Centre for Internet and Society

Comments on the Right to Information Rules, 2017

amber — 2017-04-27T09:25:42Z

On March 31st, 2017, the Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions, Department of Personnel and Training released a Circular framing rules under the Right to Information Act, 2005 (“RTI Rules”). The Ministry invited comments on on the RTI Rules. CIS submitted its comments on April 25, 2017.

1. Preliminary

1.1 On March 31st, 2017, the Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions, Department of Personnel and Training released a Circular framing rules under the Right to Information Act, 2005 (“RTI Rules”). The Ministry invited comments on on the RTI Rules.

2. The Centre for Internet and Society

2.1. The Centre for Internet and Society, (“CIS”), is a non-profit organisation that undertakes interdisciplinary research on internet and digital technologies from policy and academic perspectives. The areas of focus include digital accessibility for persons with diverse abilities, access to knowledge, intellectual property rights, openness (including open data, free and open source software, open standards, and open access), internet governance, telecommunication reform, digital privacy, and cyber-security.

3. Comments

3.1 General Comments

The new RTI Rules introduce various procedural hurdles and provides a great deal of discretionary power to the CIC in dealing with RTI applications and appeals. One of the provisions which has attracted attention in the past also is the abatement of appeals upon the death of the RTI applications. This provision, explored in more detail is especially objectionable in light of the threats that RTI activists face.

3.2 Specific Comments

3.2.1 Rule 4 of the RTI Rules states that the fees for providing information under the RTI Act would be ‘as notified by Central Government from time to time’. While the RTI Rules also prescribe the fee for filing RTI applications, this phrase provides a window to increase the fees through subsequent notifications. We recommend that the phrase “or as notified by Central Government from time to time” be deleted in order prevent prohibitive increase in the fees in future.

3.2.2 Rule 4 of the RTI Rules also specifies the fees for provision of information via floppies and diskettes. There is no plausible reason to engage in continued rulemaking applicable to outdated modes of data storage. It would be of much more help if the rules were to prescribe fees for CDs, DVDs and email. We also submit that no fees need be charged for information provided through emails, and this mode of communication must be adopted where possible.

3.2.3 Rule 8 (1)(viii) states that every appellant must affirm that they have not filed an appeal pertaining to similar matters before the Commission or any court. However, the same matter can lead to multiple counts of causes of actions, and the principle of res judicata barring further action should not apply in these cases. Therefore, it is recommended that this requirement is deleted.

3.2.4 Rule 12 permits the withdrawal of an appeal on the request of the appellant and the abatement of an appeal on the death of the appellant. This provisions needs to be evaluated in light of the increasing number of cases of threats received by RTI activists. There have been close to 400 documented cases of attacks on RTI applicants,[1] including cases of murder and physical assault. This provision will serve to enable withdrawal of RTI appeals through harassment and other means of coercion.

Further, the abatement of an appeal upon death of an RTI appellant is a clause without any merit and could translate into murders of appellants to cause abatement of the appeal. Additionally, the Supreme Court’s judgment in the matter of Union of India v. Namit Sharma[2] must be kept in mind which clarified the position that RTI applications and appeals are not in the nature of lis and deal with the question of whether requested information ought to be disclosed. Therefore, there is no reason why appeals should abate upon the demise of the appellant.

3.2.5 Rule 14 permits the CIC to return complaints due to non-compliance with the procedural rules in Rule 13. Such rules[3] have been used in the past to return complaints on unreasonable or artificial grounds. This is an example of additional procedural hurdles introduced by through the rulemaking process instead of making the process more citizen friendly.

3.2.6 Rule 15 (iii) of the RTI Rules gives the CIC the discretion to close a case without even allowing hearing to the applicant. There is no requirement on the CIC to provide a detailed reasoning of its determination either. This rule is in violation of the right to be heard before adjudication under natural justice principles.

3.7 The redressal mechanism under Rule 16 of the RTI Rules leaves a lot to be desired. Beginning with the use of the term ‘communication’ to refer to the complaint regarding a non-compliance of the CIC’s order, the rule takes a cavalier approach to addressing the significant number of cases of non-compliance with the CIC’s order. Further, there is no clear procedure spelt out with regard to how the CIC will deal with such matters and whether parties may be heard before making an adjudication. Further, there is an inconsistency in that a communication may be rejected if not submitted in the prescribed format, whereas in the case of appeals it clearly stated that they may not be returned/rejected only on the ground of non-compliance with the format.

[1] http://attacksonrtiusers.org

[2] https://indiankanoon.org/doc/47938967/

[3] Rule 9 of the RTI Rules, 2012.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/comments-on-the-right-to-information-rules-2017

Comments on the Open Licensing Policy Guidelines of the National Mission on Education through Information and Communication Technology

nehaa — 2014-06-30T11:26:44Z

The Centre for Internet and Society submitted its comments on the Open Licensing Policy Guidelines to the National Mission on Education through Information and Communication Technology (NMEICT), Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India, on May 28, 2014. The comments were prepared by Sunil Abraham and Nehaa Chaudhari.

I. PRELIMINARY

1.1 This submission presents comments from the Centre for Internet and Society (“CIS”)[1] on the Open Licensing Policy Guidelines (“Guidelines”) of the National Mission on Education through Information and Communication Technology (“NMEICT”).

1.2.The Guidelines provide a set of recommendations and procedures to ensure that content produced under the NMEICT is openly licensed.

1.3 CIS commends the NMEICT for this initiative, and appreciates the opportunity to provide feedback on the Guidelines. CIS’ comments are as stated hereafter.

II. SECTION-WISE COMMENTS

2.1 Preamble

2.1.1 Recognizing the role of intergovernmental agencies in promoting the use of open licenses, the Preamble makes a reference to the 2012 Paris OER Declaration.[2] CIS appreciates this inclusion and suggests that reference may also be made to another important declaration, i.e., the Cape Town Open Education Declaration, released in 2008,[3] which encourages the publishers and governments to make available, at no charge, via the internet, publicly funded educational materials.

2.2 Principles of Openness

2.2.1 The first principle[4] requires the treatment of information products as “national resources.” The phrase “national resource” most often used in connection with rivers, forests, mines and minerals or spectrum would imply specific legal connotations and might therefore prove to be a misnomer for information products. It is suggested that “national resources” be replaced with “commons” or, alternatively, the sentence be restructured to state that content, software and technology would be treated as “information commons”.

2.2.2 The third principle[5] states that “information and knowledge resources” shall be available “freely”. “Freely” has a wide array of connotations including the absence of restrictions and the absence of payment/costs. It is suggested that “freely” be further clarified and perhaps be replaced with “on a gratis basis”.

2.2.3. The fifth principle deals with the transfer of “all intellectual property rights” to the Government of India and the retention of “moral rights” with the contributor. Intellectual property rights is a wider term including among others copyright and related rights, patents, trademarks and industrial designs. There are two types of right under copyright- moral rights (of attribution for the work) and economic rights (which allow the owner to derive financial benefit and reward from the use of her/his work).[6] It is submitted that the intention behind the fifth principle is seemingly to transfer all economic rights to the Government of India while ensuring due credit to the author/contributor for her/his work. “Intellectual property rights” being a wider term would be a misnomer in this sense, as would the use of “copyright”, since this does not appreciate the distinction between economic and moral rights. Therefore, it is suggested that “intellectual property rights” be replaced with “economic rights” for the applicable branch of copyright law.

2.2.4. The sixth principle deals with the release of information and knowledge resources in a “suitable open licence”. “Suitable open licence” could include both indigenously developed as well as existing licences. It is submitted that in the interests of interoperability, one of the fundamental principles of open access, it would be appropriate to adopt an existing system of licensing. It is recommended therefore, that the Creative Commons approach could be adopted for content and the GNU or BSD licenses could be considered for software. It is strongly suggested that “suitable open licence” be replaced with a specific license framework to ensure interoperability, particularly between information and knowledge resources produced by other nations also funding and adopting OER.

2.3 Guidelines

2.3.1 The second guideline mandates a single portal/gateway for all knowledge resources under this project. It is suggested that this be replaced with the adoption of the principle ‘lots of copies keep stuff safe’, the basis for the LOCKSS Program of Stanford University.[7] The LOCKSS Program allows participating libraries to take custody of and preserve access to the content to which they have subscribed. It is suggested that a similar approach be adopted towards the content being developed under the NMEICT OER project.

2.3.2. The fourth guideline makes a reference to the possible adoption of a CC-BY-SA licence to make content available. The rationale behind a Share-Alike clause could be to prevent the appropriation of the education market by ‘rent seekers’. However, it is necessary to examine this further. The danger of appropriation and subsequent monopolization of content is one that needs to be addressed provided that the process of content creation itself is dependent on contributions from subsequent utilizers of content. Content under the NMEICT model is developed as a result of government contributions and is not dependent on subsequent utilizers feeding back into the system, thus invalidating the need for a Share -Alike clause. Additionally the absence of a Share-Alike clause is likely to incentivise private participation. Private players would have the freedom to utilize the content generated under this scheme, modify and develop it further and make it available in the market for sale. This would be extremely useful in meeting the last mile connectivity and ensuring the wider availability of content. It is therefore submitted that that the licence to be adopted should be CC-BY.

2.3.3. The fifth guideline places a requirement on the grantee/creator to intimate the NMEICT about the use of other open license materials. It is submitted that this could be excessive regulation. It is suggested that this guideline be modified and a two- fold requirement be placed on the content creator/grantee- one, to specify clearly and explicitly the licence being used and the licensing conditions in her/his work, and two, to attribute any and all content used to the rightful creator and holder of copyright.

2.3.4. The eighth guideline mandates the use of “open formats” for delivery of outputs. It is suggested that “open formats” be replaced with the mandatory adherence to “open standards” and a reference be made to the National Policy for Open Standards notified in 2010. The eighth guideline also discourages the use of proprietary software. It is submitted that the requirements of sharing the source file along with the relevant APIs need a more detailed explanation. It is suggested that the difference between a development platform/environment and the software written subsequently over this platform be clarified. Notwithstanding that the former may be proprietary if no other alternative is available, developers/creators/licensees would be obligated to openly license any code/software they create using the platform. It is suggested that it ought to be made explicit that there shall be no choice for the latter and that the choice was limited to the type of platform being employed.

2.3.5. It is suggested that a ninth guideline be included. This guideline would deal with accessibility for persons with disabilities. The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0[8] may be referenced and invoked.

CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS

3.1. CIS welcomes the initiative of the NMEICT towards the adoption of an OER Policy. These Guidelines, while indeed addressing the important issues associated towards the end of adoption of an OER Policy, would be further strengthened by addressing the concerns enumerated above.

3.2. CIS is thankful to the NMEICT for the opportunity to provide feedback on this Policy. As a non-governmental research organization working in the areas of Openness and[9] and Access to Knowledge,[10] CIS appreciates this effort by the NMEICT, and would be privileged to work with the Government on this and other matters in these areas.

[1].See www.cis-india.org (last accessed 26 May, 2014).

[2].See http://www.unesco.org/new/fileadmin/MULTIMEDIA/HQ/CI/CI/pdf/Events/Paris%20OER%20Declaration_01.pdf (last accessed 26 May, 2014).

[3].See http://www.capetowndeclaration.org/read-the-declaration (last accessed 26 May, 2014).

