Centre for Internet and Society

Internet Researchers' Conference 2017 (IRC17) - Selection of Sessions

sumandro — 2016-12-12T13:37:23Z

We have a wonderful range of session proposals for the second Internet Researchers' Conference (IRC17) to take place in Bengaluru on March 03-05, 2017. From the 23 submitted session proposals, we will now select 10 to be part of the final Conference agenda. The selection will be done through votes casted by the teams that have proposed the sessions. This will take place in December 2016. Before that, we invite the session teams and other contributors to share their comments and suggestions on the submitted sessions. Please share your comments by December 14, either on session pages directly, or via email (sent to raw at cis-india dot org).

The Internet Researchers' Conference 2017 (IRC17) will be organised by the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) in partnership with the Centre for Information Technology and Public Policy at the International Institute of Information Technology Bangalore (IIIT-B).

Proposed Sessions

01. #NotFewNotWeird (Surfatial: Malavika Rajnarayan, Prayas Abhinav, and Satya Gummuluri)

02. #VirtualFringe (Ritika Pant, Sagorika Singha, and Vibhushan Subba)

03. #StudentIndicUsageOnline (Shruti Nagpal and Sneha Verghese)

04. #SpeakMyLanguageInternet (Anubhuti Yadav, Sunetra Sen Narayan, Shalini Narayanan, Anand Pradhan, and Shashwati Goswami)

05. #ArchivesForStorytelling (V Jayant, Venkat Srinivasan, Chaluvaraju, Bhanu Prakash, and Dinesh)

06. #SelfiesFromTheField (Kavitha Narayanan, Oindrila Matilal and Onkar Hoysala)

07. #OpenAccessScholarlyPublishing (Nirmala Menon, Abhishek Shrivastava and Dibyaduti Roy)

08. #DigitalPedagogies (Nidhi Kalra, Ashutosh Potdar, and Ravikant Kisana)

09. #DigitalMusicAndDigitalReactions (Shivangi Narayan and Sarvpriya Raj)

10. #RenarrationWeb (Dinesh, Venkatesh Choppella, Srinath Srinivasa, and Deepak Prince)

11. IndicLanguagesAndInternetCoHabitation (Sreedhar Kallahalla, Ranjeet Kumar, Mohan Rao, and Anjali K. Mohan)

12. #DigitalPedagogy (Padmini Ray Murray and Dibyaduti Roy)

13. #CopyLeftRightLeft (Ravishankar Ayyakkannu and Srikanth Lakshmanan)

14. #ObjectsofDigitalGovernance (Marine Al Dahdah, Rajiv K. Mishra, Khetrimayum Monish Singh, and Sohan Prasad Sha)

15. #MaterializingWriting (Sneha Puthiya Purayil, Padmini Ray Murray, Dibyadyuti Roy, and Indrani Roy)

16. #DotBharatAdoption (V. Sridhar and Amit Prakash)

17. #DigitalDesires (Dhiren Borisa, Akhil Kang, and Dhrubo Jyoti)

18. #TheDigitalCommonplace (Ammel Sharon and Sujeet George)

19. #DigitalIdentities (Janaki Srinivasan, Savita Bailur, Emrys Schoemaker, Jonathan Donner, and Sarita Seshagiri)

20. #ToolsToAMultitextUniverse (Spandana Bhowmik and Sunanda Bose)

21. #DigitalisingKnowledge (Sneha Ragavan)

22. #ICTDEthics (Bidisha Chaudhuri, Andy Dearden, Linus Kendall, Dorothea Kleine, and Janaki Srinivasan)

23. #RepresentationAndPower (Bidisha Chaudhuri, Andy Dearden, Linus Kendall, Dorothea Kleine, and Janaki Srinivasan)

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/irc17-selection

Workshop on 'Privacy after Big Data' (Delhi, November 12)

sumandro — 2016-11-12T10:14:52Z

The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) and the Sarai programme, CSDS, invite you to a workshop on 'Privacy after Big Data: What Changes? What should Change?' on Saturday, November 12. This workshop aims to build a dialogue around some of the key government-led big data initiatives in India and elsewhere that are contributing significant new challenges and concerns to the ongoing debates on the right to privacy. It is an open event. Please register to participate.

Invitation note and agenda: Download (PDF)

Venue and RSVP

Venue: Centre for the Study of Developing Societies 29, Rajpur Road, Civil Lines, Delhi 110054.

Location on Google Maps: https://www.google.com/maps/place/CSDS/@28.677775,77.2162523,17z/.

Registration: Complete this form.

Concept Note

In this age of big data, discussions about privacy are intertwined with the use of technology and the data deluge. Though big data possesses enormous value for driving innovation and contributing to productivity and efficiency, privacy concerns have gained significance in the dialogue around regulated use of data and the means by which individual privacy might be compromised through means such as surveillance, or protected. The tremendous opportunities big data creates in varied sectors ranges from financial technology, governance, education, health, welfare schemes, smart cities to name a few.

With the UID (“Aadhaar”) project re-animating the Right to Privacy debate in India, and the financial technology ecosystem growing rapidly, striking a balance between benefits of big data and privacy concerns is a critical policy question that demands public dialogue and research to inform an evidence based decision.

Also, with the advent of potential big data initiatives like the ambitious Smart Cities Mission under the Digital India Scheme, which would rely on harvesting large data sets and the use of analytics in city subsystems to make public utilities and services efficient, the tasks of ensuring data security on one hand and protecting individual privacy on the other become harder.

As key privacy principles are at loggerheads with big data activities, it is important to consider privacy as an embedded component in the processes, systems and projects, rather than being considered as an afterthought. These examples highlight the current state of discourse around data protection and privacy in India and the shapes they are likely to take in near future.

This workshop aims to build a dialogue around some of the key government-led big data initiatives in India and elsewhere that are contributing significant new challenges and concerns to the ongoing debates on the right to privacy.

Agenda

09:00-09:30 Tea and Coffee

09:30-10:00 Introduction

Mr. Amber Sinha and Mr. Sandeep Mertia
This session will introduce the topic of the workshop in the context of the ongoing works at CIS and Sarai.

10:00-11:00 From Privacy Bill(s) to ‘Habeas Data’

Dr. Usha Ramanathan and Mr. Vipul Kharbanda
This session will present a brief history of the privacy bill(s) in India and end with reflections on ‘habeas data’ as a lens for thinking and actualising privacy after big data.

11:00-11:30 Tea and Coffee

11:30-12:30 Digital ID, Data Protection, and Exclusion

Ms. Amelia Andersdotter and Mr. Srikanth Lakshmanan
This session will discuss national centralised digital ID systems, often operating at a cross-functional scale, and highlight its implications for discussions on data protection, welfare governance, and exclusion from public and private services.

