Centre for Internet and Society

Quantifying India's research output - Public Lecture by Prof. Subbiah Arunachalam

radha — 2011-04-02T14:54:51Z

International Strategic and Security Studies Programme, IISc. Bangalore, is organizing a Public lecture by Prof. Subbiah Arunachalam on Friday, Sept 25th, on Quantifying India's research output.

International Strategic and Security Studies Programme

National Institute of Advanced Studies

Indian Institute of Science Campus,Bangalore -12

Public Lecture

Date: Friday, September 25, 2009

Speaker: Prof. Subbiah Arunachalam

Distinguished Fellow, Center For Internet & Society, Bangalore

Visiting Professor, Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai

Email: subbiah.arunachalam@gmail.com

Chairperson: Dr .Lalitha Sundareshan

Visiting Professor

Title: Quantifying India's research output
Time: 11:30 am
Venue: Conference Hall 2

Abstract: Science policy makers around the world are keen to assess the research performed by different countries, institutions and even individuals. Much of such work is based on databases and is based on the premise that the literature of science is a mirror of science. A number of scientometricists have used Science Citation Index (Web of Science) and other (subject-based) databases for such studies. Often they depend on publication and citation counts. Unfortunately, many of them are not aware of the nuances involved in such studies. In this talk we will look at science indicators with special reference to India and the developing countries.

All are invited to attend

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/quantifying-indias-research-output-public-lecture-by-prof.-subbiah-arunachalam

Pushing women scientists

praskrishna — 2014-10-21T15:44:09Z

Wikipedia edit-a-thon attempts to raise awareness of the contribution of Indian women to science.

The article by Renuka Phadnis was published in the Hindu on October 19, 2014. T. Vishnu Vardhan gave his inputs.

Ask anyone to name an Indian scientist and the answer is likely to be a man, and not a woman scientist. To let more people know about the unsung heroines of science in India, a workshop called the Ada Lovelace Edit-a-thon 2014 was held here recently. At least 15 participants added content about women scientists over two days to Wikipedia as the first step in bringing public awareness about them.

The edit-a-thon (a large number of people adding or modifying content on Wikipedia at once) concluded on October 14, which was Ada Lovelace Day, an international day to celebrate the achievements of women in science, technology and maths. The event was organised by BioScienceIndia Programme, a non-profit science outreach initiative, and Bangalore-based Centre for Internet and Society.

Participants added information about at least 40 women scientists. Information on 80 more would be added in a year’s time, said Nandini Rajamani, Co-director, BioScienceIndia Programme.

The aim, however, is to go beyond edit-a-thons, to examine issues that have not received the attention they deserve. Women scientists in India are not on par with men for several reasons (see info box) and the “leaky pipeline” theory is used to describe their decreasing visibility. Vishnu Vardhan, Director, Access to Knowledge team, CIS, said the aim is to motivate a new and younger generation of women scientists.

Karthik Ramaswamy, visiting scientist at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) and a participant in the edit-a-thon, said science in India has a ‘diversity problem’ with Indian women and minorities represented inadequately. “There are very few women scientists among faculty of science institutions because they have no role models. Hopefully, this (presence on Wikipedia) will provide them with role models,” he added.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/news/the-hindu-renuka-phadnis-october-19-2014-wikipedia-editathon-attempts-to-raise-awareness-of-the-contribution-of-indian-women-to-science

Pushing the Boundaries in Open Governance: Insights from OGP Asia Pacific Regional Conference in Bali, Indonesia (Day 1)

praskrishna — 2014-05-27T11:16:06Z

Sunil Abraham is quoted. He said that open governance is more about citizens checking on what government leaders are doing than on government coding its citizens to exercise surveillance.

This post originally appeared on the Open Data Research Network and has been republished with permission from the author. For the republished post on OGP website, see here.

The plenary room of Bali Nusa Dua Convention Center was jam-packed at 845 in the morning, with representatives from different countries in the Asia-Pacific region and all over the globe joining the first regional conference on open data hosted by the Government of Indonesia. The conference stage backdrop depicts a million colourful cranes moving in one direction towards the OGP logo, perhaps signalling an unprecedented wave of aspirations, commitments, plans, and actions towards a more ‘open’ governance within the region. Then a few minutes later, President Yudhoyono arrived and the two-day gathering (6-7 May 2014) of roughly 500 people started.

The program was impressive. It tried to cater to the different voices of what ideally should make an open government community – government leaders, journalists, right-to-information activists, business representatives, academia, researchers, civil-society groups, funding agencies, programmers, among others. The over-arching theme of the conference “Unlocking Innovative Openness: Impetus to Greater Citizen Engagement” speaks to both the supply side and the demand side of open data where governments can make openness more innovative to which citizens can proactively engage. The people in attendance reflected this multi-dimensionality and the kind of discussions on open governance that happened in Day 1 reflects the several, differentiated, yet somehow united view and interests of the many people that were there.

The first day of the conference brings me to four main realisations, prompted by the excellent presentations of the speakers and the lively discussion at the break-out session that I attended.

