Volume, Pitch, Rate and Quality)	TH
5.30 pm - 6.30 pm	Break
6.30 pm - 8 pm	Parallel Sessions	Personal coaching on Presentation Skills using video recordings of Presentation or Multilingual Edit-a-thon (theme - Jnanpith_Award)	Sunil Abraham(SA) VV TH Rahmanuddin Shaik (RS) Subhashish Panigrahi (SP) U.B. Pavanaja (UBP)
8:00 pm - 9:00 pm	Dinner

Friday, February 26, 2015

Timing	Session	Topics to be Covered	Coordinator / Resource Person

☾ 8 pm - 9 pm	Dinner
☼ 10.30 am - 11 am	Internet research techniques (Session 2)	Information literacy and Internet research techniques for Wikipedia editors slides	LS
9.15 am - 10 am	Internet research techniques (Session 1)	Information literacy and Internet research techniques for Wikipedia editors	LS
8:30 am - 9.15 am	Copyright, CC and Wikimedia	Introduction to Copyright and Creative Commons slides Creative Commons Wikimedia Applications	L. Shyamal (LS)
7:30 am - 8:30 am	Breakfast
7 pm - 8 pm	Parallel sessions	Personal Coaching GLAM Projects Do's and Dont's FOSS Tools Support and Discussion	CIS-A2K Team RL RS
6.30 pm - 7 pm	GLAM Projects in Indic Wikipedia Context	Feasibility, Scalability and Scope	Rohini Lakshane(RL)
6 pm - 6.30 pm	☕ Tea/Coffee Break
5 pm - 6 pm	Essential Foss Tools for Wikimedians	Hands on Session	Rahamanuddin
4.30 pm - 5 pm	Essential FOSS Tools	Demonstration	RS
4 pm - 4.30 pm	☕ Tea/Coffee Break
3.30 pm - 4 pm	Panel Discussion	Importance of NPOV in Indian Languages	Participant Panel (TBD)
2.45 pm - 3.30 pm	Importance of NPOV	NPOV as an essential quality for Wikimedians with English Wikipedia as a case study	NVV Char and Tito Dutta
2 pm - 2.45 pm	Spectogram	Interactive activity to critically discuss the importance of NPOV	SA
11.45 am - 1 pm	DIY	Digitisation Techniques for Wikimedians-Hands on Session	Group Activity
11.30 am - 11.45 am	☕ Tea/Coffee Break
11 am - 11.30 am	DIY	Digitisation Techniques for Wikimedians	Viswa Prabha(VP)
10 am - 10.30 am	☕ Tea/Coffee Break
1 pm - 2 pm	Lunch

Saturday, February 28, 2015

Timing	Session	Topics to be Covered	Coordinator / Resource Person

7 am - 7.30am	Breakfast
7:30am	Departure to Janapada Loka
9 am - 9.30am	Expectations from GLAM Activity	Design,scope and expected outcomes	TH
9.30am - 1 pm	* GLAM Activity	Interviewing Janapada Loka Staff Documentation of Janapada Loka exhibits Resource Collection for Wiki Commons Material collection for GLAM Edit-a-thon	VP RL CIS-A2K
1 pm - 2 pm	Lunch
2 pm - 3.30 pm	Group Activity	GLAM Editathon in Indian Languages	VP and VV
3.30 pm - 4 pm	☕ Tea/Coffee Break
4 pm - 4.30 pm	Panel Discussion	Need and importance of GLAM Activities	TBD
4.30 pm - 5.30 pm	Focused Group Discussion	GLAM Activities to be pursued (Individual and Community)	Participant Groups
5.30 pm - 6.30 pm	Departure to CEO Centre
☾ 8 pm - 9 pm	Dinner at CEO Centre

Sunday, March 1, 2015

Timing	Session	Topics to be Covered	Coordinator / Resource Person

07:30 am - 08:30 am	Breakfast
08:30am - 9.30 am	Media and Social Media Strategies for Wikimedians	Mobilizing mainstream media to cover Wikimedia success stories Best practices of Social Media	Tinu Cherian
9.30am - 10 am	Building Communities for Wikimedia Movement	Introduction to WMIN	Ravishankar Ayyakkannu (RA)and Yohann Thomas (YT)
10am - 10.30 am	Building Communities for Wikimedia Movement	CIS-A2K Trials and Success	VV
☼ 10.30 am - 11:00 am	☕ Tea/Coffee Break
11am - 11.30 am	Group Discussion	Challenges & Opportunities in building an Indian Language Community online	Participant Groups
11.30 pm - 12.30 pm	Participant Presentation	Participant Presentations
12.30 pm - 1 pm	Lunch
1.30 pm - 2 pm	Focused Group Discussion	Road Ahead for GLAM activities in India Languages	Participant Presentations
2.30 pm - 3.30 pm	Participant Presentation	Submission of Outreach and GLAM Draft Plans
3.30 pm - 3.45 pm	Feedback Session
3.45 pm - 4 pm	Closing Remarks
4:00 pm	Departures or Visit to CIS

For any further queries please email—

tanveercis-india.org 09844439247
ajoy cis-india.org 09845492122
vishnucis-india.org 09845207308

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/events/train-the-trainer-program

An International Conclave of Odia Language

praskrishna — 2015-03-08T05:06:14Z

Subhashish Panigrahi is participating in this event.