12:30-13:30 Digital Money and Financial Inclusion

Dr. Anupam Saraph and Ms. Astha Kapoor
This session will focus on the rise of digital banking and online payments as core instruments of financial inclusion in India, especially in the context of the Jan Dhan Yojana and UPI, and reflect on the concerns around privacy and financial data.

13:30-14:30 Lunch

14:30-15:30 Big Data and Mass Surveillance

Dr. Anja Kovacs and Mr. Matthew Rice
This session will reflect on the rise of mass communication surveillance across the world, and the evolving challenges of regulating il/legal surveillance by government agencies.

15:30-16:15 Privacy is (a) Right

Mr. Apar Gupta and Ms. Kritika Bhardwaj
This brief session is to share initial ideas and strategies for articulating and actualising a constitutional right to privacy in India.

16:15-16:30 Tea and Coffee

16:30-17:30 Round Table

An open discussion session to conclude the workshop.

Speakers

Mr. Amber Sinha

Amber works on issues surrounding privacy, big data, and cyber security. He is interested in the impact of emerging technologies like artificial intelligence and learning algorithms on existing legal frameworks, and how they need to evolve in response. Amber studied humanities and law at National Law School of India University, Bangalore.

E-mail: amber at cis-india dot org.

Twitter: @ambersinha07.

Ms. Amelia Andersdotter

Amelia Andersdotter has been a Member of the European Parliament. She works on practical implications of data protection laws and consumer information security in Sweden, and digital rights in the Europe in general. Presently she is residing in Bangalore, where she is a visiting scholar with Centre for Internet and Society. She holds a BSc in Mathematics.

URL: https://dataskydd.net.

Twitter: @teirdes.

Dr. Anja Kovacs

Dr. Anja Kovacs directs the Internet Democracy Project in Delhi, India, which works for an Internet that supports free speech, democracy and social justice in India and beyond. Anja’s research and advocacy focuses especially on questions regarding freedom of expression, cybersecurity and the architecture of Internet governance. She has been a member of the of the Investment Committee of the Digital Defenders Partnership and of the Steering Committee of Best Bits, a global network of civil society members. She has also worked as an international consultant on Internet issues, including for the Independent Commission on Multilateralism, the United Nations Development Programme Asia Pacific and the UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression, Mr. Frank La Rue, as well as having been a Fellow at the Centre for Internet and Society in Bangalore, India.

Internet Democracy Project: https://internetdemocracy.in.

Twitter: @anjakovacs.

Dr. Anupam Saraph

Anupam Saraph has extensively researched India's UID number that has been widely regarded as the game changer in development programs. It has come to be linked with both public and private databases and become the requirement for access to entitlements, benefits, services and rights. Dr. Saraph, who has the design of at least two identification programs to his credit has researched the UID’s functional creep since its inception.

He has been dissecting the myths of what the UID is or is not. He has also tracked the consequences of its linkages on databases that protect national security, sovereignty, democratic status and the entire banking and money system in India. He has also highlighted the implications of its use for targeted delivery of cash subsidies from the Consolidated Fund of India. He has written and lectured widely about the devastating impact of the UID number on development programs, national security and the governability of India.

As a Professor of Systems, Governance and Decision Sciences, Environmental Systems and Business he mentors students and teaches systems, information systems, environmental systems and sustainable development at universities in Europe, Asia and the Americas. He has worked with the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Rijksuniversitiet Groningen, RIVM, University of Edinburgh, Resource Use Institute, Systems Research Institute among others. Dr. Saraph has had the unique distinction of being India’s only person who has held the only office of a City CIO in India, in a PPP arrangement with government, industry and himself. He has also been the first e-governance Advisor to a State government. Dr. Saraph has held CxO and ministerial level positions and serves as an independent director on the boards of Public and Private Sector companies and NGOs. He is also the President of the Nagrik Chetna Manch, an NGO charged with the mission to bring accountability in governance.

Dr. Saraph is also actively engaged in civil society where he participates in several environmental, resource and nature conservation initiatives, has authored draft legislations for river and natural resource conservation, right to good governance and has contributed to governance, election and democratic reforms. Dr. Saraph is a regular columnist in newspapers and writes on issues of governance, future design, technology and education from a systems perspective.

As a future designer and recognized as a global expert on complex systems he helps individuals and organisations understand and design the future of their worlds. Together they address the toughest challenges, accomplish missions and achieve business goals. He also supports building capacity to address the challenges of today as well as to build future designs through teams and effective leadership. Since the eighties Dr. Saraph has modeled complex systems of cities, countries, regions and even the planet. His models have been awarded internationally and even placed in 10-year permanent exhibitions.

Dr Saraph works with business and government executives, civil society leaders, politicians, generals, civil servants, police, trade unionists, community activists, United Nations and ASEAN officials, judges, writers, media, architects, designers, technologists, scientists, entrepreneurs, board members and business leaders of small, mid and large single and trans-national companies, religious leaders and artists across a dozen countries and various industry sectors to help them and their organisations succeed in their missions. He advises the World Economic Forum through its Global Agenda Council for Complex Systems and the Club of Rome, Indian National Association as a founder life member.

Dr Saraph holds a PhD in designing sustainable systems from the faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences of the Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, the Netherlands.

Website: http://anupam.saraph.in.

Twitter: @anupamsaraph.

Mr. Apar Gupta

Apar Gupta practices law in Delhi. He is also one of the co-founders of the Internet Freedom Foundation. His work and writing on public interest issues can be accessed at his personal website www.apargupta.com.

Twitter: @aparatbar.

Ms. Astha Kapoor

Astha Kapoor is a public policy strategy consultant working on financial inclusion and digital payments. Currently, she is working with MicroSave. Her tasks involve a focus on government to people (G2P) payments - and her work spans strategy, advisory and evaluation with the DBT Mission, Office of the Chief Economic Advisor, NITI Aayog and ministries pertaining to food, fuel and fertilizer. She recently designed a pilot to digitize uptake of fertilizers in Krishna district, and evaluated the newly introduced coupon system in the Public Distribution System in Bengaluru.

Twitter: @kapoorastha.

Ms. Kritika Bhardwaj

Kritika Bhardwaj works as a Programme Officer at the Centre for Communication Governance (CCG), National Law University, Delhi. Her main areas of research are privacy and data protection. At CCG, she has written about the privacy implications of several contemporary issues such as Aadhaar (India's unique identification project), cloud computing and the right to be forgotten. A lawyer by training, Kritika has a keen interest in information law and human rights law.

