The Centre for Internet and Society
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You auto-complete me: romancing the bot
https://cis-india.org/raw/maya-indira-ganesh-you-auto-complete-me-romancing-the-bot
<b>This is an excerpt from an essay by Maya Indira Ganesh, written for and published as part of the Bodies of Evidence collection of Deep Dives. The Bodies of Evidence collection, edited by Bishakha Datta and Richa Kaul Padte, is a collaboration between Point of View and the Centre for Internet and Society, undertaken as part of the Big Data for Development Network supported by International Development Research Centre, Canada. </b>
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<h4>Please read the full essay on Deep Dives: <a href="https://deepdives.in/you-auto-complete-me-romancing-the-bot-f2f16613fec8" target="_blank">You auto-complete me: romancing the bot</a></h4>
<h4>Maya Indira Ganesh: <a href="https://bodyofwork.in/" target="_blank">Website</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/mayameme" target="_blank">Twitter</a></h4>
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<p>I feel like Kismet the Robot.</p>
<p>Kismet is a flappy-eared animatronic head with oversized eyeballs and bushy eyebrows. Connected to cameras and sensors, it exhibits the six primary human emotions identified by psychologist Paul Ekman: happiness, sadness, disgust, surprise, anger, and fear.</p>
<p>Scholar Katherine Hayles says that Kismet was built as an ‘ecological whole’ to respond to both humans and the environment. ‘The community,’ she writes, ‘understood as the robot plus its human interlocutors, is greater than the sum of its parts, because the robot’s design and programming have been created to optimise interactions with humans.’</p>
<p>In other words, Kismet may have ‘social intelligence’.</p>
<p>Kismet’s creator Cynthia Breazal explains this through a telling example. If someone comes too close to it, Kismet retracts its head as if to suggest that its personal space is being violated, or that it is shy. In reality, it is trying to adjust its camera so that it can properly see whatever is in front of it. But it is the human interacting with Kismet who interprets this retraction as the robot requiring its own space by moving back. Breazal says, ‘Human interpretation and response make the robot’s actions more meaningful than they otherwise would be.’</p>
<p>In other words, humans interpret Kismet’s social intelligence as ‘emotional intelligence’...</p>
<p>Kismet was built at the start of a new field called affective computing, which is now branded as ‘emotion AI’. Affective computing is about analysing human facial expressions, gait and stance into a map of emotional states. Here is what Affectiva, one of the companies developing this technology, says about how it works:</p>
<p>‘Humans use a lot of non-verbal cues, such as facial expressions, gesture, body language and tone of voice, to communicate their emotions. Our vision is to develop Emotion AI that can detect emotion just the way humans do. Our technology first identifies a human face in real time or in an image or video. Computer vision algorithms then identify key landmarks on the face…[and] deep learning algorithms analyse pixels in those regions to classify facial expressions. Combinations of these facial expressions are then mapped to emotions.’</p>
<p>But there is also a more sinister aspect to this digitised love-fest. Our faces, voices, and selfies are being used to collect data to train future bots to be more realistic. There is an entire industry of Emotion AI that harvests human emotional data to build technologies that we are supposed to enjoy because they appear more human. But it often comes down to a question of social control, because the same emotional data is used to track, monitor and regulate our own emotions and behaviours...</p>
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For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/raw/maya-indira-ganesh-you-auto-complete-me-romancing-the-bot'>https://cis-india.org/raw/maya-indira-ganesh-you-auto-complete-me-romancing-the-bot</a>
</p>
No publishersumandroBodies of EvidenceResearchers at WorkResearchPublicationsBD4DBotsBig Data for Development2019-12-06T05:00:19ZBlog EntryWorkshop Report - UIDAI and Welfare Services: Exclusion and Countermeasures
https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/workshop-report-uidai-and-welfare-services-august-27-2016
<b>This report presents summarised notes from a workshop organised by the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) on Saturday, August 27, 2016, to discuss, raise awareness of, and devise countermeasures to exclusion due to implementation of UID-based verification for and distribution of welfare services.</b>
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<h2>Introduction</h2>
<p>The Centre for Internet and Society organised a workshop on "UIDAI and Welfare Services: Exclusion and Countermeasures" at the Institution of Agricultural on Technologists on August 27 in Bangalore to discuss, raise awareness of, and devise countermeasures to exclusion due to implementation of UID-based verification for and distribution of welfare services <strong>[1]</strong>. This was a follow-up to the workshop held in Delhi on “Understanding Aadhaar and its New Challenges” at the Centre for Studies in Science Policy, JNU on May 26th and 27th 2016 <strong>[2]</strong>. In this report we summarise the key concerns raised and the case studies presented by the participants at the workshop held on August 27, 2016.</p>
<h2>Implementation of the UID Project</h2>
<p><strong>Question of Consent:</strong> The Aadhaar Act <strong>[3]</strong> states that the consent of the individual must be taken at the time of enrollment and authentication and it must be informed to him/her the purpose for which the data would be used. However, the Act does not provide for an opt-out mechanism and an individual is compelled to give consent to continue with the enrollment process or to complete an authentication.</p>
<p><strong>Lack of Adherence to Court Orders:</strong> Despite of several orders by Supreme Court stating that use of Aadhaar cannot be made mandatory for the purpose of availing benefits and services, multiple state governments and departments have made it mandatory for a wide range of purposes like booking railway tickets <strong>[4]</strong>, linking below the poverty line ration cards with Aadhaar <strong>[5]</strong>, school examinations <strong>[6]</strong>, food security, pension and scholarship <strong>[7]</strong>, to name a few.</p>
<p><strong>Misleading Advertisements:</strong> A concern was raised that individuals are being mislead in the necessity and purpose for enrollment into the project. For example, people have been asked to enrol by telling them that they might get excluded from the system and cannot get services like passports, banks, NREGA, salaries for government employees, denial of vaccinations, etc. Furthermore, the Supreme Court has ordered Aadhaar not be mandatory, yet people are being told that documentation or record keeping cannot be done without UID number.</p>
<p><strong>Hybrid Governance:</strong> The participants pointed out that with the Aadhaar (Targeted delivery of financial and other subsidies, benefits and services) Act, 2016 (hereinafter referred to as Aadhaar Act, 2016 ) being partially enforced, multiple examples of exclusion as reported in the news are demonstrating how the Aadhaar project is creating a case of hybrid governance i.e private corporations playing a significant role in Governance. This can be seen in case of Aadhaar where we see many entities from private sector being involved in its implementation, as well as many software and hardware companies.</p>
<p><strong>Lack of Transparency around Sharing of Biometric Data:</strong> The fact how and why the Government is relying on biometrics for welfare schemes is unclear and not known. Also, there is no information on how biometric data that is collected through the project is being used and its ability as an authenticating device. Along with that, there is very little information on companies that have been enlisted to hold and manage data and perform authentication.</p>
<p><strong>Possibility of Surveillance:</strong> Multiple petitions and ongoing cases have raised concerns regarding the possibility of surveillance, tracking, profiling, convergence of data, and the opaque involvement of private companies involved in the project.</p>
<p><strong>Denial of Information:</strong> In an RTI filed by one of the participant requesting to share the key contract for the project, it was refused on the grounds under section 8(1) (d) of the RTI Act, 2005. However, it was claimed that the provision would not be applicable since the contract was already awarded and any information disclosed to the Parliament should be disclosed to the citizens. The Central Information Commission issued a letter stating that the contractual obligation is over and a copy of the said agreement can be duly shared. However, it was discovered by the said participant that certain pages of the same were missing , which contained confidential information. When this issue went before appeal before the Information Commissioner, the IC gave an order to the IC in Delhi to comply with the previous order. However, it was communicated that limited financial information may be given, but not missing pages. Also, it was revealed that the UIDAI was supposed to share biometric data with NPR (by way of a MoU), but it has refused to give information since the intention was to discontinue NPR and wanted only UIDAI to collect data.</p>
<h2>Concerns Arising from the Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) on Implementation of PAHAL (DBTL) Scheme</h2>
<p>A presentation on the CAG compliance audit report of PAHAL on LPG <strong>[8]</strong> revealed how the society was made to believe that UID will help deal with the issue of duplication and collection as well as use of biometric data will help. The report also revealed that multiple LPG connections have the same Aadhaar number or same bank account number in the consumer database maintained by the OMCs, the bank account number of consumers were also not accurately recorded, scrutiny of the database revealed improper capture of Aadhaar numbers, and there was incorrect seeding of IFSC codes in consumer database. The participants felt that this was an example of how schemes that are being introduced for social welfare do not necessarily benefit the society, and on the contrary, has led to exclusion by design. For example, in the year 2011, by was of the The Liquefied Petroleum Gas (Regulation of Supply and Distribution) Amendment Order, 2011 <strong>[9]</strong>, the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas made the Unique Identification Number (UID) under the Aadhaar project a must for availing LPG refills. This received a lot of public pushback, which led to non-implementation of the order. In October 2012, despite the UIDAI stating that the number was voluntary, a number of services began requiring the provision of an Aadhaar number for accessing benefits. In September 2013, when the first order on Aadhaar was passed by court <strong>[10]</strong>, oil marketing companies and UIDAI approached the Supreme Court to change the same and allow them to make it mandatory, which was refused by the Court. Later in the year 2014, use of Aadhaar for subsidies was made mandatory. The participants further criticised the CAG report for revealing the manner in which linking Aadhaar with welfare schemes has allowed duplication and led to ghost beneficiaries where there is no information about who these people are who are receiving the benefits of the subsidies. For example, in Rajasthan, people are being denied their pension as they are being declared dead due to absence of information from the Aadhaar database.</p>
<p>It was said that the statistics of duplication mentioned in the report show how UIDAI (as it claims to ensure de-duplication of beneficiaries) is not required for this purpose and can be done without Aadhaar as well. Also, due to incorrect seeding of Aadhaar number many are being denied subsidy where there is no information regarding the number of people who have been denied the subsidy because of this. Considering these important facts from the audit report, the discussants concluded how the statistics reflect inflated claims by UIDAI and how the problems which are said to be addressed by using Aadhaar can be dealt without it. In this context, it is important to understand how the data in the aadhaar database maybe wrong and in case of e-governance the citizens suffer. Also, the fact that loss of subsidy-not in cash, but in use of LPG cylinder - only for cooking, is ignored. In addition to that, there is no data or way to check if the cylinder is being used for commercial purposes or not as RTI from oil companies says that no ghost identities have been detected.</p>
<h2>UID-linked Welfare Delivery in Rajasthan</h2>
<p>One speaker presented findings on people's experiences with UID-linked welfare services in Rajasthan, collected through a 100 days trip organised to speak to people across the state on problems related to welfare governance. This visit revealed that people who need the benefits and access to subsidies most are often excluded from actual services. It was highlighted that the paperless system is proving to be highly dangerous. Some of the cases discussed included that of a disabled labourer, who was asked to get an aadhaar card, but during enrollment asked the person standing next to him to put all his 5 fingers for biometric data collection. Due to this incorrect data, he is devoid of all subsidies since the authentication fails every time he goes to avail it. He stopped receiving his entitlements. Though problems were anticipated, the misery of the people revealed the extent of the problems arising from the project. In another case, an elderly woman living alone, since she could not go for Aadhaar authentication, had not been receiving the ration she is entitled to receive for the past 8 months. When the ration shop was approached to represent her case, the dealers said that they cannot provide her ration since they would require her thumb print for authentication. Later, they found out that on persuading the dealer to provide her with ration since Aadhaar is not mandatory, they found out that in their records they had actually mentioned that she was being given the ration, which was not the case. So the lack of awareness and the fact that people are entitled to receive the benefits irrespective of Aadhaar is something that is being misused by dealers. This shows how this system has become a barrier for the people, where they are also unaware about the grievance redressal mechanism.</p>
<h2>Aadhaar and e-KYC</h2>
<p>In this session, the use of Aadhaar for e-KYC verification was discussed The UID strategy document describes how the idea is to link UIDAI with money enabled Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) to the beneficiaries without any reason or justification for the same. It was highlighted by one of the participants how the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) believed that making Aadhaar compulsory for e-KYC and several other banking services was a violation of the Money Laundering Act as well as its own rules and standards, however, later relaxed the rules to link Aadhaar with bank accounts and accepted its for e-KyC with great reluctance as the Department of Revenue thought otherwise. It was mentioned how allowing opening of bank accounts remotely using Aadhaar, without physically being present, was touted as a dangerous idea. However, the restrictions placed by RBI were suddenly done away with and opening bank accounts remotely was enabled via e-KYC.</p>
<p>A speaker emphasised that with emerging FinTech services in India being tied with Aadhaar via India Stack, the following concerns are becoming critical:</p>
<ol><li>With RBI enabling creation of bank accounts remotely, it becomes difficult to to track who did e-KYC and which bank did it and hold the same accountable.<br /><br /></li>
<li>The Aadhaar Act 2016 states that UIDAI will not track the queries made and will only keep a record of Yes/No for authentication. For example, the e-KYC to open a bank account can now be done with the help of an Aadhaar number and biometric authentication. However, this request does not get recorded and at the time of authentication, an individual is simply told whether the request has been matched or not by way of a Yes/No <strong>[11]</strong>. Though UIDAI will maintain the authentication record, this may act as an obstacle since in case the information from the aadhaar database does not match, the person would not be able to open a bank account and would only receive a yes/no as a response to the request.<br /><br /></li>
<li>Further, there is a concern that the Aadhaar Enabled Payment System being implemented by the National Payment Corporation of India (NCPI) would allow effectively hiding of source and destination of money flow, leading to money laundering and cases of bribery. This possible as NCPI maintains a mapper where each bank account is linked (only the latest one). However, Aadhaar number can be linked with multiple bank accounts of an individual. So when a transaction is made, the mapper records the transaction only from that 1 account. But if another transaction takes place with another bank account, that record is not maintained by the mapper at NCPI since it records only transactions of the latest account seeded in that. This makes money laundering easy as the money moves from aadhaar number to aadhaar number now rather than bank account to bank account.</li></ol>
<h2>Endnotes</h2>
<p><strong>[1]</strong> See: <a href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/events/uidai-and-welfare-services-exclusion-and-countermeasures-aug-27">http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/events/uidai-and-welfare-services-exclusion-and-countermeasures-aug-27</a>.</p>
<p><strong>[2]</strong> See: <a href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/report-on-understanding-aadhaar-and-its-new-challenges">http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/report-on-understanding-aadhaar-and-its-new-challenges</a>.</p>
<p><strong>[3]</strong> See: <a href="https://uidai.gov.in/beta/images/the_aadhaar_act_2016.pdf">https://uidai.gov.in/beta/images/the_aadhaar_act_2016.pdf</a>.</p>
<p><strong>[4]</strong> See: <a href="http://scroll.in/latest/816343/aadhaar-numbers-may-soon-be-compulsory-to-book-railway-tickets">http://scroll.in/latest/816343/aadhaar-numbers-may-soon-be-compulsory-to-book-railway-tickets</a>.</p>
<p><strong>[5]</strong> See: <a href="http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/karnataka/linking-bpl-ration-card-with-aadhaar-made-mandatory/article9094935.ece">http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/karnataka/linking-bpl-ration-card-with-aadhaar-made-mandatory/article9094935.ece</a>.</p>
<p><strong>[6]</strong> See: <a href="http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/After-scam-Bihar-to-link-exams-to-Aadhaar/articleshow/54000108.cms">http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/After-scam-Bihar-to-link-exams-to-Aadhaar/articleshow/54000108.cms</a>.</p>
<p><strong>[7]</strong> See: <a href="http://www.dailypioneer.com/state-editions/cs-calls-for-early-steps-to-link-aadhaar-to-ac.html">http://www.dailypioneer.com/state-editions/cs-calls-for-early-steps-to-link-aadhaar-to-ac.html</a>.</p>
<p><strong>[8]</strong> See: <a href="http://www.cag.gov.in/sites/default/files/audit_report_files/Union_Commercial_Compliance_Full_Report_25_2016_English.pdf">http://www.cag.gov.in/sites/default/files/audit_report_files/Union_Commercial_Compliance_Full_Report_25_2016_English.pdf</a>.</p>
<p><strong>[9]</strong> See: <a href="http://petroleum.nic.in/docs/lpg/LPG%20Control%20Order%20GSR%20718%20dated%2026.09.2011.pdf">http://petroleum.nic.in/docs/lpg/LPG%20Control%20Order%20GSR%20718%20dated%2026.09.2011.pdf</a>.</p>
<p><strong>[10]</strong> See: <a href="http://judis.nic.in/temp/494201232392013p.txt">http://judis.nic.in/temp/494201232392013p.txt</a>.</p>
<p><strong>[11]</strong> Section 8(4) of the Aadhaar Act, 2016 states that "The Authority shall respond to an authentication query with a positive, negative or any other appropriate response sharing such identity information excluding any core biometric information."</p>
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<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/workshop-report-uidai-and-welfare-services-august-27-2016'>https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/workshop-report-uidai-and-welfare-services-august-27-2016</a>
</p>
No publishervanyaDigital PaymentData SystemsResearchers at WorkUIDInternet GovernanceSurveillanceBig DataAadhaarWelfare GovernanceBig Data for DevelopmentDigital ID2019-03-16T04:34:11ZBlog EntryWorkshop on Big Data in India: Benefits, Harms, and Human Rights (Delhi, October 01)
https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/events/big-data-in-india-benefits-harms-and-human-rights-oct-01-2016
<b>CIS welcomes you to participate in the workshop we are organising on Saturday, October 01 at India Habitat Centre, Delhi, to discuss benefits, harms, and human rights implications of big data technologies, and explore potential research questions. A quick RSVP will be much appreciated.</b>
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<h4>Workshop invitation: <a href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/files/big-data-in-india-invitatation-to-workshop/at_download/file">Download</a> (PDF)</h4>
<h4>Workshop agenda: <a href="http://cis-india.org/internet-governance/files/big-data-in-india-workshop-agenda/at_download/file">Download</a> (PDF)</h4>
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<p>In the last few years, there has been an emergence of the discourse of big data viewing it as an instrument not just for ensuring efficient, targeted and personalised services in the private sector, but also for development, social and policy research, and formalising and monetising various sections of the economy. This possibility is premised upon the idea that there is great knowledge that resides in both traditional and new forms of data made possible by our digital selves, and that we may now have the capability to tap into that knowledge for insights across diverse sectors like healthcare, finance, e-governance, education, law enforcement and disaster management, to name but a few. Alongside, various commentators have also pointed to the new problems and risks that big data could create for privacy of individuals through greater profiling, for free speech and economic choice by strengthening monopolistic tendencies, and for socio-economic inequalities by making existing disparities more acute and facilitating algorithmic bias and exclusion.</p>