Openness is not an option but an imperative. Aruna Roy, founder of Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathanaof India, and considered one of the most influential thinkers of this decade put it more vividly using her organization’s slogan – “right to know, right to live”. While bureaucrats, like Minister Francis Maude of the UK argued that openness improve transparency, enhance public service, and stimulate growth, civil society groups claimed that openness is not something the government can do, but must do, to benefit right holders by ensuring that they are not only aware of what the government is doing but by ensuring that government leaders, to whom citizens entrust sovereignty, execute the will of the governed.
Open governance is about relations, about people, not just about technology, transparency, or data provision. Ms. Nwe Zin Win, of Myanmar National NGOs Network emphasized that as Myanmar moves towards Open Government Partnership (OGP) membership, the process should create a space for civil society groups to proactively participate. In his remarks, Director General Yoon Soon-Gu of the Republic of Korea emphasized that when his government embarked on the process of crafting Gov 3.0 as a development agenda, with the end-goal of making Koreans live a happy life, citizen consultations were conducted all across government to ensure that this plan is responsive and relevant and reflects the people’s aspirations. Anne Jellema, CEO of World Wide Web Foundation highlighted the fact that open governance is not only good for vertical accountability (government-governed) but also about horizontal accountability (agencies within the same government) and ensures that systems are working with government – judiciary, legislative, audit, executing agencies – for the common good. Open governance then, is about building that relationship of trust between government and citizens, between business and government, and between agencies in the government.
Open government has many challenges, but these are not insurmountable. Malou Mangahas of the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism emphasized five “I”s in her plenary speech that she said are the main challenges to the open government story in the Philippines and in the region – implementation, inclusiveness, information, institutionalisation, and interconnectedness. In the area of inclusiveness, one of the challenges is on how to ensure that people can participate in a context when there is a large digital divide, where internet penetration is low, and broadband speed is slow to a crawl. Mr. Samadhi of the Government of Indonesia emphasized that there are many examples in his country where government information is translated to accessible formats by infomediaries so that citizens without internet connection became aware, informed, and knowledgeable. In one of the coffee breaks, Redempto Parafina of the Affiliated Network for Social Accountability in East Asia and the Pacific shared to me that non-government organizations, concerned individuals, and universities translate information in the CheckmySchool portal to information materials for distribution and use by communities without internet.
Open governance narrative should focus on making governments more responsive and accountable. President Yudhoyono uses Facebook and Twitter, apart from the traditional media as text and snail mail, to listen to the demands of his constituents. The Government of New Zealand, according to Minister Peter Dunne, sets goals on basic public services as health, education, and employment and demands regular public reporting on these goals; reports that can be accessed and challenged by the people to whom the services are intended. Sunil Abraham of the Centre for Internet and Society argued that open governance should not veer away from this narrative. He made an example regarding India’s Unique Identification System, where the implementation is couched within the open data narrative. He believed that open governance is more about citizens checking on what government leaders are doing than on government coding its citizens to exercise surveillance.

It was a productive day. I am thankful that I was afforded the opportunity to attend the conference. One message that profoundly affected me was Aruna Roy’s exhortation at the end of her presentation – that we should make truth powerful, and that we should make power truthful.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/open-government-partnership-michael-canares-may-6-2014-pushing-the-boundaries-in-open-governance

Punjabi Wikipedia Workshop at Punjabi University, Patiala

Shiju Alex and Subhashish Panigrahi — 2012-10-04T12:18:36Z

Patiala is the home to the famous Punjabi University. A Wikipedia workshop was organized at the Punjabi University's Punjabi Department on August 16, 2012.

When the veteran Punjabi wikipedian G.S. Guglani agreed to come forward to spread the message of Punjabi wikipedia among Punjabi speakers it opened a way to revive and build the Punjabi Wikipedia community. Once Guglani's support was confirmed we looked for suitable places to conduct the introduction workshop for Punjabi Wikipedia. Guglani himself suggested Patiala, Ludhiana, and Amritsar as the probable places to conduct the Punjabi Wikipedia introduction workshops. Prof. Rajinder Brar, Head of the Punjabi Department agreed to provide full support to conduct a workshop at Patiala.

About 30 participants including students and teachers attended the workshop. Guglani played a pivotal role in organizing the workshop. Shiju Alex gave ample support. The workshop began with a welcome message by Prof. Rajinder. Guglani then took the participants through a brief presentation (http://bit.ly/Rnki2r) and explained the history and current status of Punjabi Wikipedia. To our surprise two of the participants, Satdeep Gill and Paramjeet Singh were already aware about the Punjabi Wikipedia and they had created their accounts sometime back even though they didn't do much editing. The presence of Satdeep and Paramjeet and their previous experience with Punjabi helped us during the course of the workshop. Guglani taught one of the participants to create a user account and do the wiki editing. He showed them Punjabi typing and basic wiki editing.

This was followed by a question-answer session where the participants asked about typing, editing, referencing and many other contribution related questions. The workshop ended with a small photo session.

We are happy to share that Satdeep has become quite active after this workshop and as of now is one of the very active users in Punjabi Wikipedia. We are sure his presence will attract more Punjabi people from Patiala to Punjabi Wikipedia.

More pictures of this workshop is available at: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Punjabi_Wikipedia_Workshop-16Aug2012

Note: Although the workshop was conducted prior to the grant period, the report was written in the month of September, and hence, we are featuring this.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/punjabi-wikipedia-workshop-at-punjabi-university-patiala

Punjabi Wikipedia Workshop at Amritsar

Shiju Alex — 2012-10-04T16:11:34Z

After Ludhiana and Patiala we came to Amritsar, which we all know is home to the Golden Temple and the spiritual centre of Sikh religion, to introduce Punjabi Wikipedia. The workshop was held at the Spring Dale Senior School, Amritsar on August 17, 2012.

When we decided to conduct a Punjabi Wikipedia introduction workshop at Amritsar, the location was an issue. We tried to contact many institutes (mostly colleges) over phone. We couldn't get the permission. Finally, Punjabi Wikipedian G.S. Guglani directly approached the Spring Dale senior school management with the request for a space to do the Punjabi Wikipedia introduction workshop. Spring Dale is a famous English medium school in Amritsar. The school principal, Rajiv Sharma not only agreed to host the workshop but also made arrangements to bring selected students and teachers from eight other schools in Amritsar to join the workshop. Actually this was a bonus for us since we asked just a meeting place to host our workshop but not only we got the meeting place, we got assured participation from eight other schools and the permission to use the computer lab to conduct the hands-on wiki editing session.

Nearly 50 participants including students and teachers from eight different schools apart from the students and teachers of Spring Dale School attended the workshop. One of the active and long-time Punjabi Wikipedian Guglani Gurdip Singh lead the workshop with the active support from Shiju and Subhasish.

The event started with a formal opening talk in Punjabi by a student of Spring Dale. The Principal of the Spring Dale Senior School Rajiv Sharma introduced the guests to the audience and briefed the participants about the workshop. Guglani took the participants through a brief presentation (http://bit.ly/Rnki2r) and explained the history and current status of Punjabi Wikipedia.

Few participants were invited to create user account in Punjabi Wikipedia. Guglani demonstrated Punjabi typing and basic wiki editing. There was a question-answer session where participants asked about typing, editing, referencing and many other contribution related questions.

Participants asking questions in the Question-Answer session

After a short break and students and teachers gathered in the computer lab. Booklets containing Punjabi typing scheme were distributed among the participants. Guglani, Shiju, and Subha supported them with editing various articles in Punjabi. As none of the students was exposed to Punjabi typing before they took much interest to type Punjabi. We were able to see the surprise in the eyes of the students and teachers when Narayam converted the typed words to Gurumukhi Punjabi. However, all the present typing tools integrated to Punjabi Wikipedia have some issues. After getting inputs from users I logged some bugs to enhance it. Bug 1 (Phonetic keymap update), Bug 2 (My Best Keyboard update). Hope WMF developers will look into it.