Centre for Communication Governance, NLU Delhi: http://ccgdelhi.org.

Twitter: @Kritika12.

Mr. Matthew Rice

Matthew Rice is an Advocacy Officer at Privacy International working across the organisation engaging with international partners and strengthening their capacity on communications surveillance issues. He has previously worked at Privacy International as a consultant building the Surveillance Industry Index, the largest publicly available database on the private surveillance sector ever assembled. Matthew graduated from University of Aberdeen with an LLB (Hons.) and also has an MA in Human Rights from University College London.

Privacy International: https://privacyinternational.org.

Twitter: @mattr3.

Mr. Sandeep Mertia

Sandeep Mertia is a Research Associate at The Sarai Programme, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi. He is an ICT engineer by training with research interests in Science & Technology Studies, Software Studies and Anthropology. He is conducting an ethnographic study of emerging modes of data-driven knowledge production in the social sector.

Sarai: http://sarai.net.

Twitter: @SandeepMertia.

Academia: https://daiict.academia.edu/SandeepMertia.

Mr. Srikanth Lakshmanan

Srikanth is a software professional with interests in Internet, follower of Internet policy discussions, volunteers for multiple online campaigns related to Internet. He is also fascinated by FOSS, opendata, localization, Wikipedia, maps, public transit, civic tech and occasionally contributes to them.

Site: http://www.srik.me.

Twitter: @logic.

Mr. Vipul Kharbanda

Vipul Kharbanda is a consultant with the Center for Internet and Society, Bangalore. After finishing his BA.LLB.(Hons.) from National Law School of India University in Bangalore, he worked for India’s largest corporate law firm for two and a half years in their Mumbai office for two years working primarily on the financing of various infrastructure projects such as Power Plants, Roads, Airports, etc. Since quitting his corporate law job, Vipul has been working as the Associate Editor in a legal publishing house which has been publishing legal books and journals for the last 90 years in India. He has also been involved with the Center for Internet and Society as a Consultant working primarily on issues related to privacy and surveillance.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/events/privacy-after-big-data-delhi-nov-12-2016

CISxScholars Delhi - William F. Stafford (Nov 03, 6:30 pm)

sumandro — 2019-03-13T00:30:39Z

We are delighted to have William F. Stafford, PhD candidate in UC Berkeley, present on "Public Measurements, Private Measurements, and the Convergence of Units" at the CIS office in Delhi on Thursday, Nov 03, at 6:30 pm. Please RSVP if you are joining us: .

CISxScholars are informal events organised by CIS for presentation, discussion, and exchange of academic research and policy analysis.

Public Measurements, Private Measurements and the Convergence of Units

In this discussion I will focus on a comparison between the standard government prescribed meters for autorickshaws and taxis and the role of ridesharing apps as instruments which take measurements, as the basis for the calculation of fares, and the more general questions which arise for commerce, technology and their regulation. I will organise the paper around the observations of a paratransit operations engineer on the distinction between public and private instruments, and explore the possible implications of new forms of commercialisation of location and proximity and reactions to such developments for understanding questions of fairness and corruption.

William F. Stafford

William F. Stafford, Jr., is a PhD candidate in the Department of Anthropology, UC Berkeley. William's research focuses on the auto-rickshaw meter in New Delhi, as a way to engage with classical questions concerning the relationship between measurement, quantification and delimitations of domains of labour. William's general interests concern the analytics of labour and the reconfiguration of what are often taken as its axiomatic aspects. Before joining Berkeley, he studied Sociology at Jawaharlal Nehru University and the Delhi School of Economics.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/cisxscholars-delhi-william-f-stafford-thursday-nov-03

Workshop on Democratic Accountability in the Digital Age (Delhi, November 14-15)

sumandro — 2016-12-15T09:27:22Z

IT for Change, along with Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), Digital Empowerment Foundation (DEF), Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS) and National Campaign for People’s Right to Information (NCPRI), is organising a two day workshop on ‘Democratic Accountability in the Digital Age’. The workshop will focus on evolving a comprehensive policy approach to data based governance and digital democracy, grounded in a rights and social justice framework. It will be held at the United Service Institution of India, Delhi, during November 14-15, 2016. The CIS team to participate in the workshop includes Sumandro Chattapadhyay (speaker), Amber Sinha (speaker), Vanya Rakesh (participant), and Himadri Chatterjee (participant).

The workshop aims to:

Discuss the institutional norms, rules and practices appropriate to the rise of ‘governance by networks’ and ‘rule by data’ that can guarantee democratic accountability and citizen participation, and
Articulate the steps to claim the civic-public value of digital technologies so that data and the new possibilities for networking are harnessed for a vibrant grassroots democracy.

We hope the workshop can create a civil society coalition that can build effective strategies for legal and policy reform to further participatory democracy in the digital age. On the first day, the workshop will set the context through knowledge sharing and thematic presentations and discussions. On the second day, we aim to concretize strategies for collective action to further democratic accountability in the digital age.

Workshop Agenda (PDF)

Background Note (ODT)

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/events/workshop-on-democratic-accountability-in-the-digital-age-delhi-november-14-15

Report on Understanding Aadhaar and its New Challenges

sumandro — 2016-09-28T12:44:38Z

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/files/report-on-understanding-aadhaar-and-its-new-challenges

Big Data in India - Workshop Agenda

sumandro — 2016-09-28T05:39:11Z

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/files/big-data-in-india-workshop-agenda

Right to Food Campaign, Ranchi Convention, 2016

sumandro — 2019-03-16T04:40:52Z

The Right to Food Campaign held its 2016 Convention in Ranchi during September 23-25, 2016. While three years have elapsed since the passage of the National Food Security Act, despite improvements in the Public Distribution System (PDS), large implementation gaps remain. This is what the Convention focused on, and gathered researchers and campaigners from across the country to share experiences and case studies on effectiveness and exclusions from the PDS. Sumandro Chattapadhyay took part in a session of the Convention to discuss how UID-linked welfare delivery is being rolled out across key programmes like provision of pension and rationed distribution of essential commodities, and their impact on people's right to welfare services.

Right to Food Campaign: Website.

Right to Food Campaign: Cash Transfers and UID: Our Main Demands.