<p>From a regulatory perspective, big data technologies pose fundamental challenges to the national data regulatory frameworks that have existed since many years. The nature of collection and utilisation of big data, which is often not driven by immediate purpose of the collected data, conflict with the principles of data minimisation and collection limitation that have been integral to data protection laws globally. This compels us to revisit existing theories of data governance. Additionally, use of big data in public decision-making highlights the question of how algorithmic control and governance must be regulated. This raises concerns around taking determining a balanced position that recognises the importance of big data, including for development actions, and ensures unhindered innovation with simultaneous focus on greater transparency and anonymisation to protect individual privacy, and various big data risks faced by population groups. In order to answer these questions, we need to begin with identifying the different harms and benefits of big data that could arise through its use across sectors and disciplines, especially in the context of human rights.</p>
<p>This workshop is designed around an extensive study of current and potential future uses of big data for governance in India that CIS has undertaken over the last year. The study focused on key central government projects and initiatives like the UID project, the Digital India programme, the Smart Cities Challenge, etc.</p>
<p>We will initiate the workshop with a detailed presentation of our findings and key concerns, which will then shape the discussion agenda of the workshop. We look forward to discuss aspects of big data technologies through the entry points of harms, opportunities, and human rights.</p>
<p>The final session of the workshop will focus on identifying key research questions on the topic, and exploring potential alliances of scholars and organisations that can drive such research activities.</p>
<p>We look forward to making this a forum for knowledge exchange for our friends and colleagues attending the discussion and discuss the opportunity to for potential collaboration.</p>
<p><strong>RSVP:</strong> Please send an email to Ajoy Kumar at <<a href="mailto:ajoy@cis-india.org">ajoy@cis-india.org</a>>.</p>
<p><strong>Organisers:</strong> Amber Sinha <<a href="mailto:amber@cis-india.org">amber@cis-india.org</a>> and Sumandro Chattapadhyay <<a href="mailto:sumandro@cis-india.org">sumandro@cis-india.org</a>>.</p>
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<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/events/big-data-in-india-benefits-harms-and-human-rights-oct-01-2016'>https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/events/big-data-in-india-benefits-harms-and-human-rights-oct-01-2016</a>
</p>
No publishervanyaDevelopmentBig DataInternet GovernanceDigital SecurityDigital IndiaDigitisationDigital subjectivitiesBiometricsBig Data for DevelopmentE-GovernanceDigital Rights2016-09-28T05:53:55ZEventWorkshop on 'Privacy after Big Data' (Delhi, November 12)
https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/events/privacy-after-big-data-delhi-nov-12-2016
<b>The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) and the Sarai programme, CSDS, invite you to a workshop on 'Privacy after Big Data: What Changes? What should Change?' on Saturday, November 12. This workshop aims to build a dialogue around some of the key government-led big data initiatives in India and elsewhere that are contributing significant new challenges and concerns to the ongoing debates on the right to privacy. It is an open event. Please register to participate.</b>
<p> </p>
<h4>Invitation note and agenda: <a href="https://github.com/cis-india/website/raw/master/docs/CIS-Sarai_PrivacyAfterBigData_ConceptAgenda.pdf">Download</a> (PDF)</h4>
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<h3>Venue and RSVP</h3>
<p><strong>Venue:</strong> Centre for the Study of Developing Societies 29, Rajpur Road, Civil Lines, Delhi 110054.</p>
<p><strong>Location on Google Maps:</strong> <a href="https://www.google.com/maps/place/CSDS/@28.677775,77.2162523,17z/">https://www.google.com/maps/place/CSDS/@28.677775,77.2162523,17z/</a>.</p>
<p><strong>Registration:</strong> <a href="https://goo.gl/forms/py0Q0u8rMppu4smE3">Complete this form</a>.</p>
<h3>Concept Note</h3>
<p>In this age of big data, discussions about privacy are intertwined with the use of technology and the data deluge. Though big data possesses enormous value for driving innovation and contributing to productivity and efficiency, privacy concerns have gained significance in the dialogue around regulated use of data and the means by which individual privacy might be compromised through means such as surveillance, or protected. The tremendous opportunities big data creates in varied sectors ranges from financial technology, governance, education, health, welfare schemes, smart cities to name a few.</p>
<p>With the UID (“Aadhaar”) project re-animating the Right to Privacy debate in India, and the financial technology ecosystem growing rapidly, striking a balance between benefits of big data and privacy concerns is a critical policy question that demands public dialogue and research to inform an evidence based decision.</p>
<p>Also, with the advent of potential big data initiatives like the ambitious Smart Cities Mission under the Digital India Scheme, which would rely on harvesting large data sets and the use of analytics in city subsystems to make public utilities and services efficient, the tasks of ensuring data security on one hand and protecting individual privacy on the other become harder.</p>
<p>As key privacy principles are at loggerheads with big data activities, it is important to consider privacy as an embedded component in the processes, systems and projects, rather than being considered as an afterthought. These examples highlight the current state of discourse around data protection and privacy in India and the shapes they are likely to take in near future.</p>
<p>This workshop aims to build a dialogue around some of the key government-led big data initiatives in India and elsewhere that are contributing significant new challenges and concerns to the ongoing debates on the right to privacy.</p>
<h3>Agenda</h3>
<h4>09:00-09:30 Tea and Coffee</h4>
<h4>09:30-10:00 Introduction</h4>
<p><a href="#amber">Mr. Amber Sinha</a> and <a href="#sandeep">Mr. Sandeep Mertia</a><br />
<em>This session will introduce the topic of the workshop in the context of the ongoing works at CIS and Sarai.</em></p>
<h4>10:00-11:00 From Privacy Bill(s) to ‘Habeas Data’</h4>
<p><a href="#usha">Dr. Usha Ramanathan</a> and <a href="#vipul">Mr. Vipul Kharbanda</a><br />
<em>This session will present a brief history of the privacy bill(s) in India and end with reflections on ‘habeas data’ as a lens for thinking and actualising privacy after big data.</em></p>
<h4>11:00-11:30 Tea and Coffee</h4>
<h4>11:30-12:30 Digital ID, Data Protection, and Exclusion</h4>
<p><a href="#amelia">Ms. Amelia Andersdotter</a> and <a href="#srikanth">Mr. Srikanth Lakshmanan</a><br />
<em>This session will discuss national centralised digital ID systems, often operating at a cross-functional scale, and highlight its implications for discussions on data protection, welfare governance, and exclusion from public and private services.</em></p>
<h4>12:30-13:30 Digital Money and Financial Inclusion</h4>
<p><a href="#anupam">Dr. Anupam Saraph</a> and <a href="#astha">Ms. Astha Kapoor</a><br />
<em>This session will focus on the rise of digital banking and online payments as core instruments of financial inclusion in India, especially in the context of the Jan Dhan Yojana and UPI, and reflect on the concerns around privacy and financial data.</em></p>
<h4>13:30-14:30 Lunch</h4>
<h4>14:30-15:30 Big Data and Mass Surveillance</h4>
<p><a href="#anja">Dr. Anja Kovacs</a> and <a href="#matthew">Mr. Matthew Rice</a><br />
<em>This session will reflect on the rise of mass communication surveillance across the world, and the evolving challenges of regulating il/legal surveillance by government agencies.</em></p>
<h4>15:30-16:15 Privacy is (a) Right</h4>
<p><a href="#apar">Mr. Apar Gupta</a> and <a href="#kritika">Ms. Kritika Bhardwaj</a><br />
<em>This brief session is to share initial ideas and strategies for articulating and actualising a constitutional right to privacy in India.</em></p>
<h4>16:15-16:30 Tea and Coffee</h4>
<h4>16:30-17:30 Round Table</h4>
<p><em>An open discussion session to conclude the workshop.</em></p>
<h3>Speakers</h3>
<h4 id="amber">Mr. Amber Sinha</h4>
<p>Amber works on issues surrounding privacy, big data, and cyber security. He is interested in the impact of emerging technologies like artificial intelligence and learning algorithms on existing legal frameworks, and how they need to evolve in response. Amber studied humanities and law at National Law School of India University, Bangalore.</p>
<p>E-mail: amber at cis-india dot org.</p>
<p>Twitter: <a href="https://twitter.com/ambersinha07">@ambersinha07</a>.</p>
<h4 id="amelia">Ms. Amelia Andersdotter</h4>
<p>Amelia Andersdotter has been a Member of the European Parliament. She works on practical implications of data protection laws and consumer information security in Sweden, and digital rights in the Europe in general. Presently she is residing in Bangalore, where she is a visiting scholar with Centre for Internet and Society. She holds a BSc in Mathematics.</p>
<p>URL: <a href="https://dataskydd.net">https://dataskydd.net</a>.</p>
<p>Twitter: <a href="https://twitter.com/teirdes">@teirdes</a>.</p>
<h4 id="anja">Dr. Anja Kovacs</h4>
<p>Dr. Anja Kovacs directs the Internet Democracy Project in Delhi, India, which works for an Internet that supports free speech, democracy and social justice in India and beyond. Anja’s research and advocacy focuses especially on questions regarding freedom of expression, cybersecurity and the architecture of Internet governance. She has been a member of the of the Investment Committee of the Digital Defenders Partnership and of the Steering Committee of Best Bits, a global network of civil society members. She has also worked as an international consultant on Internet issues, including for the Independent Commission on Multilateralism, the United Nations Development Programme Asia Pacific and the UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression, Mr. Frank La Rue, as well as having been a Fellow at the Centre for Internet and Society in Bangalore, India.</p>
<p>Internet Democracy Project: <a href="https://internetdemocracy.in/">https://internetdemocracy.in</a>.</p>
<p>Twitter: <a href="https://twitter.com/anjakovacs">@anjakovacs</a>.</p>
<h4 id="anupam">Dr. Anupam Saraph</h4>
<p>Anupam Saraph has extensively researched India's UID number that has been widely regarded as the game changer in development programs. It has come to be linked with both public and private databases and become the requirement for access to entitlements, benefits, services and rights. Dr. Saraph, who has the design of at least two identification programs to his credit has researched the UID’s functional creep since its inception.</p>
<p>He has been dissecting the myths of what the UID is or is not. He has also tracked the consequences of its linkages on databases that protect national security, sovereignty, democratic status and the entire banking and money system in India. He has also highlighted the implications of its use for targeted delivery of cash subsidies from the Consolidated Fund of India. He has written and lectured widely about the devastating impact of the UID number on development programs, national security and the governability of India.</p>
<p>As a Professor of Systems, Governance and Decision Sciences, Environmental Systems and Business he mentors students and teaches systems, information systems, environmental systems and sustainable development at universities in Europe, Asia and the Americas. He has worked with the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Rijksuniversitiet Groningen, RIVM, University of Edinburgh, Resource Use Institute, Systems Research Institute among others. Dr. Saraph has had the unique distinction of being India’s only person who has held the only office of a City CIO in India, in a PPP arrangement with government, industry and himself. He has also been the first e-governance Advisor to a State government. Dr. Saraph has held CxO and ministerial level positions and serves as an independent director on the boards of Public and Private Sector companies and NGOs. He is also the President of the Nagrik Chetna Manch, an NGO charged with the mission to bring accountability in governance.</p>
<p>Dr. Saraph is also actively engaged in civil society where he participates in several environmental, resource and nature conservation initiatives, has authored draft legislations for river and natural resource conservation, right to good governance and has contributed to governance, election and democratic reforms. Dr. Saraph is a regular columnist in newspapers and writes on issues of governance, future design, technology and education from a systems perspective.</p>
<p>Dr. Saraph is also actively engaged in civil society where he participates in several environmental, resource and nature conservation initiatives, has authored draft legislations for river and natural resource conservation, right to good governance and has contributed to governance, election and democratic reforms. Dr. Saraph is a regular columnist in newspapers and writes on issues of governance, future design, technology and education from a systems perspective.</p>
<p>Dr. Saraph is also actively engaged in civil society where he participates in several environmental, resource and nature conservation initiatives, has authored draft legislations for river and natural resource conservation, right to good governance and has contributed to governance, election and democratic reforms. Dr. Saraph is a regular columnist in newspapers and writes on issues of governance, future design, technology and education from a systems perspective.</p>
<p>As a future designer and recognized as a global expert on complex systems he helps individuals and organisations understand and design the future of their worlds. Together they address the toughest challenges, accomplish missions and achieve business goals. He also supports building capacity to address the challenges of today as well as to build future designs through teams and effective leadership. Since the eighties Dr. Saraph has modeled complex systems of cities, countries, regions and even the planet. His models have been awarded internationally and even placed in 10-year permanent exhibitions.</p>
<p>Dr Saraph works with business and government executives, civil society leaders, politicians, generals, civil servants, police, trade unionists, community activists, United Nations and ASEAN officials, judges, writers, media, architects, designers, technologists, scientists, entrepreneurs, board members and business leaders of small, mid and large single and trans-national companies, religious leaders and artists across a dozen countries and various industry sectors to help them and their organisations succeed in their missions. He advises the World Economic Forum through its Global Agenda Council for Complex Systems and the Club of Rome, Indian National Association as a founder life member.</p>
<p>Dr Saraph holds a PhD in designing sustainable systems from the faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences of the Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, the Netherlands.</p>
<p>Website: <a href="http://anupam.saraph.in/">http://anupam.saraph.in</a>.</p>
<p>Twitter: <a href="https://twitter.com/anupamsaraph">@anupamsaraph</a>.</p>
<h4 id="apar">Mr. Apar Gupta</h4>
<p>Apar Gupta practices law in Delhi. He is also one of the co-founders of the Internet Freedom Foundation. His work and writing on public interest issues can be accessed at his personal website <a href="http://www.apargupta.com/">www.apargupta.com</a>.</p>
<p>Twitter: <a href="https://twitter.com/aparatbar">@aparatbar</a>.</p>
<h4 id="astha">Ms. Astha Kapoor</h4>
<p>Astha Kapoor is a public policy strategy consultant working on financial inclusion and digital payments. Currently, she is working with MicroSave. Her tasks involve a focus on government to people (G2P) payments - and her work spans strategy, advisory and evaluation with the DBT Mission, Office of the Chief Economic Advisor, NITI Aayog and ministries pertaining to food, fuel and fertilizer. She recently designed a pilot to digitize uptake of fertilizers in Krishna district, and evaluated the newly introduced coupon system in the Public Distribution System in Bengaluru.</p>
<p>Twitter: <a href="https://twitter.com/kapoorastha">@kapoorastha</a>.</p>
<h4 id="kritika">Ms. Kritika Bhardwaj</h4>
<p>Kritika Bhardwaj works as a Programme Officer at the Centre for Communication Governance (CCG), National Law University, Delhi. Her main areas of research are privacy and data protection. At CCG, she has written about the privacy implications of several contemporary issues such as Aadhaar (India's unique identification project), cloud computing and the right to be forgotten. A lawyer by training, Kritika has a keen interest in information law and human rights law.</p>
<p>Centre for Communication Governance, NLU Delhi: <a href="http://ccgdelhi.org/">http://ccgdelhi.org</a>.</p>
<p>Twitter: <a href="https://twitter.com/Kritika12">@Kritika12</a>.</p>
<h4 id="matthew">Mr. Matthew Rice</h4>
<p>Matthew Rice is an Advocacy Officer at Privacy International working across the organisation engaging with international partners and strengthening their capacity on communications surveillance issues. He has previously worked at Privacy International as a consultant building the Surveillance Industry Index, the largest publicly available database on the private surveillance sector ever assembled. Matthew graduated from University of Aberdeen with an LLB (Hons.) and also has an MA in Human Rights from University College London.</p>
<p>Privacy International: <a href="https://privacyinternational.org/">https://privacyinternational.org</a>.</p>
<p>Twitter: <a href="https://twitter.com/mattr3">@mattr3</a>.</p>
<h4 id="sandeep">Mr. Sandeep Mertia</h4>
<p>Sandeep Mertia is a Research Associate at The Sarai Programme, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi. He is an ICT engineer by training with research interests in Science & Technology Studies, Software Studies
and Anthropology. He is conducting an ethnographic study of emerging modes of data-driven knowledge production in the social sector.</p>
<p>Sarai: <a href="http://sarai.net/">http://sarai.net</a>.</p>
<p>Twitter: <a href="https://twitter.com/SandeepMertia">@SandeepMertia</a>.</p>
<p>Academia: <a href="https://daiict.academia.edu/SandeepMertia">https://daiict.academia.edu/SandeepMertia</a>.</p>
<h4 id="srikanth">Mr. Srikanth Lakshmanan</h4>
<p>Srikanth is a software professional with interests in Internet, follower of Internet policy discussions, volunteers for multiple online campaigns related to Internet. He is also fascinated by FOSS, opendata, localization,
Wikipedia, maps, public transit, civic tech and occasionally contributes to them.</p>
<p>Site: <a href="http://www.srik.me/">http://www.srik.me</a>.</p>
<p>Twitter: <a href="https://twitter.com/logic">@logic</a>.</p>
<h4 id="vipul">Mr. Vipul Kharbanda</h4>
<p>Vipul Kharbanda is a consultant with the Center for Internet and Society, Bangalore. After finishing his BA.LLB.(Hons.) from National Law School of India University in Bangalore, he worked for India’s largest corporate law firm for two and a half years in their Mumbai office for two years working primarily on the financing of various infrastructure projects such as Power Plants, Roads, Airports, etc. Since quitting his corporate law job, Vipul has been working as the Associate Editor in a legal publishing house which has been publishing legal books and journals for the last 90 years in India. He has also been involved with the Center for Internet and Society as a Consultant working primarily on issues related to privacy and surveillance.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/events/privacy-after-big-data-delhi-nov-12-2016'>https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/events/privacy-after-big-data-delhi-nov-12-2016</a>
</p>
No publishersumandroData SystemsDigital GovernancePrivacyData RevolutionSurveillanceBig DataDigital IndiaInternet GovernanceBig Data for DevelopmentDigital Rights2016-11-12T10:14:52ZEventTo be Counted When They Count You: Words of Caution for the Gender Data Revolution
https://cis-india.org/raw/to-be-counted-when-they-count-you-words-of-caution-for-the-gender-data-revolution
