The Centre for Internet and Society
https://cis-india.org
These are the search results for the query, showing results 121 to 135.
Open Data Hackathons are Great, but Address Privacy and License Concerns
https://cis-india.org/openness/open-data-hackathons-are-great-but-address-privacy-and-license-concerns
<b>This is to cross-publish a blog post from DataMeet website regarding a letter shared with the organisers of Urban Hack 2015, Bangalore, in response to a set of privacy and license concerns identified and voiced during the hackathon by DataMeet members. Sumandro Chattapadhyay co-authored and co-signed the letter. The blog post is written by Nisha Thompson.</b>
<p> </p>
<p>Hackathons are a source of confusion and frustration for us. DataMeet actively does not do them unless there is a very specific outcome the community wants like<a href="https://github.com/datameet/maps/tree/master/parliamentary-constituencies"> freeing a whole dataset </a>or introducing <a href="http://datameet.org/2015/05/13/mumbai-meet-6-data-science-hackathon/">open data to a new audience</a>. We feel that they cause burn out, are not productive, and in general don't help create a healthy community of civic tech and open data enthusiasts.</p>
<p>That is not to say we feel others shouldn't do them, they are very good opportunities to spark discussion and introduce new audiences to problems in the social sector. <a href="http://www.datakind.org/chapters/datakind-blr">DataKind</a> and <a href="https://rhokbangalore.wordpress.com/">RHOK</a> and numerous others host hackathons or variations of them regularly to stir the pot, bring new people into civic tech and they can be successful starts to long term connections and experiments. A lot of people in the DataMeet community participate and enjoy hackathons.</p>
<p>However, with great data access comes great responsibility. We always want to make sure that even if no output is achieved when a dataset is opened at least no harm should be done.</p>
<p>Last October an open data hackathon,<a href="https://www.hackerearth.com/sprints/urban-hack/"> Urban Hack</a>, run by Hacker Earth, <a href="http://www.nasscom.in/">NASSCOM</a>, <a href="http://www.xrci.xerox.com/">XEROX</a>, <a href="https://console.ng.bluemix.net/?cm_mmc=EcoDISA-_-Bluemix_day-_-11-15-14::12-31-15-_-UrbanHack">IBM </a>and <a href="http://wri-india.org/">World Resource Institute India</a> wanted to bring out open data and spark innovation in the transport and crime space by making datasets from <a href="http://mybmtc.com/">Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation (BMTC)</a> and the Bangalore City Police available to work with. A DataMeet member (<a href="http://www.lostprogrammer.com/">Srinivas Kodali</a>) was participating, he is a huge transport data enthusiast and wanted to take a look at what is being made available.</p>
<p>In the morning shortly after it started I received a call from him that there is a dataset that was made available that seems to be violating privacy and data security. We contacted the organizers and they took it down, later we realized it was quite a sensitive dataset and a few hundred people had already downloaded it. We were also distressed that they had not clarified ownership of data, license of data, and had linked to sources like <a href="http://openbangalore.org/">Open Bangalore</a> without specifying licensing, which violated the license.</p>
<p>The organizers were quite noted and had been involved with hackathons before so it was a little distressing to see these mistakes being made. We were concerned that the government partners (who had not participated in these types of events before) were also being exposed to poor practices. As smart cities initiatives take over the Indian urban space, we began to realize that this is a mistake that shouldn't happen again.</p>
<p>Along with <a href="http://cis-india.org/">Centre for Internet and Society</a> and Random Hacks of Kindness we sent the organizers, Bangalore City Police and BMTC a letter about the breach in protocol. We wanted to make sure everyone was aware of the issues and that measures were taken to not repeat these mistakes.</p>
<p>You can see the letter here:</p>
<p><iframe src="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2702333-Appropriate-and-Responsible-Practices-for.html" height="500" width="600"></iframe></p>
<p>We are very proud of the DataMeet community and Srinivas for bringing this violation to the attention of the organizers. As people who participate in hackathons and other data events it is imperative that privacy and security are kept in mind at all times. In a space like India where a lot of these concepts are new to institutions, like the Government, it is essential that we are always using opportunities not only to showcase the power of open data but also good practices for protecting privacy and ensuring security.</p>
<p> </p>
<p><em>Originally posted on DataMeet website: <a href="http://datameet.org/2016/02/02/to-hack-or-not-to-hack/">http://datameet.org/2016/02/02/to-hack-or-not-to-hack/</a>.</em></p>
<p> </p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/openness/open-data-hackathons-are-great-but-address-privacy-and-license-concerns'>https://cis-india.org/openness/open-data-hackathons-are-great-but-address-privacy-and-license-concerns</a>
</p>
No publishersumandroPrivacyOpen DataOpen Government DataFeaturedHackathonOpenness2016-02-05T20:37:18ZBlog EntryOER16: Open Culture
https://cis-india.org/openness/news/oer16-open-culture
<b>The 7th Open Educational Resources Conference, OER16: Open Culture, will be held on April 19 and 20, 2016 at the University of Edinburgh. The event is organized by Association for Learning Technology.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">As a part of the programme committee, Subhashish Panigrahi is currently reviewing the submissions for the 7th Open Educational Resources Conference, "OER16: Open Culture" that is being organised during April 19 and 20, 2016 at University of Edinburgh, UK. See the details of the Programme Committee <a class="external-link" href="https://oer16.oerconf.org/about/programme-committee/">here</a>. Download a PDF of the <a href="http://oer16.oerconf.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2015/11/OER16-Flyer-1.0-digital.pdf">flyer for OER16</a>.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The vision for the conference is to focus on the value proposition of embedding open culture in the context of institutional strategies for learning, teaching and research. The conference will be chaired by Melissa Highton, Director of Learning, Teaching and Web Services at the University of Edinburgh, and Lorna Campbell, OER Liaison at the University of Edinburgh and EDINA Digital Education Manager.</p>
<p><span>OER16 will focus on:</span></p>
<ul>
<li><span> </span><span>The strategic advantage of open and creating a culture of openness.</span></li>
<li><span> </span><span>Converging and competing cultures of open knowledge, open source, open content, open practice, open data and open access.</span></li>
<li><span> </span><span>Hacking, making and sharing.</span></li>
<li><span> </span><span>The reputational challenges of openwashing.</span></li>
<li><span> </span><span>Openness and public engagement.</span></li>
<li><span> Innovative approaches to opening up cultural heritage collections for education.</span></li>
</ul>
<p><b>Follow #oer16 to keep up to date with all conference news. Register for the event <a class="external-link" href="http://go.alt.ac.uk/OER16-Registration">Now</a>.<br /></b></p>
<ul>
</ul>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/openness/news/oer16-open-culture'>https://cis-india.org/openness/news/oer16-open-culture</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaOpen Educational ResourcesOpenness2016-01-30T06:53:26ZNews ItemApproaching Open Research via Open Data - Presentation at TERI, December 22, 2015
https://cis-india.org/openness/approaching-open-research-via-open-data-2015
<b>The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), Delhi, organised a seminar on 'Open Access in Research Area: A Strategic Approach' on December 22, 2015. We supported the seminar as a knowledge partner. Sumandro Chattapadhyay was invited to deliver a special address. Here are the notes and slides from the presentation.</b>
<p> </p>
<p>The brief presentation foregrounded <em>open data</em> as a crucial part of open research, and also as an instrument of opening up research for public consumption, discussion, and scrutiny.</p>
<p>The presentation started with reference to the <a href="http://cis-india.org/openness/open-access-dialogues-report">Open Access Dialogues</a> organised by The African Commons Project and the Centre for Internet and Society during November 2012 to March 2013 that explored the global open access agenda from a developing world perspective.</p>
<p>I noted that one of the key findings from the Indian participants of the online consultations organised as part of the Open Access Dialogues was the need for a <em>broader vision of open access</em>. Open research data is a key component of this broader vision of open access and open research.</p>