At the end of the session email addresses were exchanged for future communication. New wikipedians were given pointers to stay in touch and ask questions when they face problems with editing.

This workshop involving school childern was really a very good experince for us. I would like to thank the Spring Dale Senior School management for the warm hospitality that they extended to us. We are touched. I could see the possibility of doing programs there.

After conducting three workshops for Punjabi (two workshops (Luhiana and Patiala) involving college students and one workshop (Amritsar) involving school children), I am sure there is bright future ahead for the Punjabi Wikipedia if community can come forward to build the community further. From the statistical report of last year we can see that it was only Guglani editing Punjabi Wikipedia. Now Guglaniji and Surinder came forward to build it and we have around 6-7 active users now. For a language with almost 3 crore speakers 7 active users is not an encouraging number. So we need to have more programs to build it further. Hope community will be able to come forward for that.

More pictures of this workshop is available at: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Punjabi_Wikipedia_Workshop-17Aug2012

Note: Although the workshop was conducted prior to the grant period, the report was written in the month of September, and hence, we are featuring this.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/punjabi-wikipedia-workshop-at-amritsar

Publishing Next

praskrishna — 2014-09-30T07:50:28Z

T. Vishnu Vardhan was a speaker at Publishing Next organized by CinnamonTeal Publishing, a Margao (Goa)-based publishing house that provides publishing services to authors and publishers. The event was held in Goa on September 19 and 20.

For speakers click here. Read the full description on Publishing Next website.

Schedule | publishing next

Schedule

For descriptions of each session, please view this page.

19th September 2014			20th September 2014
	Hall 1 (Panel Discussions and Presentations)	Hall 2 (Workshops)		Hall 1 (Panel Discussions and Presentations)	Hall 2 (Workshops)
09:00 – 10:00	Registration of attendees		09:30 – 10:00	Insight Talk by Klaus Willberg
10:00 – 10:20	Inauguration / Address		10:00 – 11:30	A Pulse on Publishing
10:20 – 11:00	Keynote Address		11:30 – 12:00	Tea
11:00 – 11:20	Tea		12:00 – 13:15	Worse Off Without Verse?	Physical Distribution in a Global World: 12.00-12.45
11:20 – 11:45	Presentation by Netex Knowledge Factory		13:15 – 14:00	Lunch
11:45 – 13:15	Publishing in Indian languages		14:00 – 14:20	Presentation by HP India
13:15 – 14:00	Lunch		14:20 – 15:20	The Art of the Book	Fiction/History/Research : 14:20 – 15:00
14:00 – 14:20	Presentation by NewsHunt		15:20 – 15:45	Q&A on ISBN Issues
14:20 – 15:45	Open Publishing, Copyright and Copyleft	Face to Face: Printers and Publishers: 14:20 – 16:15	15:45 – 16:15	Tea
15:45 – 16:15	Tea		16:15 – 16:30	Presentation by IppStar	Publishing Environments in Brazil and Sri Lanka: 16:15 – 17:00
16:15 – 17:30	The Business of Graphic Books	Publishing Translated Literature: 16:15-17:00	16:30 – 18:00	e-Publishing in India
17:30 – 19:00	Are There Enough Good Books for Children?	eBook Development and Distribution: 17.30-18.30	18.00 – Publishing Next Industry Awards Presentation Ceremony
20:30 – Networking Dinner at Hotel Sandalwood

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/news/publishing-next

Public Consultation for the First Draft of 'Government Open Data Use License - India' Announced

sinha — 2016-06-30T09:41:07Z

The first public draft of the open data license to be used by Government of India was released by the Department of Legal Affairs earlier this week. Comments are invited from general public and stakeholders. These are to be submitted via the MyGov portal by July 25, 2016. CIS was a member of the committee constituted to develop the license concerned, and we contributed substantially to the drafting process.

Please read the call for comments here.

The PDF version of the draft license document can be accessed here.

Comments are to be submitted by July 25, 2016.

Government Open Data Use License - India

National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy

Government of India

1. Preamble

Structured data available in open format and open license for public access and use, usually termed as “Open Data,” is of prime importance in the contemporary world. Data also is one of the most valuable resources of modern governance, sharing of which enables various and non-exclusive usages for both commercial and non-commercial purposes. Licenses, however, are crucial to ensure that such data is not misused or misinterpreted (for example, by insisting on proper attribution), and that all users have the same and permanent right to use the data.

The open government data initiative started in India with the notification of the National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy (NDSAP), submitted to the Union Cabinet by the Department of Science and Technology, on 17th March 2012 [1]. The NDSAP identified the Department of Electronics & Information Technology (DeitY) as the nodal department for the implementation of the policy through National Informatics Centre, while the Department of Science and Technology continues to be the nodal department on policy matters. In pursuance of the Policy, the Open Government Data Platform India [2] was launched in 2012.

While, the appropriate open formats and related aspects for implementation of the Policy has been defined in the “NDSAP Implementation Guidelines” prepared by an inter- ministerial Task Force constituted by the National Informatics Centre [3], the open license for data sets published under NDSAP and through the OGD Platform remained unspecified till now.

2. Definitions

a. “Data” means a representation of Information, numerical compilations and observations, documents, facts, maps, images, charts, tables and figures, concepts in digital and/or analog form, and includes metadata [4], that is all information about data, and/or clarificatory notes provided by data provider(s), without which the data concerned cannot be interpreted or used [5].

b. “Information” means processed data [6].

c. “Data Provider(s)” means person(s) publishing and providing the data under this license.

d. “License” means this document.

e. “Licensor”means any data provider(s) that has the authority to offer the data concerned under the terms of this licence.

f. “User” means natural or legal persons, or body of persons corporate or incorporate, acquiring rights in the data (whether the data is obtained directly from the licensor or otherwise) under this licence.

g. “Use” includes lawful distribution, making copies, adaptation, and all modification and representation of the data, subject to the provisions of this License.

h. “Adapt” means to transform, build upon, or to make any use of the data by itsre-arrangement or alteration [7].

i. “Redistribute” means sharing of the data by the user, either in original or in adapted form (including a subset of the original data), accompanied by appropriate attribute statement, under the same or other suitable license.

j. “Attribution Statement” means a standard notice to be published by all users of data published under this license, that contains the details of the provider, source, and license of the data concerned [8].

k. “Personal Information” means any Information that relates to a natural person,which, either directly or indirectly, in combination with other Information available or likely to be available with a body corporate, is capable of identifying such person [9].