<b>In 2015, after the announcement of the SDGs or Sustainable Development Goals, a new global developmental framework through the year 2030, the United Nations described data as the “lifeblood of decision-making and the raw material for accountability” for the purpose of realizing these developmental goals. This curious yet key link between these new developmental goals and the use of quantitative data for agenda setting invited a flurry of big data-led initiatives such as but not limited to Data2X, that sought to further strengthen and solidify the relationship between ‘Big Development’ and ‘Big Data.’</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">One of those SDG goals (Goal 5) prioritizes gender equality and empowerment of women and girls not only as a standalone goal but also as a crucial factor to realizing the other goals. In response, several academic and non-profit initiatives have begun to interpret and conduct data-led gendered development or the “gender data revolution”. As with other data discourses, the gender-data discourse is also one of ‘speed’, charging ahead using a variety of quantitative and visualization approaches to reveal and eventually solve gendered problems of development.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">These interventions also invite some classical critical questions: who is setting the agenda for the gender data revolution and who are its imagined subjects? How are questions of participation and asymmetries of power in developmental research being addressed? How does the gender data revolution address the situatedness as well as incompleteness of data records in the Global South (where most sites of intervention are)? Speaking specifically to the theme of this special issue (‘cross-cultural feminist technologies’), this paper demonstrates how the welfarist discourse of data-led gender development is, in fact, assembled through the overwhelming enumeration of female-identifying bodies in the Global South.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The paper offers critical historical insights from the fields of international development, anthropology, and postcolonial history to caution against both, the possible harms of gender disaggregated datafication as well as the consequences of non-participatory datafication of women, the subjects of the gender data revolution.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Read the full paper <strong><a href="https://cis-india.org/raw/to-be-counted-when-they-count-you.pdf" class="internal-link">here</a></strong>.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">This study was undertaken as part of the Big Data for Development network supported by the International Development Research Centre, Canada, and is shared under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.</p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; "><span class="discreet">The views and opinions expressed on this page are those of their individual authors. Unless the opposite is explicitly stated, or unless the opposite may be reasonably inferred, CIS does not subscribe to these views and opinions which belong to their individual authors. CIS does not accept any responsibility, legal or otherwise, for the views and opinions of these individual authors. For an official statement from CIS on a particular issue, please contact us directly.</span></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/raw/to-be-counted-when-they-count-you-words-of-caution-for-the-gender-data-revolution'>https://cis-india.org/raw/to-be-counted-when-they-count-you-words-of-caution-for-the-gender-data-revolution</a>
</p>
No publishernoopurRAW PublicationsBig DataResearchers at WorkBD4DRAW ResearchBig Data for Development2022-02-01T01:06:08ZBlog EntryThe Mother and Child Tracking System - understanding data trail in the Indian healthcare systems
https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/privacy-international-ambika-tandon-october-17-2019-mother-and-child-tracking-system-understanding-data-trail-indian-healthcare
<b>Reproductive health programmes in India have been digitising extensive data about pregnant women for over a decade, as part of multiple health information systems. These can be seen as precursors to current conceptions of big data systems within health informatics. In this article, published by Privacy International, Ambika Tandon presents some findings from a recently concluded case study of the MCTS as an example of public data-driven initiatives in reproductive health in India. </b>
<p> </p>
<h4>This article was first published by <a href="https://privacyinternational.org/news-analysis/3262/mother-and-child-tracking-system-understanding-data-trail-indian-healthcare" target="_blank">Privacy International</a>, on October 17, 2019</h4>
<h4>Case study of MCTS: <a href="https://cis-india.org/raw/big-data-reproductive-health-india-mcts" target="_blank">Read</a></h4>
<hr />
<p>On October 17th 2019, the UN Special Rapporteur (UNSR) on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights, Philip Alston, released his thematic report on digital technology, social protection and human rights. Understanding the impact of technology on the provision of social protection – and, by extent, its impact on people in vulnerable situations – has been part of the work the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) and Privacy International (PI) have been doing.</p>
<p>Earlier this year, <a href="https://privacyinternational.org/advocacy/2996/privacy-internationals-submission-digital-technology-social-protection-and-human" target="_blank">PI responded</a> to the UNSR's consultation on this topic. We highlighted what we perceived as some of the most pressing issues we had observed around the world when it comes to the use of technology for the delivery of social protection and its impact on the right to privacy and dignity of benefit claimants.</p>
<p>Among them, automation and the increasing reliance on AI is a topic of particular concern - countries including Australia, India, the UK and the US have already started to adopt these technologies in digital welfare programmes. This adoption raises significant concerns about a quickly approaching future, in which computers decide whether or not we get access to the services that allow us to survive. There's an even more pressing problem. More than a few stories have emerged revealing the extent of the bias in many AI systems, biases that create serious issues for people in vulnerable situations, who are already exposed to discrimination, and made worse by increasing reliance on automation.</p>
<p>Beyond the issue of AI, we think it is important to look at welfare and automation with a wider lens. In order for an AI to function it needs to be trained on a dataset, so that it can understand what it is looking for. That requires the collection large quantities of data. That data would then be used to train and AI to recognise what fraudulent use of public benefits would look like. That means we need to think about every data point being collected as one that, in the long run, will likely be used for automation purposes.</p>
<p>These systems incentivise the mass collection of people's data, across a huge range of government services, from welfare to health - where women and gender-diverse people are uniquely impacted. CIS have been looking specifically at reproductive health programmes in India, work which offers a unique insight into the ways in which mass data collection in systems like these can enable abuse.</p>
<p>Reproductive health programmes in India have been digitising extensive data about pregnant women for over a decade, as part of multiple health information systems. These can be seen as precursors to current conceptions of big data systems within health informatics. India’s health programme instituted such an information system in 2009, the Mother and Child Tracking System (MCTS), which is aimed at collecting data on maternal and child health. The Centre for Internet and Society, India, <a href="https://cis-india.org/raw/big-data-reproductive-health-india-mcts" target="_blank">undertook a case study of the MCTS</a> as an example of public data-driven initiatives in reproductive health. The case study was supported by the <a href="http://bd4d.net/" target="_blank">Big Data for Development network</a> supported by the International Development Research Centre, Canada. The objective of the case study was to focus on the data flows and architecture of the system, and identify areas of concern as newer systems of health informatics are introduced on top of existing ones. The case study is also relevant from the perspective of Sustainable Development Goals, which aim to rectify the tendency of global development initiatives to ignore national HIS and create purpose-specific monitoring systems.</p>
<p>After being launched in 2011, 120 million (12 crore) pregnant women and 111 million (11 crore) children have been registered on the MCTS as of 2018. The central database collects data on each visit of the woman from conception to 42 days postpartum, including details of direct benefit transfer of maternity benefit schemes. While data-driven monitoring is a critical exercise to improve health care provision, publicly available documents on the MCTS reflect the complete absence of robust data protection measures. The risk associated with data leaks are amplified due to the stigma associated with abortion, especially for unmarried women or survivors of rape.</p>
<p>The historical landscape of reproductive healthcare provision and family planning in India has been dominated by a target-based approach. Geared at population control, this approach sought to maximise family planning targets without protecting decisional autonomy and bodily privacy for women. At the policy level, this approach was shifted in favour of a rights-based approach to family planning in 1994. However, targets continue to be set for women’s sterilisation on the ground. Surveillance practices in reproductive healthcare are then used to monitor under-performing regions and meet sterilisation targets for women, this continues to be the primary mode of contraception offered by public family planning initiatives.</p>
<p>More recently, this database - among others collecting data about reproductive health - is adding biometric information through linkage with the Aadhaar infrastructure. This data adds to the sensitive information being collected and stored without adhering to any publicly available data protection practices. Biometric linkage is aimed to fulfill multiple functions - primarily authentication of welfare beneficiaries of the national maternal benefits scheme. Making Aadhaar details mandatory could directly contribute to the denial of service to legitimate patients and beneficiaries - as has already been seen in some cases.</p>
<p>The added layer of biometric surveillance also has the potential to enable other forms of abuse of privacy for pregnant women. In 2016, the union minister for Women and Child Development under the previous government suggested the use of strict biometric-based monitoring to discourage gender-biased sex selection. Activists critiqued the policy for its paternalistic approach to reduce the rampant practice of gender-biased sex selection, rather than addressing the root causes of gender inequality in the country.</p>
<p>There is an urgent need to rethink the objectives and practices of data collection in public reproductive health provision in India. Rather than continued focus on meeting high-level targets, monitoring systems should enable local usage and protect the decisional autonomy of patients. In addition, the data protection legislation in India - expected to be tabled in the next session in parliament - should place free and informed consent, and informational privacy at the centre of data-driven practices in reproductive health provision.</p>
<p>This is why the systematic mass collection of data in health services is all the more worrying. When the collection of our data becomes a condition for accessing health services, it is not only a threat to our right to health that should not be conditional on data sharing but also it raises questions as to how this data will be used in the age of automation.</p>
<p>This is why understanding what data is collected and how it is collected in the context of health and social protection programmes is so important.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/privacy-international-ambika-tandon-october-17-2019-mother-and-child-tracking-system-understanding-data-trail-indian-healthcare'>https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/privacy-international-ambika-tandon-october-17-2019-mother-and-child-tracking-system-understanding-data-trail-indian-healthcare</a>
</p>
No publisherambikaBig DataData SystemsPrivacyResearchers at WorkInternet GovernanceResearchBD4DHealthcareBig Data for Development2019-12-30T17:18:05ZBlog EntryRight to Food Campaign, Ranchi Convention, 2016
https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/right-to-food-campaign-ranchi-convention-2016
<b>The Right to Food Campaign held its 2016 Convention in Ranchi during September 23-25, 2016. While three years have elapsed since the passage of the National Food Security Act, despite improvements in the Public Distribution System (PDS), large implementation gaps remain. This is what the Convention focused on, and gathered researchers and campaigners from across the country to share experiences and case studies on effectiveness and exclusions from the PDS. Sumandro Chattapadhyay took part in a session of the Convention to discuss how UID-linked welfare delivery is being rolled out across key programmes like provision of pension and rationed distribution of essential commodities, and their impact on people's right to welfare services.</b>
<p> </p>
<h4>Right to Food Campaign: <a href="http://www.righttofoodcampaign.in/">Website</a>.</h4>
<h4>Right to Food Campaign: <a href="https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=sites&srcid=ZGVmYXVsdGRvbWFpbnxoYXFyb3ppcm90aXxneDo3MmQ3MTMyZjU2N2FjOGU">Cash Transfers and UID: Our Main Demands</a>.</h4>
<h4>Ranchi Convention, 2016: <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/110_asJ1t14IWALbhWN1RjDiOV8WE-fIK2xJC5Yltyc4/edit">Programme</a>.</h4>
<p> </p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/right-to-food-campaign-ranchi-convention-2016'>https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/right-to-food-campaign-ranchi-convention-2016</a>
</p>
No publishersumandroBig DataData SystemsInternet GovernanceSurveillanceAadhaarWelfare GovernanceBiometricsBig Data for DevelopmentUID2019-03-16T04:40:52ZBlog EntryReport on Understanding Aadhaar and its New Challenges
https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/report-on-understanding-aadhaar-and-its-new-challenges
<b>The Trans-disciplinary Research Cluster on Sustainability Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University collaborated with the Centre for Internet and Society, and other individuals and organisations to organise a two day workshop on “Understanding Aadhaar and its New Challenges” at the Centre for Studies in Science Policy, JNU on May 26 and 27, 2016. The objective of the workshop was to bring together experts from various fields, who have been rigorously following the developments in the Unique Identification (UID) Project and align their perspectives and develop a shared understanding of the status of the UID Project and its impact. Through this exercise, it was also sought to develop a plan of action to address the welfare exclusion issues that have arisen due to implementation of the UID Project.</b>
<p> </p>
<h4>Report: <a href="https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/files/report-on-understanding-aadhaar-and-its-new-challenges/at_download/file">Download</a> (PDF)</h4>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify;">This Report is a compilation of the observations made by participants at the workshop relating to myriad issues under the UID Project and various strategies that could be pursued to address these issues. In this Report we have classified the observations and discussions into following themes:</p>
<p><strong>1.</strong> <a href="#1">Brief Background of the UID Project</a></p>
<p><strong>2.</strong> <a href="#2">Legal Status of the UIDAI Project</a></p>
<ul>
<li><a href="#21">Procedural issues with passage of the Act</a></li>
<li><a href="#22">Status of related litigation</a></li></ul>
<p><strong>3.</strong> <a href="#3">National Identity Projects in Other Jurisdictions</a></p>
<ul>
<li><a href="#31">Pakistan</a></li>
<li><a href="#32">United Kingdom</a></li>
<li><a href="#33">Estonia</a></li>
<li><a href="#34">France</a></li>
<li><a href="#35">Argentina</a></li></ul>
<p><strong>4.</strong> <a href="#4">Technologies of Identification and Authentication</a></p>
<ul>
<li><a href="#41">Use of Biometric Information for Identification and Authentication</a></li>
<li><a href="#42">Architectures of Identification</a></li>
<li><a href="#43">Security Infrastructure of CIDR</a></li></ul>
<p><strong>5.</strong> <a href="#5">Aadhaar for Welfare?</a></p>
<ul>
<li><a href="#51">Social Welfare: Modes of Access and Exclusion</a></li>
<li><a href="#52">Financial Inclusion and Direct Benefits Transfer</a></li></ul>
<p><strong>6.</strong> <a href="#6">Surveillance and UIDAI</a></p>
<p><strong>7.</strong> <a href="#7">Strategies for Future Action</a></p>
<p><strong>Annexure A</strong> <a href="#AA">Workshop Agenda</a></p>
<p><strong>Annexure B</strong> <a href="#AB">Workshop Participants</a></p>
<hr />
<h3 id="1" style="text-align: justify;"><strong>1. Brief Background of the UID Project</strong></h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;">In the year 2009, the UIDAI was established and the UID project was conceived by the Planning Commission under the UPA government to provide unique identification for each resident in India and to be used for delivery of welfare government services in an efficient and transparent manner, along with using it as a tool to monitor government schemes. The objective of the scheme has been to issue a unique identification number by the Unique Identification Authority of India, which can be authenticated and verified online. It was conceptualized and implemented as a platform to facilitate identification and avoid fake identity issues and delivery of government benefits based on the demographic and biometric data available with the Authority.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The Aadhaar (Targeted Delivery of Financial and Other Subsidies, Benefits and Services) Act, 2016 (the “<strong>Act</strong>”) was passed as a money bill on March 16, 2016 and was notified in the gazette March 25, 2016 upon receiving the assent of the President. However, the enforceability date has not been mentioned due to which the bill has not come into force.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The Act provides that the Aadhaar number can be used to validate a person’s identity, but it cannot be used as a proof of citizenship. Also, the government can make it mandatory for a person to authenticate her/his identity using Aadhaar number before receiving any government subsidy, benefit, or service. At the time of enrolment, the enrolling agency is required to provide notice to the individual regarding how the information will be used, the type of entities the information will be shared with and their right to access their information. Consent of an individual would be obtained for using his/her identity information during enrolment as well as authentication, and would be informed of the nature of information that may be shared. The Act clearly lays that the identity information of a resident shall not be sued for any purpose other than specified at the time of authentication and disclosure of information can be made only pursuant to an order of a court not inferior to that of a District Judge and/or disclosure made in the interest of national security.</p>
<h3 id="2" style="text-align: justify;"><strong>2. Legal Status of the UIDAI Project</strong></h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;">In this section, we have summarised the discussions on the procedural issues with the passage of the Act. The participants had criticised the passage of the Act as a money bill in the Parliament. The participants also assessed the litigation pending in the Supreme Court of India that would be affected by this law. These discussions took place in the session titled, ‘Current Status of Aadhaar’ and have been summarised below.</p>
<h3 id="21" style="text-align: justify;">Procedural Issues with Passage of the Act</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The participants contested the introduction of the Act in the form of a money bill. The rationale behind this was explained at the session and is briefly explained here. Article 110 (1) of the Constitution of India defines a money bill as one containing provisions only regarding the matters enumerated or any matters incidental to the following: a) imposition, regulation and abolition of any tax, b) borrowing or other financial obligations of the Government of India, c) custody, withdrawal from or payment into the Consolidated Fund of India (CFI) or Contingent Fund of India, d) appropriation of money out of CFI, e) expenditure charged on the CFI or f) receipt or custody or audit of money into CFI or public account of India. The Act makes references to benefits, subsidies and services which are funded by the Consolidated Fund of India (CFI), however the main objectives of the Act is to create a right to obtain a unique identification number and provide for a statutory mechanism to regulate this process. The Act only establishes an identification mechanism which facilitates distribution of benefits and subsidies funded by the CFI and this identification mechanism (Aadhaar number) does not give it the character of a money bill. Further, money bills can be introduced only in the Lok Sabha, and the Rajya Sabha cannot make amendments to such bills passed by the Lok Sabha. The Rajya Sabha can suggest amendments, but it is the Lok Sabha’s choice to accept or reject them. This leaves the Rajya Sabha with no effective role to play in the passage of the bill.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The participants also briefly examined the writ petition that has been filed by former Union minister Jairam Ramesh challenging the constitutionality and legality of the treatment of this Act as a money bill which has raised the question of judiciary’s power to review the decisions of the speaker. Article 122 of the Constitution of India provides that this power of judicial review can be exercised to look into procedural irregularities. The question remains whether the Supreme Court will rule that it can determine the constitutionality of the decision made by the speaker relating to the manner in which the Act was introduced in the Lok Sabha. A few participants mentioned that similar circumstances had arisen in the case of Mohd. Saeed Siddiqui v. State of U.P. <a href="#ftn1">[1]</a>.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">where the Supreme Court refused to interfere with the decision of the Uttar Pradesh legislative assembly speaker certifying an amendment bill to increase the tenure of the Lokayukta as a money bill, despite the fact that the bill amended the Uttar Pradesh Lokayukta and Up-Lokayuktas Act, 1975, which was passed as an ordinary bill by both houses. The Court in this case held that the decision of the speaker was final and that the proceedings of the legislature being important legislative privilege could not be inquired into by courts. The Court added, “the question whether a bill is a money bill or not can be raised only in the state legislative assembly by a member thereof when the bill is pending in the state legislature and before it becomes an Act.”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">However, it is necessary to carve a distinction between Rajya Sabha and State Legislature. Unlike the State Legislature, constitution of Rajya Sabha is not optional therefore significance of the two bodies in the parliamentary process cannot be considered the same. Participants also made another significant observation about a similar bill on the UID project (National Identification Authority of India (NIDAI) Bill) that was introduced before by the UPA government in 2010 and was deemed unacceptable by the standing committee on finance, headed by Yashwant Sinha. This bill was subsequently withdrawn.</p>