[4].See 2(a), Principles of Openness of the Guidelines.

[5].See 2(c), Principles of Openness of the Guidelines.

[6]. See illustratively http://www.wipo.int/freepublications/en/intproperty/909/wipo_pub_909.html#moral_rights (last accessed 26 May, 2014); http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/property/library/moralprimer.html (last accessed 26 May, 2014); http://www.ipo.gov.uk/types/copy/c-otherprotect/c-moralrights.htm (last accessed 26 May, 2014).

[7]. See http://www.lockss.org/about/what-is-lockss/ (last accessed 26 May, 2014).

[8].See http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20/ (last accessed 28 May, 2014).

[9].See http://cis-india.org/openness (last accessed 26 May, 2014).

[10].See http://cis-india.org/a2k (last accessed 26 May, 2014).

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/comments-on-open-licensing-policy-guidelines-of-national-mission-on-education-through-information-and-communication-technology

Comments on the National Geospatial Policy (Draft, V.1.0), 2016

sumandro — 2016-06-30T09:40:59Z

The Department of Science and Technology published the first public draft of the National Geospatial Policy (v.1.0) on May 05, 2016, and invited comments from the public. CIS submitted the following comments in response. The comments were authored by Adya Garg, Anubha Sinha, and Sumandro Chattapadhyay.

1. Preliminary

1.1. This submission presents comments and recommendations by the Centre for Internet and Society ("CIS") on the proposed draft of the National Geospatial Policy 2016 ("the draft Policy / the draft NGP") [1]. This submission is based on Version 1.0 of the draft Policy released by the Department of Science and Technology ("DST") on May 5, 2016.

1.2. CIS commends the DST under the aegis of the Ministry of Science and Technology, Government of India, for its efforts at seeking inputs from various stakeholders to draft a National Geospatial Policy. CIS is thankful for this opportunity to provide a clause-by-clause submission.

2. The Centre for Internet and Society

2.1. The Centre for Internet and Society, CIS, [2] is a non-profit organisation that undertakes interdisciplinary research on internet and digital technologies from policy and academic perspectives. The areas of focus include digital accessibility for persons with diverse abilities, access to knowledge, intellectual property rights, openness (including open data, free and open source software, open standards, open access, open educational resources, and open video), internet governance, telecommunication reform, digital privacy, and cyber-security. The academic research at CIS seeks to understand the reconfiguration of social processes and structures through the internet and digital media technologies, and vice versa.

2.2. This submission is consistent with CIS’ commitment to safeguarding general public interest, and the interests and rights of various stakeholders involved. The comments in this submission aim to further the principle of citizens’ right to information, instituting openness-by-default in governmental activities, and the various kinds of public goods that can emerge from greater availability of open (geospatial) data created by both public and private agencies and crucially, by the citizens. The submission is limited to those clauses that most directly have an impact on these principles.

3. Comments and Recommendations

This section presents comments and recommendations directed at the draft policy as a whole, and in certain places, directed at specific clauses of the draft policy.

3.1. The draft policy should make references to five policies applicable to geospatial data, products, services, and solutions

3.1.1. CIS observes that the draft policy lists the key policies related to geospatial information and sharing of government data, namely the National Map Policy 2005, the Civil Aviation Requirement 2012, the Remote Sensing Data Policy 2011 and 2012, and the National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy 2012 (“NDSAP”).

3.1.2. CIS submits that apart from the policies mentioned above, Geospatial Data,Products, Services and Solutions (“GDPSS”) are also intricately linked to concepts of “open standards,” “open source software,” “open API,” “right to information,” and prohibited places” These concepts are governed by specific acts and policies, and are applicable to geospatial data, as follows:

Adoption of Open Standards: CIS observes that the draft policy captures the importance of open standards in the section 1.4 of the draft policy. It states that “A very high resolution and highly accurate framework to function as a national geospatial standard for all geo-referencing activity through periodically updated National Geospatial Frame [NGF] and National Image Frame [NIF] by ensuring open standards based seamless interoperable geospatial data.”

CIS submits that the Policy on Open Standards for e-Governance [3] which establishes the Guidelines for usage of open standards to ensure seamless interoperability, and the Implementation Guidelines of the National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy, 2012 [4] listing two key open standards for geospatial data - KML and GML, should be mentioned in the draft policy.

CIS recommends that the final version of the NGP embrace open standards as a key principle of all software projects and infrastructures within the purview of the Policy. This is essential for easier sharing and reuse of open (geospatial) data.
Adoption of Open Source Software: The Policy on Adoption of Open Source Software for Government of India states that the “Government of India shall endeavour to adopt Open Source Software in all e-Governance systems implemented by various Government organisations, as a preferred option in comparison to Closed Source Software” [5]. As the draft policy proposed to guide the development of GDPSS being developed and implemented both by the Government of India and by other agencies (academic, commercial, and otherwise), it must include an explicit reference and embracing of this mandate for adoption of Open Source Software, for reasons of reducing expenses, avoiding vendor lock-ins, re-usability of software components, enabling public accountability, and greater security of software systems.
Implementation of Open APIs: To actualise the stated principle to “[e]nable promotion, adoption and implementation of emerging / state of the art technologies” as well as to ensure the “[a]vailability of all geospatial data collected through public funded mechanism to all users,” CIS suggests that final version of the NGP must refer to and operationalise the Policy on Open Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) for Government of India [6]. This will ensure that the openly available geospatial data is available to the public, as well as to all the government agencies, in a structured digital format that is easy to consume and use on one hand, and is available for various forms of value addition and innovation on the other.
Right to Information Act 2005: The framework for reactive disclosure of information and data collected and held by the Government of India, as well as the basis for proactive disclosure of the same, is enshrined in the Right to Information Act 2005 [7]. The draft NGP, CIS proposes, should refer to this Act, and ensure that whenever an Indian citizen request for such government data and/or information that is of geospatial in nature, and the requested data and/or information is both shareable and non-sensitive, the citizen must be provided with the geospatial data and/or information in an open standard and under open license, as applicable.
Refer to Official Secrets Act, 1923: The Official Secrets Act defines “Prohibited Places” and prohibits all activities involving “sketch, plan, model, or note which is calculated to be or might be or is intended to be, directly; or indirectly, useful to an enemy or (c) obtains collects, records or publishes or communicates to any other person any secret official code or password, or any sketch, plan, model, article or note or other document or information which is calculated to be or might be or is intended to be, directly or indirectly, useful to an enemy” [8]. This provides the fundamental legal basis for regulation, expunging, and stopping circulation of geospatial data containing information about Vulnerable Points and Vulnerable Areas. CIS submits that this Act should be referred to in this context of ensuring non-publication of sensitive geospatial data (that is geospatial data related to Prohibited Places).

3.2. Grant adequate permissions to the public to re-use geospatial data

3.2.1. CIS observes that section 1.4 of the draft policy states that, “Geospatial data of any resolution being disseminated through agencies and service providers, both internationally and nationally be treated as unclassified and made available and accessible by Indian Mapping and imaging agencies.”

3.2.2. CIS recommends the abovementioned section be broadened to include not only availability and accessibility of geospatial data, but also its re-use. Further, such accessibility, availability and re-use should not be only limited to public and private entities such as Indian mapping and imaging agencies, but as well as to Indian people in general.

3.2.3. CIS further submits that section 1.4 be revised as “[g]eospatial data of any resolution being disseminated through agencies and service providers, both internationally and nationally be treated as unclassified and made available, accessible, and reusable by Indian mapping and imaging agencies in particular, and by the people of India in general.”

3.3. Ensure Open Access to shareable and non-sensitive geospatial data

3.3.1. CIS observes that the draft policy directs all “geospatial data generating agencies” to classify their data into “open access,” “registered access,” and “restricted access.” The document, however, neither defines “geospatial data generating agencies”, nor does it clarify what conditions the data must satisfy to be classified as one of the three types. Without a listing of such conditions (at least necessary, and not sufficient, conditions), nothing restricts the agencies from classifying all generated geospatial data as “restricted.”

3.3.2. Further, CIS observes that the draft policy aims to provide geospatial data acquired through public funded mechanism to be made available to the public at free of cost. It is submitted that the policy should not only be made available for free of cost, but it should also be made available in open standard format under an open license.

3.3.3. As defined in the section 1.3, the National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy (“NDSAP”) applies to “all shareable non-sensitive data available either in digital or analog forms but generated using public funds” [9]. Clearly all shareable [10] and non-sensitive [11] geospatial data, either in digital or analog forms, and generated using public funds should be proactively disclosed by the government agency concerns in accordance to the NDSAP. CIS recommends that the draft policy makes an explicit reference to NDSAP when discussing the topic of Open Access geospatial data, and re-iterates the mandate of proactive publication of shareable and non-sensitive government data.

3.3.4. Further, the process for defining an open government data license to be applied to all open government data sets being published under the NDSAP, and through the Open Government Data Platform India, is in progress. Given this, it is absolutely crucial important that the draft NGP takes this into consideration, and mandates that Open Access geospatial data must be published using the open government data license to be defined by the Implementation Guidelines of the NDSAP, when applicable.

3.4. Lack of clarity regarding the clearances and permits required for data acquisition and dissemination, and the procedures thereof

3.4.1. Section 1.8 of the draft policy states that “[a]ll clearances / permits, as necessary, for data acquisition and dissemination be through a single window, online portal. These clearances be provided within a time span of 30 days of filing the online request.” CIS observes that the draft policy does not specify the kind of clearances/permits needed before a public or private entity, or an individual, can undertake acquisition and dissemination of geospatial data. It neither clarifies under what circumstances and conditions application for such clearance / permits would be required for users.

3.4.2. Since the recently published draft Geospatial Information Regulation Bill (“GIRB”) 2016, directly addresses this topic of clearance / permit required to acquire and share geospatial information [12], it will be effective if the NGP can refer to this Bill and provide an overall governance framework for the same. Further, CIS noted that the time span of 30 days mentioned in the draft policy is inconsistent with the time period specified in the GIRB (which is 90 days).

3.4.3. CIS recommends that the draft policy also be amended suitably to include the circumstances and conditions under which required permissions shall be issued. Accordingly, the draft policy should reference the standardised and time bound security vetting process envisaged in the GIRB.

3.5. Clarification Needed regarding “Cybersecurity is to be ensured through … use of Digital Watermarks for authentication of GDPSS”

3.5.1. CIS submits that the draft policy does not elaborate on the use of “Digital Watermarks” to ensure cybersecurity, neither it is explained who will authenticate GDPSS, under what conditions, and for what reasons. CIS recommends that the draft policy be amended suitably to specify the same.

3.6. Remove Classification of Non-Public (at Present) Satellite / Aerial Imagery as Restricted by Default

3.6.1. CIS observes that the draft policy recommends that “[s]atellite/aerial images of resolution other than those currently made available on websites” should all be “classified for restricted access.”

3.6.2. CIS submits that blanket categorisation of all satellite / aerial imagery of resolution that is not currently available through a public website (for whatever reason it might be) as “restricted access” should be re-evaluated, given the immense importance of such imagery to mapping agencies and industry participants using GDPSS.

3.6.3. CIS recommends that the section be revised to define clear principles for defining satellite /aerial imagery as “open,” “registered,” and “restricted.”