3. Permissible Use of Data

Subject to the conditions listed under section 7, the user may:

a. Access, use, adapt, and redistribute data published under this license for all lawful and non-exclusive purposes, without payment of any royalty or fee;

b. Apply this license worldwide, and in perpetuity;

c. Access, study, copy, share, adapt, publish, redistribute and transmit the data in any medium or format; and

d. Use, adapt, and redistribute the data, either in itself, or by combining it with other data, or by including it within a product/application/service, for all commercial and/or non-commercial purposes.

4. Terms and Conditions of Use of Data

a. Attribution: The user must acknowledge the provider, source, and license of data by explicitly publishing the attribution statement, including the DOI (Digital Object Identifier), or the URL (Uniform Resource Locator), or the URI (Uniform Resource Identifier) of the data concerned.

b. Attribution of Multiple Data: If the user is using multiple data together and/or listing of sources of multiple data is not possible, the user may provide a link to a separate page/list that includes the attribution statements and specific URL/URI of all data used.

c. Non-endorsement: The User must not indicate or suggest in any manner that the data provider(s) endorses their use and/or the user.

d. No Warranty: The data provider(s) are not liable for any errors or omissions, and will not under any circumstances be liable for any direct, indirect, special, incidental, consequential, or other loss, injury or damage caused by its use or otherwise arising in connection with this license or the data, even if specifically advised of the possibility of such loss, injury or damage. Under any circumstances, the user may not hold the data provider(s) responsible for: i) any error, omission or loss of data, and/or ii) any undesirable consequences due to the use of the data as part of an application/product/service (including violation of any prevalent law).

e. Permanent Disclosure and Versioning: The data provider(s) will ensure that a data package once published under this license will always remain publicly available for reference and use. If an already published data is updated by the provider, then the earlier appropriate version(s) must also be kept publicly available with accordance with the archival policy of the National Informatics Centre.

f. Continuity of Provision:The data provider(s) will strive for continuously updating the data concerned, as new data regarding the same becomes available. However, the data provider(s) do not guarantee the continued supply of updated or up-to-date versions of the data, and will not be held liable in case the continued supply of updated data is not provided.

5. Template for Attribution Statement

Unless the user is citing the data using an internationally accepted data citation format [10], an attribution notice in the following format must be explicitly included:

“Data has been published by [Name of Data Provider] and sourced from Open Government Data (OGD) Platform of India: [Name of Data]. ([date of Publication: dd/mm/yyyy]) .[DOI / URL / URI]. Published under Open Government Data License - India: [URL of Open Data License – India].”

For example, “Data has been published by Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation and sourced from Open Government Data (OGD) Platform of India: Overall Balance of Payments. (08/09/2015). https://data.gov.in/catalog/overall-balance-payments. Published under Open Government Data License - India: [URL of Open Data License - India].”

6. Exemptions

The license does not grant the right to access, use, adapt, and redistribute the following kinds of data:

a. Personal information;

b. Data that the data provider(s) is not authorised to licence;

c. Names, crests, logos and other official symbols of the data provider(s);

d. Data subject to other intellectual property rights, including patents, trade-marks and official marks;

e. Military insignia;

f. Identity documents; and

g. Any data publication of which may violate section 8 of the Right to Information Act, 2005 11.

7. Termination

a. Failure to comply with stipulated terms and conditions will cause the user’s rights under this license to end automatically.

b. Where the user’s rights to use data have terminated under the aforementioned clauses or any other Indian law, it reinstates:

i. automatically, as of the date the violation is cured, provided it is cured within 30 days of the discovery of the violation; or

ii. upon express reinstatement by the Licensor.

c. For avoidance of doubt, this section does not affect any rights the licensor may have to seek remedies for violation of this license.

8. Dispute Redressal Mechanism

This license is governed by Indian law, and the copyright of any data shared under this license vests with the licensor, under the Indian Copyright Act.

9. Endnotes

[1] Ministry of Science and Technology. 2012. National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy (NDSAP) 2012. Gazette of India. March 17. http://data.gov.in/sites/default/files/NDSAP.pdf.

[2] See: https://data.gov.in/.

[3] See section 3.2 of the Implementation Guidelines for National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy (NDSAP) Version 2.2. https://data.gov.in/sites/default/files/NDSAP_Implementation_Guidelines_2.2.pdf.

[4] See section 2.1 of NDSAP 2012.

[5] See section 2.6 of NDSAP 2012.

[6] See section 2.7 of NDSAP 2012.

[7] See section 2 (a) of Indian Copyright Act 1957. http://copyright.gov.in/Documents/CopyrightRules1957.pdf.

[8] The template of the attribution statement is given in section 5 of the license.

[9] See section 2 (i) of Information Technology (Reasonable Security Practices and Procedures and Sensitive Personal Data or Information) Rules, 2011. http://deity.gov.in/sites/upload_files/dit/files/GSR313E_10511%281%29.pdf.

[10]For example, those listed in the DOI Citation Formatter tool developed by DataCite, CrossRef and others: http://crosscite.org/citeproc/.

[11] See: http://rti.gov.in/webactrti.htm.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/public-consultation-for-the-first-draft-of-government-open-data-use-license-india-announced

Protecting the Territory, Killing the Map

sumandro — 2016-05-17T10:37:14Z

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

Published by and cross-posted from The Wire.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Promoting GLAM in Goa

nitika — 2013-07-26T11:27:22Z

We organised an introductory Galleries, Libraries, Archives, Museums (GLAM) session at Goa State Central Library on December 13, 2012. It was well attended by about 45 interested people coming from over 10 different GLAM institutes in Goa.

Nitika Tandon from CIS and Debanjan from Pune community led the session about Wikipedia and GLAM activities that have been undertaken by our global community since 2010. The talk instilled a lot of enthusiasm in librarians and curators in Goa to start similar programs in their associated institutes.

Some of the institutes attending the session were: Museum of Christian Art, Goa Chitra, Bookworm Library, K.S. Goa State Library, GTL Bicholini, and DFLG District Library. Participants had a lot of interesting questions about starting GLAM projects in English, Marathi and Konkani, starting point of the project, logistical/financial support required to run a GLAM project, etc.