<h3 id="22" style="text-align: justify;">Status of Related Litigation</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;">A panellist in this session briefly summarised all the litigation that was related to or would be affected by the Act. The panellist also highlighted several Supreme Court orders in the case of <em>KS Puttuswamy v. Union of India</em> <a href="#ftn2">[2]</a> which limited the use of Aadhaar. We have reproduced the presentation below.</p>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify;"><em>KS Puttuswamy v. Union of India</em> - This petition was filed in 2012 with primary concern about providing Aadhaar numbers to illegal immigrants in India. It was contended that this could not be done without a law establishing the UIDAI and amendment to the Citizenship laws. The petitioner raised concerns about privacy and fallibility of biometrics.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;"> Sudhir Vombatkere & Bezwada Wilson <a href="#ftn3">[3]</a> - This petition was filed in 2013 on grounds of infringement of right to privacy guaranteed under Article 21 of the Constitution of India and the security threat on account of data convergence.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Aruna Roy & Nikhil Dey <a href="#ftn4">[4]</a> - This petition was filed in 2013 on the grounds of large scale exclusion of people from access to basic welfare services caused by UID. After their petition, no. of intervention applications were filed. These were the following:</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Col. Mathew Thomas <a href="#ftn5">[5]</a> - This petition was filed on the grounds of threat to national security posed by the UID project particularly in relation to arrangements for data sharing with foreign companies (with links to foreign intelligence agencies).</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Nagrik Chetna Manch <a href="#ftn6">[6]</a> - This petition was filed in 2013 and led by Dr. Anupam Saraph on the grounds that the UID project was detrimental to financial service regulation and financial <em>inclusion.</em></li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">S. Raju <a href="#ftn7">[7] </a> - This petition was filed on the grounds that the UID project had implications on the federal structure of the State and was detrimental to financial inclusion.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;"><em>Beghar Foundation</em> - This petition was filed in 2013 in the Delhi High Court on the grounds invasion of privacy and exclusion specifically in relation to the homeless. It subsequently joined the petition filed by Aruna Roy and Nikhil Dey as an intervener.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Vickram Crishna – This petition was originally filed in the Bombay High Court in 2013 on the grounds of surveillance and invasion of privacy. It was later transferred to the Supreme Court.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Somasekhar – This petition was filed on the grounds of procedural unreasonableness of the UID project and also exclusion & privacy. The petitioner later intervened in the petition filed by Aruna Roy and Nikhil Dey in 2013.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Rajeev Chandrashekhar– This petition was filed on the ground of lack of legal sanction for the UID project. He later intervened in the petition filed by Aruna Roy and Nikhil Dey in 2013. His position has changed now.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Further, a petition was filed by Mr. Jairam Ramesh initially challenging the passage of the Act as a money bill but subsequently, it has been amended to include issues of violation of right to privacy and exclusion of the poor and has advocated for five amendments that were suggested to the Aadhaar Bill by the Rajya Sabha.</li></ul>
<h3 id="23" style="text-align: justify;">Relevant Orders of the Supreme Court</h3>
<p>There are six orders of the Supreme Court which are noteworthy.</p>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Order of Sept. 23, 2013 - The Supreme court directed that: 1) no person shall suffer for not having an aadhaar number despite the fact that a circular by an authority makes it mandatory; 2) it should be checked if a person applying for aadhaar number voluntarily is entitled to it under the law; and 3) precaution should be taken that it is not be issued to illegal immigrants.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Order of 26th November, 2013 – Applications were filed by UIDAI, Ministry of Petroleum & Natural Gas, Govt of India, Indian Oil Corporation, BPCL and HPCL for modifying the September 23rd order and sought permission from the Supreme Court to make aadhaar number mandatory. The Supreme Court held that the order of September 23rd would continue to be effective.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Order of 24th March, 2014 – This order was passed by the Supreme Court in a special leave petition filed in the case of <em>UIDAI v CBI</em> <a href="#ftn8">[8] </a> wherein UIDAI was asked to UIDAI to share biometric information of all residents of a particular place in Goa to facilitate a criminal investigation involving charges of rape and sexual assault. The Supreme Court restrained UIDAI from transferring any biometric information of an individual without to any other agency without his consent in writing. The Supreme Court also directed all the authorities to modify their forms/circulars/likes so as to not make aadhaar number mandatory.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Order of 16th March, 2015 - The SC took notice of widespread violations of the order passed on September 23rd, 2013 and directed the Centre and the states to adhere to these orders to not make aadhaar compulsory.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Orders of August 11, 2015 – In the first order, the Central Government was directed to publicise the fact that aadhaar was voluntary. The Supreme Court further held that provision of benefits due to a citizen of India would not be made conditional upon obtaining an aadhaar number and restricted the use of aadhaar to the PDS Scheme and in particular for the purpose of distribution of foodgrains, etc. and cooking fuel, such as kerosene and the LPG Distribution Scheme. The Supreme Court also held that information of an individual that was collected in order to issue an aadhaar number would not be used for any purpose except when directed by the Court for criminal investigations. Separately, the status of fundamental right to privacy was contested and accordingly the Supreme Court directed that the issue be taken up before the Chief Justice of India.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Orders of October 16, 2015 – The Union of India, the states of Gujarat, Maharashtra, Himachal Pradesh and Rajasthan, and authorities including SEBI, TRAI, CBDT, IRDA , RBI applied for a hearing before the Constitution Bench for modification of the order passed by the Supreme Court on August 11 and allow use of aadhaar number schemes like The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme MGNREGS), National Social Assistance Programme (Old Age Pensions, Widow Pensions, Disability Pensions) Prime Minister's Jan Dhan Yojana (PMJDY) and Employees' Providend Fund Organisation (EPFO). The Bench allowed the use of aadhaar number for these schemes but stressed upon the need to keep aadhaar scheme voluntary until the matter was finally decided.</li></ul>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Status of these orders<br />The participants discussed the possible impact of the law on the operation of these orders. A participant pointed out that matters in the Supreme Court had not become infructuous because fundamental issues that were being heard in the Supreme Court had not been resolved by the passage of the Act. Several participants believed that the aforementioned orders were effective because the law had not come into force. Therefore, aadhaar number could only be used for purposes specified by the Supreme Court and it could not be made mandatory. Participants also highlighted that when the Act was implemented, it would not nullify the orders of the Supreme Court unless Union of India asked the Supreme Court for it specifically and the Supreme Court sanctioned that.</p>
<h3 id="3" style="text-align: justify;"><strong>3. National Identity Projects in Other Jurisdictions</strong></h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;">A panellist had provided a brief overview of similar programs on identification that have been launched in other jurisdictions including Pakistan, United Kingdom, France, Estonia and Argentina in the recent past in the session titled ‘Aadhaar - International Dimensions’. This presentation mainly sought to assess the incentives that drove the governments in these jurisdictions to formulate these projects, mandatory nature of their adoption and their popularity. The Report has reproduced the presentation here.</p>
<h3 id="31" style="text-align: justify;">Pakistan</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The Second Amendment to the Constitution of Pakistan in 2000 established the National Database and Regulation Authority in the country, which regulates government databases and statistically manages the sensitive registration database of the citizens of Pakistan. It is also responsible for issuing national identity cards to the citizens of Pakistan. Although the card is not legally compulsory for a Pakistani citizen, it is mandatory for:</p>
<ul>
<li>Voting</li>
<li>Obtaining a passport</li>
<li>Purchasing vehicles and land</li>
<li>Obtaining a driver licence</li>
<li>Purchasing a plane or train ticket</li>
<li>Obtaining a mobile phone SIM card</li>
<li>Obtaining electricity, gas, and water</li>
<li>Securing admission to college and other post-graduate institutes</li>
<li>Conducting major financial transactions</li></ul>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Therefore, it is pretty much necessary for basic civic life in the country. In 2012, NADRA introduced the Smart National Identity Card, an electronic identity card, which implements 36 security features. The following information can be found on the card and subsequently the central database: Legal Name, Gender (male, female, or transgender), Father's name (Husband's name for married females), Identification Mark, Date of Birth, National Identity Card Number, Family Tree ID Number, Current Address, Permanent Address, Date of Issue, Date of Expiry, Signature, Photo, and Fingerprint (Thumbprint). NADRA also records the applicant's religion, but this is not noted on the card itself. (This system has not been removed yet and is still operational in Pakistan.)</p>
<h3 id="32" style="text-align: justify;">United Kingdom</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The Identity Cards Act was introduced in the wake of the terrorist attacks on 11th September, 2001, amidst rising concerns about identity theft and the misuse of public services. The card was to be used to obtain social security services, but the ability to properly identify a person to their true identity was central to the proposal, with wider implications for prevention of crime and terrorism. The cards were linked to a central database (the National Identity Register), which would store information about all of the holders of the cards. The concerns raised by human rights lawyers, activists, security professionals and IT experts, as well as politicians were not to do with the cards as much as with the NIR. The Act specified 50 categories of information that the NIR could hold, including up to 10 fingerprints, digitised facial scan and iris scan, current and past UK and overseas places of residence of all residents of the UK throughout their lives. The central database was purported to be a prime target for cyber attacks, and was also said to be a violation of the right to privacy of UK citizens. The Act was passed by the Labour Government in 2006, and repealed by the Conservative-Liberal Democrat Coalition Government as part of their measures to “reverse the substantial erosion of civil liberties under the Labour Government and roll back state intrusion.”</p>
<h3 id="33" style="text-align: justify;">Estonia</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The Estonian i-card is a smart card issued to Estonian citizens by the Police and Border Guard Board. All Estonian citizens and permanent residents are legally obliged to possess this card from the age of 15. The card stores data such as the user's full name, gender, national identification number, and cryptographic keys and public key certificates. The cryptographic signature in the card is legally equivalent to a manual signature, since 15 December 2000. The following are a few examples of what the card is used for:</p>
<ul>
<li>As a national ID card for legal travel within the EU for Estonian citizens</li>
<li>As the national health insurance card</li>
<li>As proof of identification when logging into bank accounts from a home computer</li>
<li>For digital signatures</li>
<li>For i-voting</li>
<li>For accessing government databases to check one’s medical records, file taxes, etc.</li>
<li>For picking up e-Prescriptions</li>
<li>(This system is also operational in the country and has not been removed)</li></ul>
<h3 id="34" style="text-align: justify;">France</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The biometric ID card was to include a compulsory chip containing personal information, such as fingerprints, a photograph, home address, height, and eye colour. A second, optional chip was to be implemented for online authentication and electronic signatures, to be used for e-government services and e-commerce. The law was passed with the purpose of combating “identity fraud”. It was referred to the Constitutional Council by more than 200 members of the French Parliament, who challenged the compatibility of the bill with the citizens’ fundamental rights, including the right to privacy and the presumption of innocence. The Council struck down the law, citing the issue of proportionality. “Regarding the nature of the recorded data, the range of the treatment, the technical characteristics and conditions of the consultation, the provisions of article 5 touch the right to privacy in a way that cannot be considered as proportional to the meant purpose”.</p>
<h3 id="35" style="text-align: justify;">Argentina</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Documento Nacional de Identidad or DNI (which means National Identity Document) is the main identity document for Argentine citizens, as well as temporary or permanent resident aliens. It is issued at a person's birth, and updated at 8 and 14 years of age simultaneously in one format: a card (DNI tarjeta); it's valid if identification is required, and is required for voting. The front side of the card states the name, sex, nationality, specimen issue, date of birth, date of issue, date of expiry, and transaction number along with the DNI number and portrait and signature of the card's bearer. The back side of the card shows the address of the card's bearer along with their right thumb fingerprint. The front side of the DNI also shows a barcode while the back shows machine-readable information. The DNI is a valid travel document for entering Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay, and Venezuela. (System still operational in the country)</p>
<h3 id="4" style="text-align: justify;"><strong>4. Technologies of Identification and Authentication</strong></h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The panel in the session titled ‘Aadhaar: Science, Technology, and Security’ explained the technical aspects of use of biometrics and privacy concerns, technology architecture for identification and inadequacy of infrastructure for information security. In this section, we have summarised the presentation and the ensuing discussions on these issues.</p>
<h3 id="41" style="text-align: justify;">Use of Biometric Information for Identification and Authentication</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The panelists explained with examples that identification and authentication were different things. Identity provides an answer to the question “who are you?” while authentication is a challenge-response process that provides a proof of the claim of identity. Common examples of identity are User ID (Login ID), cryptographic public keys and ATM or Smart cards while common authenticators are passwords (including OTPs), PINs and cryptographic private keys. Identity is public information but an authenticator must be private and known only to the user. Authentication must necessarily be a conscious process and active participation by the user is a must. It should also always be possible to revoke an authenticator. After providing this understanding of the two processes the panellist then explained if biometric information could be used for identification or authentication under the UID Project. Biometric information is clearly public information and it is questionable if it can be revoked. Therefore it should never be used for authentication, but only for identity verification. There is a possibility of authentication by fingerprints under the UID Project, without conscious participation of the user. One could trace the fingerprints of an individual from any place the individual has been in contact with. Therefore, authentication must certainly be done by other means. The panellist pointed out that there were five kinds of authentication under the UID Project, out of which two-factor authentication and one time password were considered suitable but use of biometric information and demographic information was extremely threatening and must be withdrawn.</p>
<h3 id="42" style="text-align: justify;">Architectures of Identification</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The panelists explained the architecture of the UID Project that has been designed for identification purposes, highlighted its limitations and suggested alternatives. His explanations are reproduced below.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Under the UID Project, there is a centralised means of identification i.e. the aadhaar number and biometric information stored in one place, Central Identification Data Repository (CIDR). It is better to have multiple means of identification than one (as contemplated under the UID Project) for preservation of our civil liberties. The question is what the available alternatives are. Web of trust is a way for operationalizing distributed identification but the challenge is how one brings people from all social levels to participate in it. There is a need for registrars who will sign keys and public databases for this purpose.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The aadhaar number functions as a common index and facilitates correlation of data across Government databases. While this is tremendously attractive it raises several privacy concerns as more and more information relating to an individual is available to others and is likely to be abused.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The aadhaar number is available in human readable form. This raises the risk of identification without consent and unauthorised profiling. It cannot be revoked. Potential for damage in case of identity theft increases manifold.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Under the UID Project, for the purpose of information security, Authentication User Agencies (“<strong>AUA</strong>”) are required to use local identifiers instead of aadhaar numbers but they are also required to map these local identifiers to the aadhaar numbers. Aadhaar numbers are not cryptographically secured; in fact they are publicly available. Hence this exercise for securing information is useless. An alternative would be to issue different identifiers for different domains and cryptographically embed a “master identifier” (in this case, equivalent of aadhaar number) into each local identifier.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">All field devices (for example POS machines) should be registered and must communicate directly with UIDAI. In fact, UIDAI must verify the authenticity (tamper proof) of the field device during run time and a UIDAI approved authenticity certificate must be issued for field devices. This certificate must be made available to users on demand. Further, the security and privacy frameworks within which AUAs work must be appropriately defined by legal and technical means.</p>
<h3 id="43" style="text-align: justify;">Security Infrastructure of CIDR</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The panelists also enumerated the security features of the UID Project and highlighted the flaws in these features. These have been summarised below.</p>
<p>The security and privacy infrastructure of UIDAI has the following main features:</p>
<ul>
<li>2048 bit PKI encryption of biometric data in transit</li>
<li>End-to-end encryption from enrolment/POS to CIDR</li>
<li>HMAC based tamper detection of PID blocks</li>
<li>Registration and authentication of AUAs</li>
<li>Within CIDR only a SHA 1 Hash of Aadhaar number is stored</li>
<li>Audit trails are stored SHA 1 encrypted. Tamper detection?</li>
<li>Only hashes of passwords and PINs are stored. (biometric data stored in original form though!)</li>
<li>Authentication requests have unique session keys and HMAC</li>
<li>Resident data stored using 100 way sharding (vertical partitioning). First two digits of Aadhaar number as shard keys</li>
<li>All enrolment and update requests link to partitioned databases using Ref IDs (coded indices)</li>
<li>All accesses through a hardware security module</li>