See the invitation letter and the concept letter.

The Odia language traces its roots back to 4th Century BC. Odisha was the first state to be carved out as a separate state on the basis of the language. The dawn of 20th February 2014 was a proud moment for all Odias as Odia language was accorded the ‘Classical language’ status of our country and occupied the 6th position. This achievement was due to the relentless effort of many scholars and activists. Now it becomes the responsibility of all the Odias to preserve, propagate and carry forward the legacy of the Odia language which is spoken by around 40 million people in India and around 45 million people globally. We will see that a day will come when it will be used as the first language in all government offices for official communications.

THE INTELLECTS, a forum of progressive individuals and intellectuals in Delhi, believes it as an utmost duty and responsibility to promote Odia identity in India and abroad. In its bid to impart our language to Pravasi Odias living in and around Delhi, THE INTELLECTS is on a missionary zeal. It has started its mission called “ASA SIKHIBA AMARI BHASHA” in National Capital region.

And now, the forum in association with SHRI JAGANNATH MANDIR, TYAGRAJNAGAR is organizing a two days conclave, on 20th & 21st February 2015, to celebrate the 1st anniversary of Classical status to Odia language & the World Mother tongue Day with a special focus on our mother tongue Odia.

The Event

International Conclave of Odia Language:
The event will be a two days festival showcasing the Odia identity in the national Capital and bringing some best minds of the country to discuss on various issues of immense need on language and culture of Odisha. Around 200 eminent people from across the world including many renowned experts from various walks of life are the invited speakers.

It will be our proud privilege to have you with us for the occasion.
With Kind Regards

Debendra Rout
Convener of the conclave & Chairman of The Intellects
Email: cm.intellects@gmail.com
Mob: +91-9350127370

Programme

Celebration of 1st Anniversary of Classical status of Odia language
Date: 20th February, Friday, Time: 6 p.m. to 9 p.m.

Venue: Constitution Club, Rafi Marg, New Delhi

Welcome
Inauguration of Conclave
Inauguration of Special Report on the Conclave
Felicitation of prominent personalities for their contribution to
Odia language
Addresses
Vote of Thanks
Cultural Programme
Dinner

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/news/international-conclave-odia-language

Train the Trainer — Report in Udayavani

praskrishna — 2015-04-04T16:20:49Z

As part of the Train The Trainer program, on Feb 28, all the participants (Wikipedians from all over India) were taken to Janapada Loka, near Ramanagara. There was a report in Udayavani, Ramanagara edition on March 2, 2015 about this event.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/news/train-the-trainer-event-report-march-2-2015-udayavani-report

GoI body National Mission for Manuscripts has digitised 3 million manuscripts

praskrishna — 2015-04-05T03:20:06Z

Twelve-year-old government body National Mission for Manuscripts (NMM) has digitised over thirty lakh manuscripts and 185,88,390 pages in all as of 31 December 2014, Mahesh Sharma, Union Minister of State for Culture, Tourism & Civil Aviation said in the Rajya Sabha this week. He added that the National Archives of India (NAI) is set to digitise another 1,100,000 historic records. The government has spent over Rs 25 lakhs on digitisation as of January 2015 as compared to ~ Rs 36 lakhs in 2012-13.

The blog post by Sneha Johari was published by Medianama on March 13, 2015.

The NAI has digitised 41 non-priced NAI publications and 484 manuscripts which consist of 106,974 pages, 42 newspapers and printed books (10,346 pages) and 187,878 documents made of 613,413 pages of NAI’s oriental and public records collection.

Digital conservation over micro-film

Sharma said that the government is looking at strengthening the Public Records Act. He added that digitisation would be the preferred form of conservation since it had many advantages over micro-film processing and would provide better access to archives electronically which could be used by scholars, historians and academicians.

The NAI operates two schemes for funding the preservation of documentary heritage. These schemes include funding for preservation and conservation of rare books, old and rare documents, government libraries and museums among others.

The NMM is an organisation under GOI’s Ministry of Culture set up to create a national manuscript resource to enhance access, awareness and use for educational use. It offers courses, workshops and fellowships on Manuscriptology and Palaeography. Sharma said that the Ministry had some proposals to collaborate with foreign countries for digitisation of Indian documents but had not taken those up due to issues of national importance. Some of NMM’s challenges arise from the scale of manuscripts found in India (claimed at ~5 million), languages which cannot be read, in a poor and neglected condition and the lack of scholars who can study these manuscripts.