To begin with we'll be meeting Victor Hugos Gomes from Goa Chitra who has shown keen interest to start a GLAM project. Goa Chitra showcases the rich tradition of implements, tools, arts and crafts. Goa Chitra has archived Goa's cultural heritage through documents, books, photographs, handicrafts, electronic recordings, costumes, musical instruments, and artifacts. In the coming weeks we'll be following up with Goa Chitra and more institutions to figure out the possibility of starting new projects in 2013.

Audio

Here's an audio recording of the entire event: http://bit.ly/XEmylE


A GLAM lecture at Goa Central Library

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/promoting-glam-in-goa

Profit by Sharing: Anatomy of an Open Source Hardware Business

praskrishna — 2012-10-17T09:58:06Z

Ian Lesnet, founder of DangerousPrototypes will give a lecture on open hardware and open source at the Centre for Internet & Society office in Bengaluru on October 24, 2012, 3.00 p.m. to 5.00 p.m.

Dangerous Prototypes

Dangerous Prototypes started as a hobby on a kitchen table, but now five team members develop new open source electronics projects every month. Open source hardware means every part of an electronic device design can be changed and reused in other projects. Despite giving everything away to users and competitors, open source hardware businesses still flourish. Learn how Dangerous Prototypes started, our development process, the underlying open source business philosophy, and how the business is structured today.

Key Concepts

Open hardware businesses grow by sharing. Companies share design information with customers, the customers create communities that give improvements and fixes back to the company. Sharing is mutually beneficial to the company and community.

An open development process is a further extension of open hardware. The company designs products publicly, with active support and input from the community. Sharing extends to design review, improvements, and even testing before the project is launched.

Ian Lesnet

Ian builds a new open hardware project every month at DangerousPrototypes.com. Copies of the projects are available from Seeed Studio's open hardware manufacturing service.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/events/anatomy-of-an-open-source-hardware-business

Priyadarshini Tadkodkar on Konkani language

subha — 2014-01-31T06:20:11Z

CIS-A2K team interviewed Priyadarshini Tadkodkar about Konkani language. She speaks how editing/contributing to Konkani Wikipedia would help students.

Centre for Internet and Society's Access To Knowledge (CIS-A2K) team was there in Goa University to conduct a four day long Konkani Wikipedia workshop for the MA Konkani students. During these days Subhashish Panigrahi of CIS-A2K caught up with Dr. Priyadarshini Tadkodkar, Head, Konkani department of Goa University and asked about the brief history of Konkani language. In this video Dr. Tadkodkar shares the origin and movements that has affected Konkani, influence of other languages on it and the documentation process of the language. The Census Department of India, 2001 figures put the number of Konkani speakers in India as 2,489,015. Out of these, around 6 lakh were in Goa, 7 lakh in Karnataka, 3 lakh in Maharashtra, 6 lakh in Kerala and rest live outside of India, either as expatriates or citizens of other countries (NRIs).

Video


Above: Video of Priyadarshini Tadkodkar speaking on Konkani language

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/priyadarshini-tadkodkar-konkani-language

Privacy, Free/Open Source, and the Cloud

elonnai — 2012-03-22T05:50:10Z

A look into the questions that arise in concern to privacy and cloud computing, and how open source plays into the picture.

Introduction

Cloud computing, in basic terms, is internet-based computing where shared resources and services are taken from the primary infrastructure of the internet and provided on demand. Cloud computing creates a shared network between major corporations like Google, Microsoft, Amazon and Yahoo. In this way, cloud systems are related to grid computing systems/service- oriented architectures, and create the potential for the entire I.T. infrastructure to be programmable. Because of this, cloud computing establishes a new consumption and delivery standard for IT services based on the internet. It is a new consumption and delivery model, because it is made up of services delivered through common centers and built on servers which act as a point of access for the computing needs of consumers. The access points facilitate the tailoring and delivering of targeted applications and services to consumers. Details are taken from the users, who no longer need to have an understanding of, or control over the technology infrastructure in the cloud that supports their desired application.

There are both corporate and consumer implications for such a system. For example, according cloud computing lowers the barriers to entry for corporations and new services. It also enables innovative enterprise in locations where there is an insufficient supply of human or other resources through the provision of inexpensive hardware, software, and applications. The consumer, in turn, is provided with information that he or she is projected to be interested in based on information he or she has already “consumed.” Thus, for example: Google has the ability to monitor a person’s consuming habits through searches and to reduce those habits to a pattern which selects applications to display – and consumption of those reinforces the pattern.

Privacy Concerns:

Though cloud computing can be a useful tool for consumers, corporations, and countries, cloud computing poses significant privacy concerns for all actors involved. For the consumer, a major concern is that future business models may rely on the use of personal data from consumers of cloud services for advertising or behavioral targeting. This concern brings to light the fundamental problem of cloud computing which is that consumers consent to the secondary use of their personal data only when they are signing up for services, and that “consent” is almost automatically generated. How can the cloud assure users that their private data will be properly protected? It is true that high levels of encryption can be (and are) used, and that many companies also take other precautionary measures, but protective measures vary, and the secondary sources that gain access to information may not protect it as well as the initial source. Moreover, even strong protection measures are vulnerable to hackers. As well, what happens if a jurisdiction, like the Indian government, gains access to information about a foreign national? India still does not have a comprehensive data protection law, nor does it have many forms of redress for violations of privacy. How is that individuals information protected?

These questions give rise to other privacy concerns with respect to the data that is circulated and stored on the cloud, which are the questions of territory, sovereignty, and regulation. Many of these were brought up at the Internet Governance Forum, which took place on the 16th of September including: Which jurisdiction has authority in cases of dispute or digital crime? If you lose data or your data is damaged, stolen, or manipulated, where do you go? Is the violation enforced under local laws, and, if so, under the law of the violator or the law of the violated? If international law, who can access the tribunals, and which tribunals have this jurisdiction? What if a person's data is replicated in two data centres in two different countries? Are the data subject to scrutiny by the officials of all three? Is there a remedy against abuse by any of them? Does it matter whether the country in which the data centre resides does not require a warrant for government access? And how will a consumer know any of that up front? As a corollary, if content is being sent to one country but resides on a data centre in another country, whose data protection standards apply? For example, certain governments in Europe require data retention for limited amount of time for purposes for law enforcement, but other countries may allow retention of data for shorter or longer periods of time.