<li>All analytics carried out on anonymised data</li></ul>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The panellists pointed out the concerns about information security on account of design flaws, lack of procedural safeguards, openness of the system and too much trust imposed on multiple players. All symmetric and private keys and hashes are stored somewhere within UIDAI. This indicates that trust is implicitly assumed which is a glaring design flaw. There is no well-defined approval procedure for data inspection, whether it is for the purpose of investigation or for data analytics. There is a likelihood of system hacks, insider leaks, and tampering of authentication records and audit trails. The ensuing discussions highlighted that the UIDAI had admitted to these security risks. The enrolment agencies and the enrolment devices cannot be trusted. AUAs cannot be trusted with biometric and demographic data; neither can they be trusted with sensitive user data of private nature. There is a need for an independent third party auditor for distributed key management, auditing and approving UIDAI programs, including those for data inspection and analytics, whitebox cryptographic compilation of critical parts of the UIDAI programs, issue of cryptographic keys to UIDAI programs for functional encryption, challenge-response for run-time authentication and certification of UIDAI programs. The panellist recommended that there was a need to to put a suitable legal framework to execute this.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The participants also discussed that information infrastructure must not be made of proprietary software (possibility for backdoors for US) and there must be a third party audit with a non-negotiable clause for public audit.</p>
<h3 id="5" style="text-align: justify;"><strong>5. Aadhaar for Welfare?</strong></h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The Report has summarised the discussions that took place in the sessions on ‘Direct Benefits Transfers’ and ‘Aadhaar: Broad Issues - II’ where the panellists critically analysed the claims of benefits and inclusion of Aadhaar made by the government in light of the ground realities in states where Aadhaar has been adopted for social welfare schemes.</p>
<h3 id="51" style="text-align: justify;">Social Welfare: Modes of Access and Exclusion</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Under the Act, a person may be required to authenticate or give proof of the aadhaar number in order to receive subsidy from the government (Section 7). A person is required to punch their fingerprints on POS machines in order to receive their entitlement under the social welfare schemes such as LPG and PDS. It was pointed out in the discussions that various states including Rajasthan and Delhi had witnessed fingerprint errors while doling out benefits at ration shops under the PDS scheme. People have failed to receive their entitled benefits because of these fingerprint errors thus resulting in exclusion of beneficiaries <a href="#ftn9">[9]</a>. A panellist pointed out that in Rajasthan, dysfunctional biometrics had led to further corruption in ration shops. Ration shop owners often lied to the beneficiaries about functioning of the biometric machines (POS Machines) and kept the ration for sale in the market therefore making a lot of money at the expense of uninformed beneficiaries and depriving them of their entitlements.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Another participant organisation also pointed out similar circumstances in the ration shops in Patparganj and New Delhi constituencies. Here, the dealers had maintained the records of beneficiaries who had been categorized as follows: beneficiaries whose biometrics did not match, beneficiaries whose biometrics matched and entitlements were provided, beneficiaries who never visited the ration shop. It had been observed that there were no entries in the category of beneficiaries whose biometrics did not match however, the beneficiaries had a different story to tell. They complained that their biometrics did not match despite trying several times and there was no mechanism for a manual override. Consequently, they had not been able to receive any entitlements for months. The discussions also pointed out that the food authorities had placed complete reliance on authenticity of the POS machines and claim that this system would weed out families who were not entitled to the benefits. The MIS was also running technical glitches as a result there was a problem with registering information about these transactions hence, no records had been created with the State authority about these problems. A participant also discussed the plight of 30,000 widows in Delhi, who were entitled to pension and used to collect their entitlement from post offices, faced exclusion due to transition problems under the Jan Dhan Yojana (after the Jandhan was launched the money was transferred to their bank accounts in order to resolve the problem of misappropriation of money at the hands of post office officials). These widows were asked to open bank accounts to receive their entitlements and those who did not open these accounts and did not inform the post office were considered bogus.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">In the discussions, the participants also noted that this unreliability of fingerprints as a means of authentication of an individual’s identity was highlighted at the meeting of Empowered Group of Ministers in 2011 by J Dsouza, a biometrics scientist. He used his wife’s fingerprints to demonstrate that fingerprints may change overtime and in such an event, one would not be able to use the POS machine anymore as the machine would continue to identify the impressions collected initially.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The participants who had been working in the field had contributed to the discussions by busting the myth that the UID Project helped to identify who was poor and resolve the problem of exclusion due to leakages in the social welfare programs. These discussions have been summarised below.</p>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify;">It is important to understand that the UID Project is merely an identification and authentication system. It only helps in verifying if an individual is entitled to benefits under a social security scheme. It does not ensure plugging of leakages and reducing corruption in social security schemes as has been claimed by the Government. The reduction in leakage of PDS, for instance, should be attributed to digitization and not UID. The Government claims, that it has saved INR 15000 crore in provision of LPG on identification of 3.34 crore inactive accounts on account of the UID Project. This is untrue because the accounts were weeded by using mechanisms completely unrelated to the UID Project. Consequently, the savings on account of UID are only of INR 120 crore and not 15000 crore.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">The UID Project has resulted in exclusion of people either because they do not have an aadhaar number, or they have a wrong identification, or there are errors of classification or wilful misclassification. About 99.7% people who were given aadhaar numbers already had an identification document. In fact, during enrolment a person is required to produce one of 14 identification documents listed under the law in order to get an aadhaar number which makes it very difficult for a person with no identity to become entitled to a social welfare scheme.</li></ul>
<p style="text-align: justify;">A participant condemned the Government’s claim that the UID Project had helped in removing fake, bogus and duplicate cards and said that these terms could not be used synonymously and the authorities had no clarity about the difference between the meanings of these terms. The UID Project had only helped in removal of duplicate cards but had not helped in combating the use of fake and bogus cards.</p>
<h3 id="52" style="text-align: justify;">Financial Inclusion and Direct Benefits Transfer</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The participants also engaged in the discussions about the impact of the UID project on financial inclusion in India in the sessions titled ‘Aadhaar: Broad Issues - I & II’. We have summarised these discussions below.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The UID Project seeks to directly transfer money to a bank account in order to combat corruption. The discussions highlighted that this was nothing but introducing a neo liberal thrust in social policy and that it was not feasible for various reasons. First, 95% of rural India did not have functioning banks and banks are quite far away. Second, in order to combat this dearth of banks the idea of business correspondents, who handled banking transactions and helped in opening of bank accounts, had been introduced which had created various problems. The Reserve Bank of India reported that there was dearth of business correspondents as there was very little incentive to become one; their salary is merely INR 4000. Third, there were concerns about how an aadhaar number was considered a valid document for Know Your Customer (KYC) checks. There was a requirement for scrutiny and auditing of documents submitted during the time of enrolment which, in the present scheme of things, could not be verified. Fourth, there were no restrictions on number of bank accounts that could be opened with a single aadhaar number which gave rise to a possibility of opening multiple and shell accounts on a single aadhaar number. Therefore, records only showed transactions when money was transferred from an aadhaar number to another aadhaar number as opposed to an account-to-account transfer. The discussion relied on NPCI data which shows which bank an aadhaar number is associated with but does not show if a transaction by an aadhaar number is overwritten by another bank account belonging to the same aadhaar number.</p>
<h3 id="6" style="text-align: justify;"><strong>6. Surveillance and UIDAI</strong></h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The participants had discussed the possibility of an alternative purpose for enrolling Aadhaar in the session titled ‘Privacy, Surveillance, and Ethical Dimensions of Aadhaar’. The discussion traced the history of this project to gain insight on this issue. We have summarised below the key take aways from this discussion.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">There are claims that the main objective of launching the UID Project is not to facilitate implementation of social security schemes but to collect personal (financial and non-financial) information of the citizens and residents of the country to build a data monopoly. For this purpose, PDS was chosen as a suitable social security scheme as it has the largest coverage. Several participants suggested that numerous reports authored by FICCI, KPMG and ASSOCHAM contained proposals for establishing a national identity authority which threw some light on the commercial intentions behind information collection under the UID Project.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">It was also pointed out that there was documented proof that information collected under the UID Project might have been shared with foreign companies. There are suggestions about links established between proponents of the UID Project and companies backed by CIA or the French Government which run security projects and deal in data sharing in several jurisdictions.</p>
<h3 id="7" style="text-align: justify;"><strong>7. Strategies for Future Action</strong></h3>
<p>The participants laid down a list of measures that must be taken to take the discussions forward. We have enumerated these recommendations below.</p>
<ul>
<li>Prepare and compile an anthology of articles as an output of this workshop. </li>
<li>Prepare position papers on specific issues related to the UID Project </li>
<li>Prepare pamphlets/brochures on issues with the UID Project for public consumption </li>
<li>Prepare counter-advertisements for Aadhaar</li>
<li>Publish existing empirical evidence on the flaws in Aadhaar.</li>
<li>Set up an online portal dedicated to providing updates on the UID Project and allows discussions on specific issues related to Aadhaar.</li>
<li>Use Social Media to reach out to the public. Regularly track and comment on social media pages of relevant departments of the government.</li>
<li>Create groups dedicated to research and advocacy of specific aspects of the UID Project. </li>
<li>Create a Coordination Committee preferably based in Delhi which would be responsible for regularly holding meetings and for preparing a coordinated plan of action. Employ permanent to staff to run the Committee.</li>
<li>Organise an advocacy campaign against use of Aadhaar in collaboration with other organisations and build public domain acceptance. </li>
<li>The campaign must specifically focus on the unfettered scope of UID and expanse, misrepresentation of the success of Aadhaar by highlighting real savings, technological flaws, status of pilot programs and increasing corruption on account of the UID Project</li>
<li>Prepare a statement of public concern regarding the UID Project and collect signatures from eminent persons including academics, technical experts, civil society groups and members of parliament.</li>
<li>Organise events and discussions on issues relating to Aadhaar and invite members og government departments to speak and discuss the issues. </li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Write to Members of Parliament and Members of Legislative Assemblies raising questions on their or their parties’ support for Aadhaar and silence on the problems created by the UID Project. </li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Organise public hearings in states like Rajasthan to observe and document ground realities of the UID Project and share these outcomes with the state government and media. </li>
<li>Plan a national social audit and public hearing on the working of UID Project in the country. </li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">File Contempt Petitions in the Supreme Court and High Courts against mandatory use of Aadhaar number for services not allowed by the Supreme Court. </li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Reach out to and engage with various foreign citizens and organisations that have been fighting on similar issues. The organisations and individuals who could be approached would include EPIC, Electronic Frontier foundation, David Moss, UK, Roger Clarke, Australia, Prof. Ian Angel, Snowden, Assange and Chomsky.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify;">Work towards increasing awareness about the UID Project and gaining support from the student and research community, student organisations, trade unions, and other associations and networks in the unorganised sector.</li></ul>
<h3 id="AA" style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Annexure A – Workshop Agenda</strong></h3>
<h4>May 26, 2016</h4>
<table>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>
<p>9:00-9:30</p>
</td>
<td>
<p><strong>Registration</strong></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p>9:30-10:00</p>
</td>
<td>
<p>Prof. Dinesh Abrol - <em>Welcome</em><br />
<em>Self-introduction and expectations of participants</em><br />
Dr. Usha Ramanathan - <em>Overview of the Workshop</em></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p>10:00-11:00</p>
</td>
<td>
<p><strong>Session 1: Current Status of Aadhaar</strong><br />
Dr. Usha Ramanathan, Legal Researcher, New Delhi - <em>What the 2016 Law Says, and How it Came into Being</em><br />
S. Prasanna, Advocate, New Delhi - <em>Status and Force of Supreme Court Orders on Aadhaar</em><br /> <em>Discussion</em></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p>11:00-11:30</p>
</td>
<td>
<p><strong>Tea Break</strong></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p>11:30-13:30</p>
</td>
<td>
<p><strong>Session 2: Direct Benefits Transfers</strong><br />
Prof. Reetika Khera, Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi - <em>Welfare Needs Aadhaar like a Fish Needs a Bicycle</em><br />
Prof. R. Ramakumar, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai - <em>Aadhaar and the Social Sector: A critical analysis of the claims of benefits and inclusion</em><br />
Ashok Rao, Delhi Science Forum - <em>Cash Transfers Study</em><br />
<em>Discussion</em></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p>13:30-14:30</p>
</td>
<td>
<p><strong>Lunch</strong></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p>14:30-16:00</p>
</td>
<td>
<p><strong>Session 3: Aadhaar: Science, Technology, and Security</strong><br />
Prof. Subashis Banerjee, Dept of Computer Science & Engineering, IIT, Delhi - <em>Privacy and Security Issues Related to the Aadhaar Act</em><br />
Pukhraj Singh, Former National Cyber Security Manager, Aadhaar, New Delhi - <em>Aadhaar: Security and Surveillance Dimensions</em><br />
<em>Discussion</em></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p>16:00-16:30</p>
</td>
<td>
<p><strong>Tea Break</strong></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p>16:30-17:30</p>
</td>
<td>
<p><strong>Session 4: Aadhaar - International Dimensions</strong><br />
Joshita Pai, Center for Communication Governance, National Law University, Delhi - <em>Biometrics and Mandatory IDs in Other Parts of the World</em><br />
Dr. Gopal Krishna, Citizens Forum for Civil Liberties - <em>International Dimensions of Aadhaar</em><br />
<em>Discussion</em></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p>17:30-18:00</p>
</td>
<td>
<p><strong>High Tea</strong></p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<h4>May 27, 2016</h4>
<table>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>
<p>9:30-11:00</p>
</td>
<td>
<p><strong>Session 5: Privacy, Surveillance and Ethical Dimensions of Aadhaar</strong><br />
Prabir Purkayastha, Free Software Movement of India, New Delhi - <em>Surveillance Capitalism and the Commodification of Personal Data</em><br />
Arjun Jayakumar, SFLC - <em>Surveillance Projects Amalgamated</em><br />
Col Mathew Thomas, Bengaluru - <em>The Deceit of Aadhaar<em></em><br />
<em>Discussion</em></em></p>
<em>
</em></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p>11:00-11:30</p>
</td>
<td>
<p><strong>Tea Break</strong></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p><em>11:30-13:00</em></p>
</td>
<td>
<p><strong>Session 6: Aadhaar - Broad Issues I</strong><br />
Prof. G Nagarjuna, Homi Bhabha Center for Science Education, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai - <em>How to prevent linked data in the context of Aadhaar</em><br />
Dr. Anupam Saraph, Pune - <em>Aadhaar and Moneylaundering</em><br />
<em>Discussion</em></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p>13:00-14:00</p>
</td>
<td>
<p><strong>Lunch</strong></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p>14:00-15:30</p>
</td>
<td>
<p><strong>Session 7: Aadhaar - Broad Issues II</strong><br />
Prof. MS Sriram, Visiting Faculty, Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore - <em>Financial lnclusion</em><br />
Nikhil Dey, MKSS, Rajasthan - <em>Field witness: Technology on the Ground</em><br />
Prof. Himanshu, Centre for Economic Studies & Planning, JNU - <em>UID Process and Financial Inclusion</em><br />
<em>Discussion</em></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p>15:30-16:00</p>
</td>
<td>
<p><strong>Session 8: Conclusion</strong></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<p>16:00-18:00</p>
</td>
<td>
<p><strong>Informal Meetings</strong></p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<h3 id="AB" style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Annexure B – Workshop Participants</strong></h3>
<p>Anjali Bhardwaj, Satark Nagrik Sangathan</p>
<p>Dr. Anupam Saraph</p>
<p>Arjun Jayakumar, Software Freedom Law Centre</p>
<p>Ashok Rao, Delhi Science Forum</p>
<p>Prof. Chinmayi Arun, National Law University, Delhi</p>
<p>Prof. Dinesh Abrol, Jawaharlal Nehru University</p>
<p>Prof. G Nagarjuna, Homi Bhabha Center for Science Education, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai</p>
<p>Dr. Gopal Krishna, Citizens Forum for Civil Liberties</p>
<p>Prof. Himanshu, Jawaharlal Nehru University</p>
<p>Japreet Grewal, the Centre for Internet and Society</p>
<p>Joshita Pai, National Law University, Delhi</p>
<p>Malini Chakravarty, Centre for Budget and Governance Accountability</p>
<p>Col. Mathew Thomas</p>
<p>Prof. MS Sriram, Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore</p>
<p>Nikhil Dey, Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan</p>
<p>Prabir Purkayastha, Knowledge Commons and Free Software Movement of India</p>
<p>Pukhraj Singh, Bhujang</p>
<p>Rajiv Mishra, Jawaharlal Nehru University</p>
<p>Prof. R Ramakumar, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai</p>
<p>Dr. Reetika Khera, Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi</p>
<p>Dr. Ritajyoti Bandyopadhyay, Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Mohali</p>
<p>S. Prasanna, Advocate</p>
<p>Sanjay Kumar, Science Journalist</p>
<p>Sharath, Software Freedom Law Centre</p>
<p>Shivangi Narayan, Jawaharlal Nehru University</p>
<p>Prof. Subhashis Banerjee, Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi</p>
<p>Sumandro Chattapadhyay, the Centre for Internet and Society</p>
<p>Dr. Usha Ramanathan, Legal Researcher</p>
<p><em>Note: This list is only indicative, and not exhaustive.</em></p>
<hr />
<p><a name="ftn1"><strong>[1]</strong></a> Civil Appeal No. 4853 of 2014</p>
<p><a name="ftn2"><strong>[2]</strong></a> WP(C) 494/2012</p>
<p><a name="ftn3"><strong>[3]</strong> </a>. WP(C) 829/2013</p>
<p><a name="ftn4"><strong>[4]</strong></a> WP(C) 833/2013</p>
<p><a name="ftn5"><strong>[5]</strong></a> WP (C) 37/2015; (Earlier intervened in the Aruna Roy petition in 2013)</p>
<p><a name="ftn6"><strong>[6]</strong></a> WP (C) 932/2015</p>
<p><a name="ftn7"><strong>[7]</strong></a> Transferred from Madras HC 2013.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><a name="ftn8"><strong>[8]</strong></a> SLP (Crl) 2524/2014 filed against the order of the Goa Bench of the Bombay HC in CRLWP 10/2014 wherein the High Court had directed UIDAI to share biometric information held by them of all residents of a particular place in Goa to help with a criminal investigation in a case involving charges of rape and sexual assault.</p>
<p><a name="ftn9"><strong>[9]</strong></a> See :http://scroll.in/article/806243/rajasthan-presses-on-with-aadhaar-after-fingerprint-readers-fail-well-buy-iris-scanners</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/report-on-understanding-aadhaar-and-its-new-challenges'>https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/report-on-understanding-aadhaar-and-its-new-challenges</a>
</p>
No publisherJapreet Grewal, Vanya Rakesh, Sumandro Chattapadhyay, and Elonnai HickockBig DataData SystemsPrivacyResearchers at WorkInternet GovernanceAadhaarWelfare GovernanceBiometricsBig Data for DevelopmentUID2019-03-16T04:42:52ZBlog EntryIs India's Digital Health System Foolproof?