The NMM has 31 Manuscript Conservation Centres (MCCs) across the country under the NMM. The MCCs include organisations like Manuscript Library, University of Calcutta, Kolkata, Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute (BORI), Pune, Karnataka State Archives, Bangalore and INTACH Orissa Art Conservation Centre, Bhubaneswar.

The New Indian Express featured a report where Jayadhir Tirumalrao, Professor at the Centre for Dalit and Adivasi Studies and Translation, Hyderabad was among others who developed a script for the tribal language Gondi. The report claims that Gondi language was the only tribal language in India to have its own literature.

Previous digitisation initiatives:

In November 2014, around 55 books written by the Indian author and activist Niranjana in Kannada would be digitized and made available on Kannada Wikisource, allowing Kannada speakers to access these books easily.
In October 2014, the Ministry of Culture launched a national portal for museums. Collections in all museums under its control and those under the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) will be digitized and presented on this portal.

In July 2014, the Department of Biotechnology and Department of Science and Technology (DST), under the Ministry of Science and Technology released the draft of Open Access Policy. The objective of this policy is to provide unrestricted access to research work funded by the departments. The draft states that since all funds disbursed by DBT and DST are public funds, it is important that the information and knowledge generated through the use of these funds are made publicly available as soon as possible.
In September 2013, Goa University entered into a 3 year MoU with the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) for building the Konkani Wikipedia.
In June 2013, Tata Communications Media Services planned to digitize documents of historical and cultural significance such as films and documentaries from the archives of Doordarshan and Films Division of India which go back to 1947 including speeches of India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and other leaders.
In May 2013, Punjabi Sahitya Akademi Reference Lab scanned and saved around 1,000 manuscripts, stone-printed scripts, poetry books on computer hard discs, adding that the digitized editions will be available across the globe through the internet.

The Indian Government spent Rs 4.5 crores in 2010-11 for digitization and modernization of public libraries.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/news/medianama-march-13-2015-sneha-johari-goi-body-national-mission-for-manuscripts-has-digitised-3-million-manuscripts

How to write differently for different Telugu digital platforms - awareness session to Indu Gnana Vedika

pavan — 2018-07-19T14:56:45Z

Different digital platforms require a different style of writing based on nature, ethos, and audience of the platform. Without which writer and piece of writing can only find rejections and deletions.

On June 9th, CIS-A2K Community advocate, and Telugu Wikipedia Admin Pavan Santhosh took a session which aimed to improve writing abilities on various digital platforms to members of Indu Gnana Vedika, who earlier collaborated with A2K to release and digitize their books in Wikisource. On 22 June 2014, CIS-A2K conducted an event to re-license 10 books into CC license and Training on Tewiki to members of Indu Gnana vedika. Later Indu Gnana Vedika members started digitizing those books in Telugu Wikisource & Creating articles about Indu Gnana Vedika books and other aspects in Telugu Wikipedia.

Telugu Wikipedia admins found many of those articles are not notable to be in Telugu Wikipedia, notified and discussed. Finally deleted majority of them. One of the users introduced to Tewiki during this project - Indusri Ushasri continued to contribute improving those 10 books in Telugu Wikisource and undeleted articles about Indu Gnana vedika in Telugu Wikipedia.This event intended to be respectful and good closure for the partnership. The event was designed to provide a better idea to interested members of the organization about varying styles of different digital platforms like Telugu Wikipedia, e-Magazines, Websites, etc., and help them to choose various platforms to contribute according to the subject they wanted to write.

Pavan demonstrated various aspects that needed to look into while writing such a piece like the ethos of the platform, target audience, etc., 5 participants from Indu gnana vedika along with Indusri Ushasri participated in this event.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/how-to-write-differently-for-different-telugu-digital-platforms-awareness-session-to-indu-gnana-vedika

100wikidays: the journey so far

tito — 2017-06-28T10:04:33Z

In this article we'll chat with Bulgarian Wikipedian Vassia Atanassova (User:Spiritia) on the journey of 100wikidays so far, initial difficulties, and participation of Indian Wikipedia communities in the challenge.

100wikidays is a personal Wiki challenge, in which a participant attempts to create at least one new article on Wikipedia, for 100 days in a row. This initiative is a brainchild of Bulgarian Wikipedian Vassia Atanassova (User:Spiritia) and it started on 16 January 2015. As of 22 November 2016, 194 Wikipedians have taken this challenge and 63 of them have successfully completed it. A delighting fact is a large number of Indian Wikipedians have participated in this initiative and successfully completed this challenge. In this blog post we’ll try to focus on the project and its influence on Indian Wikimedians.

Let’s start the conversation with Vassia Atanassova, (User:Spiritia), the editor who started this initiative.

CIS-A2K: First, we congratulate you for the success of 100wikidays. When you started this challenge in January 2015, did you think that one day it would become so big?