<p>There was a brief discussion of how to start doing and thinking about open data as an approach to open research. I highlighted the need to get started on 1) getting government to open up data relevant to research, 2) opening up academic research data, and 3) sectoral conversations on data standards (technical and semantic); as well as the need to think about 1) open data as bridge across disciplinary communities, 2) quantification of life and the widening sphere of research data, and 3) academic research and public life.</p>
<p>In next slides, I quickly mentioned the international processes going on in the open data landscape - the conversation on open data and Sustainable Development Data, the possibility of using big (social and telecom) data for purposes of development monitoring, and the International Open Data Charter as a set of global principles for open data.</p>
<p>More about the seminar: <a href="http://cis-india.org/openness/teri-seminar-on-open-access-in-research">http://cis-india.org/openness/teri-seminar-on-open-access-in-research</a>.</p>
<p> </p>
<p><iframe src="//www.slideshare.net/slideshow/embed_code/key/la5ulZYBT15DiL" frameborder="0" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" scrolling="no" height="485" width="595"> </iframe></p>
<p> </p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/openness/approaching-open-research-via-open-data-2015'>https://cis-india.org/openness/approaching-open-research-via-open-data-2015</a>
</p>
No publishersumandroOpen DataOpen ResearchOpen Government DataOpenness2016-01-12T14:37:38ZBlog EntryPre-Budget Consultation 2016 - Submission to the IT Group of the Ministry of Finance
https://cis-india.org/openness/pre-budget-consultation-2016-submission-to-the-ministry-of-finance
<b>The Ministry of Finance has recently held pre-budget consultations with different stakeholder groups in connection with the Union Budget 2016-17. We were invited to take part in the consultation for the IT (hardware and software) group organised on January 07, 2016, and submit a suggestion note. We are sharing the note below. It was prepared and presented by Sumandro Chattapadhyay, with contributions from Rohini Lakshané, Anubha Sinha, and other members of CIS.</b>
<p> </p>
<p>It is our distinct honour to be invited to submit this note for consideration by the IT Group of the Ministry of Finance, Government of India, as part of the pre-budget consultation for 2016-17.</p>
<p>The Centre for Internet and Society is (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, open access, open educational resources, and open video), internet governance, telecommunication reform, digital privacy, and cyber-security. We receive financial support from Kusuma Trust, Wikimedia Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, IDRC, and other donors.</p>
<p>We have divided our suggestions into the different topics that our organisation has been researching in the recent years.</p>
<p> </p>
<h3>Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS) is the Basis for Digital India</h3>
<p> </p>
<p>We congratulate the policies introduced by the government to promote use of free/libre and open source software and that of open APIs for all e-governance projects and systems. This is not only crucial for the government to avoid vendor lock-in when it comes to critical software systems for governance, but also to ensure that the source code of such systems is available for public scrutiny and do not contain any security flaws.</p>
<p>We request the government to empower the implementation of these policies by making open sharing of source code a necessity for all software vendors hired by government agencies a necessary condition for awarding of tenders. The 2016-17 budget should include special support to make all government agencies aware and capable of implementing these policies, as well as to build and operate agency-level software repositories (with version controlling system) to host the source codes. These repositories may function to manage the development and maintenance of software used in e-governance projects, as well as to seek comments from the public regarding the quality of the software.</p>
<p>Use of FLOSS is not only important from the security or the cost-saving perspectives, it is also crucial to develop a robust industry of software development firms that specialise in FLOSS-based solutions, as opposed to being restricted to doing local implementation of global software vendors. A holistic support for FLOSS, especially with the government functioning as the dominant client, will immensely help creation of domestic jobs in the software industry, as well as encouraging Indian programmers to contribute to development of FLOSS projects.</p>
<p>An effective compliance monitoring and enforcement system needs to be created to ensure that all government agencies are Strong enforcement of the 2011 policy to use open source software in governance, including an enforcement task force that checks whether government departments have complied with this or not.</p>
<p> </p>
<h3>Open Data is a Key Instrument for Transparent Decision Making</h3>
<p> </p>
<p>With a wider set of governance activities being carried out using information systems, the government is increasingly acquiring a substantial amount of data about governance processes and status of projects that needs to be effectively fed back into the decision making process for the same projects. Opening up such data not only allows for public transparency, but also for easier sharing of data across government agencies, which reduces process delays and possibilities of duplication of data collection efforts.</p>
<p>We request the 2016-17 budget to foreground the National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy and the Open Government Data Platform of India as two key enablers of the Digital India agenda, and accordingly budget for modernisation and reconfiguration of data collection and management processes across government agencies, so that those processes are made automatic and open-by-default. Automatic data management processes minimise the possibility of data loss by directly archiving the collected data, which is increasingly becoming digital in nature. Open-by-default processes of data management means that all data collected by an agency, once pre-recognised as shareable data (that is non-sensitive and anonymised), will be proactively disclosed as a rule.</p>
<p>Implementation of the National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy has been hindered, so far, by the lack of preparation of a public inventory of data assets, along with the information of their collection cycles, modes of collection and storage, etc., by each union government agency. Specific budgetary allocation to develop these inventories will be crucial not only for the implementation of the Policy, but also for the government to get an extensive sense of data collected and maintained currently by various government agencies. Decisions to proactively publish, or otherwise, such data can then be taken based on established rules.</p>
<p>Availability of such open data, as mentioned above, creates a wider possibility for the public to know, learn, and understand the activities of the government, and is a cornerstone of transparent governance in the digital era. But making this a reality requires a systemic implementation of open government data practices, and various agencies would require targeted budget to undertake the required capacity development and work process re-engineering. Expenditure of such kind should not be seen as producing government data as a product, but as producing data as an infrastructure, which will be of continuous value for the years to come.</p>
<p>As being discussed globally, open government data has the potential to kickstart a vast market of data derivatives, analytics companies, and data-driven innovation. Encouraging civic innovations, empowered by open government data - from climate data to transport data - can also be one of the unique initiatives of budget 2016-17.</p>
<p>For maximising impact of opened up government data, we request the government to publish data that either has a high demand already (such as, geospatial data, and transport data), or is related to high-net-worth activities of the government (such as, data related to monitoring of major programmes, and budget and expenditure data for union and state governments).</p>
<p> </p>
<h3>Promotion of Start-ups and MSMEs in Electronics and IT Hardware Manufacturing</h3>
<p> </p>
<p>In line with the Make in India and Digital India initiatives, to enable India to be one of the global hubs of design, manufacturing, and exporting of electronics and IT hardware, we request that the budget 2016-17 focus on increasing flow of fund to start-ups and Medium and Small-Scale Manufacturing Enterprises (MSMEs) in the form of research and development grants (ideally connected to government, especially defense-related, spending on IT hardware innovation), seed capital, and venture capital.</p>
<p>Generation of awareness and industry-specific strategies to develop intellectual property regimes and practices favourable for manufacturers of electronics and IT hardware in India is an absolutely crucial part of promotion of the same, especially in the current global scenario. Start-ups and MSMEs must be made thoroughly aware of intellectual property concerns and possibilities, including limitations and exceptions, flexibilities, and alternative models such as open innovation.</p>