3.7. Governance of User-contributed Geospatial Data

3.7.1. A key resource and feature of contemporary geospatial industry in particular, and the digital economy in general, is the proliferation of user-contributed and user-generated geospatial data and information. CIS observes that this crucial topic, as well as the unique governance concerns that it raises, has not been addressed in the draft policy at all. CIS requests the DST to consider this matter with due attention to the specific nature and values of such user-contributed and user-generated in the digital economy on one hand, and in emergency contexts such as natural disasters on the other, and prepare a framework for its appropriate governance as part of the NGP itself.

3.8. Protect Geospatial Privacy of Citizens by Defining Sensitive Personal Geospatial Data and Information

3.8.1. CIS observes that the draft policy lacks rules for collection, use, storage, and distribution of geospatial data from an individual’s privacy standpoint. Further, neither does the Information Technology (Reasonable Security Practices and Procedures and Sensitive Personal Data or Information) Rules, 2011 address these concerns [13]. Section 3 of the Rules define “Sensitive personal data or information”, which do not include geospatial information.

3.8.2. The argument of violation of constitutional right to privacy was pleaded in a case against Google and other private mapping agencies in 2008 [14]. In the judgment, Madras HIgh Court noted that there existed no legislation/guidelines to prohibit mapping programmes from conducting their activities indiscriminately, and the lack of one thereof prevented the Court from injuncting such activities. Thus, there exists a judicial ambiguity on the aspect of collection and use of geospatial data.

3.8.3. CIS submits that the draft policy may be suitably amended to ensure that collection, processing and dissemination of geospatial information is in consonance with the constitutionally protection of an individual’s privacy.

3.9. Clarification Needed regarding “Mechanisms to be put in place to evaluate / audit GDPSS creation, consumption and distribution”

3.9.1. The draft policy suggests that “mechanisms to be put in place to evaluate/audit GDPSS creation, consumption and distribution” without clarifying the scope, purpose, and purview of this mechanism, and most crucially it does not describe what exactly will be evaluated / audited. CIS submits that this section is revised and expanded.

3.9.2. The same section also identifies the need for a “framework to be put in place to assess the data collection versus its utilization towards government program and socio-economic development.” CIS observes that this is a very promising and much welcome gesture by the DST, but this section must be developed as a separate and detailed mandate. At the least, the NGP may suggest that a more detailed guideline document regarding this framework will be developed in near future.

3.10. Data Taxation and Geospatial Cess

3.10.1. The draft policy refers to imposition of “data taxation (geospatial cess)” and use of “licensing” of geospatial data to raise money for geospatial activities of the Government of India. CIS is of the opinion will severely affect the geospatial industry in the country in particular, and will raise the monetary barrier to public use of geospatial data and maps in general; and hence must be strictly avoided.

3.11. Data Dissemination Cell

3.11.1. CIS submits that instead of development of a separate Data Dissemination Cell within all government agencies to operationalise the mandate of the NGP, the Chief Data Officers within all government agencies identified under the implementation process of the NDSAP be given this complementary responsibility. This would ensure effective channelisation of human and financial resources to take forward the joint mandate of NGP and NDSAP towards greater public availability and use of (shareable and non-sensitive) government data.

3.12. Special Infrastructure for Governance, Management, and Publication of Real-time Geospatial Data

3.12.1. A key term that the draft policy does not talk about is “big data.” The static or much-slowly-changing geospatial data such as national boundaries and details of Vulnerable Points and Vulnerable Areas are really a very small part of of the global geospatial information. The much larger and crucial part is the real-time (that is continuously produced, stored, analysed, and used in almost real-time) 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 collected by digital devices 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 NGP.

3.12.2. Further, with increasing number of government assets being geo-referenced for the purpose of more effective and real-time management, especially in the transportation sector, the corresponding agencies (which are often not mapping agencies) are acquiring a vast amount of high-velocity geospatial data, which needs to be analysed and (sometimes) published in the real-time. CIS submits a sincere request to DST to highlight the crucial need for special infrastructure for such data, as well as its governance, and identify the key principles concerned in the next version of the draft NGP.

3.13. Sincere Request for Preparation and Circulation of a Second Public Draft of the National Geospatial Policy

3.13.1. CIS commends the DST for publishing the draft policy, and facilitating a consultation process inviting stakeholders and civil society to submit feedback. The NGP envisages to address crucial concepts of privacy, licensing, intellectual property rights, liability, national security, open data, which cut across and impact various technology platforms, industries and the citizens.

3.13.2. In view of the multifarious issues highlighted that arise at the intersection of various legal and ethical concepts, CIS respectfully requests the DST to conduct another round of consultation after the publication of the second draft of the NGP. Multiple rounds of consultation and feedback would contribute to the robustness of the lawmaking process and ensure that the final policy safeguards the general public interest, and the interests and rights of various stakeholders involved.

3.13.3. CIS is thankful to DST for the opportunity to provide comments, and would be privileged to provide further assistance on the matter to DST.

Endnotes

[1] See: http://www.dst.gov.in/sites/default/files/Draft-NGP-Ver%201%20ammended_05May2016.pdf.

[2] See: http://cis-india.org/.

[3] See: https://egovstandards.gov.in/sites/default/files/Published%20Documents/Policy_on_Open_Standards_for_e-Governance.pdf.

[4] See: http://data.gov.in/sites/default/files/NDSAP.pdf.

[5] See: http://deity.gov.in/sites/upload_files/dit/files/policy_on_adoption_of_oss.pdf.

[6] See: http://deity.gov.in/sites/upload_files/dit/files/Open_APIs_19May2015.pdf.

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

[8] See: http://www.archive.india.gov.in/allimpfrms/allacts/3314.pdf, sections 2(d) and 3(b).

[9] See: https://data.gov.in/sites/default/files/NDSAP.pdf.

[10] See section 2.11 of NDSAP.

[11] See section 2.10 of NDSAP.

[12] See: http://mha.nic.in/sites/upload_files/mha/files/GeospatialBill_05052016_eve.pdf.

[13] See: http://deity.gov.in/sites/upload_files/dit/files/GSR313E_10511%281%29.pdf.

[14] J. Mohanraj v (1) Secretary To Government, Delhi; (2) Indian Space Research Organisation, Bangalore; (3) Google India Private Limited, Bangalore, 2008 Indlaw MAD 3562.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/comments-on-the-national-geospatial-policy-draft-v-1-0-2016

Comments on the Draft National Policy on Software Products

Anubha Sinha, Rohini Lakshané, and Udbhav Tiwari — 2016-12-12T14:45:11Z

The Centre for Internet & Society submitted public comments to the Department of Electronics & Information Technology (DeitY), Ministry of Information & Communications Technology, Govt. of India on the National Policy of Software Products on December 9, 2016.

I. Preliminary

1. This submission presents comments by the Centre for Internet and Society, India (“CIS”) on the Draft National Policy on Software Products [1] (“draft policy”), released by the Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology (“MeitY ”).

2. CIS commends MeitY on its initiative to present a draft policy, and is thankful for the opportunity to put forth its views in this public consultation period.

3. This submission is divided into three main parts. The first part, ‘Preliminary’, introduces the document; the second part, ‘About CIS’, is an overview of the organization; and, the third part contains the comments by CIS on the Draft National Policy on Software Products.

II. About CIS

4. CIS is a non-profit organisation [2] that undertakes interdisciplinary research on internet and digital technologies from policy and academic perspectives. The areas of focus include digital accessibility for persons with diverse abilities, access to knowledge, intellectual property rights, openness (including open data, free and open source software, open standards, open access, open educational resources, and open video), internet governance, telecommunication reform, freedom of speech and expression, intermediary liability, digital privacy, and cyber security.

5. CIS values the fundamental principles of justice, equality, freedom and economic development. This submission is consistent with CIS' commitment to these values, the safeguarding of general public interest and the protection of India's national interest at the international level. Accordingly, the comments in this submission aim to further these principles.

III. Comments on the Draft National Policy on Software Products

General Comments

6. CIS commends MeitY on its initiative to develop a consolidated National Policy on Software Products. We believe that there are certain salient points in the draft policy that deserve particular appreciation for being in the interest of all stakeholders, especially the public. An indicative list of such points include:

A focus on aiding digital inclusion via software, especially in the fields of finance, education and healthcare.
The recognition of the need for openness and application of open data principles in the private and public sector. Identifying the need for diversification of the information technology sector into regions outside the developed cities in India.
Identifying the need for innovation and original research in emerging fields such as Internet of Things and Big Data.

7. We observe that the draft policy weighs in the favour of creating a thriving digital economy, which indeed is a commendable objective per se. However, there are certain aspects which remain to be addressed by the draft policy, to ensure that the growth of our domestic software industry truly achieves the vision set out in Digital India for better delivery of government services and maximisation of the public interest.

8. We submit that the proposed policy should include certain additional guiding principles to direct creation of software and its end-utilisation. These principles would ensure responsible, inclusive, judicious and secure software product life cycle by all the relevant stakeholders, including the industry, the government and especially the public. An indicative list of such principles that we believe should be explicitly included in the policy are:

Ensuring that internationally accepted principles of privacy are followed in software development and utilisation, including public awareness.
Requiring basic yet sufficient standards of information security to ensure protection of user data at all stages of the software product life cycle.
Enforcing lingual diversity in software to allow for India’s diverse population to operate indigenous software in an inclusive manner.
Mandating minimum standards on accessibility in software creation, procurement and implementation to ensure sustainable use by the differently-abled.
Focusing on transparency & accountability in software procurement for all public funded projects.
Implementing the utilisation of Free and Open Source Software (“FOSS”) in the execution of public funded projects as per the mandate of the Policy on Adoption of Open Source Software for Government of India; thereby incentivising the creation of FOSS for use in both private and public sector.
For software to be truly inclusive of the goals of Digital India, it is essential that to provide supports to Indic languages and scripts without yielding an inferior experience or results for the end user in non-English interfaces. Software already deployed should be translated and localised.

9. The inclusion of these principles in substantive clauses of the policy will go a long way in ensuring the sustainable and transparent growth of domestic software product ecosystem.

Specific Comments

10. Development of a robust Electronic Payment Infrastructure

10.1. CIS observes that clauses 5.4 and 6.7 of the draft policy aim to establish a seamless electronic payment infrastructure. We submit that an electronic payment infrastructure should be designed with strong standards of information security, privacy and inclusivity (both accessibility and lingual).

10.2. We recommend that the policy mandate minimum standards of information security, privacy and inclusivity in all payment systems across private and public sectors. The policy should, therefore, ideally specify the respective standards for these categories, for instance ISO 27001 and National Policy on Universal Electronics Accessibility [3], alongside other industry standards for Electronic Payment Infrastructure.

11. Government Procurement

11.1. CIS observes that clause 6.1 of the draft policy seeks to develop a framework for inclusion of Indian software in government procurement. It is commendable that the draft policy identifies the need for a better framework. CIS notes that the existing procurement procedure allows for usage of Indian software. In fact, the Government e-Marketplace(eGM) already has begun to incorporate some of these principles in general procurement.

11.2. Indeed, the presence of a transparent and accountable government procurement, which leverages technology and the internet, is key to ensuring a sustainable and fair market. CIS recommends that the policy refer to these guiding principles to enable the development of a viable cache of Indian software products by creating more avenues, including government procurement.