Vassia: No, actually I wasn’t completely sure that I myself will be able to complete it. :) The story behind the 100wikidays is that earlier in 2014 I had already tried the so called “100happydays” challenge, in which you prove that 100 days in a row you have found happiness, even in the smallest things, by posting a photo of what made you happy. Needless to say, I failed it, around the 11-th day, which according to statistics happens with 7 out of 10 people. :) So, when in the end of 2014 I got the idea of retrying the challenge, already only knew that happiness was obviously not “my cup of tea” :) so I had to try something I am good in and have more chances for success, like writing in Wikipedia. :) But back then, I didn’t believe that I will be able to finish it myself – it was such a crazy idea – and no, I had never planned it as anything bigger than my own personal challenge. :)

CIS-A2K: Let’s talk about the initial days. What were the difficulties you faced?
Vassia: As I had already failed the happy photography challenge before, I was really nervous in the beginning. The challenge – as the rules of the #100happydays postulate – requires you to make a public commitment and announce your daily progress, and this is very demanding. You commit in front of a community you care for and don’t want to lose your face, or disappoint them. For me, this is half of the difficulty – and half of the magic.

The other half, of course, is to really find the time to create a decent encyclopedic article every day. We are definitely not talking about long featured articles, of course, but decent articles, giving the basic necessary information about a topic, referenced with reliable sources. I am not really eager about the idea of #100stubdays, although, of course, I have also had extremely busy days when I am not able to produce anything longer than a stub.

Thus, one of the first lessons I had to learn from the challenge was how to find the right balance between the inborn perfectionism and the unavoidable time limitations. I think that everyone who commits to the challenge and doesn’t quit it immediately, has such a period of adapting one’s style of contributing, of rearranging life priorities, and stealing from oneself precious time that would otherwise spend with the family, with friends, for other hobbies, or simply for sleeping. Oh, sleeping, how much I started appreciate sleep after the beginning of the challenge! #100wikidays is famous for jokes related with sleep deprivation. :)

CIS-A2K: How did you promote this initiative among the Wikipedia communities around the world?
Vassia: Hmm… I didn’t! It all happened naturally, by word of mouth. It is editors who are promoting it by getting involved in the challenge, I am not doing anything special. 100wikidays is living its own life. :)

In the beginning friends of mine who followed my Facebook wall liked and sometimes commented on the posts with the new articles. It took about one month before the first follower appeared, one of the ex-students in my university course “Wikipedia and Wiki Technologies”, Vladislav Nedelev. About that time I decided to propose the idea of the #100wikidays as a topic for talk at Wikimania. Funny detail is that initially this talk proposal got rejected, and it took weeks before it was reevaluated and approved :)

In the meanwhile, in early March, the next follower, or “victim”, joined, and happily that one was Asaf Bartov, Wikimedia Foundation’s senior officer in emergent Wikimedia communities. He didn’t want to be alone in the trouble :))) so one day he posted on his wall the question “Who will be the first Indian Wikipedian to commit to #100wikidays?” And by the end of the day there were four people (you, Tito, included)!!! And it was amazing, absolutely mindblowing!

Asaf also proposed the idea of the Facebook group and the Meta coordination page, where people report their daily progress. In my opinion, he is the most efficient victims recruiter in the #100wikidays :)

As of today (22 November 2016) we have 194 “victims” from 54 language versions of Wikipedia – and several sister projects like Wikiquote, Wikisource, Wiktionary and Commons and about 1/3 of all who have started it, have also completed it successfully. So, yeah, somehow it really became a global thing :) And real life meetings very much helped for that. Nikola Kalchev’s lightning talk at the Wikimedia Conference in Berlin, my talks at Wikimania in Mexico, at the Central and Eastern European Meetup in Voore, and at WikiLive conference in Belgrade, Alex Stinson’s speech at WikiConference USA 2015, Asaf also. Everyone who has taken the challenge can become its ambassador.

CIS-A2K: Tell us about a few participants who performed really well in this challenge?
Vassia: Oh, there are so many wonderful editors in #100wikidays, so many examples to be followed, people who are trendsetters on their own! Of course, Antanana and Lord Bumbury, who couldn’t stop themselves after the 100-th day, and made more than 220 wikidays in a row, each of them! Armine, who is now doing her 5th run of #100wikidays. Adam Cuerden with his runs of #10commonsdays of restoring old photographs, pixel by pixel! Asaf, Rosiestep, Penny Richards, Patricio, Maor X, and others whose focus is solely on biographies of notable women. Mervat Salman who introduced the #WikiWomenWeeks driving even more attention to this topic. Everyone in the challenge has brought to it something new and unique. And the most beautiful of it all is when ideas spread virally among the #100wikidays community, and people inspire each other with their choice of articles, and the way they communicate them.