<p>We request the budget 2016-17 to give special emphasis to facilitation of technology licensing and transfer, through voluntary mechanisms as well as government intervention, such as compulsory licensing and government enforced patent pools.</p>
<p> </p>
<h3>Applied Mathematics Research is Fundamental for Cybersecurity</h3>
<p> </p>
<p>Recent global reports have revealed that some national governments have been actively involved in sponsoring distortion in applied mathematics research so as to introduce weaknesses in encryption standards used in for online communication. Instead of trying to regulate key-length or mandating pre-registration of devices using encryption, as suggested by the withdrawn National Encryption Policy draft, would not be able to address this core emerging problem of weak cybersecurity standards.</p>
<p>For effective and sustainable cybersecurity strategy, we must develop significant expertise in applied mathematical research, which is the very basis of cybersecurity standards development. We request the budget 2016-17 to give this topic the much-needed focus, especially in the context of the Digital India initiative and the upcoming National Encryption Policy.</p>
<p>Along with developing domestic research capacity, a more immediately important step for the government is to ensure high quality Indian participation in global standard setting organisations, and hence to contribute to global standards making processes. We humbly suggest that categorical support for such participation and contribution is provided through the budget 2016-17, perhaps by partially channeling the revenues obtained from spectrum auctions.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/openness/pre-budget-consultation-2016-submission-to-the-ministry-of-finance'>https://cis-india.org/openness/pre-budget-consultation-2016-submission-to-the-ministry-of-finance</a>
</p>
No publishersumandroOpen StandardsOpen SourceCybersecurityOpen DataIntellectual Property RightsOpen Government DataFeaturedPatentsOpennessOpen InnovationEncryption Policy2016-01-12T13:34:41ZBlog EntrySeminar on Open Access in Research Area: A Strategic Approach
https://cis-india.org/openness/teri-seminar-on-open-access-in-research
<b>The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), Delhi, is organising a seminar on open access in research on Tuesday, December 22, 2015. The seminar will focus on: 1) wider access to scientific publications and research data, 2) access to scientific information, and 3) challenges and opportunities of research data. The Centre for Internet and Society is supporting the event as a Knowledge Partner.</b>
<p> </p>
<h2>Background</h2>
<p>Open Access has become central importance to advancing the interests of researchers, scholars, students, business, and the public as well as librarians. Increasingly, research institutions require researchers to publish articles that report research findings openly accessible in open domain.</p>
<p>Open Access pursues to yield scholarly publishing to spread knowledge and allow that knowledge to be built upon. Price barriers should not stop researchers from getting access to research data. Open Access, and the open availability and search ability of scholarly research that it entails, will have a significant positive impact on everything from education to the research practice in various fields.</p>
<p>To explore why Open Access is so important to a number of groups, TERI Library along with The Centre for Internet & Society (CIS) as Knowledge Partner is organizing a half day seminar on <em>Open Access in Research Areas: a Strategic Approach</em> on December 22, 2015 at TERI Seminar Hall, IHC, Lodhi Road, New Delhi.</p>
<p>The Seminar will focus on:</p>
<ul>
<li>
<p>wider access to scientific publications and research data</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>access to scientific information, and</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>challenges and opportunities of research data.</p>
</li></ul>
<p> </p>
<h2>Schedule</h2>
<p>No registration is required to attend the seminar. Seats are limited, and will be provided on first-come-first-served basis.</p>
<p> </p>
<table>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>13:45 - 14:00</td>
<td><br /></td>
<td><strong>Registration and Networking</strong></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>14:00 - 14:10</td>
<td><br /></td>
<td>Welcome Address - <strong>Mr. Prabir Sengupta</strong>, Distinguished Fellow and Director, Knowledge Management Division, TERI</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>14:10 - 14:20</td>
<td><br /></td>
<td>Special Address - <strong>Sumandro Chattapadhyay</strong>, Research Director, The Centre for Internet and Society</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>14:20 - 14:35</td>
<td><br /></td>
<td>Keynote Address - <strong>Dr. K.R. Murali Mohan</strong>, Advisor, Big Data Initiatives Division, Department of Science and Technology</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>14:35 - 14:50</td>
<td><br /></td>
<td>Inaugural Address - <strong>Dr. Chandrima Shaha</strong>, Director, National Institute of Immunology, New Delhi</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>14:50 - 15:00</td>
<td><br /></td>
<td>Setting the Theme and Vote of Thanks - <strong>Dr. P.K. Bhattacharya</strong>, Fellow and Area Convenor, Knowledge Management Division, TERI</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>15:00 - 15:30</td>
<td><br /></td>
<td><strong>Tea and Refreshments</strong></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>15:30 - 17:15</td>
<td><br /></td>
<td><strong>Plenary Session</strong><br />
Chair: <strong>Dr. Ramesh Sharma</strong>, Director, CEMCA<br />
<ul>
<li><strong>Puneet Kishor</strong>, Researcher and Independent Consultant - "Science, Data, and Creative Commons"</li>
<li><strong>Dr. Beth Sandore Namachchivaya</strong>, Associate Dean of Libraries and Professor University of Illinois - "Developing Services, Infrastructure, and Best Practices to Conserve and Provide Access to Research Data: Challenges and Opportunities"</li>
<li><strong>Dr. Usha Mujoo Munshi</strong>, Librarian, Indian institute of Public Administration</li></ul>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p> </p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/openness/teri-seminar-on-open-access-in-research'>https://cis-india.org/openness/teri-seminar-on-open-access-in-research</a>
</p>
No publishersumandroOpen DataFeaturedOpen ResearchOpen AccessOpennessEvent2015-12-22T05:37:44ZEvent30 Books of Odia Author and Historian Jagannath Prasad Das to Come Online on Odia Wikisource
https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/discover-bhubaneswar-30-books-of-odia-author-and-historian-jagannath-prasad-das-to-come-online-on-odia-wikisource
<b></b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The article was published in <a class="external-link" href="http://mybhubaneswar.com/jagannath-prasad-das-books-odia-wikisource/">Discover Bhubaneswar, a web portal on Odisha</a> on December 4, 2015.</p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Odia author and cultural historian Jagannath Prasad Das has recently permitted to re-license under a free license Creative Commons Share-Alike 4.0 or <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0">CC-BY-SA 4.0</a> for 30 volumes of his notable works. The author, popularly known as “J P” or “JP Das” has been honored with Saraswati Samman and Sahitya Academy award for his significant contribution in fiction, historical research of Odisha’s cultural heritage in his books Puri Paintings, Chitra-Pothi and Palm-leaf Miniatures apart from his Odia books “Prathama Purusa” and “Bhabanatha O Anyamane”.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">“I made a rather late and hesitant entry into the internet and digital world, but it has since become an integral part of my life. My introduction to digital books was through Srujanika’s digitised version of Purnachandra Odia Bhashakosha – all of 95,00 pages in seven volumes — which was impossible to handle on the writing table. That made me think how wonderful it would be to have all Odia books available on the internet that could be easily accessible to every interested reader”, says Das.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">“As a beginning I decided to put my own writings on the internet. Many of our young Odia writers are are quite active on the social media. I hope they will take the initiative to get more and more Odia books available on the internet with the help of Odia Wikisource”, he adds.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">This contribution opens up a whole new window to his books being accessible to readers for free online. Recently the scanning of the original books were made by the Bhubaneswar based non-profit and science education research organization Srujanika which will now be made available after converting them into text form.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Apart from Dr Das, many other notable individuals like Padma shree Debi Prasanna Pattanayak, Dr Subrat Prusty, Manoj Panda, Bharat Majhi and organisations like Aama Odisha, Manik Biswanath Smrutinyasa have taken the noble step of sharing their works online with free licenses using Odia Wikisource as a platform.