How are privacy, free/open source, and the cloud related ?

Eben Moglen, a professor from Columbia law school, and founder and chairman of the Software Freedom Law Center who spoke on cloud computing, privacy, and free/open software at the Indian Institute for science on Thursday September 25, had another solution to the privacy concerns that arise out of the cloud. His lecture explains how the internet has moved from a tool that once promoted equality between people – no servants and no masters – to a tool that reinforces social hierarchies. The reinforcement of these hierarchies is directly related to the language used and communication facilitated between the computer and the individual. Professor Moglen describes how initially, when computers were first introduced to the public, humans spoke directly to computers, and computers responded directly to humans. This open, two-way communication changed when Microsoft, Apple, and IBM removed the language between humans and computers and created proprietary software based on a server-client computing relationship. By removing the language between humans and computers, these corporations dis-empowered individuals. Professor Moglen used this as a springboard to address the privacy concerns that come up in cloud computing. Privacy at its base is the ability of an individual to control access to various aspects of self, such as decisional, informational, and locational. In having the ability to control these factors, privacy consists of a relation between a person and another person or an entity. Professor Moglen postulated that free/open access to code would make the internet an environment where choices over that relationship were still in the hands of an individual, and, among other protections, the individuals could build up their desired levels of privacy.

Is free/open software the solution?

Eben Moglen's solution to the many privacy concerns that arise out of cloud computing is the application and use of free software/open source by individuals. Unlike some applications on the cloud, open source is free, and once an individual has access to the code, that person can control how a program functions, including how a program uses personal information, and thus the person would be able to protect their privacy. Of course, this presumes that the consumer of the internet is sophisticated enough to access and manipulate code. But even putting that presumption aside, is the ability to write code enough to protect data (will help you protect data better – add more security)? Perhaps if a person could create his own server and bypass the cloud, but this does not seem like an ideal (or practical) solution. Though free/open source is an important element that should be incorporated into cloud computing, free/open source depends on open standards. According to Pranesh Prakash, in his presentation at the Internet Governance Forum, the role of standards in ensuring interoperability is critical to allowing consumers to choose between different devices to access the cloud, to choose between different software clients, and to shift between one service and another. This would include moving information, both the data and the metadata, from one cloud to another. Clouds would need to be able to talk to one another to enable data sharing, and open source is key to this, though it is important to note that if one uses free/open source, they must set up their own infrastructure.

Conclusion

Even though Moglen believes that free/open source software brings freedom and provides the solution to protect an individual’s privacy in the context of cloud computing, he was not speaking to the specific context of India. To do that, it is important to expand the definitions that one uses of free/open source and privacy, and then to contextualize them. Looking closely at the words “free/open source,” they are not limited to access to a software's code, even though that is free/open source’s base. For the ideology of free/open source to work, access to code is just a key to the puzzle. A person, community, culture and state must understand the purpose of free/open source, know how to use it, and know how it can be applied in order for it to be transformative, liberating, and protective. There needs to be a shared understanding that free/open source is not just about being able to change code, but about a shared commitment to sharing code and making it transparent and accessible. In the United States and other countries, free/open source did not just enter into American society and immediately fix issues of privacy by bringing freedom, as it seems Professor Moglen is suggesting free/open source will do in India. Though Professor Moglen promises freedom and privacy protection through free/open source, perhaps this is not an honest appraisal of the technology. Free/open source, if not equally accessed or misapplied, protects neither freedom nor privacy. As noted above, even if a person has access to code, he can protect data only to a certain extent. Thus, he might think that he has created a privacy wall around information that actually is readily accessible. In other words, free/open source cannot be the only answer to freedom, but instead a piece to a collective answer.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/privacy/privacy-cloud-computing

Privacy vs. Transparency: An Attempt at Resolving the Dichotomy

sunil — 2015-03-08T06:26:21Z

The right to privacy has been articulated in international law and in some national laws. In a few countries where the constitution does not explicitly guarantee such a right, courts have read the right to privacy into other rights (e.g., the right to life, the right to equal treatment under law and also the right to freedom of speech and expression).

With feedback and inputs from Sumandro Chattapadhyay, Elonnai Hickok, Bhairav Acharya and Geetha Hariharan. I would like to apologize for not providing proper citation to Julian Assange when the first version of this blog entry was published. I would also like to thank Micah Sifry for drawing this failure to his attention. The blog post originally published by Omidyar Network can be read here. Also see http://newint.org/features/2015/01/01/privacy-transparency/

In other countries where privacy is not yet an explicit or implicit right, harm to the individual is mitigated using older confidentiality or secrecy law. After the Snowden affair, the rise of social media and the sharing economy, some corporations and governments would like us to believe that “privacy is dead”. Privacy should not and cannot be dead, because that would mean that security is also dead. This is indeed the most dangerous consequence of total surveillance as it is technically impossible to architect a secure information system without privacy as a precondition. And conversely, it is impossible to guarantee privacy without security as a precondition.

The right to transparency [also known as the right to information or access to information] – while unavailable in international law – is increasingly available in national law. Over the last twenty years this right has become encoded in national laws – and across the world it is being used to hold government accountable and to balance the power asymmetry between states and citizens. Independent and autonomous offices of transparency regulators have been established. Apart from increasing government transparency, corporations are also increasingly required to be transparent as part of generic or industry specific regulation in the public interest. For instance, India’s Companies Act, 2013, requires greater transparency from the private sector. Other areas of human endeavor such as science and development are also becoming increasingly transparent though here it is still left up to self-regulation and there isn’t as much established law. Within science and research more generally, the rise of open data accompanied the growth of the Open Access and citizen science movement.