Ranchi Convention, 2016: Programme.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/right-to-food-campaign-ranchi-convention-2016

Internet Researchers' Conference 2017 (IRC17) - Call for Sessions

sumandro — 2016-12-12T13:40:08Z

It gives us great pleasure to announce that the second Internet Researchers' Conference (IRC17) will take place in Bengaluru on March 03-05, 2017. It will be organised by the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) in partnership with the Centre for Information Technology and Public Policy at the International Institute of Information Technology Bangalore (IIIT-B). It is a free and open conference. Sessions must be proposed by teams of two or more members on or before Friday, October 28. All submitted session proposals will go though an open review process, followed by each team that has proposed a session being invited to select ten sessions of their choice to be included in the Conference agenda. Final sessions will be chosen through these votes, and be announced on January 09, 2017.

IRC17 Call for Sessions: Download (PDF)

IRC17 Selection of Sessions: http://cis-india.org/raw/irc17-selection

Deadline for submission was Friday, October 28.

IRC17: Key Provocations

Two critical questions that emerged from the conversations at the previous edition of the Conference (IRC16) were about the digital objects of research, and the digital/internet experiences in Indic languages. As we discussed various aspects and challenges of 'studying internet in India', it was noted that we have not sufficiently explored how ongoing research methods, assumptions, and analytical frames are being challenged (if at all) by the becoming-digital of the objects of research across disciplines: from various artifacts and traces of human and machinic interactions, to archival entries and sites of ethnography, to practices and necessities of collaboration.

We found that the analyses of such digital objects of research often tend to assume either an aesthetic and functional uniqueness or sameness vis-à-vis the pre-/proto-digital objects of research, while neither of these positions are discussed in detail. Further, we tend to universalise the English-speaking user's/researcher's experience of working with such digital objects, without sufficiently considering their lives and functions in other (especially, Indic) languages.

These we take as the key provocations of the 2017 edition of IRC:

How does the becoming-digital of the research objects challenge our current research practices, concerns, and assumptions?
How do we appreciate, study, and theorise the functioning of and meaning-making by digital objects in Indic languages?
What research tools and infrastructures are needed to study, document, annotate, analyse, archive, cite, and work with (in general) digital objects, especially those in Indic languages?

Call for Sessions

We invite teams of two or more researchers and practitioners to propose sessions for IRC17. We do understand that finding team members for a session you have in mind might be difficult in certain cases. Please feel free to share initial sessions ideas on the researchers@cis-india mailing list [1]. Also, please keep an eye on the list to see what potential topics are being discussed.

All sessions will be one and half hours long, and will be fully designed and facilitated by the team concerned, including moderation (if any). The sessions are expected to drive conversations on the topic concerned. They may include presentation of research papers but this is not at all mandatory.

If you plan to organise a session structured around presentation of research papers, please note that we are exploring potential publication outlets for a collection of full-length research papers. If your session is selected for IRC17, we will notify you of guidelines to be followed for the submission and review of full-length papers prior to the conference. If you are interested in this publication possibility, please indicate that in your session proposal submission.

Sessions that involve collaborative work (either in group or otherwise), including discussions, interactions, documentation, learning, and making, are most welcome.

Further, we look forward to sessions conducted in Indic languages. The proposing team, in such a case, should consider how participants who do not understand the language can participate in it. IRC organisers and other participants will play an active role in making such engagements possible.

The only eligibility criteria for proposing sessions are that they must be proposed by a team of at least two members, and that they must engage with one (or more) of the three key provocations mentioned above. Further, the teams whose sessions are selected for IRC17 must commit to producing at least one post-conference essay/documentation on the topic of their session.

The deadline for submission of sessions proposals for IRC17 is Friday, October 28.

To propose a session, please send the following documents (as attached text files) to raw[at]cis-india[dot]org:

Title and Description of the Session: The session should be named in the form of a hashtag (check the IRC16 sessions for reference [2]). The description of the session should clearly state what the key focus of the session is, and which of the three central concerns it will address. The description should be approximately 300 words long.
Session plan: This should describe how the session will be conducted and moderated. Any specific requirements (technical, language support, etc.) of the session should also be noted here. This should not be more than 200 words long. If your session plan involves presentation of research papers, please indicate whether you would be interested in having these papers considered for academic publication.
Documentation plan: This should indicate how documentation will be done during the session, and more importantly what form the post-conference essay/documentation will take and what issue(s) it will address. This should not be more than 100 words long.
Short Abstracts (Only for Sessions with Paper Presentations): If your session involves presentation of research papers, please share a 250 words abstract for each paper.
Details of the Team: Please share brief biographic notes of each member of the session team, and contact details.

Session Selection Process

October 28: Deadline of submission of session proposals.

October 31: All submitted sessions will be posted on the CIS website, along with the names, biographic brief, and contact details of the members of the session teams.

November 01 - December 24: Open review period. All session teams, as well as other interested contributors, may review the submitted proposals and share comments directly with the session teams, or discuss the session on the researchers@cis-india list. The session teams may fully and continuously edit the proposal during this period, including adding/changing session teams.

December 25: Open review ends and voting begins. All session teams will select 10 sessions to be included in the IRC17 programme. The votes will be anonymous, that is which session team has voted for which set of sessions will not be made public.

January 05: Voting ends.

January 09: Announcement of selected sessions.

February 12: Deadline for selected session teams to submit a detailed session plan, information about which will be shared later. If a selected session involves presentation of papers, then the draft papers are to be submitted by this date (no need to submit a detailed session plan in that case).

Venue, Accommodation, and Travel

The conference will take place at the International Institute of Information Technology Bangalore (IIIT-B) during March 03-05, 2017 [3].

The conference does not have any participation fees. The organisers will cover all costs related to accommodation and hospitality during the conference. We look forward to offer a limited number of (domestic) travel fellowships for students and other deserving applicants. We will also confirm this on January 02, 2017.

About the IRC Series

The Researchers at Work (RAW) programme [4] at the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) initiated the Internet Researchers' Conference (IRC) series to address these concerns, and to create an annual temporary space in India, for internet researchers to gather and share experiences.

The IRC series is driven by the following interests:

creating discussion spaces for researchers and practitioners studying internet in India and in other comparable regions,
foregrounding the multiplicity, hierarchies, tensions, and urgencies of the digital sites and users in India, accounting for the various layers, conceptual and material, of experiences and usages of internet and networked digital media in India, and
exploring and practicing new modes of research and documentation necessitated by new (digital) objects of power/knowledge.

The first edition of the Internet Researchers' Conference series was held in February 2016 [5]. It was hosted by the Centre for Political Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University [6], and was supported by the CSCS Digital Innovation Fund [7]. The Conference was constituted by eleven discussion sessions (majority of which were organised around presentation of several papers), four workshop sessions (which involved group discussions, activities, and learnings), a book sprint over three sessions to develop an outline of a (re)sourcebook for internet researchers in India, and a concluding round table. The audio recordings and notes from IRC16 are now being compiled into an online Reader. A detailed reflection note on the IRC16 has already been published [8].