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Odia Wikisource, a sister project of the <a href="https://or.wikipedia.org/">Odia Wikipedia</a>, is available online at <a href="http://or.wikisource.org/">or.wikisource.org</a>. There are over 238 books already and all of the books are either under Public Domain or under the above mentioned Creative Commons Share-Alike license which gives the freedom of accessing the works for free, reuse them and even correct if any mistakes found, of course following the guidelines made by the Wikisource community. Currently about 10 Wikisourcers are actively contributing to digitize books of various genre, ranging from science to fiction to even the Odia classics.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">With more authors generously opening up their work online, it feels like they are worried of the books becoming obsolete from the new generation leaving them with no way to learn about their own language and literature. Regional languages like Odia are facing the struggle to selling more books with the growing trend of English-centric education and rat race for jobs. In such a tough situation more popular Odia literary content is certainly going to give a boost to readership and will take the language to more people.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/discover-bhubaneswar-30-books-of-odia-author-and-historian-jagannath-prasad-das-to-come-online-on-odia-wikisource'>https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/discover-bhubaneswar-30-books-of-odia-author-and-historian-jagannath-prasad-das-to-come-online-on-odia-wikisource</a>
</p>
No publishersubhaOpennessCIS-A2KOdia WikipediaAccess to Knowledge2016-01-03T11:19:12ZBlog EntryOpen access in the Marathi language expands by a thousand books
https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/wikimedia-blog-subhashish-panigrahi-december-3-open-access-in-marathi-language-expands-by-thousand-books
<b>As the Maharashtra Granthottejak Sanstha (MGS) celebrated its 121st anniversary recently, the organization re-licensed 1000 books under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license so that the books could be digitized and be made available on the Marathi Wikisource for millions of Marathi readers.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">This was published in <a class="external-link" href="https://blog.wikimedia.org/2015/12/03/open-access-marathi-language/">Wikimedia Blog</a> on December 3, 2015.</p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">As the <i><a href="http://granthottejak.org/about.html">Maharashtra Granthottejak Sanstha</a></i> (MGS) celebrated its 121st anniversary recently, the organization re-licensed 1000 books under the <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA 4.0</a> license so that the books could be digitized and be made available on the <a href="https://mr.wikisource.org/wiki/%E0%A4%AE%E0%A5%81%E0%A4%96%E0%A4%AA%E0%A5%83%E0%A4%B7%E0%A5%8D%E0%A4%A0">Marathi Wikisource</a> for millions of Marathi readers.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-1"><a href="https://blog.wikimedia.org/2015/12/03/open-access-marathi-language/#cite_note-1">[1]</a></sup></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">MGS is a non-profit organization working for the preservation of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maharashtra" title="en:Maharashtra">Maharashtra’s</a> linguistic and cultural heritage. It was founded in Pune, India in 1894. Being an important archive for the preservation of many hundreds of years old manuscripts and historical artifacts from the Peshwa era, the institution is open to public for study and research.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">During the four-day anniversary celebration, the <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CIS-A2K" title="CIS-A2K">Centre for Internet Society’s Access to Knowledge program</a> (CIS-A2K)—an organization that supports the Wikimedia movement in India—opened a Wikipedia stall there where Marathi Wikimedians were present. Around 600 people visited the stall and learned about the news of MGS’s book donation.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Many active and new Marathi Wikimedians were present at the exhibition stall along with Abhinav Garule from the CIS-A2K program to share the incredible work Marathi Wikipedia and Wikimedia community at large are doing. Autographs of eighteen notable writers who received awards from Sanstha for different genres of writings were collected for uploading to the Wikipedia pages about them. While meeting the authors, Wikimedians also approached them to relicense some of their works under Creative Commons licenses so that they could be digitized on Wikisource and/or enrich Wikipedia—and some of the authors expressed a good deal of interest in opening up their books for Wikisource.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Some of the major books donated are <i>Peshwa Rojnishi</i> (diary of <i>Peshwa</i>), <i>Benjamin Franklin Charitra</i> (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Autobiography_of_Benjamin_Franklin"><i>The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin</i></a>), <i>Kekavali</i>, <i>S M Paranjape Charitra</i> (autobiography), <i>Letters Exchanged between the Sanstha and the British Government</i>, <i>Shinde Gharanyacha Padmamay Itihas</i> (manuscript), and <i>Marathwadyatil Arvachin Marathi Vangmay</i> (modern Marathi literature from <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marathwada" title="w:Marathwada">Marathwada</a>, a region in Maharashtra) are some of the popular books read by Marathi speakers that are going to be part of the books donated by the organization.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">We reached out to Avinash Chaphekar, the joint secretary of the organization, to know more about the state of book publication and readership.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Subhashish Panigrahi (SP): Could you share your ideas of opening these invaluable books for Wikisource? How they are going to be useful for the online readers to learn about the Peshwas?</b></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Avinash Chaphekar (AC): These books are of historical importance and contain information that needs to reach more people; they cover topics that are rarely covered well anywhere else. Right after India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi recommended the autobiography of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin" title="en:Benjamin Franklin">Benjamin Franklin</a>, as it contains a lot of messages for a common person, a lady walked up to and asked if she could read it in Marathi. Be it such autobiographies or a poetry book like “Kekavali”, such books that were published by the MGS should not be kept closed—many readers are searching for them. We donated 800 of these old books to the Marathi Wikisource because we don’t have large presence in the media or the Internet, so how would any reader who does not know us buy a book? If these books are available online, they can at least find and read them.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>SP: Where do you think there is gap between publishers and readers today? Many Marathi books get published every year and if you search on the Internet, which many people today do, you would hardly find much.</b></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>AC</b>: Online readership is increasing every day, but when you look at Marathi readers, the majority of them are still buying books. During the exhibitions here (even this year!), there is always quite a rush to buy books. Only the youth and tech-savvy people read online. But most people we meet say that they feel more comfortable holding and reading physical books. Moreover, there is no concrete research validating that most of the youngsters here are accessing information only online. I still feel reading books in a conventional way by holding books in your hands will continue to exist as there is some kind of satisfaction that lies in it.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>SP: Did you know that we are going to get these books retyped, meaning that readers will not just be able to read them in their smartphones or computers but they could use the text for republishing the same books in the future? How do you think such a model will be useful for publishers?</b></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>AC</b>: At the MGS, we don’t have funds to republish these books, and publishers are not ready to do it no matter how historically valuable the books are—even an incredibly valuable reference book called <i>Marathi Grantha Nirmiti Watchal</i> (the history of creation of Marathi books in Marathi), authored by SG Tulpule and published by us in 1973. This book has detailed information about Marathi publications, even those that existed before printing technology existed. As many such books are not being reprinted, we cannot leave the remaining few copies to perish. Let them go online and reach millions of people.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/wikimedia-blog-subhashish-panigrahi-december-3-open-access-in-marathi-language-expands-by-thousand-books'>https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/wikimedia-blog-subhashish-panigrahi-december-3-open-access-in-marathi-language-expands-by-thousand-books</a>