So the question before us is: Are these two rights – the right to transparency and the right to privacy – compatible? Is it a zero-sum game? Do we have to sacrifice one right to enforce the other? Unfortunately, many privacy and transparency activists think this is the case and this has resulted in some conflict. I suggest that these rights are completely compatible when it comes to addressing the question of power. These rights do not have to be balanced against one another. There is no need to settle for a sub-optimal solution. Rather this is an optimization problem and the solution is as follows: privacy protections must be inversely proportionate to power and as Julian Assange says transparency requirements should be directly proportionate to power.[*]

In most privacy laws, the public interest is an exception to privacy. If public interest is being undermined, then an individual privacy can be infringed upon by the state, by researchers, by the media, etc. And in transparency law, privacy is the exception. If the privacy of an individual can be infringed, transparency is not required unless it is in the public interest. In other words, the “public interest” test allows us to use privacy law and transparency law to address power asymmetries rather than exacerbate them. What constitutes “public interest” is of course left to courts, privacy regulators, and transparency regulators to decide. Like privacy, there are many other exceptions in any given transparency regime including confidentiality and secrecy. Given uneven quality of case law there will be a temptation by the corrupt to conflate exceptions. Here the old common-law principle of “there is no confidence as to the disclosure of iniquity” – which prevents confidentiality law from being used to cover malfeasance or illegality – can be adopted in appropriate jurisdictions.

Around 10 years ago, the transparency movement gave birth to yet another movement – the open government data movement. The tension between privacy and transparency is most clearly seen in the open government data movement. The open government data movement in some parts of the world is dominated by ahistorical and apolitical technologists, and some of them seem intent on reinventing the wheel. In India, ever since the enactment of the Right to Information Act, 2003, 30 transparency activists are either killed, beaten or criminally intimidated every year. This is the statistic from media coverage alone. Many more silently suffer. RTI or transparency is without a doubt one of the most dangerous sectors within civil society that you could choose to work in. In contrast, not a single open data activist has ever been killed, beaten or criminally intimidated. I suspect this is because open data activists do not sufficiently challenge power hierarchies. Let us look a little bit closely at their work cycle. When a traditional transparency activist asks a question, that is usually enough to get them into trouble. When an open data activist publishes an answer [a dataset nicely scrubbed and machine readable, or a visualization, or a tool] they are often frustrated because nobody seems interested in using it. Often even the activist is unclear what the question is. This is because open data activist works where data is available. Open data activists are obsessed with big datasets, which are easier to find at the bottom of the pyramid. They contribute to growing surveillance practices [the nexus between Internet giants, states, and the security establishment] rather that focusing on sousveillance [citizen surveillance of the state, also referred to as citizen undersight or inverse surveillance]. They seem to be obsessed only with tools and technologies, rather than power asymmetries and injustices.

Finally, a case study to make my argument easier to understand – Aadhaar or UID, India’s ambitious centralized biometric identity and authentication management system. There are many serious issues with its centralized topology, proprietary technology, and dependence on biometrics as authentication factors – all of which I have written about in the past. In this article, I will explain how my optimization solution can be applied to the project to make it more effective in addressing its primary problem statement that corruption is a necessary outcome of power asymmetries in India.

In its current avatar – the Aadhaar project hopes to assign biometric-based identities to all citizens. The hope is that, by doing authentication in the last mile, corruption within India’s massive subsidy programmes will be reduced. This, in my view, might marginally reduce retail corruption at the bottom of the pyramid. It will do nothing to address wholesale corruption that occurs as subsidies travel from the top to the bottom of the pyramid. I have advocated over the last two years that we should abandon trying to issue biometric identities to all citizens, thereby making them more transparent to the state. Let us instead issue Aadhaar numbers to all politicians and bureaucrats and instead make the state more transparent to citizens. There is no public interest in reducing privacy for ordinary citizens – the powerless – but there are definitely huge public interest benefits to be secured by increasing transparency of politicians and bureaucrats, who are the powerful.

The Indian government has recently introduced a biometric-based attendance system for all bureaucrats and has created a portal that allows Indian citizens to track if their bureaucrats are arriving late or leaving early. This unfortunately is just bean counting [for being corrupt and being punctual are not mutually exclusive] and public access to the national portal was turned off because of legitimate protests from some of the bureaucrats. What bureaucrats do in office, who they meet, and which documents they process is more important than when they arrive at or depart from work. The increased transparency or reduced privacy was not contributing to the public interest.

Instead of first going after small-ticket corruption at the bottom of the pyramid, maximization of public interest requires us to focus on the top, for there is much greater ROI for the anti-corruption rupee. For example: constructing a digital signature based on audit trails that track all funds and subsidies as they move up and down the pyramid. These audit trails must be made public so that ordinary villagers can be supported by open data activists, journalists, social entrepreneurs, and traditional civil society in verification and course correction.

I hope open data activists, data scientists, and big data experts will draw inspiration from the giants of the transparency movement in India. I hope they will turn their attention to power, examine power asymmetries and then ask how the Aadhaar project can be leveraged to make India more rather than less equal.

Videos

Open Up? 2014: Risky Business: Transparency, Technology, Security, and Human Rights

Open Up? 2014: Data Collection and Sharing: Transparency and the Private Sector

The videos can also be watched on Vimeo:

[*].http://prospect.org/article/real-significance-wikileaks “Transparency should be proportional to the power that one has.”

Read the presentation on Risky Business: Transparency, Technology, Security and Privacy made at the Pecha Kucha session here. (ODP File, 35 kb)

Disclaimer: The views, opinions, and positions expressed by the author(s) of this blog are theirs alone, and do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or positions of Omidyar Network. We make no representations as to accuracy, completeness, timeliness, suitability or validity of any information presented by individual authors of the blogs and will not be liable for any errors, omissions, or delays in this information or any losses, injuries or damages arising from its display or use.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/privacy-v-transparency

Presentation at TIFR: 'Scholarly Communication in the Age of the Commons'

sachia — 2011-04-02T15:42:49Z

CIS Distinguished Fellow Dr. Subbiah Arunachalam will give a talk titled 'Scholarly Communication in the Age of the Commons' at TIFR, Mumbai, on Friday, 24 July 2009.

Dr. Subbiah Arunachalam, Distinguished Fellow, Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore, Scholarly communication in the age of the commons, 24/07/09, 1600Hrs, AG-66

Abstract

Scholarly communication plays a central role in the creation and assimilation of new knowledge, especially in the sciences. In its turn scholarly communication depends on developments in technology. Unfortunately, scientists who do cutting edge science often follow communication practices of a bygone era and are therefore holding back the development of knowledge. In this talk we will look at state-of-the-art developments in scholarly communication and literature-based evaluation of science and see how we in India can benefit by adopting them.

About Dr.Subbiah Arunachalam

Subbiah Arunachalam is an information scientist. He has been an editor of scientific journals, teacher of information science, librarian, and a science writer. As Secretary and Editor of publications of the Indian Academy of Sciences, Bangalore, during 1973-75, he reorganised the publications of the Academy and helped enlarge its Fellowship. Currently he is actively promoting open access to science and scholarship. His interests include scientometrics, science journalism and ICT-enabled rural development.