CIS-A2K: 100wikidays is a difficult challenge. If someone writes articles for 60 or 70 days in a row, and then for some reason fails to continue, would you call it a failure, or what would be your suggestions?
Vassia: Heh, my favourite question. :) The word “failure” does not exist in my #100wikidays vocabulary. If you quit before the end of the 100 days, or if it takes you more than 100 days to finish, you have still made contributions to Wikipedia and has allowed someone to learn from the free knowledge that you have shared with the world. :) I know, the challenge has rules that really seem to be discouragingly severe. And it is normal that not everybody opts for it. But once you dare to opt, in the FB group you receive enormous support and appreciation – every day, for every new article. Also, among the challenge rules, the last one is “Ignore All Rules”. So, it is only up to you to decide whether a missed day is really a failure or not. My advice to everyone in this situation is: continue as if nothing has happened and no one has noticed :)

CIS-A2K: Several Indian Wikipedia communities participated in 100wikidays. Tell us about the participation of Indian Wikipedians in this challenge.
Vassia: So far, there have been contributors in 9 Indian languages: Punjabi (17), Oriya/Odia (3), Telugu (4), Bengali (3), Tamil (5), Hindi (4), Kannada (1), Malayalam (8). Correct me if I am missing anything. :) The total figure makes Indians the most active participants in the challenge, globally, with Armenia scoring second with 27 editors by now. No less than 13 are the Indian alumni, so far, which is quite of a big percentage of all. And the projects covered are different, not just Wikipedia in all those different languages, but also Wikisource, Wiktionary. This is truly impressive because some of the sister projects, like Wikisource, are really very demanding in terms of human resources and time, and usually not so populated with editors, which makes it even a greater challenge to undertake #100wikidays there. And I can’t but mention the recent notable interest in the challenge, registered in Malayalam Wikipedia. I’d be really very happy to know that the challenge has helped for the substantial growth of their, and generally, to any language version of Wikipedia. :)

Credits

Image source: Wikimedia Commons, license: CC-BY-SA 4.0, author: Kacie Harold

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/100wikidays

Improving Telugu Village Articles

Pavan Santhosh — 2016-11-26T02:27:39Z

Telugu wikipedians on 6 October 2016 held a discussion on improving the quality of Telugu articles. The event was organized by IIIT, Hyderabad, CIS-A2K and OpenGeo.

A possible collaboration between Wikipedia and free and open source enthusiasts and environmental groups was explored at the meeting. Subodh Kulkarni and Pavan Santhosh made a presentation about Wikipedia. The participants were from different groups such as SOUL (Save Our Urban Lakes), OpenGeo.org (organization that works for open source mapping) and Sweccha (organization working to expand free software movement in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh).

Prof. Madhav Gadgil moderated a discussion on how these organizations could collaborate for different Wikimedia projects. The discussion primarily revolved around improving ongoing Telugu village articles.

Prof. Gadgil stressed on compiling articles using reliable and verifiable sources. He also urged the participants to upload geo-tagged photos to Commons especially photos of lakes of which the authorities have denied existence. The discussion also focused on the synergy between OpenGeo and Wikipedia.

Post-lunch, Prof. Gadgil delivered a lecture on “Human Knowledge: An Evolutionary Perspective in IIT”. Prof. Gadgil explained that the next big leap in evolution of human knowledge is free knowledge in which everyone can contribute and utilize which was Wikipedia. He urged the scholars and students to contribute to Wikipedia which is the future for knowledge society.

Telugu and English wikipedians including Vinay, Lubna Sarwath, Undavalli Ravikumar, Raju and many more participated in the event.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/improving-telugu-village-articles

Free Knowledge and Indian Government Work

tito — 2017-06-28T10:02:00Z

Indian Government works are not available under free and open licenses. On the other hand a large number countries such as Argentina, Australia, Austria, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Greece, Guatemala, Israel, Macedonia, Mexico, New Zealand, Poland, Serbia, Spain, Taiwan, Ukraine, United Kingdom, Venezuela etc. have adopted the Creative Commons and other free licenses. The works by the US Federal Government automatically go into public domain. This article promotes the idea that the Government works should be freely licensed, wherever possible and applicable.

Part 1: Free Knowledge

Free knowledge movement is a worldwide movement that creates and tries to get works under free and open licenses. It claims that knowledge is a common human property, and must be easily, freely accessible.

While discussing the topic "Access to knowledge: a basic human right", American scientist and researcher Jack Andraka feels:

Access to knowledge is, you know, a basic human right. Knowledge should not be commoditized; it wants to be free.

The Open Definition defines the term “Open Knowledge” in Open Definition 2.0 as:

"Knowledge is open if anyone is free to access, use, modify, and share it — subject, at most, to measures that preserve provenance and openness."