</p>
No publisherSubhashish Panigrahi and Abhinav GaruleOpennessMarathi WikipediaCIS-A2KAccess to Knowledge2016-01-03T11:26:49ZBlog EntryDesign!Public (6th Edition)
https://cis-india.org/openness/news/design-public-6th-edition
<b>The sixth edition of Design Public conceptualized and hosted by CivicLabs, an initiative of the Center for Knowledge Societies was held at Vihara Innovation Campus, New Delhi. Sumandro Chattapadhyay was a panelist.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The event created a platform through which urban administrators could engage with a wide range of expertise representing innovation, public policy, development, technology and entrepreneurship. The event brought together leading global and Indian practitioners representing these fields, to share and exchange best practices, learnings, approaches and philosophies in an attempt to chart a way forward for an ecosystem for civic innovation for India’s cities.</p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">For more information see the <a class="external-link" href="http://www.designpublic.in/">Design Public website</a>. Also see the <a class="external-link" href="http://designpublic.in/blogs/">blog post</a> by Khusbhoo Dixit on this.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/openness/news/design-public-6th-edition'>https://cis-india.org/openness/news/design-public-6th-edition</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaOpenness2015-11-30T02:11:45ZNews ItemGuerrilla GLAMː An alternate way of doing GLAM in indie-way
https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/guerrilla-glam-an-alternate-way-of-doing-glam-in-indie-way
<b> I have been working on a concept called the Guerrilla GLAM. Here is a very quick summary about the concept that was published in the GLAM-wiki newsletter for November.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><a href="https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/GLAM" title="GLAM">GLAM</a> stands for cultural institutions like Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums. It is a globally acclaimed free knowledge movement for opening up cultural data using various free software platforms as a tool. GLAM activities include collaboration with cultural institutions, data mining, meta data and other documentation of institutional collections, digitization of published works, records and artifacts, and publishing the collected information in both human and machine readable forms with open standards. Building partnership with GLAM institutions is a great way of funneling the cultural content acquisition and bringing open access to such valuable data. But it is not that easy given the complications each country have in terms of formal agreement, organizational framework, and dissemination of information. "Guerrilla GLAM" techniques are based on the learning curve of institutional partnership building for large scale GLAM projects and leveraging personal contacts in small scale GLAM projects. It bring in several frugal strategies for cutting cost implication and operating in flexible modes. Guerrilla GLAM's range of work aims to accommodate people of different core expertise and it targets small to large orgaizations.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Guerrilla GLAM appeared first as a <a class="text external" href="https://wikimania2015.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions/How_to_do_GuerillaGLAM">public presentation during Wikimania</a> which I presented this year. It later interested many GLAM practitioners of New Zealand who organized a <a class="text external" href="https://blogs.otago.ac.nz/openotago/2015/10/06/how-to-do-guerilla-glam/" rel="nofollow">webinar</a> which provided a great platform to add many interesting ideas to my existing set of ideas. Guerrilla GLAM is still a budding concept that aims for being implemented by many cultural enthusiasts especially those who would like to document much about the artifacts, digitize old text from archives and manuscripts, and create meta data for institutional collections. Guerrilla GLAM operates with zero or with some informal institutional partnership with the institution and carried on the shoulders of the Wikimedians. The Wikimedians seek out for support from local communities, leverage the permissible access to institutional property and to some extent the personal relations with the institutions keeping the legal restrictions in mind, and do their best to acquire as much data as possible. Often times, near to zero cost Guerrilla GLAM projects with detailed planning with right kind of people on-board could yield more or less the same like any conventional GLAM project.</p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Click to read the original published on <a class="external-link" href="https://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/GLAM/Newsletter/November_2015/Contents/Special_story">Wikimedia Blog</a> on November 25, 2015.</p>
<p> </p>
<p><span id="comments"> </span></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/guerrilla-glam-an-alternate-way-of-doing-glam-in-indie-way'>https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/guerrilla-glam-an-alternate-way-of-doing-glam-in-indie-way</a>
</p>
No publishersubhaOpennessWikipediaAccess to KnowledgeWikimedia2015-12-16T03:09:47ZBlog EntryDesign Public Conclave, 6th Edition
https://cis-india.org/openness/design-public-conclave-6th-edition
<b>The 6th edition of the Design Public Conclave was hosted by Civic Labs, an initiative of the Center for Knowledge Studies, and part of the Vihara Innovation Network, in partnership with Social Innovation Exchange, Okapi, Business World, Business World for Smart Cities, and the Delhi Jal Board.</b>
<p> </p>
<p>This <a href="http://designpublic.in/">edition of the conclave</a> was focused on the challenges and opportunities faced by Indian cities. It sought to explore new mechanisms for integrating collaborative dialogue and problem solving into processes of government and citizen interaction. Participants included individuals from organisations such as Okapi, Hyderabad Urban Labs, Fields of View, Innovation Academy, Hewlett Packard, LIRNEasia, among others.</p>
<p>The conclave began with a round of light yoga before moving into the introductory session. Namit Arora, a member of the Delhi Dialogue Commission, who gave the opening remarks introduced some of the subjects to be discussed and raised issues of citizen engagement, massive migration, pollution, unplanned growth, housing, water and power shortage, social problems like sectarianism and crime as some of the challenges faced in civic innovation. He stressed the lack of engagement between public and private parties and the issue of having no sense of commons in civic life in India.</p>
<h2>What is Civic Innovation?</h2>
<p>The first panel titled “What is civic innovation?” comprised Diastika Rahwidiati from Pulse Lab, Pavan Srinath from Takshashila Institution, Sriganesh Lokanathan from LIRNEasia and Aditya Dev Sood from Vihara Innovation Network. Pavan raised questions about how more people can be involved in civic issues, and spoke about the training program for public governance run by the Takshashila Institution as a means towards that. He also shared the example of Bangalore Political Action Committee, a citizen’s collective that includes several eminent personalities from the city that aims to improve the quality of life in the city. The panel continued to discuss how technology can be harnessed for social activism, and how the data revolution and data sciences can be used for civic innovation. Questions were asked about whether digital activism, such as civic hackathons, is not just a passing fad. A lot of solutions that are only technological in nature, can be misinformed, and so it is essential that other actors are involved along with technologists.</p>
<h2>The Vision of a Smart City</h2>
<p>Next, Sumit D. Chowdhury from the Ministry of Urban Development, Karuna Gopal from Foundation for Futuristic Cities, Parvathi Menon from Innovation Alchemy, Debashish Rao from HP, Bharath Palavalli from Fields of View and Namrata Mehta from CivicLabs spoke about how smart cities can be built. Parvathi Menon kicked off the conversation by saying that while it is impossible to design smart cities, it is possible to design smart communities. Sumit Chowdhury shared some of the factors that, in his opinion, make a smart city—the creation of scalable infrastructure, transparency in governance, velocity of business and quality of life. A city that can measure itself and use that knowledge to improve itself is a true smart city. Bharat Palavalli chimed in that while technology can make cities more efficient, efficiency can be dangerous. It can become easy to forget who the city is becoming more efficient for. Here, Sumit brought up the example of Shivpur in Maharashtra, where there are water meters in every village, public consciousness about planning and services and timely payment of taxes by citizen to drive the point that smart cities are driven by communities, and technology plays a role in enabling processes and the State in institutionalizing successful solutions. Finally, it was pointed out that under the 100 Smart Cities Initiative, the MoUD does not have a consistent understanding of what smart cities should be.</p>