12. Incentives for Digital India oriented software

12.1. CIS observes that clause 6.3 of the draft policy incentivises the creation of software addressing the action pillars of the commendable Digital India programme.

12.2. For development of superior quality software which will ensure excellent success of the Digital India programme, CIS recommends that the incentives should be provided contingent to the incorporation of certain minimum standards of software development. Such products and services should, inter alia, adhere to the stipulations under National Policy on Universal Electronics Accessibility, the Guidelines for Indian Government Websites, Information Technology (Reasonable security practices and procedures and sensitive personal data or information) Rules, 2011, etc. In the process, the software should be subjected to reviews by a neutral entity to gauge the compliance with the abovementioned minimum standards.

13. Increasing adoption of Open APIs and Open Data

13.1. CIS observes that clause 6.6 of the draft policy promotes the use of open APIs and open data in development of e-government services.

13.2. We strongly recommend that open APIs and open data principles be adopted by software used in all government organizations, and non-commercial software . Open Data and Open APIs can serve a vital role in ensuring transparent, accountable and efficient governance, which can be leveraged in a major way within the policy by the public and civil society.

14. Creation of Enabling Environment for Innovation, R&D, and IP Creation and Protection

14.1. CIS observes that clause 8.1 of the draft policy seeks to create an enabling environment for innovation, R&D, and IP creation and protection.

14.2. CIS submits that the existing TRIPS-compliant Indian intellectual property law regime is adequately designed to incentivise creativity and innovation in the area of software development. The Indian Patents Act, 1970 read with the Guidelines for Examination of Computer Related Inventions, 2016 do not permit the patenting of computer programmes per se. Several Indian software developers, notably small and medium sized development companies have made evidence-based submissions to the government previously on the negative impact of software patenting on software innovation [4].

14.3. CIS recommends that the proposed policy re-affirm the adequacy of the Indian intellectual property regime to protect software development, in compliance with the TRIPS Agreement.

IV. Conclusion

15. CIS commends the MeitY on the development of the draft policy. We strongly urge MeitY to address the issues highlighted above, especially emphasising the incorporation of essential principles such as information security, privacy, accessibility, etc. Adoption of such measures will ensure a fair balance between commercial growth of domestic software industry and the maximisation of public interest.

[1]. National Policy on Software Products (2016, Draft internal v1. 15) available at http://meity.gov.in/sites/upload_files/dit/files/National%20Policy%20on%20Software%20Products.pdf

[2]. See The Centre for Internet and Society, available at http://cis- india.org for details of the organization,and our work.

[3]. See http://meity.gov.in/sites/upload_files/dit/files/Accessible-format-National%20Policy%20on%20Universal%20Electronics.pdf

[4]. See http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/52159304.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_me dium=text&utm_campaign=cppst

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/comments-on-draft-national-policy-on-software-products

Comments on the draft National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy

pranesh — 2011-08-24T06:32:55Z

A draft of the 'National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy', which some hope will be the open data policy of India, was made available for public comments in early May. This is what the Centre for Internet and Society submitted.

These are the comments that we at the Centre for Internet and Society submitted to the National Spatial Data Infrastructure on the draft National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy.

Comments on the National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy by the Centre for Internet and Society

We would like to begin by noting our appreciation for the forward-thinking nature of the government that is displayed by its pursuit of a policy on sharing of governmental data and enabling its use by citizens. We believe such a policy is a necessity in all administratively and technologically mature democracies. In particular, we applaud the efforts to make this applicable through a negative list of data that shall not be shared rather than a positive list of data that shall be shared, hence making sharing the default position. However, we believe that there are many ways in which this policy can be made even better than it already is.

1. Name

We believe that nomenclature of the policy must accurately reflect both the content of the policy as well as prevailing usage of terms. Given that 'accessibility' is generally used to mean accessibility for persons with disabilities, it is advisable to change the name of the policy.

Recommendation:

A. We would recommend calling this the "National Open Data Policy" to reflect the nomenclature already established for similar policies in other nations like the UK. In the alternative, it could be called a "National Public Sector Information Reuse Policy". If neither of those are acceptable, then it could be re-titled the "National Data Sharing and Access Policy".

2. Scope and Enforceability

It is unclear from the policy what all departments it covers, and whether it is enforceable.

Recommendation:

A. This policy should cover the same scope as the Right to Information (RTI) Act: all 'public authorities' as defined under the RTI Act should be covered by this policy.

B. Its enforceability should be made clear by including provisions on consequences of non-compliance.

3. Categorization

The rationale for the three-fold categorization is unclear. In particular, it is unclear why the category of 'registered access' exists, and on what basis the categorization into 'open access' and 'registered access' is to be done. If the purpose of registration is to track usage, there are many better ways of doing so without requiring registration.

Recommendation:

A. Having three categories of:

Open data
Partially restricted data
Restricted data

B. Data that is classified as non-shareable (as per a reading of s.8 and s.9 of RTI Act as informed by the decisions of the Central Information Commission) should be classified as ‘restricted’.

C. The rationale for classifying data as 'open' or 'partially restricted' should be how the data collection body is funded. If it depends primarily on public funds, then the data it outputs should necessarily be made fully open. If it is funded primarily through private fees, then the data may be classified as 'partially restricted'. 'Partially restricted' data may be restricted for non-commercial usage, with registration and/or a licence being required for commercial usage.

4. Licence

No licence has been prescribed in the policy for the data. Despite India not allowing for database rights, it still allows for copyright over original literary works, which includes original databases. All governmental works are copyrighted by default in India, just as they are in the UK. To ensure that this policy goes beyond merely providing access to data to ensure that people are able to use that data, it must provide for a conducive copyright licence.

Recommendation:

A. The licence that has been created by the UK government (another country in which all governmental works are copyrighted by default) may be referred to: http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/

B. However, the UK needed to draft its own licence because the concept of database rights are recognized in the EU, which is not an issue here in India. Thus, it would be preferable to use the Open Data Commons - Attribution licence:

http://www.opendatacommons.org/licenses/by/

The UK licence is compatible with both the above-mentioned licence as well as with the Creative Commons - Attribution licence, and includes many aspects that are common with Indian law, e.g., bits on usage of governmental emblems, etc.

5. Integrity of the data

Currently, there is no way of ensuring that the data that is put out by the data provider is indeed the data that has been downloaded by a citizen.

Recommendation:

It is imperative to require data providers to provide integrity checks (via an MD5 hash of the data files, for instance) to ensure that technological corruption of the data can be detected.

6. Authenticity of the data

Currently, there is no way of ensuring that the data that is put out by the data provider indeed comes from the data provider.

Recommendation:

It is preferable to require data providers to authenticate the data by using a digital signature.

7. Archival and versioning

The policy is silent on how long data must be made available.

Recommendation:

There must be a system of archival that is prescribed to enable citizens to access older data. Further, a versioning and nomenclature system is required alongside the metadata to ensure that citizens know the period that the data pertains to, and have access to the latest data by default.

8. Open standards

While the document does mention standards-compliance, it is preferable to require open standards to the greatest extent possible, and require that the data that is put out be compliant with the Interoperability Framework for e-Governance (IFEG) that the government is currently in the process of drafting and finalizing.

Recommendation:

A. The policy should reference the National Open Standards Policy that was finalised by the Department of Information Technology in November 2010, as well as to the IFEG.

B. The data should be made available, insofar as possible, in structured documents with semantic markup, which allows for intelligent querying of the content of the document itself. Before settling upon a usage-specific semantic markup schema, well-established XML schemas should be examined for their suitability and used wherever appropriate. It must be ensured that the metadata are also in a standardized and documented format.

9. Citizen interaction

One of the most notable failings of other governments' data stores has been the fact that they don't have adequate interaction with the citizen projects that emerge from that data. For instance, it is sometimes seen that citizens may point out flaws in the data put out by the government. At other times, citizens may create very useful and interesting projects on the basis of the data made public by the government.

Recommendation:

A. The government's primary datastore (data.gov.in) should catalogue such citizen projects, including open and documented APIs that the have been made available for easy access to that data.

B. Additionally the primary datastore should act as a conduit for citizen's comments and corrections to the data provider. Data providers should be required to take efforts to keep the data up-to-date.

C. Multiple forms of access should preferably be provided to data, to allow non-technical users interactive use of the data through the Web.

10. Principles, including 'Protection of Intellectual Property'

It is unclear why ‘protection of intellectual property’ is one of the guiding principles of this policy. Only those ideals which are promoted by this policy should be designated as ‘principles’. This policy, insofar as we can see, has no relation whatsoever with protection of intellectual property. The government is not seeking to enforce copyright over the data through this policy. Indeed, it is seeking to encourage the use of public data. Indeed, the RTI Act makes it clear in s.9 that government copyright shall not act as a barrier to access to information.

Given that, it makes no sense to include ‘protection of intellectual property’ amongst the principles guiding this policy. Further, there are some other principles that may be removed without affecting the purpose or aim of this document: ‘legal conformity’ (this is a given since a policy wouldn’t wish to violate laws); ‘formal responsibility’ (‘accountability’ encapsulates this); ‘professionalism’ (‘accountability’ encapsulates this); ‘security’ (this policy isn’t about promoting security, though it needs to take into account security concerns).

Recommendation:

A. Remove ‘protection of intellectual property’, ‘legal conformity’, ‘formal responsibility’, ‘professionalism’, and ‘security’ from the list of principles in para 1.2.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/draft-ndsap-comments

Comments on the Draft ICAR Open Access Policy

nehaa — 2013-05-28T06:44:45Z

The following comments were submitted to the Indian Council for Agricultural Research on May 23, 2013.

Introduction

The Centre for Internet and Society,[1] is is a not-for-profit research organization. Our substantive areas of work include openness (including openness of government data, open access to scholarly literature, open standards, free and open source software, open educational resources, and open video) access to knowledge and IPR reform, freedom of expression, privacy, accessibility for persons with disabilities, digital humanities and digital natives.[2]It is our belief that openness and collaboration are the agents of innovation and creativity, and the advent of the internet has radically redefined the meaning and practice of openness and collaboration. Pursuant to our vision, we have been actively involved in the area of Openness and the promotion of open access.[3]

Key research and highlights of our work in these areas are as under:

Comments on the Interoperability Framework for e-Governance (Phase 1), submitted to the Department of Information and Technology.[4]
A Status Report on Open Access to Scholarly Literature in India.[5]
A Survey Report on the Online Video Environment in India.[6]
A Report on Open Government Data in India.[7]
An Open Government Data Study.[8]
Publication of multiple blog posts and the conduction of various events including workshops and seminars around Openness and Open Access.[9]

We hope that our commitment to Open Access and Openness, substantiated with our work in these areas leads you to consider our comments to your Draft Open Access Policy favourably.

The Structure of the Report

This report will deal provide feedback on the structure of the policy, various clauses of the policy, what clauses may be omitted (if any) and other clauses that may be included. Additionally, possible challenges that might require to be addressed in the implementation of this policy have also been indicated.