All open content must be a) available under free licenses, b) accessible as a whole, and c) should be in open format (see more details)

A big name in the world of free content is (of course) Wikipedia, where you can use, share, remix content from the site under the Creative Commons licenses. There are many organizations, networks and groups working to get more and more content under free and open licenses such as Creative Commons (text, audio, video, image), Free and Open Source Software or FOSS (software), Open design principle (machine, engineering), Open Access (academic works) etc.

Article 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights suggests that education should be free. Right to information is also a human right and Article 27 of the declaration states:

(1) Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits.
(2) Everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author.

These are just not possible unless knowledge /information is easily and preferably freely accessible to everyone without restrictions. If the first barrier is accessibility, i.e, not having enough digital content or information or content behind paywall, then the second barrier is its openness. Just having access to some web pages is not enough, it also requires rights like free using, sharing, remixing, Unrestricted content can be utilized in the best way.

Part 2: Indian Government Work

Indian Government websites are not freely licensed. In section 2(k) of Indian Copyright Act, 1957 the meaning of “Government work” is explained:

"Government work" means a work which is made or published by or under the direction or control of—
(i) the Government or any department of the Government;
(ii) any Legislature in India;
. . .

Read Indian Copyright Act, section 2(c) here.

Indian Copyright Act section 17(d) informs about the “First owner of copyright” of a Government work:

in the case of a Government work, Government shall, in the absence of any agreement to the contrary, be the first owner of the copyright therein;

Read section 17(d) here.

Section 28 is about “Term of copyright in Government works”. It states:

In the case of Government work, where Government is the first owner of the copyright therein, copyright shall subsist until [sixty years] from the beginning of the calendar year next following the year in which the record is first published.—In the case of Government work, where Government is the first owner of the copyright therein, copyright shall subsist until [sixty years] from the beginning of the calendar year next following the year in which the record is first published."

Read section 28 here

Section 52 of the act allows some “fair use” and informs how content can be used for research, education, review, criticism and some other purpose. The lengthy copyright section may be read here. However, it does not make the content free. You are not allowed to remix the work or use for commercial purpose. You can not freely use, modify, distribute it.

Now let’s have a look at a few Government websites and their license details pages.

Indian Prime Minister’s official website

(http://www.pmindia.gov.in/en/website-policies)

In this website the copyright policy page informs:

Material featured on this website may be reproduced free of charge. However, the material has to be reproduced accurately and not to be used in a derogatory manner or in a misleading context. Wherever the material is being published or issued to others, the source must be prominently acknowledged. However, the permission to reproduce this material shall not extend to any material which is identified as being copyright of a third party. Authorisation to reproduce such material must be obtained from the department/copyright holder concerned.

A screenshot may be seen below:

Here-

“Wherever the material is being published or issued to others, the source must be prominently acknowledged.” -- this part of the policy is similar to the Creative Commons licenses, where the owner or author of a work must be given attribution.

but,

“has to be reproduced accurately” -- it prohibits remix or modification works,
“not to be used in a derogatory manner” -- it is unclear that what is “derogatory manner”! Can it be used for criticism?

Indian Vice President’s official website
(http://vicepresidentofindia.nic.in/website-policies)

This is similar to the Prime Minister’s website policy and does not allow remix, commercial use etc. See screenshot:

Indian President’s official website
(http://presidentofindia.gov.in/copyright-policy.htm)

Although the Vice President’s website allows some fair use, the Indian President’s official web portal’s license is different and does not allow to reproduce the work “partially or fully”. The copyright policy states:

This contents of this website may not be reproduced partially or fully, without due permission from The President of India, If referred to as a part of another publication, the source must be appropriately acknowledged. The contents of this website can not be used in any misleading or objectionable context.

We have shown 3 example above, but it is more or less similar in all government web portals.

Part 3: Government works — Worldwide

It might be interesting to note that unlike India, a large number of countries publish their Government works under open licenses or public domain. We’ll discuss only a few here:

United States

The works by the US Federal Government automatically go into public domain.
The White House website and third party content such as text or speeches by the first lady are licensed under CC SA 3.0 US license. U.S.
On 18 June, 2013, Barack Obama and other G7 leaders endorsed the Open Data Charter. Open Data Action plan is licensed under CC0.
Several other works such as works created by New York State Senate, works created by the State of Virginia are also under different creative commons licenses. Details may be seen here.

United Kingdom

In the United Kingdom, Open Government License (OGL) is used for Crown Copyright works published by the UK government. Since 2001, some works by the UK government were available under the Click-Use license. This license was replaced by OGL in 2010. The first version of OGL was released on 30 September 2010. OGL is compatible with the CC licenses. OGL allows to:

copy, publish, distribute and transmit the Information,
adapt the Information,
exploit the Information commercially and non-commercially for example, by combining it with other Information, or by including it in your own product or application.

However,

Attribution must be given to with source link, which is similar to the creative commons licenses.
Some documents such as the British passport, military insignia, property rights, including patents, trademarks, and design rights, personal information in data don’t come under OGL.