<h2>Dialogue between Society and State</h2>
<p>This panel was followed by Elizabeth Elson’s keynote talk, “The dialogue between society and the state.” She spoke about the the power struggle between citizens and the government even in the case of technological application about who brings about change. She shared her experiences from the MAMPU programme. She pointed out some issues faced during the programme like too much focus on symptoms without really understanding the underlying causes, the use of intermediaries, creating mutually empowering coalitions. Elizabeth Elson pointed out that the terms, innovation and technology are used interchangeably . She pointed out that this was problematic as all technological solutions were not innovative. Another important issue that she raised was the need for technological intervention make media more accountable to the society. This session was followed by lunch.</p>
<h2>Changing Society and Governments</h2>
<p>The next session was moderated by Sumadro Chattapadhyay of Centre for Internet and Society. This panel included Garima Agarwal from Ashoka Innovators, Bangalore and Maesy Angelina from MAMPU programme, Jakarta. The session focussed on what were the appropriate modes of dialogues between civil society, private sector and government. Maesy Angelina focussed on design thinking as one of key methodologies for social innovation. Garima Agarwal emphasised on the importance of developing empathy as an institution. The panel said that while civil society and private sector could continue to point out the issues to the government, very often there is a failure of the government apparatus in that they do not know how to respond to these issues.</p>
<h2>Civic Tech Demos</h2>
<p>After lunch, there was a small session of brief pitches of examples of civic technological innovations. These include Local Circles, Meri Awaaz, SocialCops, On Track Media and BusBud. The issues that the solutions sought to addressed ranged from citizen engagement, awareness about reproductive issues, MNREGA, public transport and parking. I was reminded of the words of Pia Mancini who felt that she had failed in leveraging technology to solve governance issues as those problems were not technological but cultural. Having said that, a number of the ideas and the desire of use technology to solve social problems were laudable and one hopes to see more applications like these in future.</p>
<h2>Breakout Sessions</h2>
<p>This was followed by three simultaneous breakout sessions on the following topics – 1) Form and Function: Data Protocols for Civic Innovation, 2) Water Management for Improved Urban Health, and 3) Gaming for Decentralized Waste Management. I was part of the group discussing data protocols for civic innovation. Various question were raised with the implications of open data. One of the recurring themes was the question of ownership of data and who had a rightful claim over it. We broke the discussion down into two heads – risks of data and opportunities for governance and solutions. Among risks, we discussed issues such as privacy risks, chilling effects on free speech, reliability of data, profusion of data without clear insights, social profiling and re-identification of anonymised data. We look at different forms and opportunities for governance including licensing and control, cross linking of data silos, clear guidelines on who controls and owns data. The failure of conventional data protection principles like collection limitation and data minimisation principles were also considered and alternate models which involved having hierarchies of different kinds of data based on potential harm through misuse were discussed. After the breakout sessions, each group made a presentation of their observation.</p>
<h2>Concluding</h2>
<p>The final session was on accelerating civic innovation. The panel comprised Kartik Desai from ASHA Impact, Delhi, Nishesh Mehta from Water Co-Lab, Ahmedabad, AIyong Paul Seong from USAID, Delhi, Santosh Singh from World Bank, Delhi and Aditya Dev Sood from Vihara Innovation Network. The discussion was focussed on what kinds of services can have an impact on the way citizens interact with the state. Elizabeth Elson’s keynote on the dialogues between the state and the citizens is also relevant with regard to this discussion. Different actors including citizens, civil society actors, government institutions and industry were discussed as agents who may create the new platforms for interaction. The conclave concluded with dinner and drinks in the lawns of the Vihara Innovation Campus.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/openness/design-public-conclave-6th-edition'>https://cis-india.org/openness/design-public-conclave-6th-edition</a>
</p>
No publisheramberOpen DataOpen InnovationOpenness2016-06-18T16:45:05ZBlog EntryCIS Participated in T20 Mumbai, Regional Consultation Meeting, October 19, 2015
https://cis-india.org/a2k/news/cis-participated-in-t20-mumbai-oct-19-2015
<b>This is the first time that a T20 event, which is a series of preparatory meetings towards G20 summits, is taking place in India. Sumandro Chattapadhyay represented CIS in this consultation, and was a discussant in the session on Technology, Services, and Skills.</b>
<p> </p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">"On 19 October 2015, over 50 experts from foreign and Indian think tanks, business leaders from India, and government representatives from the G20 countries will gather at Gateway House in Mumbai to discuss issues of global economic governance and foreign economic policy at India’s first Think20 (T20) meeting. The keynote address for the meeting, “Global Economy and Challenges for Multilateral Policies” will be delivered by Dr. Raghuram Rajan, Governor, Reserve Bank of India. This is a Think-20 (T20) regional consultation meeting. The G20 is a multilateral forum comprising the world’s 20 major economies, and is recognized as the “premier global economic governance platform”. This year, Turkey is the president of the G20 forum (2015). The T20 is an official sub-forum of the G20 process, responsible for contributing ideas and research to the G20 on global economic issues.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The T20 Mumbai event will be co-hosted by Gateway House, in collaboration with the leading Turkish think tank – Economic Policy Research Foundation of Turkey (TEPAV). TEPAV is the official Turkish Think Tank responsible for coordinating the activities of the T20 in 2015 with think tanks from all the G20 member countries.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">India will join the T20 group for the first time, by hosting the meeting in Mumbai, and Gateway House is honoured to initiate this select event. Observations and recommendations from the dialogue will be officially submitted to the Turkish G20 presidency, and incorporated into the discourse for the G20 Leaders Summit scheduled for 15-16 November, 2015, Antalya, Turkey."</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">This meeting is significant for India: it reinforces India’s role as a key participant in multilateral economic fora and contributor of solutions for global economic issues...</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Participants will include Gateway House members comprising business leaders and individuals from India. The Indian government will be represented by the Ministry of Finance, Ministry of External Affairs, the Reserve Bank of India, and EXIM Bank. Diplomatic representation is expected from G20 countries, SAARC countries and several multilateral financial institutions.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The sessions will commence with a keynote by Dr. Raghuram Rajan, Governor, Reserve Bank of India, followed by a joint think tank and business session on the impact of geopolitics and business. Starting at noon will be five working sessions for the think tank experts to discuss a range of global economic issues under the G20 mandate such as global trade and investments, inclusive business models, financing sustainable infrastructure and building skills for a technology and services-driven economy."</p>
<hr />
<p><strong>Press release: <a class="external-link" href="http://www.gatewayhouse.in/press-release-indias-first-think20-t20-meeting/">http://www.gatewayhouse.in/press-release-indias-first-think20-t20-meeting/</a></strong></p>
<p><strong>Event page: <a class="external-link" href="http://www.gatewayhouse.in/t20mumbai/">http://www.gatewayhouse.in/t20mumbai/</a></strong></p>
<p><strong>Agenda: <a class="external-link" href="http://www.gatewayhouse.in/t20mumbai/agenda/">http://www.gatewayhouse.in/t20mumbai/agenda/</a></strong></p>
<hr />
<h3>Notes from Sumandro's Statement</h3>
<p> </p>
<ul>