https://cis-india.org/raw/is-indias-digital-health-system-foolproof
<b>This contribution by Aayush Rathi builds on "Data Infrastructures and Inequities: Why Does Reproductive Health Surveillance in India Need Our Urgent Attention?" (by Aayush Rathi and Ambika Tandon, EPW Engage, Vol. 54, Issue No. 6, 09 Feb, 2019) and seeks to understand the role that state-run reproductive health portals such as the Mother and Child Tracking System (MCTS) and the Reproductive and Child Health will play going forward. The article critically outlines the overall digitised health information ecosystem being envisioned by the Indian state.</b>
<p> </p>
<h4>This article was first published in <a href="https://www.epw.in/engage/article/indias-digital-health-paradigm-foolproof" target="_blank">EPW Engage, Vol. 54, Issue No. 47</a>, on November 30, 2019</h4>
<hr />
<p>Introduced in 2013 and subsequently updated in 2016, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MHFW) published a document laying out the standards for electronic health records (EHRs). While there exist varying interpretations of what constitutes as EHRs, some of its characteristics include electronic medical records (EMRs) of individual patients, arrangement of these records in a time series, and inter-operable linkages of the EMRs across various healthcare settings (Häyrinen et al 2008; OECD 2013).</p>
<p>To work effectively, EHRs are required to be highly interoperable so that they can facilitate exchange among health information systems (HIS) across participating hospitals. For this, the Integrated Health Information Platform (IHIP) is being developed so as to assimilate data from various registries across India and provide real-time information on health surveillance (Krishnamurthy 2018).</p>
<h3><strong>EHR Implementation: Unpacking the (Dis)incentive Structure</strong></h3>
<p>As the implementation of EHR standards is voluntary, anecdotal evidence indicates that their uptake in the Indian healthcare sector has been very slow. Here, the opposition of the Indian Medical Association to the Clinical Establishments (Registration and Regulation) Act, 2010, resulting in nationwide protests and subsequent legal challenges to the act, is instructive. To start with, the act prescribes the minimum standards that have to be maintained by clinical establishments which are registered or seeking registration (itself mandatory to run a clinic under the act) <strong>[1]</strong>. Further, Rule 9(ii) of the Clinical Establishments (Registration and Regulation) Rules, 2012, drafted under the act, requires clinical establishments to maintain EMRs or EHRs for every patient. However, with health being a state subject in India, the act has only been enforced in 11 states and all union territories except the National Capital Territory of Delhi (Jyoti 2018). The resistance to the act is largely due to protests by stakeholders from within the medical fraternity regarding its adverse impact on small- and medium-sized hospitals (Jyoti 2018).</p>
<h3><strong>Contextualising Clinicians' Inertia</strong></h3>
<p>Another major impediment to the adoption of EHRs by health service providers is reluctance on the part of individual physicians to transition to an EHR system. This is because compliance with EHR standards requires physicians to input clinical notes themselves.</p>
<p>Comparing the greater patient load faced by doctors in India vis-à-vis the United States (US), the chief medical officer of an EHR vendor in India estimates that the average Indian doctor sees about 40–60 patients a day, whereas in the US it may be around 18–20 patients (Kandhari 2017). This is suggestive of the wide disparity in the number of physicians per 1,000 citizens in both countries (World Bank nd). Given this, doctors in India tend to be more problem-oriented, time-strapped, and pay less attention to clinical notes (Kandhari 2017). Thus, clinicians will consider a system to be efficient only if the system reduces their documentation time, even if the time savings do not translate into better patient care (Allan and Englebright 2000). The inability of EHRs to help reduce documentation time deters clinicians from supporting their implementation (Poon et al 2004). Additionally, research done in the United States indicates that there is no evidence to suggest that an information system helps save time expended by clinicians on documentation (Daly et al 2002). Moreover, the use of an information system is stated to have had no impact on patient care, but doctors have acknowledged its use for research purposes (Holzemer and Henry 1992).</p>
<h3><strong>Prohibitive Costs of Implementation</strong></h3>
<p>While national-level EHRs have been adopted globally, their distribution across countries is telling. In a survey published in 2016 by the World Health Organization, wealthier countries were over-represented, with two-thirds from the upper-middle-income group and roughly half from the high-income countries having introduced EHR systems. On the other hand, only a third of lower-middle-income countries and 15% of low-income countries reported having implemented EHRs (World Health Organization 2016). A major reason for the slow uptake of EHRs in poorer countries is likely to be funding as EHR implementation requires considerable investment, with most projects averaging several million dollars (US) (Kuperman and Gibson 2003). Although various funding models for EHR implementation are being utilised globally, it is unclear what model will be adopted in India to bring in private healthcare service providers within its ambit (Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society 2007). This absence of funding direction for private actors poses to be a significant impediment in the integration of private databases with other public ones.</p>
<p>In general, poorer countries are also more likely to have less developed infrastructure and health Information and Communication Technology (ICT) to support EHR systems. Besides this, they not only lack the capacity and human resources required to develop and maintain such complex systems (Tierney et al 2010; McGinn et al 2011), but training periods have also been found to be long and more costly than expected (Kovener et al 1997).</p>
<h3><strong>Socio-economic Exclusions and Cross-cultural Barriers</strong></h3>
<p>There exists scant research investigating the existing use of EHRs in India, though preliminary work is being undertaken to assess EHR implementation in other developing countries (Tierney et al 2010; Fraser et al 2005). Even in the context of developed countries, where widespread adoption of EHRs has been gaining traction for some time now, very little data exists around implementation and efficacy in underserved regions and communities. This is further problematised as clinical information systems and user populations also vary in their characteristics and, for this reason, individual studies are unable to identify common trends that would predict EHR implementation success.</p>
<p>Underserved settings may lack the infrastructure needed to support EHRs. The risk of exclusion already exists in parts such as difficulties inherent in delivering care to remote locations, barriers related to cross-cultural communication, and the pervasive problem of providing care in the setting of severe resource constraints. Equally important is the fact that health workers who already report significant existing impediments in their delivery of routine care in these settings do not necessarily see EHRs as being useful in catering to the specific needs of their patient population (Bach et al 2004). Moreover, experience with EHRs also reveals that there are cultural barriers to capturing accurate data (Miklin et al 2019). What this could mean is that stigma associated with the diagnosis of conditions such as HIV/AIDS or induced abortions will result in their under-reporting even within EHR systems.</p>
<h3><strong>Stick or Twist?</strong></h3>
<p>Other modalities have been devised to nudge healthcare providers into adopting EHR standards voluntarily. The National Accreditation Board for Hospitals and Healthcare Providers (NABH), India, a constituent board of the Quality Council of India (a public–private initiative), has been reported to have incorporated the EHR standards within its accreditation matrix. NABH accreditation, considered an indicator of high quality patient care, is highly sought–after by hospitals in India in order to attract medical tourists as well as insurance companies: two prominent sources of income for hospitals (Kandhari 2017). Additionally, NABH accreditation is valid for a term of three years, thus requiring hospitals seeking to renew their accreditation to adopt EHR standards as well.</p>
<p>Another commercial use of EHR has been in health insurance. The Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) and the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority (IRDAI) have both voiced their support for expediting the implementation of the EHR standards (EMR Standards Committee 2013). Both, the FICCI and IRDAI have placed emphasis on adopting EHRs, seeing it as a necessary move for formalising the health insurance industry (FICCI 2015). They have also had representation on the committee that sent recommendations to the MHFW on the first version of the EHR standards in 2013 (FICCI 2015). FICCI had additionally played a coordination role in having the recommendations framed for the 2013 EHR standards.</p>
<h3><strong>Fluid Data Objectives</strong></h3>
<p>The push for EHR implementation is emblematic of a larger shift in the healthcare approach of the Indian state, that of an indirect targeting of demand-side financing by plugging data inefficiencies in health insurance.</p>
<p>The draft National Health Policy (NHP), published in 2015, reflected the mandate of the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare to strengthen the public health system by creating a right to healthcare legislation and reaching a public spend of 2.5% of the gross domestic product by 2018. The final version of the NHP, published in 2017, however, codified a shift in healthcare policy by focusing on strategic purchasing of secondary and tertiary care services from the private sector and a publicly funded health insurance model.</p>
<p>In line with the vision of the NHP 2017, in February 2018, the Union Minister for Finance and Corporate Affairs, Arun Jaitley, announced two major initiatives as a part of the government’s Ayushman Bharat programme (Ministry of Finance 2018). Administered under the aegis of the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, these initiatives are intended to improve access to primary healthcare through the creation of 150,000 health and wellness centres as envisioned under the NHP 2017, and improve access to secondary and tertiary healthcare for over 100 million vulnerable families by providing insurance cover of up to ₹ 500,000 per family per year under the Pradhan Mantri–Rashtriya Swasthya Suraksha Mission/National Health Protection Scheme (PM–RSSM/NHPS) (Ministry of Health and Family Welfare 2018). The NHPS, modelled along the lines of the Affordable Care Act in the US, was later rebranded as the Pradhan Mantri–Jan Arogya Yojana (PM-JAY) at the time of its launch in September 2018. It is claimed to be the world’s largest government-funded healthcare programme and is intentioned to provide health insurance coverage for vulnerable sections in lieu of the Sustainable Development Goal-3 (National Health Authority nd).</p>
<p>To enable the implementation of the Ayushman Bharat programme, the NITI Aayog then proposed the creation of a supply-side digital infrastructure called National Health Stack (NHS) (NITI Aayog 2018). As outlined in the consultation and strategy paper, the NHS is “built for NHPS, but beyond NHPS.” The NHS seeks to leverage the digitisation push through IndiaStack, which seeks to digitalise “any large-scale health insurance program, in particular, any government-funded health care programs.” The synergy is clear, with the NHPS scheme also aiming to be “cashless and paperless at public hospitals and empanelled private hospitals" (National Health Authority nd) <strong>[2]</strong>.</p>
<p>The NHS is also closely aligned with the NHP 2017, which draws attention to leveraging technologies such as big data analytics on data stored in universal registries. The Vision document for the NHS emphasises the fragmented nature of health data as an impediment to reducing inequities in healthcare provision. The NHS, then, also seeks to be the master repository of health data akin to the IHIP. By creating a base layer of registries containing information about various actors involved in the healthcare supply chain (providers such as hospitals, beneficiaries, doctors, insurers and Accredited Social Health Activists), it potentially allows for recording of data from both public and private sector entities, plugging a significant gap in the coverage of the HIS currently implemented in India. With the provision of open, pullable APIs, the NHS also shares the motivations of the IndiaStack to monetise health data.</p>
<p>A key component of the proposed NHS is the Coverage and Claims platform, which the vision document describes as “provid[ing] the building blocks required to implement any large-scale health insurance program, in particular, any government-funded healthcare programs. This platform has the transformative vision of enabling both public and private actors to implement insurance schemes in an automated, data-driven manner through open APIs " (NITI Aayog2018). A post on the iSPIRT website further explains the centrality of this Coverage and Claims platform in enabling a highly personalised medical insurance market in India: “This component will not only bring down the cost of processing a claim but ... increased access to information about an individual’s health and claims history ... will also enable the creation of personalised, sachet-sized insurance policies." These data-driven customised insurance policies are expected to generate “care policies that are not only personalized in nature but that also incentivize good healthcare practices amongst consumers and providers … [and] use of techniques from microeconomics to manage incentives for care providers, and those from behavioural economics to incentivise consumers" (Productnation Network 2019). The Coverage and Claims platform, and especially the Policy (generation) Engine that it will contain, is aimed at intensive financialisation of personal healthcare expenses, and extensive experiments with designing personalised nudges to shape the demand behaviour of consumers.</p>
<p>The imagination of healthcare the NHS demonstrates is one where broadening health insurance coverage is equated to providing equitable healthcare and as a panacea for the public healthcare sector. The first phase of this push towards better healthcare provision is to focus on contextualising the historical socio-economic divide. The next phase is characterised by digitalisation: the introduction of ICT to bridge the socio-economic divide in healthcare provision. In this process, the resulting data divide has been invisibilised in reframing better healthcare as an insurance problem for which data needs to be generated. Each policy innovation is then characterised by further marginalisation of those that were originally identified as underserved. This is a result of increasing repercussions of the data-divide, with access to benefits increasingly being mediated by technology.</p>
<h3><strong>Concluding Remarks</strong></h3>
<blockquote>The idea that any person in India can go to any health service provider/ practitioner, any diagnostic center or any pharmacy and yet be able to access and have fully integrated and always available health records in an electronic format is not only empowering but also the vision for efficient 21st century healthcare delivery.<br />
— Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Electronic Health Record Standards For India (2013)</blockquote>
<p>The objective of health data collection has evolved over the course of the institution of the HIS in 2011, to the development of the NHPS and National Health Policy in 2017. What began as a solution to measure and address gaps in access and quality in healthcare provisioning through data analysis has morphed into data centralisation and insurance coverage. Shifting goalposts can also be found in the objectives behind introducing digital systems to collect data.</p>
<p>In recent iterations of the healthcare imaginary, such as the IHIP and the NHS, data ownership by the beneficiaries is stressed upon. In the absence of a rights-based framework dictating the use of data, the role of ownership should be interrogated, especially in the context of a prevalent data divide (Tisne 2019). The legitimisation of data capture can be seen in the emergence of opt-in models of consent, data fiduciaries managing consent on the data subject’s behalf, etc. (Zuboff 2019).</p>
<p>This framing forecloses a discussion about the quality and kind of data being used. The push towards datafication needs to be questioned for its re-indexing of categorical meaning away from the complexities of narrative, context and history (Cheney-Lippold 2018). Instead, the proposed solution is one that stores datafied elements within a closed set (reproductive health= [abortion, aids, contraceptive,...vaccination, womb]). While this set may be editable, so new interpretations can be codified, it inherently remains stable, assuming a static relationship between words and meaning. Health is then treated as having an empirically definable meaning, thus losing the dynamism of what the health and wellness discourse could entail.</p>
<p>It has been historically demonstrated in the Indian context that multiple tools and databases for health data management are a barrier to an efficient HIS. However, generating centralised or federated databases without addressing concerns in data flows, quality, uses in existing data structures, and the digital divide across health workers and beneficiaries alike will lead to the amplification of existing exclusions in data and, consequently, service provisioning.</p>
<h3><strong>Acknowledgements</strong></h3>
<p>The author would like to express his gratitude to Sumandro Chattapadhyay and Ambika Tandon for their inputs and editorial work on this contribution. This work was supported by the Big Data for Development Network established by International Development Research Centre (Canada).</p>
<h3><strong>Notes</strong></h3>
<p><strong>[1]</strong> Section 2 (a) of the Clinical Establishments (Registration and Regulation) Act, 2010: A hospital, maternity home, nursing home, dispensary, clinic, sanatorium or institution by whatever name called that offers services, facilities requiring diagnosis, treatment or care for illness, injury, deformity, abnormality or pregnancy in any recognised system of medicine established and administered or maintained by any person or body of persons, whether incorporated or not.</p>
<p><strong>[2]</strong> The National Health Stack, then, is the latest manifestation of the Indian government’s push for a “Digital India.” A key component of Digital India has been e-governance, financial inclusion, and digitisation of transaction services. The nudge towards cashless modes of transaction and delivery, also accelerated by India’s demonetisation drive in November 2016, has led to rapid uptake of digital payment services in particular, and that of the IndiaStack initiative in general. Developed by iSPIRT, IndiaStack (https://indiastack.org/) aspires to transform service delivery by public and private actors alike through its “presence-less, paperless, and cashless” mandate.</p>
<h3><strong>References</strong></h3>
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<p>Bach, Peter, Hoangmai Pham, Deborah Schrag, Ramsey Tate and J Lee Hargraves (2004): “Primary Care Physicians Who Treat Blacks and Whites,” New England Journal of Medicine, Vol 351, pp 575–84.</p>
<p>Cheney-Lippold, John (2018): We Are Data: Algorithms and the Making of Our Digital Selves, New Delhi: Sage.</p>
<p>Daly, Jeanette, Buckwalter Kathleen and Meridean Maas (2002): “Written and Computerized Care Plans,” Journal of Gerontological Nursing, Vol 28, No 9, pp 14–23.</p>
<p>EMR Standards Committee (2013): “Recommendations on Electronic Medical Records Standards in India,” Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India, New Delhi, https://mohfw.gov.in/sites/default/files/24539108839988920051EHR%20Standards-v5%20Apr%202013.pdf.</p>
<p>Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (2015): "A Guiding Framework for OPD and Preventive Health Insurance in India: Supply and Demand Side Analysis," http://ficci.in/spdocument/20678/P&P-helath-insurance.pdf.</p>
<p>Fraser, Hamish, Paul Biondich, Deshendran Moodley, Sharon Choi, Burke Mamlin and Peter Szolovits (2005): “Implementing Electronic Medical Record Systems in Developing Countries,” Journal of Innovation in Health Informatics, Vol 13 No 2, pp 83–95.</p>
<p>Häyrinen, Kristiina, Kaija Saranto and Pirkko Nykänen (2008): “Definition, Structure, Content, Use and Impacts of Electronic Health Records: A Review of the Research Literature,” International Journal of Medical Informatics, Vol 77, No 5, pp 291–304.</p>
<p>Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (2007): “Electronic Health Records: A Global Perspective,” http://www.providersedge.com/ehdocs/ehr_articles/Electronic_Health_Records-A_Global_Perspective-Exec_Summary.pdf.</p>
<p>Holzemer, William and S B Henry (1992): “Computer-supported Versus Manually-generated Nursing Care Plans: A Comparison of Patient Problems, Nursing Interventions, and AIDS Patient Outcomes,” Computers in Nursing, Vol 10 No 1, pp 19–24.</p>
<p>Jha, Ashish, Catherine DesRoches, Eric Campbell, Karen Donelan, Sowmya Rao, Timothy Ferris, Alexandra Shields, Sarah Rosenbaum and David Blumenthal (2009): "Use of Electronic Health Records in U.S. Hospitals," New England Journal of Medicine, Vol 360 No 16, pp 1628–1638.</p>
<p>Jyoti, Archana (2018): “States Give Clinical Establishment Act Cold Shoulder," Pioneer, https://www.dailypioneer.com/2018/india/states-give-clinical-establishment-act-cold-shoulder.html.</p>
<p>Kandhari, Ruhi (2017): “Why a Backdoor Push Towards eHealth,” Ken, https://the-ken.com/story/why-backdoor-push-towards-ehealth/.</p>
<p>Kovner, Christine, Lynda Schuchman and Catherin Mallard (1997): “The Application of Pen-Based Computer Technology to Home Health Care,” CIN: Computers, Informatics and Nursing, Vol 15, No 5, pp 237–44.</p>
<p>Krishnamurthy, R (2018): “Integrated Health Information Platform for Integrated Disease Surveillance Program,” Training of the Trainer Workshop, World Health Organisation, New Delhi, https://idsp.nic.in/WriteReadData/IHIP/IHIP%20ToT-Overview-Presentation.pdf.</p>
<p>Kuperman, Gilad and Richard Gibson (2003): “Computer Physician Order Entry: Benefits, Costs, and Issues,” Annals of Internal Medicine, Vol 139 No 1, pp 31–9.</p>