Overview

It is felt that the ICAR Draft Policy on Open Access is fairly comprehensive, covering most areas associated with its implementation, detailed, embodies the principles of openness and open access, and is a step in the right direction towards achieving open access to scientific and scholarly literature, acting as an example for other communities to do the same.[10]

Structural Feedback

It is suggested that the policy be structured along the lines of the UNESCO Library Open Access Policy, with headings including Introduction, the Objectives/Mission Statement of the Policy, Applicability, Repository, Roles and Obligations of various participants, Intellectual Property Law Issues and Implementation.[11]

Feedback on Existing Clauses

The decision of the ICAR to implement an Open Access Policy is commendable, and an encouragement to other institutions to follow suit.

The adoption of OAI-MHP standard will ensure interoperability, given that it is seen as the cornerstone in open access to institutional research output, and failure to utilize this standard would reduce accessibility and therefore the impact of materials, since they are invisible to each other.

The provisions of the content to be made a part of the repository, and the implementation are comprehensive and detailed. Inter alia, measures involving encouragement to publish in journals that allow for open access through archiving, workshops for advocacy and capacity building, adoption of the CC-NC-SA license are appreciated.

Suggested Changes

It is suggested that the Policy include provisions on information to be made available in accessible formats. In pursuance of the same, it is particularly suggested that the ICAR adopt measures to publish literature that is made available through this Open Access mechanism in formats accessible for visually impaired/print disabled persons, to truly realise the underlying aims of Open Access.

It is suggested that in addition to class/lecture notes already included under the content, ‘course content’ developed for any class/seminar/lecture in any university/college/educational institution be made a separate category of material to be included for open access.

It is suggested that the following sentence in the proposed policy be further clarified: “Scientists are advised to mention the ICAR’s Open Access policy while signing the copyright agreements with the publishers”- A clarification is required regarding the application of this sentence and its applicability. Would the policy apply to both those cases where the scientists have copyright over their work, and where the institute has copyright, or to only one of these scenarios?

It is suggested that the ICAR participate in the development and promote the building of cross institutional services (cross repository services) to further the aims of Open Access,[12] and the same be reflected in the forthcoming policy.

It is suggested that the forthcoming policy include an explicit provision on long term digital preservation[13] of the collected information, including possible measures that the ICAR may adopt to this end.

It is suggested that the forthcoming policy include a specific provision that requires contributing scientists/researchers etc. to explicitly declare that they have the copyright for and have obtained the necessary permissions to post and contribute to the Open Access Project.

It is suggested that the ICAR take steps for aiding the development of Open Access Journals. In furtherance of the same, the ICAR could have links of the websites of these Journals on its own repository, such that the link to the articles on the websites of these Journals leads directly to the ICAR Repository. Such a move would incentivise authors to contribute, since their effort would be recognised, and researchers would have a persistent source to cite from an archive. This effort would also be in consonance with the broader aims of Open Access that the ICAR is keen to achieve through its proposed policy.

It is suggested that the policy also include measures to encourage persons not members of the ICAR to contribute to the Repository.

It is suggested that as regards the implementation aspects of the creation of this repository, the ICAR would also have to ensure the creation of digital document identifiers for all content to be contributed to and housed on the repository. Additionally, the policy ought to also lay down standards of training and development of the staff and authors to submit content to the repository, and to be able to efficiently utilize the same. It is also suggested that the policy encompass the development of a framework for feedback for users and feedback from users, where the former would provide current statistics and details about articles and contributions to users, and the latter would be a mechanism for users to comment on their experience in utilising the repository.

Concluding Observations

The Centre for Internet and Society deeply appreciates the effort undertaken by the ICAR to bring about Open Access in its area of work, which is definitely a welcome step in the right direction. CIS hopes that given its commitment to Open Access and strong tradition of work in this area, the ICAR would give due regard to the observations made out in this report.

[1]. Hereafter referred to as CIS.

[2]. See http://cis-india.org/about for more details.

[3]. See http://cis-india.org/openness for our work on Openness.

[4]. Available at http://cis-india.org/openness/blog/comments-ifeg-phase-1

[5]. Available at http://cis-india.org/openness/blog/open-access-to-scholarly-literature

[6]. Available at http://cis-india.org/openness/online-video-environment-in-india

[7]. Available at http://cis-india.org/openness/blog/ogd-draft-v2-call-for-comments

[8]. Available at http://cis-india.org/openness/blog/open-government-data-study

[9]. See http://cis-india.org/@@search?SearchableText=open+access for details of our posts and events on Open Access.

[10]. United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, Open Access Policy Concerning UNESCO Publications, available at http://www.unesco.org/new/fileadmin/MULTIMEDIA/HQ/ERI/pdf/oa_policy_en_2.pdf (last accessed 22 May, 2013).

[11]. Id.

[12]. Gerard van Westrienen and Clifford A. Lynch, Academic Institutional Repositories: Deployment Status in 13 Nations as of Mid 2005, available at http://dlib.org/dlib/september05/westrienen/09westrienen.html (last accessed 22 May, 2013).

[13]. Leslie Chan, Supporting and Enhancing Scholarship in the Digital Age: The Role of Open Access Institutional Repositories , Canadian Journal of Communication, Vol. 29 (3&4), 277, 282.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/comments-on-draft-icar-open-access-policy

Comments on Technical Standards for Interoperability Framework for E-Governance in India (Phase II)

pranesh — 2012-02-29T09:44:07Z

The e-Governance Standards Division has called for public comments on the draft of the Technical Standards IFEG Phase II. We from the Centre for Internet and Society have given our comments.

The present document is — as the draft IFEG Phase I document was — an excellent step in the right direction, following very ably the policy guidelines laid down in the National Policy on Open Standards for e-Governance.

The Expert Committee and other contributors have made excellent choices as to the 29 standards that have been laid down in this phase of the IFEG. It is praiseworthy that the majority of these (20) are designated as mandatory, and only nine are designated as interim standards. Furthermore, the system has been quite transparent with the selection of standards, providing concise descriptions for each.

That said, the document could be improved by providing greater detail for those standards which are said to violate the National Open Standards Policy. In the current document, every interim standard is said to violate “clause 2”, rather than providing the more specific details (sub-clause, one-line explanation) about the violation.

It is unfortunate that yet again accessibility-related standards have been passed over in the presentation and archival domain.

As we have mentioned in earlier feedback, many other governmental interoperability frameworks are going beyond merely listing technical standards. Some governments, such as Germany and the EU, go beyond technical interoperability, and also have documents dealing with organizational, informational, and legal interoperability. These are equally important components of an interoperability framework. Other governments also also lay down best practice guides, and other aids to implementation, sometimes even including application recommendations. Further, there are many which lay out standards for the the semantic layer, business services layer, etc.

We at the Centre for Internet and Society are currently advising the government of Iraq on development of their e-Governance Interoperability Framework, and would be glad to extend any support that the Department of IT may require of us, including comments on all further phases.

Section-specific Comments

Section 5.2.8

It is unclear whether by IEEE 802.11-2007, the base version is being referred to or the amended version, since IEEE 802.11-2007 has been amended by IEEE 802.11n-2009 to include the IEEE 802.11n standard. As IEEE 802.11n has also become an established standard, it is suggested that section 5.2.28 make it clear that the amended standard is being referred to.

Section 5.2.13

It is recommended that IMAP v4rev1 (IETF RFC 3501, updated by RFCs 4466, 4469, 4551, 5032, 5182, 5738, 6186, supplemented by RFCs 2177, 4550) be used instead of POP3 (IETF RFC 1939). It is critical that governmental messages be preserved on government servers, and should not simply be downloaded and then deleted as is the default with POP3 implementations. IMAP allows for downloading and offline access to mails as well. Any deletion on the server from the client would be recorded in the server logs, hence allowing for transparency. Given this, and the more advanced features available in IMAP, it should be preferred to POP3. In other government interoperability frameworks where an e-mail access protocol is specified, including those of Germany, Malaysia, and Hong Kong, IMAP is provided as a standard and never is POP3 provided as the sole standard.

Section 5.2.15

SAML 2.0 is a standard for exchanging authentication and authorization data between security domains, and is not a ‘Wireless LAN Authentication’ standard. Indeed, section 5.2.8 (IEEE 802.11-2007) talks about ‘Wireless LAN Security’.

Section 5.2.23

WML v1.3, as noted, is a declining standard that is deprecated due to the recommendation by W3C of XHTML Basic v1.1. If it is at all included, it should be included not as “Mandatory – Watchlist”, but as “Additional Standard”, as it is a direct competitor to XHTML Basic v1.1.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/interoperability-framework-for-e-governance

Comments on Draft National Policy on ICT in School Education

krithika — 2011-08-30T14:23:03Z

The Department of School Education & Literacy under the Ministry of Human Resources Development invited comments on its latest draft of the National Policy on ICT in School Education. CIS' comments are listed in this post.

The Department of School Education & Literacy under the Ministry of Human Resources Development has invited comments on its latest draft of the National Policy on ICT in School Education. We, at the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) have the following comments on the latest draft:

Digital content and resources already available in the public domain must be leveraged by the Government and this intention must be specifically expressed in the policy.
The provision in the copyright law providing for fair use of copyrighted material must be completely taken advantage of in developing, sharing, disseminating and exchanging digital content and resources. Material already part of the public domain should be included in the pool of resources to be utilised by the Government under the policy.
It is not enough for the State to provide “open and free access” to ICT and ICT-enabled tools and resources to all students. It is important that the Government adopts the concept of global Open Educational Resources (OER) and license Indian content appropriately. OER refers to digitised materials offered freely and openly for educators, students and self-learners to use and reuse for teaching, learning and research.¹ OER materials are being increasingly integrated into open and distance education. The policy should mandate the State to license all digital content under OER.
It is commedable that the policy mandates use of Open Standards for the State to maintain and share digitsed content. However, we recommend that the policy uses the same definition for “Open Standards” as that incorporated in the Government's Open Standards policy so that the same phrase is defined uniformly across all national policies.
The policy should not foreclose the option of including freeware or resources obtained gratis in the educational material for students. It should allow the State to make efforts to obtain freely available educational material and incoporate it as part of the educational material.
Course developed by the State should be licensed under a Creative Commons License, preferably an attribution-only² or sharealike³ CC license 3.0. Similarly, software used as part of educational resource must be licensed under a GPL or a BSD license.
Teachers and students should be sensitised towards the fair use exception in the Indian copyright law so that maximum utilisation of the provision is facilitated.
School libraries should be encouraged to exercise their right to the fair use exception applicable to libraries. Even though the law on fair use in respect of public libraries seems restricted in terms of the number of copies of a book that can be made (and thus, leading to staggered borrowing) and making it a prerequisite for the book to be unavailable for sale in India. However, there is significant room for interpretation of these ambiguous provisions and take advantage of the fair use exception to provide greater access to educational materials available in school libraries. Other statutes such as the Public Libraries Act govern the operations of State libraries and this, in addition to the fair use provision, would allow for greater flexibility in operation for the libraries. The State should endeavour to make the most of these provisions and interpret them to enable greater access to learning material for the students.
The policy should require libraries to follow an anonymisation policy which ensures that the details of books borrowed by the students remain private and the students' privacy is adequately safeguarded in this regard.
As far as ICT for children for special needs is concerned, it is recommended that the State use the DAISY format to make documents accessible and comply with WCAG guidelines to ensure accesssibility of web content.
Indian law on fair use exception applicable for distance education is still unclear. Therefore, we recommend that this policy be used test the feasibility of fair use in case of distance education in India.
The results and findings from the monitoring, evaluation and research should be declared Open Government Data (OGD) and shared or disseminated accordingly. A piece of data is open if anyone is free to use, reuse and redistribute it – subject only, at most, to the requirement of attribute and share-alike.⁴ Open data commissioned or produced by the government or government controlled entities constitutes OGD.⁵
As far as use of software for education is concerned, students need to read code before they write code, just as in the case of books. Therefore, Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) has to be made available so that the source code is accessible for the students to read and improve upon. De facto proprietary software could be made available where budget exists so that students can learn in a technology-neutral fashion and are exposed to multiple implementations of an idea. However, proprietary software availability will be inapplicable for domains which operate exclusively on free software.
The present draft recommends educating students and teachers on use of firewalls and other security measures to be used to block “inappropriate websites”. We feel that there is no requirement for a centralised policy on blocking websites. We recommend community-based blocking wherein each school can decide the criteria on which they want to block a website.
It is very critical to ensure that there is no surveillance done on children so that there is a free environment for children to use the digitised content and the internet for their educational purposes.
We recommend that the State is mandated to have all Indian language content be encoded using Unicode standards.
We have gone through the comments made on the draft version by IT for Change and Free Software Foundation (FSF) and we are broadly in agreement with the points made by them. We would like to reiterate that use of FOSS must be made mandatory.