<li>The problem of creating meaningful and sustainable employment opportunities in today's technology-mediated global economy is not simply one of skill-enabling the existing and emerging workforce to take part in the growing service sector.<br /><br /></li>
<li>It is crucial to recognise that the contemporary growth of service sector in economies across countries is being fundamentally shaped by access to technology, and access to information and services via technological devices and networks.<br /><br /></li>
<li>A key barrier to effective access to technology in the developing world is the rent-seeking business strategies that permeate global technological industries: from technologies of communication, to those of agriculture, to those of medicine.<br /><br /></li>
<li>Apart from removing such barriers, global and national strategies towards skill development for achieving meaningful and sustainable employment must focus on two things: 1) enabling self-learning through open educational resources, and public infrastructures supporting the same, and 2) a broad-based national innovation system that incentivises businesses to create and effectively use intellectual properties, as appropriate for the local context.<br /><br /></li>
<li>Skill-enabling of new entrants to the labour market (or existing one) must not be understood in terms of special purpose vocational training, that is narrow education for presently existing job opportunities. Neither can online self-learning programmes succeed without building public infrastructures for social learning.<br /><br /></li>
<li>Various recent commentators, most famously The Economist, have flagged the ineffectiveness, and even negative impacts, of the global intellectual property rights regime. An effective and democratic national innovation system must neither treat innovation in a sector-specific manner, nor as a general strategy driven by the needs of particular industries in a particular stage of their development of operations and IP ownership.<br /><br /></li>
<li>Skilling of the existing and emerging workforce must enable them to take part in the global knowledge economy, and its technological basis, in a holistic way.<br /><br /></li>
<li>Openness in policy-making and collaborative implementation, not only between public and private agencies but also between public agencies, are absolutely essential for the success of any such initiative to develop skills of the national workforce.</li></ul>
<p> </p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/a2k/news/cis-participated-in-t20-mumbai-oct-19-2015'>https://cis-india.org/a2k/news/cis-participated-in-t20-mumbai-oct-19-2015</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaOpennessAccess to Knowledge2015-10-20T13:54:39ZNews ItemOCR and OER – update
https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/education-okfn-subhashish-panigrahi-september-25-2015-ocr-and-oer-update
<b>We welcome this short posting from Subhashish Panigrahi which updates a 2014 posting of his on Indic Language Wikipedias as Open Educational Resources at http://education.okfn.org/indic-language-wikipedias-as-open-educational-resources/</b>
<p> </p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">To read the blog post published by Open Education Working Group, see <a class="external-link" href="http://education.okfn.org/ocr-and-oer-update/">here</a>.</p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify;">Subhashish Panigrahi (<a href="http://twitter.com/subhapa">@subhapa</a>) is an educator, author, blogger, Wikimedian, language activist and free knowledge evangelist based in Bengaluru (often called Bangalore), India. After working for a while at the Wikimedia Foundation’s India Program he is currently at the <a href="https://cis-india.org">Centre for Internet and Society</a>‘s <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Access_To_Knowledge">Access To Knowledge program</a>. He works primarily in building partnership with universities, language research and GLAM (Gallery, Library, Archive and Museums) organizations for bringing more scholarly and encyclopedic content under free licenses, designs outreach programs for South Asian language Wikipedia/Wikimedia projects and communities. He wears many other hats: Editor for Global Voices Odia, Community Moderator of Opensource.com, and Ambassador for India in OpenGLAM Local. Subhashish is the author of a piece “Rising Voices: Indigenous language Digital Activism” in the book <a href="http://meson.press/books/digital-activism-in-asia-reader" target="_blank">Digital Activism in Asia Reader</a>.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify;">Google’s OCR and its use by Wikimedians in South Asia</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Some time back on the <a href="https://support.google.com/drive/answer/176692" target="_blank">OCR project support</a> network, Google had announced that the Google drive could be used for <a href="https://support.google.com/drive/answer/176692" target="_blank">Optical Character Recognition</a> (OCR). The software now works for over 248 world languages (including all the major South Asian languages). Though the exact pattern of development of the software is not clear, some of the Wikimedians reported that there is improvement over time in the recognition of their native languages Malayalam and Tamil. The recent encounter has been with a simple, easy to to use and robust software that can detect most languages with over 90% accuracy.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The OCR technology extracts text from images, scans of printed text, and even handwriting to some extent, which means that the text can be extracted pretty much from any old book, manuscript, or image. This certainly brings hope to most Indian languages as there is a lot to digitize. Most of the major Indian languages have plenty of non-digitized literature and the existing OCR systems are not as good as Google when so many languages are concerned as a whole.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Google’s OCR engine is probably using aspects of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesseract_%28software%29" target="_blank">Tesseract</a>, an OCR engine released as free software, or <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OCRopus" target="_blank">OCRopus</a>, a free document analysis and optical character recognition (OCR) system that is primarily used in <a href="https://books.google.com/" target="_blank">Google Books</a>. Developed as a community project during 1995-2006 and later <a href="https://code.google.com/archive/p/tesseract-ocr/" target="_blank">taken over by Google</a>, Tesseract is considered one of the most accurate OCR engines and works for over 60 languages. The source code is available <a href="https://github.com/tesseract-ocr" target="_blank">on GitHub</a>.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The <a href="https://support.google.com/drive/answer/176692" target="_blank">OCR project support page</a> offers additional details on preserving character formatting for things like bold and italics after OCR in the output text.</p>
<blockquote style="text-align: justify;">
<p>When processing your document, we attempt to preserve basic text formatting such as bold and italic text, font size and type, and line breaks. However, detecting these elements is difficult and we may not always succeed. Other text formatting and structuring elements such as bulleted and numbered lists, tables, text columns, and footnotes or endnotes are likely to get lost.</p>
</blockquote>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The user-end interaction of the OCR software currently is rather simple. The user has to upload an image of the scan in any image format (.jpg, .png, .gif, etc.) or PDF to the Google Drive. Upon completion of the uploading, opening the file in Google Drive shows both the image and the converted text in the same document.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">One of the most popular free and open digitization platforms, <a href="https://wikisource.org/wiki/Main_Page" target="_blank">Wikisource</a> currently hosts hundreds or thousands of free books which are either out of copyright or under Creative Commons licenses (CC-by or CC-by-SA) allowing users to digitize.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">While OCR works quite well for Latin based languages, many other scripts do not get OCRed perfectly. So, the Wikisourcers (Wikisource contributors) often have to type the text.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Thus the new Google OCR might be useful both for the Wikisource community and many others who are in the mission of digitizing old text and archiving them.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The image below shows a screen from a tutorial to convert text in the <a title="Odia language" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odia_language" target="_blank">Odia language</a> from a scanned image using Google’s OCR.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/education-okfn-subhashish-panigrahi-september-25-2015-ocr-and-oer-update'>https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/education-okfn-subhashish-panigrahi-september-25-2015-ocr-and-oer-update</a>
</p>
No publishersubhaOpen Educational ResourcesOpennessAccess to Knowledge2016-06-18T17:09:22ZBlog EntryTransformaking 2015 : International Summit on Critical and Transformative Making, Yogyakarta