Endnotes

[1] See: https://lists.ghserv.net/mailman/listinfo/researchers.

[2] See: http://cis-india.org/raw/irc16.

[3] See: http://iiitb.ac.in/.

[4] See: http://cis-india.org/raw/.

[5] See: http://cis-india.org/raw/irc16.

[6] See: http://www.jnu.ac.in/SSS/CPS/.

[7] See: http://cis-india.org/raw/cscs-digital-innovation-fund.

[8] See: http://cis-india.org/raw/iirc-reflections-on-irc16.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/irc17-call

Big Data

sumandro — 2016-09-22T07:20:29Z

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/big-data

Big Data in India - Invitatation to Workshop

sumandro — 2016-09-20T09:44:18Z

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/files/big-data-in-india-invitatation-to-workshop

IIIT Delhi Workshop on Center for IT and Society

sumandro — 2016-09-17T14:40:26Z

A workshop on the upcoming Center for IT and Society in IIIT-Delhi was organised today, September 17, in the institute. The workshop highlights on the process of establishing a center on IT and Society, which will focus on studying relationships and impact of ICTs and Internet on society and the role that society plays in shaping them, particularly in India. The center will bring together faculty in various humanities and social sciences disciplines, and would also initiate interdisciplinary taught programme in IT and Social Sciences. Sumandro Chattapadhyay was invited to participate in this workshop.

URL: https://www.iiitd.ac.in/it-society.

Participants:

Dheeraj Sanghi, Dean Academics, IIIT-Delhi
Itty Abraham, National University of Singapore
Ravinder Kaur, IIT Delhi
Aaditeshwar Seth, IIT Delhi
Shreekant Gupta, Delhi University
Satish Deshpande, Delhi University
Geetha Venkataraman, Ambedkar University, Delhi
Rohit Negi, Ambedkar University, Delhi
Anindya Chaudhuri, Global Development Network, Delhi
Vibodh Parthasarathi, Jamia Millia Islamia
Suboor Bakht, Heidelberg Centre South Asia, Delhi
Dinesh Sharma, Centre for Media Studies, New Delhi
Odile Henry, Centre for Social Sciences and Humanities (CSH), Delhi
Marine Al Dahdah, Centre for Social Sciences and Humanities (CSH), Delhi
Biswajit Das, Jamia Millia Islamia, Delhi
Deepak Kumar, Jawahar Lal Nehru University
Ravi Sundaram, Centre for the study of developing societies
Rajshree Chandra, Delhi University
Sumandro Chattapadhyay, The Centre for Internet and Society, Delhi
Dibyendu Maiti, DSE, Delhi University
Balaji Parthasarathy, IIIT Bangalore
Anirban Mondal, Shiv Nadar University
Ashokankur Datta, Shiv Nadar University
Ravi Shukla, India Development Centre, Netvision Corporation
Yogendra Singh (professor emeritus), Jawahar Lal Nehru University
Rajiv George Aricat, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
Arani Basu, Institute fuer Asien- und Afrikawissenschaften, Berlin
Arunima S Mukherjee, Health Information Systems Project
Pankaj Vajpayee, IIIT-Delhi
Raj Ayyar, IIIT-Delhi
Amrit Srinivasan, IIIT-Delhi
Akshay Kumar, IIIT-Delhi
Ganesh Bagler, IIIT-Delhi
Samaresh Chatterjee, IIIT-Delhi
Ponnurangam Kumaraguru, IIIT-Delhi

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/iiit-delhi-workshop-on-center-for-it-and-society

Sequoia India’s Designathon 2016

sumandro — 2016-09-17T13:39:12Z

Along with their annual hackathon, Sequoia India organised a designathon in Bangalore on September 10-11, 2016. The participants picked one of three tracks - gamification, information visualisation, and smart acceleration - and developed an interface design or clickable prototype or a demo video. Sumandro Chattapadhyay was invited to participate as a mentor for the information visualisation track.

URL: http://www.sequoiahack.com/sequoia-design/

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/sequoia-india-designathon-2016

IIRC: Reflections on IRC16

sumandro — 2016-09-06T09:28:51Z

The first edition of the Internet Researchers' Conference (IRC) series was held on February 26-28, 2016. It was hosted by the Centre for Political Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University, and was supported by the CSCS Digitial Innovation Fund. Here we share our reflections on the Conference, albeit rather delayed, and lessons towards the next edition to be held in March 2017.

Note: IIRC stands for 'if I remember correctly' in ancient internet acronym culture. Thanks to Sebastian for the inspiration.

For several months, we have been trying to organise our thoughts, as well as post-conference documentation efforts, emerging from the Internet Researchers' Conference 2016. We have not been very successful in either till now. And like most unsuccessful ventures, it has been a robust learning experience. We are working on giving the IRC16 Reader a final shape, before it becomes more of an academic legend. We hope to launch the beta version of the Reader in mid-September. Here, let me quickly share my reflections on IRC16, at least what I remember of it.

A Game of Selections

The Conference departed from most other academic conferences in two obvious ways: 1) the sessions were not selected by a programme committee but through votes cast by all the teams that proposed a session, and 2) the Conference programme consisted of both panel discussions and workshop sessions, and there was no requirement for the panel discussions to be structured around papers (though some sessions did involve presentation of papers). At the feedback session of the Conference, and also in conversations afterwards, it was pointed out that this manner of session selection (not based on paper abstracts, and through voting by peers) is perhaps “too democratic / too wiki-like,” which undermines the ability to curate the Conference effectively. Several participants also presented the opposite viewpoint – that a more peer-driven selection of sessions better reflects the immediate interests and priorities of the community of internet researchers who are gathering at the Conference. As one participant articulated: “we must have faith in our ignorance.”

We at CIS are still confident about this mode of selection but at the same time we do recognise three key concerns in conducting the selection process:

Anonymity: The anonymous selection process breaks down since we expect the potential participants of the Conference to share early ideas about their potential sessions, and scout for potential session team members, through the mailing list (and elsewhere) before actually submitting the panel proposal. We still prefer that participants discuss the session before proposing it, so perhaps we will have to live with the incomplete anonymity when it comes to the session selection process. Perhaps we can make the votes non-anonymous too to keep parity – that is, all the proposed sessions would be published with the names of their proposers, and all the teams will publicly indicate which other sessions they are voting for.
Disciplinary capture: While peer-based voting works very well when it comes to reflecting the interests of the community, it might quite easily break down if there is a concentration of teams coming from a specific disciplinary background. How we approach research objects and questions, and hence how we appreciate how exciting a research object or question is, can be quite intimately shaped by our disciplinary locations. A dominance of a specific discipline among the peer-group (that is among all the teams that have proposed sessions) can potentially lead to a 'capture' of the Conference by research objects and questions of interest to specific disciplines. This is something we have to be more aware of when casting our votes.
Peer-review before peer-votes: The process followed last year only allowed a session team to vote on the sessions proposed by other teams, but not to review and comment on those proposals. This review process is not only useful to infuse the session proposals with ideas and concerns coming from other disciplinary and methodological locations, but also to support the teams to revisit their articulation and structuring of the session before their peers start to cast votes. This is something we must aspire to do during the selection process for IRC17.