More about the Open Government License may be seen here.

France

France government’s website http://www.gouvernement.fr/ is licensed under the CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 FR license. The English version of the policy page may be seen here.
France government’s cultural department’s website http://www.culture.fr/ is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 FR.
The Culture Communication website http://www.culturecommunication.gouv.fr/ is also licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 FR.

Russian Federation

Content of the website http://kremlin.ru are under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International. License policy page may be seen here. Many other Russian government works are under different open licenses, details may be seen here.

Netherlands

The Dutch government official website http://www.rijksoverheid.nl/ is licensed under CC 0. All content of this website is under public domain, unless any other license is specified.

Bulgaria

The President of Bulgaria’s official website https://www.president.bg/ is licensed under CC BY ND 2.5 Bulgaria.

Croatia

Croatian Government website http://otvorenikod.nsk.hr/ is licensed under CC BY SA 3.0 Croatia.

The Long list

More than 30 countries have adopted and publishing their works under the Creative Commons and other free licenses. Other the above mentioned countries, the list include countries like Argentina, Australia, Austria, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, Czech Republic, Georgia, Greece, Guatemala, Israel, Macedonia, Mexico, New Zealand, Poland, Serbia, Spain, Taiwan, Ukraine, Venezuela etc. Other than the counties, several international organizations such as the World Bank, Inter-American Development Bank, European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) endorsed the free license concept and have adopted the same. See a long list of countries using free licenses here.

Last line

It is unfortunate that the Indian Government works are not under free licenses, however it would be great if the Government rethinks and relicense their general content under the free licenses. This will help not only the movement, but the content itself can be utilized in a much better and broader way.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/free-knowledge-and-indian-government-work

Guru Gomke is a Stylish Ol Chiki Typeface for India’s Santali Speakers

praskrishna — 2016-12-01T14:56:41Z

The blog post was published by AIGA.org on November 29, 2016. Subhashish Panigrahi was consulted.

Back story: Ever met a teenaged girl yearning to be a typeface designer? Yes? Then perhaps you know Pooja Saxena, who recognized her life’s calling when she was still in high school. Saxena went on to study with type historian and designer Fiona Ross at the University of Reading in the UK.

The idea for Guru Gomke came from a chat she had with Panigrahi, whose work with the Access to Knowledge (A2K) Program at the Centre for Internet and Society in Bangalore underscored the lack of tools and resources available for India’s minority languages online. For example, Ol Chiki is the alphabet needed to write the language Santali, used by over 5 million people in India and its neighboring countries. “At the time of our conversation, we couldn’t find a single Unicode-compliant font in the script—forget a typeface family with a bold or an italic. [Noto Sans Ol Chiki, in regular and bold, has since been released]. Subhashish mentioned all these minority scripts in India that people can’t use because fonts and keyboards for them don’t exist,” Saxena says. “I was enthusiastic to help create a free open-source typeface family and input methods in Ol Chiki, and thanks to Subhashish’s work with A2K, he was able to make it happen.”

Why’s it called Guru Gomke? Guru Gomke is a title of respect for Pandit Raghunath Murmu, creator of the Ol Chiki script in the early 20th century. The name translates to “great teacher.” It was recommended to Panigrahi by one of the language experts consulted by the designers, and they found it a wonderful nod to the history of the script.

What are its distinguishing characteristics? Its very existence, frankly. It’s now one of just two Unicode-compliant fonts with both bold and italic character sets.

What should I use it for? Next time you need to set absolutely anything in Ol Chiki.

What other typefaces do you like to pair it with? Matched to Source Sans Pro visually and proportionally, these two fonts are visually harmonic used anywhere Ol Chiki and Latin texts have to work together. In fact, the Latin glyphs included in Guru Gomke are derived from Source Sans Pro.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/news/eye-on-design-aiga-guru-gomke-is-stylish

Sunil Abraham - Key Listener Speech at Wikimedia Summit 2019

sunil — 2019-05-04T03:34:15Z

The Wikimedia Summit 2019 – formerly known as "Wikimedia Conference" or "Chapters Meeting" – took place on 29–31 March 2019 in Berlin. Sunil Abraham made a speech at the summit organized in Berlin.

Sunil answers a series of questions at the closing session of the Wikimedia Summit 2019:

What stands out?

Money. Creative Commons revenues are pegged at 2.4 million dollars. Mozilla Foundation gets 24 million dollars. Wikimedia Foundation gets 91 million dollars. So the job of pulling off the "Big Open" or the "creation of the meta movement" or "the movement of movements" is primarily the responsibility of the Wikimedia community given the scale of resources it is able to mobilize. For example, the Open Access movement has lost funding as its key donor Open Society Foundation after supporting the movement for 17 years is unable to support any further. The Wikipedia movement can easily save the global access movement by just allocating 1 million dollar for it.