https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/transformaking-2015-international-summit-on-critical-and-transformative-making-yogyakarta
<b>Transformaking 2015 brought together makers, scientist, hackers, bricoleurs, researchers, artists, designers and other interdisciplinary practitioners from across the globe in a series of Residency and Research Program, Symposium, Exhibition, Fair, and Satellite Projects. It was held from August 10 to September 20, 2015. Transformaking 2015 was organized by HONF Foundation & CATEC (Culture Arts Technoloy Empowerment Community) in partnership with the Centre for Internet & Society (CIS), Common Room, Crosslab, and Nicelab. </b>
<p> </p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">More information on the event can be accessed on this <a class="external-link" href="http://transformaking.org/opencall">website</a>. I presented a talk <a class="external-link" href="http://transformaking.org/program/symposium">Open Spectrum and Open Science – Policy and Future Opportunities</a>. I was also a speaker in a panel <a class="external-link" href="http://transformaking.org/program/symposium">Encouraging Innovations through Communication and Open Source Culture</a> with fellow panelists Tom Rowlands (Future Everything), Gustav Hariman (Common Room, Bandung) and Colette Tron (Alphabetville) and moderated by Sachet Manandhar of Karkhana Labs, Nepal.</p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify;">As with many other societies, Indonesia has a distinct maker culture that goes back centuries. The rise of collective movements in the network culture following the digital revolution — with associated terms such as DIY (do-it-yourself), DIWO (do-it-with-others), open source, maker and hacker spaces — only reinvigorates and replicates traditional production practices at the grass-roots level: verbal passing of knowledge both vertical (between generations) and horizontal (among community members), voluntary communal division of labour, inventiveness to overcome limited infrastructures, driven by the need to find solutions for a better life rather than personal profit. Our forefathers were the genuine makers.<br /><br />The burgeoning maker movement has been receiving growing recognition as it demonstrates great potential to address concerns and provide innovative solutions at a local, citizen level where established socio-political systems fail. As the makers and associated maker culture come into contact with large industries, they run the risk of being reduced into commodities. A critical attitude is essential to keep the maker movement genuine with lessons from our forefathers in mind and catalyze practices create solutions and sustainable implementations in a process of transformative making — or Transformaking.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The summit aimed to:</p>
<ul>
<li>Create a forum for all stakeholders to discuss views, practices, questions, and issues in the realm of critical making movement</li>
<li>Exhibit projects that create tangible, transformative solutions at a citizen level</li>
<li>Produce usable tools and define dissemination strategies for catalyzing local transformations globally</li></ul>
<ul></ul>
<hr />
<p>The following is a note on the Conception of the Summit:</p>
<h3>Conception of the Summit - Why 'Transformaking'?</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The act of Making is not new, and has been an ongoing process over centuries of mankind, ever since the invention of Neanderthal tools, the wheel, cultural artifacts and practices, to the modern day space shuttle and modes of communication. Today’s networked knowledge society is catalyzing and affecting the process of Making and knowledge production in interesting ways by mediating the co-located and instantaneous access, dissemination and sharing of information amongst people across vast distances.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/Transformaking.png/@@images/c5d0eac0-51db-4a42-a514-286e593c1c32.png" alt="null" class="image-inline" title="Transformaking" /></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">The notion of free labour accompanying a rising participation in the gift economy of network culture, is loaded with words such as <em>DIY, Open Knowledge, Open Data, Free & Open Source</em>, that blurs the lines of distinction between production & consumption, labour & cultural expression, and has transcended both the puritan new left movement on one hand and the neo-liberal free market ideology on the other.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">There has evidently been a marked shift in the site of labour — from the factory to society, that autonomists have called ‘the social factory’ which challenges the very notion of capitalism from the inside. In Pierre Lévy’s own words — A shift from the Cartesian model of thought based on the singular idea of cogito (I think) to a collective or plural cogitamus (we think), seems to be the unifying goal represented by various models and spaces for thinking such as Makercultures, Think Tanks, Maker Movements, Maker Labs & Hacker/Maker Spaces.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">This change in the process of making and knowledge production is further underlined by contextualized maker activity geared towards fueling change, thereby challenging traditional modes of production and consumption, creative and cultural expression, structures of societal organization, ownership, access, intellectual property and copyright regimes, models of participative democracy, citizen science and civic governance in a process of Transformative Making or –what we call – ‘<strong>Transformaking</strong>’.</p>
<p><strong>Transformaking: The International Summit on Critical and Transformative Making 2015</strong> shall bring together makers, hackers, bricoleurs, educators, researchers, theorists, artists and designers to:</p>
<ul style="text-align: justify;">
<li>A Symposium to self reflect, debate and put forth views with regards to their respective practices and dissect various complexities and questions that surround the areas of Critical and Transformative Making.</li>
<li>An Exhibition on Critical Making featuring completed and contextualized projects and productions.</li>
<li>Produce a tangible outcome, of the first International Summit, that focuses on collating diverse views, practices and usable tools along with strategizing modes of academic publication and dissemination for furthering meaningful local transformations, globally.</li></ul>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/transformaking-2015-international-summit-on-critical-and-transformative-making-yogyakarta'>https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/transformaking-2015-international-summit-on-critical-and-transformative-making-yogyakarta</a>
</p>
No publishersharathOpennessAccess to Knowledge2016-06-18T18:00:08ZBlog EntrySoftware Freedom Day 2015, Bengaluru
https://cis-india.org/openness/events/software-freedom-day-2015-bengaluru
<b>We are celebrating Software Freedom Day in Bengaluru this 19 September 2015.
Time & Date: 3 pm, 19 September 2015
Venue: Centre for Internet and Society,
194, 2nd C Cross, Domlur 2nd Stage,
Bengaluru 560071</b>
<p> </p>
<iframe src="https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1Qdb-P7rPv98IMdGa5U2axPHZn1Kd2lycOqCKzVrrZsE/viewform?embedded=true" frameborder="0" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" height="500" width="760">Loading...</iframe>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/openness/events/software-freedom-day-2015-bengaluru'>https://cis-india.org/openness/events/software-freedom-day-2015-bengaluru</a>
</p>
No publishersubhaOpenness2020-05-02T16:38:31ZEventMini Unconference on Openness in Development, Bangalore
https://cis-india.org/openness/events/mini-unconference-on-openness-in-development-bangalore
<b>Singapore Internet Research Centre and the Centre for Internet & Society are partnering together to hold a mini unconference session on Openness in Development on Day 2 of SIRCA III workshop. </b>
<p><span>For registration, please visit <a href="https://docs.google.com/forms/d/18PH8TL84yN24vRM9p6N-HmakNE2fjz0Ggld5MmRxVe0/viewform">here</a> or click on the image below.</span></p>
<hr />
<h3>Poster of the Event</h3>
<table class="listing">
<tbody>
<tr>
<th><a class="external-link" href="https://docs.google.com/forms/d/18PH8TL84yN24vRM9p6N-HmakNE2fjz0Ggld5MmRxVe0/viewform"><img src="https://cis-india.org/home-images/copy_of_Openness.png" alt="Openness" class="image-inline" title="Openness" /></a></th>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p>Contact: <b><span>Sandy PEK Sin Yee (Ms) </span> </b><span>| Project Officer (SiRC) | Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information | Nanyang Technological University, 31 Nanyang Link, #04-22, Singapore 637718 </span></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/openness/events/mini-unconference-on-openness-in-development-bangalore'>https://cis-india.org/openness/events/mini-unconference-on-openness-in-development-bangalore</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaOpennessEvent2015-09-18T01:49:43ZEvent