A Clash of Disciplines

Continuing from the “disciplinary capture” point above, the presence of researchers and practitioners from various fields and disciplines was, according to me, the most exciting part of the IRC16, and also the part that led to significant frustration. I felt that we were able to gather people from various disciplinary backgrounds – academic and otherwise – but could not provide sufficient space or time for the inter-disciplinary conversations to a take more fuller form. We saw clear disagreements emerging between researchers coming from different disciplinary locations, though most of them did not have the opportunity to be developed into a detailed discussion.

This is quite a high ambition for a conference of this kind; that is given the conference was not focused narrowly on a set of topics. Nonetheless, this remains one of the key objectives of the IRC series, and we need to understand how better to create opportunities for participants to communicate their disciplinary concerns and create inter-disciplinary discussions.

One possible way to create context for more inter-disciplinary conversations is by requesting all the sessions’ teams to include members from different disciplines. Also, we can try to keep more open discussion space (but that means less selected sessions) to provide time for the discussions spilling over from the sessions. Thirdly, we can think of including “inter-disciplinary conversations” as one of the key themes for potential sessions of IRC17.

Further, though we experienced several clashes of disciplines, methods, and approaches, these were all limited to a completely anglophone intellectual environment. We failed substantially, as was pointed out by a participant at the feedback session, to create space at the Conference for Indic language practices and concerns – both for researchers and practitioners working in these languages, and the criticisms of anglophone academic framings and practices coming from such researchers and practitioners. This is something we must address proactively during the future editions of the Conference.

A Storm of Sessions

One of the often heard criticisms of the conference was regarding the decision to have parallel sessions. While the decision was taken purely to accommodate as many sessions as possible, this of course imposed an undesirable burden upon the participants to choose between two rather desirable sessions. We as organisers of IRC16 faced the same tough decision of choosing between sessions that should both be part of the Conference agenda, and conveniently decided to let the participants choose (instead of us choosing for them). It is quite likely that we would do this again, or at least would like to do this again – that is, we expect that for IRC17 too we would receive a lot of wonderful sessions and decide against a fully single-track conference.

The question of sessions, however, is not only one of tracks. It is also about formats. In the feedback session, there was a clear recognition of the value of “workshop” sessions – that is sessions that involved all the participants doing something – in a conference like this, which is explicitly interested in the conceptual and technical challenges of digital media research. There was also a demand that we have more workshop sessions in IRC17, as opposed to “discussion” sessions that involved paper presentations. While the original plan was that all the participants will primarily be learning or doing something at a workshop session, and will not be talking, as the discussion sessions were primarily meant for talking, the actual sessions in the Conference differed from each other essentially in terms of whether papers were presented or not.

Thus, it perhaps makes sense, for the IRC17 call for sessions, to not to separate out these session types in terms of workshop/discussion but in terms of paper-driven/non-paper-driven. Maybe this separation itself is avoidable and all that we need to say is that the Conference is fundamentally interested in sessions that drive conversations, both intra- and inter-disciplinary. While presentation of papers can surely drive conversations, they are not necessary at all.

A Feast for Researchers and Practitioners

A key objective, if not the key objective, of IRC16 was to build a temporary space for researchers and practitioners studying internet and society in India (though not necessarily from or located in India) to gather and share thoughts. While we felt that the conference has been quite effective in doing that, we have been rather clueless when it comes to sustaining the momentum of interactions that was achieved at the Conference, or documenting the various kinds and threads of conversations taking place there.

The first problem, we may say, is not something that CIS (as the organiser of the conference series) should be concerned with too much, since our aim and responsibility is to make possible this temporary space and not to host all conversations and collaborations coming out of it. In fact, we should not be interested in hosting and/or facilitating all such initiatives. The second problem, however, is a serious one for us. Since the Conference is not organised around pre-written papers, we will have to depend on the efforts by the participants either during, or after (or both) the Conference to produce an output that documents, narrates, and/or reflects on the conversations that took place. Such an approach, thus, is fundamentally based upon the trust that the participants will prepare and share these materials after the Conference. On a lighter note, we also hope that social embarrassment and pressure will also play a role here (but that only works when the majority of the participants are actually sharing).

There are two connected points here:

While the majority of the documentation happens either at the Conference or after that, what kind of pre-Conference efforts (by the participants) would be useful in ensuring productive sessions?
Who all contribute to this post-Conference Reader? Should it be restricted to teams/people whose sessions were selected, or all who proposed a session, and/or took part in the Conference?

A recommendation at the feedback session of IRC16 touched upon the first question, while the second question is derived from a critical question posed at the same session. The recommendation was that the teams whose sessions get selected for the Conference should share a more detailed session agenda note before the Conference to better inform the participants about the content and approach of the same. The critical question mentioned earlier was regarding the imagination of the community of researchers and practitioners being gathered at the Conference, and if it is only limited to the people whose sessions got selected. In our minds it is clear that everyone gathering at these conferences, and those who proposed sessions but could not attend, are all part of this imagined community, and thus should also contribute to the post-Conference Reader.

A Dance with Sustainability

IRC16 was supported very generously by the Centre for Political Studies at JNU (as part of an ongoing project titled UPE2 Project: Politics on Social Media), the CSCS Digital Innovation Fund, and CIS. The first provided us with the conference venue and accommodation, the second provided financial support towards food and travel expenses (and bit of accommodation too), and the third picked up all the remaining expenses and efforts. While we will keep doing what it takes to organise the next editions of IRC, we are dependent on academic and other institutes that are willing to host the event and accommodate the participants, and on various sources of funding that may be available to cover the miscellaneous expenses.