Notes

1 OECD (2007), Giving Knowledge for Free: The Emergence of Open Educational Resources, OECD Publishing.
doi: 10.1787/9789264032125-en

2 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/legalcode

3 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/legalcode

4 http://www.opendefinition.org/

5 http://www.opendefinition.org/government/

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/ict-in-school-education

Commemorating Chandan Chiring (1990-2024)

Nayan Jyoti Nath and Ajay Das — 2024-05-07T23:51:28Z

"ৱিকিপ্ৰকল্পসমূহৰ সম্পাদনাৰ দুৱাৰ সকলোৰে বাবে মুকলি। ই কোনো নিৰ্দিষ্ট সংখ্যাত্মক লক্ষ্য আগত ৰাখি কৰা কাম নহয়। ই এক নিৰৱচ্ছিন্ন প্ৰক্ৰিয়া। বৰ্তমান সময়ত অসমীয়া ৱিকিপিডিয়াত লিখিবলগীয়া বিষয় আছে অগণন, ৱিকিউৎসত সন্নিৱিষ্ট কৰিবলগীয়া গ্ৰন্থও আছে অগণন। সেইদৰে ৱিকিউদ্ধৃতিত সন্নিৱিষ্ট কৰিবলগীয়া লেখাৰ সংখ্যাও গণিব নোৱাৰা। ৱিকিউদ্ধৃতিয়ে পূৰ্ণাংগ ৰূপ পোৱাৰ পিছত এতিয়া আমি অন্যান্য ৱিকিপ্ৰকল্প যেনে ৱিকিঅভিধান, ৱিকিগ্ৰন্থ, ৱিকিসংবাদ আদিলৈয়ো মন মেলিব পাৰোঁ। কিন্তু ইয়াৰ বাবে আমাক লাগিব আমাৰ মাতৃভাষাটোৰ প্ৰতি আন্তৰিক দায়িত্ববোধ, এক শক্তিশালী কৰ্মদল আৰু সাংগঠনিক কাৰ্যকৰিতা। ইয়াৰ লগতে আমি এই কথাত গুৰুত্ব দিব লাগিব যে খৰধৰকৈ অপৈণত বহু কাম কৰাতকৈ নিয়মিতভাৱে উন্নত মানৰ কাম কৰি কিদৰে অসমীয়া ৱিকিপ্ৰকল্পসমূহৰ গুণগত মান বজাই ৰাখিব পৰা যায়।"
- চন্দন চিৰিং ফুকন

(Editing WikiProjects is open to everyone, without specific numerical goals in mind, as it's a continuous process. Currently, there are countless articles awaiting creation on the Assamese Wikipedia, numerous books to be added to Wikisource, and an endless amount of content for Wikiquotes. Once the Wikiquotes project gains its complete form, we can shift attention to other projects like Wiktionary, Wikibooks, and Wikinews. However, achieving this requires a genuine sense of responsibility toward one's mother tongue, a robust workforce, and effective organization. Moreover, maintaining the quality of Assamese wiki projects necessitates consistent, high-quality contributions, rather than rushing to produce a large quantity of immature work.
Chandan Chiring Phukan)

With a heavy heart, I am deeply saddened to share the news of the passing of Chandan Chiring Phukan at 11:30 pm on Saturday, April 27th. Chandan Chiring was born on November 14, 1990, in Titabor, Jorhat district of Assam. He completed his primary and higher secondary education in Titabor and obtained Bachelor's and Master's degrees in Commerce from B Barooah College and KC Das Commerce College, Guwahati. After completing his education, he started his career in a private institution and moved on to work as a District Account Manager in the ASSAM STATE RURAL LIVELIHOOD MISSION (ASRLM) department of the Government of Assam owing to his talent. He began his career as a government employee in Barpeta district of Assam and was transferred to Majuli in July 2023 after two years. Chandan entered the world of literature at an early age and published his poems in several Assamese children's magazines ever since he was in school. Chandan always carried the ocean of Assamese art and culture in his heart. He was also interested in Indigenous food cultures, especially South Asian cuisine. He had a special place in his heart for Indian as well as Greek mythology and the Harry Potter films. He cherished an interest in gardening and photography. Despite his busy schedule, he enjoyed reading books and spending time on wikis.

After the transfer, he was affected with chronic dysentery, which gradually developed multiple internal infections, and experienced decreased immunity. He was under treatment for three months and was unable to walk. He slowly recovered and took care of his body at home for a few days. One day after Bahag Bihu, he started having fever and his health deteriorated, leading to his passing on April 27th.

Feeling that Chandan had recovered from his illness, he became more aware of his tastes. He dreamt of publishing a book of children's poems and fairy tales from around the world, but this dream didn’t become reality.

Chandan Da's passing hits close to home for me, as he was not just a fellow Wikimedian but a dear friend within my small circle of trusted individuals, a circle I hold tightly due to my introverted nature. Despite never meeting him in person, Chandan Da became a guiding light in my Wikimedia journey. His commitment to quality over quantity was evident in the 583 pages he created in Assamese Wikipedia despite the challenges of limited typing tools and keyboards around 2012, when he joined. His dedication extended to editing, with a remarkable 12,893 edits on Assamese Wikipedia, 1090 on Assamese Wikisource, and 1289 on Assamese Wikiquote, where he also served as an administrator. Chandan Da's contributions weren't confined to his native language; he uploaded 632 images and documents to Commons and participated in numerous Wiki workshops and conferences, including the Wiki Tea table meet at Assam College of Engineering on October 25, 2014, the Assamese Wikimedians' Conference and Workshop at Pragjyotish College on January 2, 2022, and a significant Train the Trainer (TTT) event in Kerala from September 28 to October 1, 2023. His total global edits amounted to an impressive 19,520. His impact reverberates through the Wikimedia community, inspiring newcomers and veterans alike.

Chandan Da's message for the community was published in the Assamese wikipatrika in September 2012, November 2015, May 2016, and May 2023 editions. He actively participated in publishing the wikipatrika regularly, starting from its first issue in September 2012. For his tireless efforts, he received many barnstars and accolades, totalling 34 barnstars, including The Original Barnstar, The Tireless Contributor Barnstar, Asian Month 2023 Barnstar, and The Teamwork Barnstar. He possessed great leadership qualities, always pushing others to contribute and do something for their mother tongue. He single-handedly contributed to getting a domain for Assamese Wikiquote and tirelessly contributed while encouraging others to do the same. Despite being hospitalized for around three months and facing difficulties in speaking and seeing clearly, he participated in the feminism and folklore campaign, creating 47 articles and becoming the fourth highest contributor from Assamese.

Although advised to rest after gaining strength, he fell ill again, but even on his deathbed, he was organizing an edit-a-thon on Assamese Wikiquote from April 22nd to April 28th. Unfortunately, he passed away on April 27th at 11:30 pm. We shared almost everything, discussing vast topics from films to mythology, personal matters to serious issues, and from food to travel. All of these conversations will be missed dearly. Since joining the service, I hardly had time to contribute to Wiki, but he always insisted that I contribute in any form. His encouragement and inspiration were the driving forces behind my recent activity on Wiki. He also consistently reminded me to attend the monthly Wiki meet, which I shamefully avoided many times due to my nature. His impact on the Assamese Wiki community cannot be forgotten. His loss is deeply felt not only by the Assamese wiki community but by the entire Indic wiki community. Today, the entire Assamese wiki family mourns his loss as Asomi Aai lost one of her dearest sons. As Jean-Paul Sartre said, "The only way to deal with death is to transform everything that precedes it into art." Chandan Da's contributions to Wiki, his poems, his dreams—all are art that will eternally remain in our hearts. May his departed soul find peace.

This article was written by Nayan Jyoti Nath, an Assamese Wikimedian. Ajay Das is the co-author.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/commemorating-chandan-chiring

CoinFest 2016

praskrishna — 2016-04-04T15:19:28Z

Coinsecure and India Bitcoin have joined hands to organize to organize CoinFest at the Centre for Internet & Society's Bangalore office on Saturday, April 10, 2016, from 4.00 p.m. to 7.00 p.m.

CoinFest 2016

CoinFest 2015 was a stunning success, taking Canada’s crypto holiday to countries around the world. CoinFest 2016 is building on that momentum, preparing a series of events for April with over two dozen cities planning to participate. This year's CoinFest will celebrate Bitcoin & educate participants about its uses & benefits. Come learn about bitcoin, blockchain, and other digital currencies! Find out how to use them and how this technology is having a positive impact globally!

Speakers

Coinsecure - Benson Samuel & team will be talking about journey of Bitcoin in India.
Airbitz - Meghan Kellison-Lords & Factom - Paul Snow will also be participating via Hangouts.

Follow the event on Facebook

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/events/coinfest-2016

Code As Communication

praskrishna — 2015-01-23T03:12:15Z

Gene Kogan will give a talk at the Centre for Internet & Society's Bangalore office on February 2, 2015. The talk will be from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. Gene's talk will draw analogies between software, communication, creativity, and expressivity. Programming has a long history of comparison to other written media, with inevitable consequences on our legal policy over authorship and ownership.

With the emergence of free "creative coding" and "live coding" platforms like Processing, OpenFrameworks, PureData, vvvv, and SuperCollider, the boundaries between code and creative expression have further eroded, initiating inquiry as to its overlap with "traditional" creative writing. We are confronted with old questions within new contexts. As existing institutions incorporate emerging technologies into their creative programs and new ones take root and solidify, how do we make an infrastructure which most effectively and transparently fosters the development of creative technology? How do we ensure that this process is fair and democratic, and at greatest benefit and lowest cost to the public? What rights should users and developers receive? As the distinction between art and technology becomes blurry, what relevance does the FOSS movement have in cultivating cultural production?

Gene Kogan

Gene Kogan is a programmer and artist who writes free software for new and emerging technologies. He creates tools for live music, dance, theatre, and performance art. He contributes to numerous open-source software projects, and frequently gives workshops and demonstrations on topics related to code and art.