<p>Leung, Gabriel, Philip Yu, Irene Wong, Janice Johnston and Keith Tin (2003): “Incentives and Barriers That Influence Clinical Computerization in Hong Kong: A Population-based Physician Survey,” Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, Vol 10 No 2, pp 201–12.</p>
<p>McGinn Carrie Anna, Sonya Grenier, Julie Duplantie, Nicola Shaw, Claude Sicotte, Luc Mathieu, Yvan Leduc, France Légaré and Marie-Pierre Gagnon (2011): “Comparison of User Groups' Perspectives of Barriers and Facilitators to Implementing Electronic Health Records: A Systematic Review,” BMC Medicine, Vol 9 No 46.</p>
<p>Miklin, Daniel, Sameera Vangara, Alan Delamater and Kenneth Goodman (2019): “Understanding of and Barriers to Electronic Health Record Patient Portal Access in a Culturally Diverse Pediatric Population,” JMIR Medical Informatics, Vol 7, No 2.</p>
<p>Ministry of Finance (2018): “Budget 2018-19: Speech of Arun Jaitley,” New Delhi, https://www.indiabudget.gov.in/ub2018-19/bs/bs.pdf.</p>
<p>Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India (2008): "4 Years of Transforming India-Healthcare for All," New Delhi. https://mohfw.gov.in/ebook2018/gvtbook.html.</p>
<p>Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India (2013): “Electronic Health Record Standards For India,” Government of India, New Delhi, https://www.nhp.gov.in/NHPfiles/ehr_2013.pdf.</p>
<p>Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India (2017): Request for Proposal: Development and Implementation of Integrated Health Information Platform (IHIP), Centre for Health Informatics, National Institute of Health and Family Welfare, New Delhi, https://nhp.gov.in/NHPfiles/IHIP_RFP%20.pdf.</p>
<p>Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India (2018): “IDSP Segment of Integrated Health Information Platform,” New Delhi, https://idsp.nic.in/index4.php?lang=1&level=0&linkid=454&lid=3977.</p>
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<p>NITI Aayog (2018): “National Health Stack- Strategy and Approach,” NITI Aayog, New Delhi, http://www.niti.gov.in/writereaddata/files/document_publication/NHS-Strategy-and-Approach-Document-for-consultation.pdf.</p>
<p>Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (2013): “Strengthening Health Information Infrastructure for Health Care Quality Governance: Good Practices, New Opportunities and Data Privacy Protection Challenges,” OECD Health Policy Studies, Paris, OECD Publishing, https://read.oecd-ilibrary.org/social-issues-migration-health/strengthening-health-information-infrastructure-for-health-care-quality-governance_9789264193505-en.</p>
<p>Poon, Eric, David Blumenthal, Tonushree Jaggi, Melissa Honour, David Bates and Rainu Kaushal (2004): “Overcoming Barriers to Adopting and Implementing Computerized Physician Order Entry Systems in U.S. Hospitals,” Health Affairs, Vol 23 No 4, pp 184–90.</p>
<p>Productnation Network (2019): “India’s Health Leapfrog–Towards A Holistic Healthcare Ecosystem,” iSpirt, https://pn.ispirt.in/towards-a-holistic-healthcare-ecosystem/.</p>
<p>Rathi, Aayush and Ambika Tandon (2019): “Data Infrastructures and Inequities: Why Does Reproductive Health Surveillance in India Need Our Urgent Attention?” EPW Engage, https://www.epw.in/engage/article/data-infrastructures-inequities-why-does-reproductive-health-surveillance-india-need-urgent-attention.</p>
<p>Sequist, Thomas, Theresa Cullen, Howard Hays, Maile Taualii, Steven Simon, and David Bates (2007): “Implementation and Use of an Electronic Health Record Within the Indian Health Service,” Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, Vol 14, No 2, pp 191–97.</p>
<p>World Bank (nd): Physicians (per 1,000 people) | Data, https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.MED.PHYS.ZS.</p>
<p>Tierney, William et al. (2010): “Experience Implementing Electronic Health Records in Three East African Countries,” Studies in Health Technology and Informatics, Vol 160, No 1, pp 371–75.</p>
<p>Tisne, Martin (2018): “It’s Time for a Bill of Data Rights,” MIT Technology Review, https://www.technologyreview.com/s/612588/its-time-for-a-bill-of-data-rights/.</p>
<p>World Health Organization (2016): “Global Diffusion of eHealth: Making Universal Health Coverage Achievable,” https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/252529/9789241511780-eng.pdf;jsessionid=9DD5F8603C67EEF35549799B928F3541?sequence=1.</p>
<p>Zuboff, Soshana (2019): The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, New York: PublicAffairs.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/raw/is-indias-digital-health-system-foolproof'>https://cis-india.org/raw/is-indias-digital-health-system-foolproof</a>
</p>
No publisheraayushEHRBig DataBig Data for DevelopmentResearchBD4DHealthcareResearchers at Work2019-12-30T17:58:00ZBlog EntryExploring Big Data for Development: An Electricity Sector Case Study from India
https://cis-india.org/raw/exploring-big-data-for-development-an-electricity-sector-case-study-from-india
<b>This working paper by Ritam Sengupta, Dr. Richard Heeks, Sumandro Chattapadhyay, and Dr. Christopher Foster draws from the field study undertaken by Ritam Sengupta, and is published by the Global Development Institute, University of Manchester. The field study was commissioned by the CIS, with support from the University of Manchester and the University of Sheffield.</b>
<p> </p>
<h4>Download the working paper: <a href="http://hummedia.manchester.ac.uk/institutes/gdi/publications/workingpapers/di/di_wp66.pdf" target="_blank">PDF</a></h4>
<hr />
<h3><strong>Abstract</strong></h3>
<p>This paper presents exploratory research into “data-intensive development” that seeks to inductively identify issues and conceptual frameworks of relevance to big data in developing countries. It presents a case study of big data innovations in “Stelcorp”; a state electricity corporation in India. In an attempt to address losses in electricity distribution, Stelcorp has introduced new digital meters throughout the distribution network to capture big data, and organisation-wide information systems that store and process and disseminate big data.</p>
<p>Emergent issues are identified across three domains: implementation, value and outcome. Implementation of big data has worked relatively well but technical and human challenges remain. The advent of big data has enabled some – albeit constrained – value addition in all areas of organisational operation: customer billing, fault and loss detection, performance measurement, and planning. Yet US$ tens of millions of investment in big data has brought no aggregate improvement in distribution losses or revenue collection. This can be explained by the wider outcome, with big data faltering in the face of external politics; in this case the electoral politics of electrification. Alongside this reproduction of power, the paper also reflects on the way in which big data has enabled shifts in the locus of power: from public to private sector; from labour to management; and from lower to higher levels of management.</p>
<p>A number of conceptual frameworks emerge as having analytical power in studying big data and global development. The information value chain model helps track both implementation and value-creation of big data projects. The design-reality gap model can be used to analyse the nature and extent of barriers facing big data projects in developing countries. And models of power – resource dependency, epistemic models, and wider frameworks – are all shown as helping understand the politics of big data.</p>
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<em>Cross-posted from <a href="http://www.gdi.manchester.ac.uk/research/publications/other-working-papers/di/di-wp66/">University of Manchester</a>.</em>
<p> </p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/raw/exploring-big-data-for-development-an-electricity-sector-case-study-from-india'>https://cis-india.org/raw/exploring-big-data-for-development-an-electricity-sector-case-study-from-india</a>
</p>
No publishersumandroBig DataData SystemsResearchers at WorkResearchFeaturedPublicationsBig Data for Development2019-03-16T04:33:15ZBlog EntryEthics and Human Rights Guidelines for Big Data for Development Research
https://cis-india.org/raw/bd4d-ethics-human-rights-guidelines
<b>This is a four-part review of guideline documents for ethics and human rights in big data for development research. This research was produced as part of the Big Data for Development network supported by International Development Research Centre, Canada</b>
<p> </p>
<h4>Part #1 - Review of Principles of Ethics in Biomedical Science: <a href="https://cis-india.org/raw/bd4d-guideline-documents/biomedicalscience" class="internal-link" title="CIS_BD4D_Guideline01_MS+AS_BiomedicalScience PDF">Download</a> (PDF)</h4>
<h4>Part #2 - Review of Principles of Ethics in Computer Science: <a href="https://cis-india.org/raw/bd4d-guideline-documents/computerscience" class="internal-link" title="CIS_BD4D_Guideline02_RS+AS_ComputerScience PDF">Download</a> (PDF)</h4>
<h4>Part #3 - Summary of Review of Codes of Ethics for Big Data and AI: <a href="https://cis-india.org/raw/bd4d-guideline-documents/AIEthicsReview" class="internal-link" title="CIS_BD4D_Guideline03_AS+PT_BigDataAIEthicsReview_SummaryNotes PDF">Download</a> (PDF)</h4>
<h4>Part #4 - Extended Review of Codes of Ethics for Big Data and AI: <a href="https://cis-india.org/raw/bd4d-guideline-documents/ExtendedNotes" class="internal-link" title="CIS_BD4D_Guideline04_PT+PB_BigDataAIEthicsReview_ExtendedNotes PDF">Download</a> (PDF)</h4>
<hr />
<p>The rapid expansion in the volume, velocity, and variety of data available, together with the development of innovative forms of statistical analytics, is generally referred to as “big data”; though there is no single agreed upon definition of the term. Big data promises to provide new insights and solutions across a wide range of sectors. Despite enormous optimism about the scope and variety of big data’s potential applications, many remain concerned about its widespread adoption, with some scholars suggesting it could generate as many harms as benefits. The predecessor disciplines of data science such as computer sciences, applied mathematics, and statistics have traditionally managed to stay out of the scope of ethical frameworks, based on the assumption that they do not involve humans as subject of their research. While critical study into big data is still in its infancy, there is a growing belief that there are significant discontinuities between the rapid growth in big data and the ethical framework that exists to govern its use. In this set of documents, we look at them in detail.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/raw/bd4d-ethics-human-rights-guidelines'>https://cis-india.org/raw/bd4d-ethics-human-rights-guidelines</a>
</p>
No publisherAmber Sinha, Manjri Singh, Rajashri Seal, Pranav Bhaskar Tiwari, Pranav M BidareResearchers at WorkBD4DRAW ResearchBig Data for DevelopmentArtificial Intelligence2020-05-20T07:56:48ZBlog EntryData Infrastructures and Inequities: Why Does Reproductive Health Surveillance in India Need Our Urgent Attention?
https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/data-infrastructures-inequities-reproductive-health-surveillance-india
<b>In order to bring out certain conceptual and procedural problems with health monitoring in the Indian context, this article by Aayush Rathi and Ambika Tandon posits health monitoring as surveillance and not merely as a “data problem.” Casting a critical feminist lens, the historicity of surveillance practices unveils the gendered power differentials wedded into taken-for-granted “benign” monitoring processes. The unpacking of the Mother and Child Tracking System and the National Health Stack reveals the neo-liberal aspirations of the Indian state. </b>
<p> </p>
<p><em>The article was first published by <a href="https://www.epw.in/engage/article/data-infrastructures-inequities-why-does-reproductive-health-surveillance-india-need-urgent-attention" target="_blank">EPW Engage, Vol. 54, Issue No. 6</a>, on 9 February 2019.</em></p>
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<h3><strong>Framing Reproductive Health as a Surveillance Question</strong></h3>
<p>The approach of the postcolonial Indian state to healthcare has been Malthusian, with the prioritisation of family planning and birth control (Hodges 2004). Supported by the notion of socio-economic development arising out of a “modernisation” paradigm, the target-based approach to achieving reduced fertility rates has shaped India’s reproductive and child health (RCH) programme (Simon-Kumar 2006).</p>
<p>This is also the context in which India’s abortion law, the Medical Termination of Pregnancy (MTP) Act, was framed in 1971, placing the decisional privacy of women seeking abortions in the hands of registered medical practitioners. The framing of the MTP act invisibilises females seeking abortions for non-medical reasons within the legal framework. The exclusionary provisions only exacerbated existing gaps in health provisioning, as access to safe and legal abortions had already been curtailed by severe geographic inequalities in funding, infrastructure, and human resources. The state has concomitantly been unable to meet contraceptive needs of married couples or reduce maternal and infant mortality rates in large parts of the country, mediating access along the lines of class, social status, education, and age (Sanneving et al 2013).</p>
<p>While the official narrative around the RCH programme transitioned to focus on universal access to healthcare in the 1990s, the target-based approach continues to shape the reality on the ground. The provision of reproductive healthcare has been deeply unequal and, in some cases, in hospitals. These targets have been known to be met through the practice of forced, and often unsafe, sterilisation, in conditions of absence of adequate provisions or trained professionals, pre-sterilisation counselling, or alternative forms of contraception (Sama and PLD 2018). Further, patients have regularly been provided cash incentives, foreclosing the notion of free consent, especially given that the target population of these camps has been women from marginalised economic classes in rural India.</p>
<p>Placing surveillance studies within a feminist praxis allows us to frame the reproductive health landscape as more than just an ill-conceived, benign monitoring structure. The critical lens becomes useful for highlighting that taken-for-granted structures of monitoring are wedded with power differentials: genetic screening in fertility clinics, identification documents such as birth certificates, and full-body screeners are just some of the manifestations of this (Adrejevic 2015). Emerging conversations around feminist surveillance studies highlight that these data systems are neither benign nor free of gendered implications (Andrejevic 2015). In continual remaking of the social, corporeal body as a data actor in society, such practices render some bodies normative and obfuscate others, based on categorisations put in place by the surveiller.</p>
<p>In fact, the history of surveillance can be traced back to the colonial state where it took the form of systematic sexual and gendered violence enacted upon indigenous populations in order to render them compliant (Rifkin 2011; Morgensen 2011). Surveillance, then, manifests as a “scientific” rationalisation of complex social hieroglyphs (such as reproductive health) into formats enabling administrative interventions by the modern state. Lyon (2001) has also emphasised how the body emerged as the site of surveillance in order for the disciplining of the “irrational, sensual body”—essential to the functioning of the modern nation-state—to effectively happen.</p>
<h3><strong>Questioning the Information and Communications Technology for Development (ICT4D) and Big Data for Development (BD4D) Rhetoric</strong></h3>
<p>Information and Communications Technology (ICT) and data-driven approaches to the development of a robust health information system, and by extension, welfare, have been offered as solutions to these inequities and exclusions in access to maternal and reproductive healthcare in the country.</p>
<p>The move towards data-driven development in the country commenced with the introduction of the Health Management Information System in Andhra Pradesh in 2008, and the Mother and Child Tracking System (MCTS) nationally in 2011. These are reproductive health information systems (HIS) that collect granular data about each pregnancy from the antenatal to the post-natal period, at the level of each sub-centre as well as primary and community health centre. The introduction of HIS comprised cross-sectoral digitisation measures that were a part of the larger national push towards e-governance; along with health, thirty other distinct areas of governance, from land records to banking to employment, were identified for this move towards the digitalised provisioning of services (MeitY 2015).</p>
<p>The HIS have been seen as playing a critical role in the ecosystem of health service provision globally. HIS-based interventions in reproductive health programming have been envisioned as a means of: (i) improving access to services in the context of a healthcare system ridden with inequalities; (ii) improving the quality of services provided, and (iii) producing better quality data to facilitate the objectives of India’s RCH programme, including family planning and population control. Accordingly, starting 2018, the MCTS is being replaced by the RCH portal in a phased manner. The RCH portal, in areas where the ANMOL (ANM Online) application has been introduced, captures data real-time through tablets provided to health workers (MoHFW 2015).</p>
<p>A proposal to mandatorily link the Aadhaar with data on pregnancies and abortions through the MCTS/RCH has been made by the union minister for Women and Child Development as a deterrent to gender-biased sex selection (Tembhekar 2016). The proposal stems from the prohibition of gender-biased sex selection provided under the Pre-Conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostics Techniques (PCPNDT) Act, 1994. The approach taken so far under the PCPNDT Act, 2014 has been to regulate the use of technologies involved in sex determination. However, the steady decline in the national sex ratio since the passage of the PCPNDT Act provides a clear indication that the regulation of such technology has been largely ineffective. A national policy linking Aadhaar with abortions would be aimed at discouraging gender-biased sex selection through state surveillance, in direct violation of a female’s right to decisional privacy with regards to their own body.</p>
<p>Linking Aadhaar would also be used as a mechanism to enable direct benefit transfer (DBT) to the beneficiaries of the national maternal benefits scheme. Linking reproductive health services to the Aadhaar ecosystem has been critiqued because it is exclusionary towards women with legitimate claims towards abortions and other reproductive services and benefits, and it heightens the risk of data breaches in a cultural fabric that already stigmatises abortions. The bodies on which this stigma is disproportionately placed, unmarried or disabled females, for instance, experience the harms of visibility through centralised surveillance mechanisms more acutely than others by being penalised for their deviance from cultural expectations. This is in accordance with the theory of "data extremes,” wherein marginalised communities are seen as living on the extremes of data capture, leading to a data regime that either refuses to recognise them as legitimate entities or subjects them to overpolicing in order to discipline deviance (Arora 2016). In both developed and developing contexts, the broader purpose of identity management has largely been to demarcate legitimate and illegitimate actors within a population, either within the framework of security or welfare.</p>
<h3><strong>Potential Harms of the Data Model of Reproductive Health Provisioning</strong></h3>
<p>Informational privacy and decisional privacy are critically shaped by data flows and security within the MCTS/RCH. No standards for data sharing and storage, or anonymisation and encryption of data have been implemented despite role-based authentication (NHSRC and Taurus Glocal 2011). The risks of this architectural design are further amplified in the context of the RCH/ANMOL where data is captured real-time. In the absence of adequate safeguards against data leaks, real-time data capture risks the publicising of reproductive health choices in an already stigmatised environment. This opens up avenues for further dilution of autonomy in making future reproductive health choices.</p>
<p>Several core principles of informational privacy, such as limitations regarding data collection and usage, or informed consent, also need to be reworked within this context.<sup>[1]</sup> For instance, the centrality of the requirement of “free, informed consent” by an individual would need to be replaced by other models, especially in the context of reproductive health of rape survivors who are vulnerable and therefore unable to exercise full agency. The ability to make a free and informed choice, already dismantled in the context of contemporary data regimes, gets further precluded in such contexts. The constraints on privacy in decisions regarding the body are then replicated in the domain of reproductive data collection.</p>
<p>What is uniform across these digitisation initiatives is their treatment of maternal and reproductive health as solely a medical event, framed as a data scarcity problem. In doing so, they tend to amplify the understanding of reproductive health through measurable indicators that ignore social determinants of health. For instance, several studies conducted in the rural Indian context have shown that the degree of women’s autonomy influences the degree of usage of pregnancy care, and that the uptake of pregnancy care was associated with village-level indicators such as economic development, provisioning of basic infrastructure and social cohesion. These contextual factors get overridden in pervasive surveillance systems that treat reproductive healthcare as comprising only of measurable indicators and behaviours, that are dependent on individual behaviour of practitioners and women themselves, rather than structural gaps within the system.</p>