When we started planning for IRC16, we decided not to conceptualise this as part of an ongoing or future project – that is, the conference series should not itself become a deliverable under a project at CIS. While this gives us intellectual and functional independence, it entails serious financial limitations. We are of course open to the conference series becoming a site for developing or communicating a deliverable under an ongoing project at CIS or any other involved actor (especially the host and funding agencies) but such matters, we feel, are best discussed in a case-to-case basis. The bottom line remains that we need financial and human support to take this conference series forward. This is definitely something to be discussed further at IRC17.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/raw/iirc-reflections-on-irc16

CIS - Telangana State Open Data Policy v.1 - Submission

sumandro — 2016-09-01T05:45:54Z

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/files/cis-telangana-state-open-data-policy-v-1-submission

Submitted Comments on the Telangana State Open Data Policy 2016

sumandro — 2016-09-01T05:49:51Z

Last month, the Information Technology, Electronics & Communications Department of the Government of Telangana released the first public draft of the Telangana State Open Data Policy 2016, and sought comments from various stakeholders in the state and outside. The draft policy not only aims to facilitate and provide a framework for proactive disclosure of data created by the state government agencies, but also identify the need for integrating such a mandate within the information systems operated by these agencies as well. CIS is grateful to be invited to submit its detailed comments on the same. The submission was drafted by Anubha Sinha and Sumandro Chattapadhyay.

Download the submitted document: PDF.

1. Preliminary

1.1. This submission presents comments and recommendations by the Centre for Internet and Society (“CIS”) [1] on the proposed draft of the Telangana Open Data Policy 2016 (“the draft policy”). This submission is based on Version 1 of the draft policy shared by the Information Technology, Electronics & Communications Department, Government of Telangana (“the ITE&C Department”).

1.2. CIS commends the ITE&C Department for its generous efforts at seeking inputs from various stakeholders to draft an open data policy for the state of Telangana. 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, 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 to realise the various kinds of public goods that can emerge from greater availability of open (government) data. 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. Defining the Scope of the Policy in the Preamble

3.1.1. CIS observes and appreciates that the ITE&C Department has identified the open data policy as a catalyst for, and as dependent upon, a larger transformation of the information systems implemented in the state, to specifically ensure that these information systems.

3.1.2. CIS commends the endeavour of the draft policy to share data in open and machine-readable standards. To further this, it will be useful for the preamble to explicitly mandate proactive disclosure in both human-readable and machine-readable formats, using open standards, and under open license(s).

3.1.3. CIS recommends that the draft policy state the scope of the policy at the outset, i.e. in the Preamble section of the document. This will provide greater clarity to the stakeholders who are trying to ascertain applicability of the draft policy to their data.

3.1.4. CIS commends the crucial mandate of creating data inventory within every state government ministry / department. We further recommend that the draft policy also expressly states the need to make these inventories publicly accessible.

3.1.5. CIS commends the draft policy’s aim to build a process to engage with data users for better outcomes. We suggest that the draft policy also enumerates the “outcomes” of such engagement, in order to provide more clarity. We recommend that these “outcomes” include greater public supply of open government data in an effective, well-documented, timely, and responsible manner.

3.1.6. Further, CIS suggests that the draft policy define “information centric and customer centric data” to provide more clarity to the document, as well as its scope and objectives.

3.2. Provide Legal and Policy References

3.2.1. Strengthening transparency, predictability, and legal certainty of rules benefits all stakeholders. Thus, as far as possible, terms in the draft policy should use pre-existing legal definitions. In case of ambiguities arising after the implementation of the policy, consistency in definitions will also lead to greater interpretive certainty. It must be noted that good quality public policies which promote legal certainty, lead to better implementation.

3.2.2. CIS observes that the draft policy re-defines various terms in Section 4 that have already been defined in National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy (“NDSAP”) 2012 [2], the Right to Information 2005 (“RTI Act”) [3], and IT (Reasonable security practices and procedures and sensitive personal data or information) Rules 2011 [4]. We strongly recommend that the draft policy uses the pre-existing definitions in these acts, rules, and policies.

3.2.3. Further, CIS observes that while certain sections accurately reflect definitions and parts from other acts, rules and policies, such sections are not referenced back to the latter. These sections include, but are not limited to: Sections 3, 7, 8, 4 (definitions of Data set, Data Archive, Negative list, Sensitive Personal data). We strongly recommend that accurate legal references be added to the draft policy after careful study of the language used.

3.3. Need for More Focused Objective Statement

3.3.1. While the draft policy has a very comprehensive statement of its objectives, including "all issues related to data in terms of the available scope of sharing and accessing spatial and non-spatial data under broad frameworks of standards and interoperability," it may consider offering a more focused statement of its key objective, which is to provide a policy framework for proactive disclosure of government data by the various agencies of the Government of Telangana.

3.3.2. Further, the objective statement must clearly state that the policy enables publication of data created by the agencies of the Government of Telangana, and/or by private agencies working in partnership with public agencies, using public funds as open data (that is, using open standards, and under open license). The present version of the objective statement mentions "sharing" and "accessing" the data concerned under "broad frameworks of standards and interoperability" but does not make it clear if such shared data will be available in open standards, under open licenses, and for royalty-free adaptation and redistribution by the users concerned.

3.4. Suggestions related to the Definitions

3.4.1. The term “Data” has not been defined in accordance with NDSAP 2012. We suggest that the definition provided in NDSAP is followed so as to ensure legal compatibility.

3.4.2. The term “Sensitive Personal Data” seems to have been defined on the basis of the definition provided in the IT (Reasonable security practices and procedures and sensitive personal data or information) Rules 2011. Please add direct reference so as to make this clear. We further suggest that the term “Personal Information”, also defined in the same IT Rules, is also included and referred to in the draft policy, so that not only Sensitive Personal Data is barred from disclosure under this policy, but also Personal Information (that is "any information that relates to a natural person, which, either directly or indirectly, in combination with other information available or likely to be available with a body corporate, is capable of identifying such person") [5].

3.4.3. The term “Negative List” is defined in a manner that allows the state government ministries and agencies to identify which data are to be considered as non-shareable without any reference to an existing policy framework that list acceptable grounds for such identification. The term must be defined more restrictively, as this definition can allow an agency to avoid disclosure of data that may not be legally justifiable as non-shareable or sensitive. Thus, we recommend a more limited definition which may draw upon the RTI Act 2005, and specifically consider the factors mentioned in Sections 8 and 9 of the Act as the (only) set of acceptable reasons for non-disclosure of government data.

3.4.4. The terms “Shareable Data” and “Sensitive Data” are used in several places in the draft policy but are not defined in Section 4. Both these terms are defined in NDSAP 2012. We suggest that both these terms be listed in Section 4, in accordance with the respective definitions provided in NDSAP 2012.

3.4.5. The terms “Data Archive”, “Data Acquisition”, “Raw Data”, “Standards-Compliant Applications”, and “Unique Data” are defined in Section 4, but none of these terms appear elsewhere in the draft policy. We suggest that these terms are either better integrated into the document, or may not be defined at all.