Follow Gene Kogan elsewhere:

Website: http://www.genekogan.com

Vimeo: http://www.vimeo.com/genekogan

Soundcloud: http://www.soundcloud.com/genekogan

Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/genekogan

Github: http://www.github.com/genekogan

Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/genekogan

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/events/code-as-communication

Cluster in collaboration with the Architects Association of Turin (FOAT) participates at the Democracy Biennial

sachia — 2011-04-02T16:09:12Z

Sunil Abraham to speak at the conference 'Housing the Democratic City' in Turin, Italy

The first edition of the Biennale Democrazia, will take place in Turin the 22 – 26 April 2009, it is an international cultural event entirely dedicated to the ethical and political project of democracy a political system which, by definition, is in constant evolution and development, continually facing new challenges to be overcome. The Democracy Biennial is organized by the City of Turin, the Italia Committee and the Piedmont Regional government. It forms part of a series of programmes and public events called Esperienza Italia organized to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the Unification of Italy in 1861. The Democracy Biennial takes its inspiration from the profound studies on democracy carried out by Norberto Bobbio and it is intended to function as a tool for spreading a culture of Democracy that can also be put into practice in everyday life. It aims to create a permanent, ongoing workshop, open to the public, that explores and debates, from both a local and international point of view, the fundamental values of democracy, the forms it has adopted and the challenges it faces today. The event will consist of different preparatory activities (workshops, debates, readings, international forums, in-depth seminars and events actively involving citizens (as well as films, theatre and music events).

In partnership with the Biennale Democrazia the Architects Association of Turin (FOAT), has curated a section, within the event program, entitled “Housing the Democratic City”. The section offers a series of sessions: a workshop, conferences and a call for paper that aim to stimulate reflections on issues related to housing the city, for a future of urban democracy.

In occasion of this important event Cluster, in collaboration with the Architects Association (FOAT), has invited a collaborator from Bangalore, India, Sunil Abraham to speak at the conference “Housing the Democratic City” at Teatro Gobetti on Sunday 26th April. Other participating speakers are Bill Dunster (UK), Cino Zucchi (Italy).

Sunil Abraham is an industrial and production engineer from Bangalore in India. In 1998 he founded Mahiti, an association dedicated to reducing the cost and complexity of information and communication technology for the voluntary sector. In August 2008 he co-founded The Centre for Internet and Society, that brings together a team of practitioners, theoreticians, researchers and artists to work on the emerging field of Internet and Society to critically engage with concerns of digital pluralism, public accountability and pedagogic practices, with particular emphasis on South-South dialogues and exchange. Sunil contributed to the last issue of Cluster, Transmitting Architecture in a dual interview and discussion entitled “Design in Urban democracy:a question of survival?” PDF downloadable here.

Sunil Abraham will also be speaking in two other sections of the Biennial on April 25 ‘Democracy and India’ with Prof. Federico Squarcini, professor of History of Indian Religions, University of Florence and ‘Democracy and Technology’ with the Politecnico of Turin. More details on the programme coming soon.

For info. please visit: Biennale Democrazia Order of the Architects of Turin (FOAT)

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/cluster-in-collaboration-with-the-architects-association-of-turin-foat-participates-at-the-democracy-biennial-1

Classical Odia Language in the Digital Age

subha — 2014-07-28T07:41:51Z

The essay was published in the June edition of Odisha Review, a magazine published by Government of Odisha's Department of Information and Public Relations.

Click to read the original article published in Odisha Review here.

Odisha’s documentation and archival history dates back to the pre-Kalinga civilization that existed more than 5,000 years back in which today’s Odisha was a major part of it. It, later was more vibrant when Kalinga kingdom and was widespread from Ganga to Godavari, geographically consisting of modern day Odisha entirely and partly Bangladesh, West Bengal, Bihar, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Chattishgarh, Andhra Pradesh, Telengana and part of Tamilnadu and Kerala. The epigraphs of cave painting in Gudahandi and stone inscriptions of Hatigumpha in Udayagiri complex are a few examples of the early documentations that the ancestral Kalingan tribes had made. Furthermore, the early Buddhist poets of Kalinga (popularly known as 64 Sidhapada) wrote “ doha ” (spiritual verses) in Pali language. Pali is the language of all of the Buddhist literature and predecessor of modern Odia, Maithili, Bangla and Assamese language and has deep impact on many other Indic languages. Odia has travelled through a long journey of “Tambapata ” (bronze plate inscription), “Talapatra” (palm leaf manuscripts), printed books since early 18th century and e-books in the modern days. Years of history that have perished during invasions by foreign invaders could have told more about this civilization. Modern Odisha state, so far has been able to uphold the pride of having the largest number of palm leaf manuscripts (over 20,000 manuscripts) in the world. Odia printing and publication industry is spread across all the 30 administrative districts of Odisha and other Indian cities like Kolkata and New Delhi and to some extent in some parts of Surat. A few million books would have been printed starting from the first book “New Testament ” that got printed in 1809.[1]

In this chronology there comes the new age reading tools “e-books” or electronic books less formally initiated in the eighties by students of Regional Engineering College, Rourkela (Now National Institute of Rourkela) and now crossed a decade.[2]

Odia got classical status on 20 February this year after 5 other Indian languages on the basis of its literary heritage of over three millennia. Interestingly, it is older than most of the most spoken languages in the world. Like many other mighty civilizations, traders of this region conquered places and took their language and culture to their occupied colonies. Early traders of Kalingan Sadhabas were trading silk and spices with South Asian countries. With them travelled Kalinga’s language and culture. When all of the other language’s have been able to have a strong presence on the Internet, online content available in Odia is way limited compared to even other Indic languages. It has been almost a decade since Odia support is available in most computers across operating systems. But, the digital desktop publishing (DTP) published resources are still not available in a searchable manner – not on internet or in a computer locally. Currently, the Odia publication industry uses proprietary standard fonts for Odia typing. Akruti, LEAP office, Shreelipi are name to few. All of these were the only means for printing books using desktop publishing at one point of time. But, these encoding systems are out-of-date. The major drawback of these fonts is, they have regular Latin characters replaced by Odia characters. If a document is typed using one such fonts is sent to someone it is difficult to even read or reuse if the person in the receiving end does not have the exact font used for typing. As already mentioned the fonts are commercial and proprietary and it is mandatory to buy them to use. In reality most of the users do not buy and use pirated versions of the software for work.

The printed documents typed in one standard is not compatible with the other one. To avoid this problems, an advanced universal standard called “Unicode” was released in early 2000. Unicode has both Odia and Latin characters in a font that allows both the scripts to be displayed correctly at the same time. It is universally compatible and all the operating systems have Unicode fonts installed in the computers. This takes the pain of installing multiple fonts to access any typed text. Searching any text typed in Unicode is as simple as googling something in English. Moreover, documents typed using one Unicode font could be read using another Unicode font. Unfortunately, none of the Odia newspapers have their publications in Unicode at this moment.

This, practically does not allow any reader to search, access, reuse and quote any content. Same is the case for all other published resources like books and magazines. More than 80 per cent of the published content are not even released online and also not archived.

Many publishers, intimidated of online content plagiarism have been protecting their publications. Unfortunately, copyright laws in India are not stringently practiced unlike the west. This has given rise to a parallel piracy market for the movies and music over the years. Interestingly, books are not of that much demand as music and movies are. As a result of the lingua-cultural shift to English from native languages regional language publications are not widely sold in the post-colonial Indian book market as compared to the English publications. The case of the use of Odia language as a language of governance is still not put in place. Odia is still to be used as a medium for official communication in all of the government offices. English medium educational Boards have been domineering over the Odisha state Board. Despite of these challenges, number of Odia dailies is slowly growing. There are around 100 newspapers published daily from various regions of Odisha. It is essential to note that news archives, unlike literary writings have much of any kind of high commercial value. So is in the case of scholarly and research publications. If all of these publications could be made available online in digital form that will take Odia literature to the global audience. This triggers the need of A) making sure the forthcoming publications are not just typed in Unicode but made available online, B) digitization of published books and making them available free on internet.

It is essential to take measures to ascertain the forthcoming publications use Unicode standard and digitizing published matter and publishing them online. Online content could be made available in Unicode and has trillion times reach than printed matter. As a vast number of the users use Microsoft’s Windows XP they could either upgrade their operating system or move to completely free and open source and Linux based operating systems like Ubuntu. At this moment, Odia has far less content on internet.

Odia Wikipedia tops the list of Odia Unicode content websites and is the largest Odia online encyclopaedia with over 8,000 articles. Available for free on or.wikipedia.org, Odia Wikipedia is a community project where any user could create, edit and modify content. The articles being encyclopaedic and referenced from other reliable sources has some level of authenticity. As this is a small project and is developing it needs more voluntary contribution to grow to a larger project that could serve the purpose of an Open Educational Resources (OER) for students. There are a handful of web and news portals maintained by individuals and organizations that have Odia content in Unicode. The other upcoming project is Odia Wikisource which is an online library. Odia books that are useful for the Odia speaking community like classical literature, religious scriptures, dictionaries and lexicons, journals and research papers and manuscripts could go online on this platform. The most important thing about these two projects is that they both have only volunteers as contributors and anyone and everyone could contribute. Any individual or organization who is interested could add a lot of value to Odia language by contributing the process of digitizing content and making them available for free. These projects, additionally are released under Creative Commons Share-Alike licenses that allows free reuse, modification and commercial reproduction of content. Many valuable books could also be part of Odia Wikisource.

Srujanika, a Bhubaneswar based organization in collaboration with National Institute of Technology, Rourkela and Pragati Utkal Sangh, Rourkela has scanned over 760 Odia books. Out of these, over 200 books are hosted in a non-profit project “Open Access to Oriya Books (OAOB)” and hosted at: oaob.nitrkl.ac.in. Organizations like Manik-Smrutinyas and Institute of Odia Studies and Research have re-licensed books of noted author Dr. Jagannath Mohanty and Dr. Debi Prasanna Pattanayak and Subrat Prusty respectively to Creative Commons licenses for free, commercial distribution. Majority of the resourceful magazines like The Utkal Prasanga could be also made available in Unicode standard by changing its copyright terms to Creative Commons licenses. Larger debates are also needed to convince authors and knowledge and information producing organizations/departments like universities and government’s departments (e.g.Information and Public Relations, Department of Mass Education and Department of Statistics.) to migrate from proprietary copyright restrictions to reusable licenses like Creative Commons licenses. This will not only will help for more public-private collaboration and knowledge production but also taking language resources to masses which is discontinued because of lack of updated technological advancement like use of Unicode font and digitizing valuable content. Government portals need Odia localization in Unicode standard so public get access to information in Odia language and this could make e-governance much more easier. Government notifications that often are released publicly are found to be released in image formats. Many such public and private information could just be released in plain text that will increase the searchability, accessibility and reusability million times.

Footnotes:

[1].Pattnaik, Pushpashree. Presentation on digitization of Odia books in Utkal University (21 February 2014).

[2].Mohanty, Jagadish, eSabada. eOdissa.com (2009 - 2010).