What concerns me?

Homogenization. Homogenization of time frames, homogenization of process. Should we, for example, stagger the time period for online community consultation on the draft recommendations, so that there is less 'consultation fatigue' By homogenizing the processes at the Summit, it would be risking infantilizing the community. Would this meeting have been more exciting and useful, if Working Groups had the freedom to fork the process, and do what works for them.

What have I learned from my own journey and work?

Working with lawyers for the last 10 years, has led me to appreciate tests over principles. For example, in the open standards movement there is a constant question: is this particular standard an open standard? There, free software acts as the canary in the coal mine: If we cannot implement a standard using free software, then it is not an open standard. Working with lawyers for the last 10 years, has led me to appreciate tests over principles. For example, in the open standards movement there is a constant question: is this particular standard an open standard?There, free software acts as the canary in the coal mine: If we cannot implement a standard using free software, then it is not an open standard.

What have you learned that could be useful for the strategy process?

From the process architect I have learned that we shouldn't focus on solving /this/ particular instance of the problem, we should focus on working on developing processes that solve these problems in the future. So, the emphasis is on process fixes. This is really the bleeding edge of regulatory theory these days. Since we are in Germany, I must mention the name of the German academic Gunther Teubner who developed this concept of reflexive regulation 26 years ago in his article 'Substantive and Reflexive Elements in Modern Law.

What would you suggest to improve the strategy process?

The core of responsive regulation is community consultation processes. However, closing the loop on the consultation process is critical, otherwise participants feel that they have wasted time providing feedback. For example, the Indian telecom regulator first issues a consultation paper. Then solicits the first round of feedback, then solicits a second round of counter comments then they hold round tables, and, finally, they issue the recommendation or the regulation. But when they do that, they make sure they close the loop.They provide reasoned explanations for why suggestions were rejected. This might have to happen at both stages for this strategy development process. The working groups will have to say why they rejected certain pieces of feedback, and also the board will have to explain why they rejected certain recommendations from the working groups.

What would be your wish for this movement?

As we enter adulthood as a movement, it is important that we do not lose our youthful idealism. Idealism at two levels: ambition and vocabulary. Global civil society is broadly divided into two groups. Those who work on tractable problems, like getting rid of polio. And those who work on intractable problems, like saving and developing democracy. When monitoring and evaluation becomes a primary management lens for our movement, it shouldn't make us more and more risk-averse. Let us not focus on the easy problems let us always focus, as a movement, on the hard problems. When it comes to vocabulary, I am not totally sure that phrases like 'product experience', 'target markets', and 'Knowledge as a Service' is the vocabulary of the movement. Maybe, we need to think of two types of vocabulary, External facing vocabulary and internal facing vocabulary.

Watch the Video

Video, via Wikimedia Commons, source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikimedia_Summit_2019_-_Key_listener_Sunil_Abraham.webm.
Author, Anna Rees (WMDE): Uploader: Cornelius Kibelka (WMDE), This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/sunil-abraham-key-listener-speech-at-wikimedia-summit-2019

Centre for Internet and Society

ICT for Development

Centre should partner local communities in 'Digital India': Expert

January 2015 Bulletin

Accessibility and Inclusion

NVDA and eSpeak

Other

Access to Knowledge

Pervasive Technologies

Wikipedia

Openness

Internet Governance

News & Media Coverage

Digital Humanities

About CIS

Cultural knowledge needs to be more open

The Basics

Open up to us

What open tools and data help you get things done?

What do you wish were more open?

What are the biggest challenges to openness that you encounter, either at work or in your life?

Why choose the open source way?

Train the Trainer Program

Programme Schedule

Thursday, February 26, 2015

Friday, February 26, 2015

Saturday, February 28, 2015

Sunday, March 1, 2015

An International Conclave of Odia Language

The Event

Programme

Train the Trainer — Report in Udayavani

GoI body National Mission for Manuscripts has digitised 3 million manuscripts

Digital conservation over micro-film

Previous digitisation initiatives:

More articles for Tulu Wikipedia

How to write differently for different Telugu digital platforms - awareness session to Indu Gnana Vedika

100wikidays: the journey so far

See also

Credits

Improving Telugu Village Articles

Free Knowledge and Indian Government Work

Part 1: Free Knowledge

Part 2: Indian Government Work

Indian Prime Minister’s official website

Part 3: Government works — Worldwide

United States

United Kingdom

France

Russian Federation

Netherlands

Bulgaria

Croatia

The Long list

Last line

Guru Gomke is a Stylish Ol Chiki Typeface for India’s Santali Speakers

Sunil Abraham - Key Listener Speech at Wikimedia Summit 2019

What stands out?

What concerns me?

What have I learned from my own journey and work?

What have you learned that could be useful for the strategy process?

What would you suggest to improve the strategy process?

What would be your wish for this movement?

Watch the Video