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See the original posting at the TIFR website here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/presentation-at-tifr-scholarly-communication-in-the-age-of-the-commons

Presentation at IDRC: ‘Scholarly Communication in the Age of the Commons -- A Southern Perspective’

sachia — 2011-04-02T15:59:03Z

Prof. Subbiah Arunachalam, CIS Distinguished Fellow, will give a talk titled 'Scholarly Communication in the Age of the Commons -- A Southern Perspective' at IDRC, Ottawa, Canada, on 13 July 2009.

Brown Bag Presentation: ‘Scholarly communication in the age of the commons - A southern perspective’ by Subbiah Arunachalam, Distinguished Fellow, Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore, India

Date: July 13, 2009

Time: 1400 hr

Location: IDRC

150 Kent Street

Ottawa, ON, Canada

Room 950

RSVP: Nicole Leguerrier nleguerrier@idrc.ca

The toll-access journal system that was set up some 350 years ago and which has served well till a few decades ago evolved, for historical reasons, largely to serve the needs of North-North knowledge exchange and has failed to take cognizance of the aspirations of the South. The need for science to be performed everywhere and take roots in all countries is now well recognized. If OA is so very important to the South, why is the progress slow? While computers, internet access and bandwidths continue to pose problems in a number of southern countries, in general the situation is improving. The more important factor is scientists' apathy. Scientists in the South, by and large, do not exercise their rights to the full; often they give away on a platter copyright to their research papers to journal publishers. The publishers themselves indulge in practices that would entice publishing scientists and librarians to act in ways that would benefit the publishers. Funding agencies and governments of southern countries are not as proactive as they should be.

Focused advocacy on the advantages of the public commons approach can bring about some revolutionary changes. Such advocacy should be aimed at all levels of stakeholders. Some examples of what is being done in India will be presented.

Biography

Subbiah Arunachalam (Arun) is a Distinguished Fellow with the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), Bangalore, a research and advocacy organization that was founded in August 2008. Before then, he was a volunteer for 12 years with the M S Swaminathan Research Foundation, a Chennai-based NGO, promoting the use of information and communication technologies to empower the poor and the marginalized and bring about holistic rural development.

Arun is an advocate of open access to scientific and scholarly literature and has conducted several workshops on knowledge management, electronic publishing, open access archiving, science communication, and South-South Exchange for sharing knowledge among development workers from Asia, Africa and Latin America. Arun has been a Visiting Professor at the Indian Institute of Technology, Chennai, University of Calcutta, Annamalai University, National Institute of Advanced Study, Bangalore, and Asian Collegeof Journalism, Chennai. Immediately after returning to India Arun will join the Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai, as a visiting scientist. Arun has been a member of the Executive Committee of Global Knowledge Partnership (GKP) for two terms, and is currently a member of the International Advisory Board of IICD, The Hague, and a Trustee of both the Voicing the Voiceless Foundation, New Delhi, and the Electronic Publishing Trust for Development, UK.

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Causerie-midi: La communication scientifique à l’ère des biens communs – perspectives du Sud, par Subbiah Arunachalam, chercheur associé de marque au Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore (Inde)

Date: le 13 juillet 2009

Heure: 14 h

Lieu: CRDI

150, rue Kent

Ottawa (Ont.) Canada

pièce 950

RSVP: Nicole Leguerrier (nleguerrier@idrc.ca)

Pour des raisons historiques, le système des publications scientifiques payantes mis en place il y a trois siècles et demi et qui a produit des résultats satisfaisants jusqu’aux dernières décennies sert maintenant, en grande partie, l’échange de connaissances Nord-Nord et ne prend pas en compte les aspirations du Sud. La nécessité de favoriser partout l’activité scientifique et de conforter son enracinement dans tous les pays est aujourd’hui généralement admise. Si le libre accès revêt une telle importance pour le Sud, pourquoi les progrès sont-ils si lents ? Bien que les ordinateurs, l’accès Internet et la bande passante continuent de poser problème dans un grand nombre de pays du Sud, la situation a somme toute tendance à s’améliorer. Le facteur qui joue le plus est dès lors l’apathie des chercheurs. De façon générale, les scientifiques du Sud n’exercent pas pleinement leurs droits : ils cèdent les droits d’auteur sur leur article à l’éditeur de la revue. Et les éditeurs se livrent à des pratiques qui incitent les auteurs et les bibliothécaires à agir à leur avantage. Les bailleurs de fonds et les gouvernements des pays du Sud, quant à eux, ne sont pas aussi proactifs qu’ils le devraient.

Un plaidoyer axé sur les avantages des biens communs pourrait produire des changements révolutionnaires. Ce plaidoyer doit viser toutes les parties prenantes. M. Subbiah Arunachalam livrera des exemples d’initiatives en cours en Inde.

Notice biographique

Subbiah Arunachalam (Arun) est chercheur associé de marque au Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) de Bangalore, un organisme de recherche et de plaidoyer fondé en août 2008. Il a été auparavant bénévole, pendant 12 ans, à la Fondation de recherche M.S.Swaminathan, une ONG de Chennai ayant pour vocation d’encourager le recours aux technologies de l’information et de la communication afin de rendre les populations pauvres et marginalisées plus autonomes et de favoriser un développement rural global.

Arun est partisan du libre accès aux publications scientifiques et savantes et a animé plusieurs ateliers sur la gestion des connaissances, l’édition électronique, l’auto-archivage, les communications scientifiques et les échanges Sud-Sud afin de favoriser la mise en commun des connaissances parmi les professionnels du développement d’Asie, d’Afrique et d’Amérique latine. Il a été professeur invité à l’Institut indien de technologie de Chennai, à l’Université de Calcutta, à l’Université Annamalai et au National Institute of Advanced Studies de Bangalore. Il a siégé au comité exécutif de l’Alliance mondiale pour le savoir (GKP) pendant deux mandats et siège actuellement au comité consultatif international de l’Institut international pour la communication et le développement (IICD), à La Haye, ainsi qu’aux conseils d’administration de la fondation Voicing the Voiceless de New Delhi et de l’Electronic Publishing Trust for Development, au Royaume-Uni.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/idrc-scholarly-communication