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/odisha-review-june-2014-classical-odia-language-in-digital-age

Civic Hacking Workshop

pranesh — 2011-08-23T03:14:03Z

CIS, with the UK Government's Foreign Office and the Cabinet Office Team for Digital Engagement, and Google India, is organizing a workshop on open data (or the lack thereof) and 'civic hacking'.

The UK Government's Foreign Office and the Cabinet Office Team for Digital Engagement, Google India and the Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore are organizing a 'Civic Hacking Workshop' on Wednesday, July 28, 2010, bringing together civic-minded technologists who've been working with governmental data in India and Britain.

The workshop will discuss the problems of obtaining data, especially in India, the technological solutions that these various groups have encountered, the difficulties of technology as a mass-based civic solution, and the visions that these groups have for a more engaged civil society and the contributions they seek to make to the public.

The people attending are, from India (Bangalore):

Alok Singh (Akshara Foundation)
Shivangi Desai (Akshara Foundation)
Arun Ganesh (Geohackers / National Institute of Design)
A. Pandian (Mapunity)
Sridhar Raman (Mapunity)
S. Raghavan Kandala (Mapunity)
Thejesh GN (Janaagraha / Infosys)
Sushant Sinha (IndianKanoon.com / Yahoo)
Vijay Rasquinha (Mahiti)
P.G. Bhat (SmartVote.in)
Pranesh Prakash (CIS)
Raman Jit Singh Chima (Google)

And from Britain:

David McCandless (Information Is Beautiful)
Harry Metcalfe (TellThemWhatYouThink.org / Open Rights Group)
Tim Green (Democracy Club)
Edmund von der Burg (YourNextMP)
Rohan Silva (Special Adviser to the PM)

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/civic-hacking-workshop

Civic hackers seek to find their feet in India

praskrishna — 2011-04-04T06:45:41Z

In 2006, when Sushant Sinha,who holds a doctorate in Internet security from the University of Michigan, tried to use the Indian government’s judicial rulings website, Judis.nic.in, he found it difficult to get the data he was looking for. “Judis.nic.in didn’t have a good text search or ability to sort results by relevance,” Sinha said. The lack of these two critical functions rendered the wealth of data on the site largely unusable.

Sinha, who currently works at Yahoo India, set about creating the legal search engine Indiankanoon. org, which now has a database of more than 1.4 million judgements. It tries to overcome the deficiencies of the government’s effort, indexing judgements by the Supreme Court, the high courts and various tribunals, and linking them to the underlying Acts.

In November, the portal saw around one million unique visits. Sinha is a “civic hacker”, a programmer driven by the urge to create applications that will allow fellow citizens to help themselves and further the democratic process by using information, often from freely available government databases. (A “cracker”, on the other hand, uses similar tools to break into secure systems with malicious intent.)

Nishant Shah, director, research, at the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), Bangalore, offers a wider definition for civic hackers.

“In a Web 2.0 world, you needn’t have programming skills to be a civic hacker. When people have access to digital technologies, they are potentially civic hackers, because they have learned how to negotiate with oppression and injustice. In the West, the ubiquitousness of digital technologies has enabled a lot of people to engage with civic hacking—from subversive documentaries by the Yes Men group to parodic YouTube videos that critique state-market policies— all these qualify as civic hacking.”

WikiLeaks, said Shah, is the biggest example of such a civic hacker in recent times. “Civic hackers are always in grey territory,” he said. “Their legality is always being questioned, depending on how far they go. Remember, WikiLeaks was around for five years before they began talking about banning it.”

Much of the online Indian information in the open domain, from the government or autonomous bodies such as the Election Commission (EC), isn’t always served up such that it can be sliced and diced in ways that citizens can digest, making the civic hacker a critical part of the democratic process in the digital age.

A larger presence in the West, they are thin on the ground in the country. “Civic hackers, while present (in India), are not numerous, and it’s unclear to what extent they are conscious of the work that others are doing, although this could be easily remedied through networking efforts both online and offline,” according to a report by CIS.

One of the reasons for their sparse numbers CIS suggests is that the Indian government doesn’t engage yet with the hacking community,

unlike countries such as the US. New York, Washington DC and San Francisco, for instance, have portals that share data with the intention of encouraging application development.

The NYC BigApps competition has a cash prize of $20,000 (nearly `9 lakh) for the best application using the City of New York’s NYC.gov data mine. Around 350 data sets including public safety data, buildings complaints, and real-time traffic numbers are thrown open to participants. In 2009, an application to let New Yorkers findmass transit routes, public school information, etc., based on their location won the prize.

Despite the lack of incentives, some hackers are still mushrooming in the Indian space. In 2009, just ahead of the April-May general election, 25-year-old Akshay Surve, the founder of a think tank for social change called SocialSync.org Labs, was building a Web application to profile members of Parliament.

The application was aimed at generating a snapshot of each legislator based on the debates they participated in, the number of Parliament sessions attended, and other such information that could help voters make an informed choice.

The websites of the EC and the Lok Sabha had much of this data in Excel and Adobe PDF documents, but that didn’t necessarily make it usable. The formats changed every year, and some files didn’t allow text and numbers to be extracted. To build the mashup—an application that throws together data from more than one source, mashing everything up to create a new service—Surve had to parse and standardize the data.

Realizing that the problem he faced was not an isolated one, Surve and his friend, Pavan Mishra, launched OpenCivic.in this year, a set of standards and APIs (application programming interface) that sift data from government websites and make them available in a machine-readable, remixable format.

Surve’s API is the primary engine for Askneta.com and Gov-Check.net, which track the performance of elected representatives and use OpenCivic’s feed. He plans to keep the API free for non-commercial use. Now his team is at work to develop a mobile version of the API. Another example is RTINation. com, built in August 2009 by a group of graduates from the Kanpur and Delhi Indian Institutes of Technology.

RTINation.com enables the online filing of Right to Information (RTI) applications. A 2009 PricewaterhouseCoopers report estimated that more than a quarter of those who file RTI applications have to visit a government office over three times to do so. RTINation.com generates its revenue by charging each user `125 for an application. It is now building a backoffice to handle marketing and promotion.

“Since we launched, we have seen 200,000 unique visitors,” said Rahul Gupta, a cofounder of RTINation.com. Most civic hackers in India entered the field through work related to various e-governance initiatives and the RTI Act, which has put more government data in the public domain than ever before. This data, though, is dumped in a format that makes it difficult for citizens to use or understand. “Few of the publicly accessible databases are open in terms of data reusability (in terms of machine-readability and openness of formats), data reusability (legally), easily accessible (via search engines, for persons with disabilities, etc.), understandable (marked up with annotations and etadata),” according to CIS. Here is where civic hackers such as Sinha and Surve come in.

CIS suggests that networking across civic hacking teams could strengthen this effort. OpenCivic.in has been proactive in its tie-ups. In February, it joined hands with Yes To Politics, a civic participation endeavour by Texas-based software engineer Murali M. Launched in 2009, Yes To Politics offers tools to help communities work on causes. Among these are analytics of previous elections and a tracker of ongoing campaigns. During its peak usage in the four weeks leading up to the 2009 assembly elections in Andhra Pradesh, the website had on an average 43,000 visitors a day, with a oneday surge of 97,457 visitors on 9 April that year. Yes To Politics, inactive since last year’s polls, is going to launch a new version in January. “Once we do that, we contribute our own data feeds to OpenCivic,” said Murali.

Talking about the challenges, Murali said, “The data sets from the Election Commission’s site were raw and not directly presentable to users. So we had to iteratively transform it and correct (it) on the way and make meaningful sets. It took me almost three-and-a-half weeks to get it ready. And when the EC releases any new data, they always release in PDF files that are hard to retrieve and mashup. So I wrote special apps (applications) to scan files, transform data, and automatically correct spelling mistakes in names.” The 36-year-old software engineer works full-time for Alcatel-Lucent and develops the applications when he’s free. Yes To Politics has been steadily adding bells and whistles to its portal. Recently, it integrated Google Maps into an application called Vote2009, layering it with information such as when a constituency is scheduled to have elections. “Another example is, due to delimitation, about 77 assembly and eight parliamentary constituencies in AP (Andhra Pradesh) have been reorganized. We set up a section where users can look at what has changed and find their constituency based on mandal and district information,” Murali said.

Read the original article in Livemint here

Read it in IndiaInfoline here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/civic-hackers-in-India

Centre for Internet and Society

Comments on the Right to Information Rules, 2017

1. Preliminary

2. The Centre for Internet and Society

3. Comments

Comments on the Open Licensing Policy Guidelines of the National Mission on Education through Information and Communication Technology

I. PRELIMINARY

II. SECTION-WISE COMMENTS

CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS

Comments on the National Geospatial Policy (Draft, V.1.0), 2016

1. Preliminary

2. The Centre for Internet and Society

3. Comments and Recommendations

3.2. Grant adequate permissions to the public to re-use geospatial data

3.3. Ensure Open Access to shareable and non-sensitive geospatial data

3.4. Lack of clarity regarding the clearances and permits required for data acquisition and dissemination, and the procedures thereof

3.5. Clarification Needed regarding “Cybersecurity is to be ensured through … use of Digital Watermarks for authentication of GDPSS”

3.6. Remove Classification of Non-Public (at Present) Satellite / Aerial Imagery as Restricted by Default

3.7. Governance of User-contributed Geospatial Data

3.8. Protect Geospatial Privacy of Citizens by Defining Sensitive Personal Geospatial Data and Information

3.9. Clarification Needed regarding “Mechanisms to be put in place to evaluate / audit GDPSS creation, consumption and distribution”

3.10. Data Taxation and Geospatial Cess

3.11. Data Dissemination Cell

3.12. Special Infrastructure for Governance, Management, and Publication of Real-time Geospatial Data

3.13. Sincere Request for Preparation and Circulation of a Second Public Draft of the National Geospatial Policy

Endnotes

Comments on the Draft National Policy on Software Products

I. Preliminary

II. About CIS

III. Comments on the Draft National Policy on Software Products

General Comments

Specific Comments

10. Development of a robust Electronic Payment Infrastructure

11. Government Procurement

12. Incentives for Digital India oriented software

13. Increasing adoption of Open APIs and Open Data

14. Creation of Enabling Environment for Innovation, R&D, and IP Creation and Protection

IV. Conclusion

Comments on the draft National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy

Comments on the National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy by the Centre for Internet and Society

1. Name

Recommendation:

2. Scope and Enforceability

Recommendation:

3. Categorization

Recommendation:

4. Licence

Recommendation:

5. Integrity of the data

Recommendation:

6. Authenticity of the data

Recommendation:

7. Archival and versioning

Recommendation:

8. Open standards

Recommendation:

9. Citizen interaction

Recommendation:

10. Principles, including 'Protection of Intellectual Property'

Recommendation:

Comments on the Draft ICAR Open Access Policy

Introduction

The Structure of the Report

Overview

Structural Feedback

Feedback on Existing Clauses

Suggested Changes

Concluding Observations

Comments on Technical Standards for Interoperability Framework for E-Governance in India (Phase II)

Section-specific Comments

Section 5.2.8

Section 5.2.13

Section 5.2.15

Section 5.2.23

Comments on Draft National Policy on ICT in School Education

Notes

Commemorating Chandan Chiring (1990-2024)

CoinFest 2016

CoinFest 2016

Speakers