<p>While traditionally associated with state governance, the contemporary surveillance regime is experienced as distinct from its earlier forms due to its reliance on a nexus between surveillance by the state and private institutions and actors, with both legal frameworks and material apparatuses for data collection and sharing (Shepherd 2017). As with historical forms of surveillance, the harms of contemporary data regimes accrue disproportionately among already marginalised and dissenting communities and individuals. Data-driven surveillance has been critiqued for its excesses in multiple contexts globally, including in the domains of predictive policing, health management, and targeted advertising (Mason 2015). In the attempts to achieve these objectives, surveillance systems have been criticised for their reliance on replicating past patterns, reifying proximity to a hetero-patriarchal norm (Haggerty and Ericson 2000). Under data-driven surveillance systems, this proximity informs the preexisting boxes of identity for which algorithmic representations of the individual are formed. The boxes are defined contingent on the distinct objectives of the particular surveillance project, collating disparate pieces of data flows and resulting in the recasting of the singular offline self into various 'data doubles' (Haggerty and Ericson 2000). Refractive, rather than reflective, the data doubles have implications for the physical, embodied life of individual with an increasing number of service provisioning relying on the data doubles (Lyon 2001). Consider, for instance, apps on menstruation, fertility, and health, and wearables such as fitness trackers and pacers, that support corporate agendas around what a woman’s healthy body should look, be or behave like (Lupton 2014). Once viewed through the lens of power relations, the fetishised, apolitical notion of the data “revolution” gives way to what we may better understand as “dataveillance.”</p>
<h3><strong>Towards a Networked State and a Neo-liberal Citizen</strong></h3>
<p>Following in this tradition of ICT being treated as the solution to problems plaguing India’s public health information system, a larger, all-pervasive healthcare ecosystem is now being proposed by the Indian state (NITI Aayog 2018). Termed the National Health Stack, it seeks to create a centralised electronic repository of health records of Indian citizens with the aim of capturing every instance of healthcare service usage. Among other functions, it also envisions a platform for the provisioning of health and wellness-based services that may be dispensed by public or private actors in an attempt to achieve universal health coverage. By allowing private parties to utilise the data collected through pullable open application program interfaces (APIs), it also fits within the larger framework of the National Health Policy 2017 that envisions the private sector playing a significant role in the provision of healthcare in India. It also then fits within the state–private sector nexus that characterises dataveillance. This, in turn, follows broader trends towards market-driven solutions and private financing of health sector reform measures that have already had profound consequences on the political economy of healthcare worldwide (Joe et al 2018).</p>
<p>These initiatives are, in many ways, emblematic of the growing adoption of network governance reform by the Indian state (Newman 2001). This is a stark shift from its traditional posturing as the hegemonic sovereign nation state. This shift entails the delayering from large, hierarchical and unitary government systems to horizontally arranged, more flexible, relatively dispersed systems.<sup>[2]</sup> The former govern through the power of rules and law, while the latter take the shape of self-regulating networks such as public–private contractual arrangements (Snellen 2005). ICTs have been posited as an effective tool in enabling the transition to network governance by enhancing local governance and interactive policymaking enabling the co-production of knowledge (Ferlie et al 2011). The development of these capabilities is also critical to addressing “wicked problems” such as healthcare (Rittel and Webber 1973).<sup>[3]</sup> The application of the techno-deterministic, data-driven model to reproductive healthcare provision, then, resembles a fetishised approach to technological change. The NHSRC describes this as the collection of data without an objective, leading to a disproportional burden on data collection over use (NHSRC and Taurus Glocal 2011).</p>
<p>The blurring of the functions of state and private actors is reflective of the neo-liberal ethic, which produces new practices of governmentality. Within the neo-liberal framework of reproductive healthcare, the citizen is constructed as an individual actor, with agency over and responsibility for their own health and well-being (Maturo et al 2016).</p>
<h3><strong>“Quantified Self” of the Neo-liberal Citizen</strong></h3>
<p>Nowhere can the manifestation of this neo-liberal citizen can be seen as clearly as in the “quantified self” movement. The quantified self movement refers to the emergence of a whole range of apps that enable the user to track bodily functions and record data to achieve wellness and health goals, including menstruation, fertility, pregnancies, and health indicators in the mother and baby. Lupton (2015) labels this as the emergence of the “digitised reproductive citizen,” who is expected to be attentive to her fertility and sexual behaviour to achieve better reproductive health goals. The practice of collecting data around reproductive health is not new to the individual or the state, as has been demonstrated by the discussion above. What is new in this regime of datafication under the self-tracking movement is the monetisation of reproductive health data by private actors, the labour for which is performed by the user. Focusing on embodiment draws attention to different kinds of exploitation engendered by reproductive health apps. Not only is data about the body collected and sold, the unpaid labour for collection is extracted from the user. The reproductive body can then be understood as a cyborg, or a woman-machine hybrid, systematically digitising its bodily functions for profit-making within the capitalist (re)production machine (Fotoloulou 2016). Accordingly, all major reproductive health tracking apps have a business model that relies on selling information about users for direct marketing of products around reproductive health and well-being (Felizi and Varon nd).</p>
<p>As has been pointed out in the case of big data more broadly, reproductive health applications (apps) facilitate the visibility of the female reproductive body in the public domain. Supplying anonymised data sets to medical researchers and universities fills some of the historical gaps in research around the female body and reproductive health. Reproductive and sexual health tracking apps globally provide their users a platform to engage with biomedical information around sexual and reproductive health. Through group chats on the platform, they are also able to engage with experiential knowledge of sexual and reproductive health. This could also help form transnational networks of solidarity around the body and health (Fotopoulou 2016).</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">This radical potential of network-building around reproductive and sexual health is, however, tempered to a large extent by the reconfiguration of gendered stereotypes through these apps. In a study on reproductive health apps on Google Play Store, Lupton (2014) finds that products targeted towards female users are marketed through the discourse of risk and vulnerability, while those targeted towards male users are framed within that of virility. Apart from reiterating gendered stereotypes around the male and female body, such a discourse assumes that the entire labour of family planning is performed by females. This same is the case with the MCTS/RCH.</p>
<p>Technological interventions such as reproductive health apps as well as HIS are based on the assumption that females have perfect control over decisions regarding their own bodies and reproductive health, despite this being disproved in India. The Guttmacher Institute (2014) has found that 60% of women in India report not having control over decisions regarding their own healthcare. The failure to account for the husband or the family as stakeholder in decision-making around reproductive health has been a historical failure of the family planning programme in India, and is now being replicated in other modalities. This notion of an autonomous citizen who is able to take responsibility of their own reproductive health and well-being does not hold true in the Indian context. It can even be seen as marginalising females who have already been excluded from the reproductive health system, as they are held responsible for their own inability to access healthcare.</p>
<h3><strong>Concluding Remarks</strong></h3>
<p>The interplay that emerges between reproductive health surveillance and data infrastructures is a complex one. It requires the careful positioning of the political nature of data collection and processing as well as its hetero-patriarchal and colonial legacies, within the need for effective utilisation of data for achieving developmental goals. Assessing this discourse through a feminist lens identifies the web of power relations in data regimes. This problematises narratives of technological solutions for welfare provision.</p>
<p>The reproductive healthcare framework in India then offers up a useful case study to assess these concerns. The growing adoption of ICT-based surveillance tools to equalise access to healthcare needs to be understood in the socio-economic, legal, and cultural context where these tools are being implemented. Increased surveillance has historically been associated with causing the structural gendered violence that it is now being offered as a solution to. This is a function of normative standards being constructed for reproductive behaviour that necessarily leave out broader definitions of reproductive health and welfare when viewed through a feminist lens. Within the larger context of health policymaking in India, moves towards privatisation then demonstrate the peculiarity of dataveillance as it functions through an unaccountable and pervasive overlapping of state and private surveillance practises. It remains to be seen how these trends in ICT-driven health policies affect access to reproductive rights and decisional privacy for millions of females in India and other parts of the global South.</p>
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For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/data-infrastructures-inequities-reproductive-health-surveillance-india'>https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/data-infrastructures-inequities-reproductive-health-surveillance-india</a>
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No publisherAayush Rathi and Ambika TandonBig DataData SystemsPrivacyResearchers at WorkInternet GovernanceResearchBD4DHealthcareSurveillanceBig Data for Development2019-12-30T16:44:32ZBlog EntryData bleeding everywhere: a story of period trackers
https://cis-india.org/raw/sadaf-khan-data-bleeding-everywhere-a-story-of-period-trackers
<b>This is an excerpt from an essay by Sadaf Khan, written for and published as part of the Bodies of Evidence collection of Deep Dives. The Bodies of Evidence collection, edited by Bishakha Datta and Richa Kaul Padte, is a collaboration between Point of View and the Centre for Internet and Society, undertaken as part of the Big Data for Development Network supported by International Development Research Centre, Canada.</b>
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<h4>Please read the full essay on Deep Dives: <a href="https://deepdives.in/data-bleeding-everywhere-a-story-of-period-trackers-8766dc6a1e00" target="_blank">Data bleeding everywhere: a story of period trackers</a></h4>
<h4>Sadaf Khan: <a href="http://mediamatters.pk/the-team/" target="_blank">Media Matters for Democracy</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/nuqsh" target="_blank">Twitter</a></h4>
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<p>...By now there are a number of questions buzzing around my head, most of them unasked. Are users comfortable with so much of their data being collected? Are there really algorithms that string together all this data into medically-relevant trends? How reliable can these trends be when usage is erratic? Are period tracking apps pioneering, fundamental elements of a future where medical aid is digital and reliable data is inevitably linked to the provision of medical services? And if so, are privacy and health soon to become conflicting rights?</p>
<p>I also want to find out how users understand data collection and privacy before giving apps consent to utilize their data and information as they will. Hareem says she gives apps informed consent. ‘If my data becomes a part of the statistics aiding medical research, why not? There is no harm in it. I am getting a good service, and if my data helps create a better understanding as a part of a larger statistical pool, they are welcome to use it.’</p>
<p>But is she really sure that this information will be used only as anonymised data for medical research? ‘Look at the kind of information that is being collected,’ she answers. ‘Dates, mood, consistency of mucus, basal temperature. What kind of use does one have for this data?’</p>
<p>Naila, in turn, says: ‘Honestly, I have never really thought about what happens to the data the application collects. Obviously I enter detailed information about my cycle and my moods and my sex life. But a), my account is under a fake name and b), even if it wasn’t, who would have any use for stuff like when my period starts and ends and what my mood or digestive system is like at any given moment?’</p>
<p>In fact, this sentiment is shared among all the women interviewed for this piece — what use would anyone have for this data?</p>
<p>As users, we often imagine our own data as anonymised within a huge dataset. But as users, we don’t have enough information about how our data is being used — or will be used in future. The open and at times vague language of a platform’s terms and conditions allows menstrual apps to use data in ways that I may not know of. Some apps continue to hold customer data even after an account is deleted. Even though I may technically ‘agree’ to the terms and conditions, is this fully informed consent?</p>
<p>One of the big concerns around this kind of medical information being collected is the potential for collaborations with big pharmaceuticals and other health service providers. With apps sitting on a goldmine of users’ fertility and health information, health service providers might mine their data for potential consumers and reach out directly to them. While this is like any targeted marketing campaign, the fact that the advertiser is likely to be offering medical services to women suffering from infertility and are at their most vulnerable, raises totally different ethical concerns.</p>
<p>And these apps and their businesses might grow in directions that users haven’t taken into consideration. Take Ovia’s health feature for companies to buy premium services for their employees. While the gesture is packaged as a goodwill one, it also means that an employer has access to extremely private and intimate medical information about their women employees. And while the data set is anonymised, it is still possible to figure out the identity of users based on specific information. For example, how many women in any company are pregnant at any given time?...</p>
<p>Pregnant a year after my miscarriage, I initially downloaded multiple apps in a bid to find a good fit. I don’t know which one of these was in communication with Facebook. But almost immediately, my Facebook timeline started becoming littered with ads for baby stuff — clothes, shoes bibs, prams, cribs, ointments for stretch marks, maternity wear, the works.</p>
<p>It makes me think of those old school clockwork-style videos. You drop a ball and off it goes: making dominos fall, knocking over pots and pans, setting in motion absurd, synchronized mechanisms. Similarly, I drop my data and watch it hurtle into my life, on to other platforms, off to vendors. Maybe to stalkers? To employers? Who knows.</p>
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For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/raw/sadaf-khan-data-bleeding-everywhere-a-story-of-period-trackers'>https://cis-india.org/raw/sadaf-khan-data-bleeding-everywhere-a-story-of-period-trackers</a>
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No publishersumandroBodies of EvidenceResearchers at WorkResearchFeaturedPublicationsBD4DBig Data for Development2019-12-06T05:03:09ZBlog EntryCFI-ACCION - Panel Discussion on 'Big Data: Challenge or Opportunity?' (Delhi, December 06)
https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/cfi-accion-panel-discussion-on-big-data-delhi-dec-06
<b>The Centre for Financial Inclusion of ACCION International is organising a panel discussion on "Big Data: Challenge or Opportunity?" as an associated event of the Inclusive Finance India Summit 2016, Hotel Ashok, Delhi, December 05-06. The discussion will be held at 12:30 on Tuesday, December 06. It will be moderated by Amy Jensen Mowl, CFI Fellow at IFMR, and M.S. Sriram, Distinguished Fellow at the Institute for Development of Research in Banking Technology. Sumandro Chattapadhyay will participate as a panelist.</b>
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<h4>Inclusive Finance India Summit: <a href="http://inclusivefinanceindia.org/">http://inclusivefinanceindia.org/</a>.</h4>
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<img src="https://github.com/cis-india/website/raw/master/img/CFI-ACCION_Discussion-Poster_20161206.jpg" />
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For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/cfi-accion-panel-discussion-on-big-data-delhi-dec-06'>https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/cfi-accion-panel-discussion-on-big-data-delhi-dec-06</a>
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No publishersumandroFinancial TechnologyBig DataData SystemsBig Data for DevelopmentFinancial InclusionResearchers at Work2019-03-16T04:41:52ZBlog EntryCan data ever know who we really are?
https://cis-india.org/raw/zara-rahman-can-data-ever-know-who-we-really-are
<b>This is an excerpt from an essay by Zara Rahman, written for and published as part of the Bodies of Evidence collection of Deep Dives. The Bodies of Evidence collection, edited by Bishakha Datta and Richa Kaul Padte, is a collaboration between Point of View and the Centre for Internet and Society, undertaken as part of the Big Data for Development Network supported by International Development Research Centre, Canada.</b>
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<h4>Please read the full essay on Deep Dives: <a href="https://deepdives.in/can-data-ever-know-who-we-really-are-a0dbfb5a87a0" target="_blank">Can data ever know who we really are?</a></h4>
<h4>Zara Rahman: <a href="https://www.theengineroom.org/people/zara-rahman/" target="_blank">The Engine Room</a>, <a href="https://zararah.net/" target="_blank">Website</a>, and <a href="https://twitter.com/zararah" target="_blank">Twitter</a></h4>
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<blockquote>If I didn’t define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people’s fantasies for me and eaten alive.<br /><em>– <a href="https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/1982-audre-lorde-learning-60s/" target="_blank">Audre Lorde</a></em></blockquote>
<p>The proliferation of digital data and the technologies that allow us to gather that data can be used in another way too — to allow us to define for ourselves who we are, and what we are.</p>
<p>Amidst a growing political climate of fear, mistrust and competition for resources, activists and advocates working in areas that are stigmatised within their societies often need data to ‘prove’ that what they are working on matters. One way of doing this is by gathering data through crowdsourcing. Crowdsourced data isn’t ‘representative’, as statisticians say, but gathering data through unofficial means can be a valuable asset for advocates. For example, <a href="http://readytoreport.in/" target="_blank">data collating the experiences of women</a> who have reported incidents of sexual violence to the police in India, can then be used to advocate for better police responses, and to inform women of their rights. Deservedly or not, quantifiable data takes precedence over personal histories and lived experience in getting the much-desired currency of attention.</p>
<p>And used right, quantifiable data — whether it’s crowdsourced or not — can also be a powerful tool for advocates. Now, we can use quantifiable data to prove beyond a question of a doubt that disabled people, queer people, people from lower castes, face intersecting discrimination, prejudice, and systemic injustices in their lives. It’s an unnecessary repetition in a way, because anybody from those communities could have told reams upon reams of stories about discrimination — all without any need for counting.</p>
<p>Regardless, to play within this increasingly digitised system, we need to repeat what we’ve been saying in a new, digitally-legible way. And to do that, we need to collect data from people who have often only ever been de-humanised as data subjects.</p>
<p>Artist and educator Mimi Onuoha writes about <a href="https://points.datasociety.net/the-point-of-collection-8ee44ad7c2fa#.y0xtfxi2p" target="_blank">the challenges that arise while collecting such data</a>, from acknowledging the humans behind that collection to understanding that missing data points might tell just as much of a story as the data that has been collected. She outlines how digital data means that we have to (intentionally or not) make certain choices about what we value. And the collection of this data means making human choices solid, and often (though not always) making these choices illegible to others.</p>
<p>We speak of black boxes when it comes to <a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/breaking-the-black-box-what-facebook-knows-about-you" target="_blank">the mystery choices that algorithms make</a>, but the same could be said of the many human decisions that are made in categorising data too, whether that be choosing to limit the gender drop-down field to just ‘male/female’ as with Fitbits, or a variety of apps incorrectly assuming that all people who menstruate <a href="https://medium.com/@maggied/i-tried-tracking-my-period-and-it-was-even-worse-than-i-could-have-imagined-bb46f869f45" target="_blank">also want to know about their ‘fertile window’</a>. In large systems with many humans and machines at work, we have no way of interrogating why a category was merged or not, of understanding why certain anomalies were ignored rather than incorporated, or of questioning why certain assumptions were made.</p>
<p>The only thing we can do is to acknowledge these limitations, and try to use those very systems to our advantage, building our own alternatives or workarounds, collecting our own data, and using the data that is out there to tell the stories that matter to us.</p>
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For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/raw/zara-rahman-can-data-ever-know-who-we-really-are'>https://cis-india.org/raw/zara-rahman-can-data-ever-know-who-we-really-are</a>
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No publishersumandroBodies of EvidenceBig DataData SystemsResearchers at WorkResearchPublicationsBD4DBig Data for Development2019-12-06T05:02:53ZBlog Entry