3.5. Rename Section 6 to Focus on Implementation of the Policy

3.5.1. Though the Section 6 is named as “Shareable Data”, it instead categorically lists down how the policy is to be implemented. This is a very welcome step, but the Section title should reflect this purpose of the Section.

3.5.2. The decision proposed in the draft policy to make it mandatory for "each funding organization" to "highlight data sharing policy as preamble in its RFPs as well as Project proposal formats" is much appreciated and commendable. For a clearer and wider applicability of this measure, we recommend that this responsibility should apply to all state government agencies, including agencies where the state government enjoys significant stake, and all public-private partnerships entered into by the state government agencies, and not only to "funding organizations" (a term that has also not been defined in the draft policy).

3.5.3. While the Section details out various measures and steps of implementation of the policy, it does not clarify which agency and/or committee would have the authority and responsibility to coordinate, monitor, facilitate, and ensure these measures and steps. Not only governmental representatives but also non-governmental representatives may be considered for such a committee.

3.6. Host All Open Government Data in the State Portal

3.6.1. We observe that the Section 6 indicates that , the designated domain for the open government data portal for the state of Telangana, will only store metadata related to the proactive disclosed data sets but not the data sets themselves. This is further clarified in Section 10. We strongly urge the ITE&C Department to reconsider this decision to not to store the actual open data sets in the state open government data portal itself but in the departmental portals. A central archive of the open data assets, hosted by the state open government data portal, will allow for more effective and streamlined management of the open data assets concerned, including their systematic backing-up, better security and integrity, permanent and unique disclosure, and rule-driven updation. This would also reduce the burden upon all the government agencies, especially those that do not have a substantial IT team, to run independent department-specific open data portals.

3.7. Reconsider the Section on Data Classification

3.7.1. While it is clear that the Section 7 on Data Classification follows the classification of various data sets created, managed, and/or hosted by government agencies offered in the NDSAP 2012, it is not very clear what role this classification plays in functioning and implementation of the draft policy. While Open Access and Registered Access data may both be considered as open government data that is to be proactively disclosed by the state government agencies via the state open government data portal, the Restricted Access data overlaps with the kinds of data already included in the Negative List defined in the draft policy (and elsewhere, like the RTI Act 2005). Further, the final sentence in this Section ensures that all data users provide appropriate attribution of the source(s) of the data set concerned, which (though is an important statement) should not be part of this Section on Data Classification. We suggest reconsideration of inclusion of this Section.

3.8. Reconsider the Section on Technology for Sharing and Access

3.8.1. While it is clear that the Section 8 on Technology for Sharing and Access is adapted from the Section 9 of the NDSAP 2012, the text in this Section seems to be not fully compatible with other statements in this draft policy. For example, the Section states that "[t]his integrated repository will hold data of current and historical nature and this repository over a period of time will also encompass data generated by various State Government departments." However, the draft policy states in Section 10 that "data.telangana.gov.in will only have the metadata and data itself will be accessed from the portals of the departments."

3.8.2. We strongly urge the ITE&C Department to revise this Section through close discussion with the NDSAP Project Management Unit, National Informatics Centre, which is the technical team responsible for developing and managing the portal, since the present version of this Section lists the original feature set of the portal as envisioned in 2012 but does not reflect the most recent feature set that has been already implemented in the portal concerned.

3.9. Current Legal Framework (Section 9) should List to Relevant Acts, Rules, Policies, and Guidelines

3.9.1. CIS observes that the draft policy attempts to lay out the applicable legal framework in Section 2 and 9 of the draft policy, and submits that the legal framework is incomplete and recommends that the draft policy lists all the following relevant acts, rules, policies and guidelines:

National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy, 2012
Right to Information Act, 2005
Information Technology Act, 2002
Information Technology (Reasonable security practices and procedures and sensitive personal data or information) Rules, 2011.

3.9.2. CIS submits that apart from the policies mentioned above, the implementation of the draft policy is intricately linked to concepts of "open standards," "open source software," "open API," and "right to information." These concepts are governed by specific acts and policies, and are applicable to government owned data, as follows:

Adoption of Open Standards: CIS observes that the draft policy draws on the importance of building information systems for interoperability and greater information accessibility. Interoperability is achieved by appropriate implementation of open standards. Thus, CIS submits that the Policy on Open Standards for e-Governance [6] 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 [7] should be mentioned in the draft policy.
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 organizations, as a preferred option in comparison to Closed Source Software [8]." As the draft policy proposed to guide the development of information systems to share open data is being developed and implemented both by the Government of Telangana 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: CIS observes that the draft policy refers to Standard compliant applications in Section 4. CIS suggests that final version of the policy refer to and operationalise the Policy on Open Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) for Government of India [9]. This will ensure that the openly available 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. Refer to Official Secrets Act, 1923: The Official Secrets Act penalises a person if he/she "obtains, collects, records or publishes or communicates to 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 for which relates to a matter the disclosure of which is likely to affect the sovereignty and integrity of India, the security of the State or friendly relations with foreign States [10]." CIS submits that this Act should be referred to in this context of ensuring non-publication of the aforementioned data.

3.10. Mandate a Participatory Process for Developing the Implementation Guidelines

3.10.1. We highly appreciate and welcome the fact that the draft policy emphasises rapid operationalisation of the policy by mandating that the ITE&C Department will prepare a detailed implementation guideline within 6 months of the notification of this policy, and all state government departments will publish at least 5 high value datasets within the next three months. Just as an addition to this mandate, we would like to propose that it can be suggested that the ITE&C Department undertakes a participatory process, with contributions from both government agencies and non-government actors, to develop this implementation guideline document. We believe that opening up government data in an effective and sustainable manner, for most government agencies, involves a systematic change in how the agency undertakes day-to-day data management practices. Hence, to develop productive and practical implementation guidelines, the ITE&C Department needs to gather insights from the other state government agencies regarding their existing data (and metadata) management practices [11]. Further, participation of the non-government actors in this process is crucial to ensure that the implementation guidelines appropriately identify the high value data sets, that is data sets that should be published on a priority basis.

3.11. Defer the Decision about Roles of Data Owners, Generators, and Controllers

3.11.1. As the draft policy does not specifically define the terms “Data Owners”, “Data Generators”, and “Data Controllers”, and the Section 11 only briefly describes some of the roles of these types of actors, we suggest removal of this discussion and the decision regarding the specific roles and functions of the Data Owners / Generators / Controllers from the draft policy itself. It will be perhaps more appropriate and effective to define these terms, as well as their roles and functions, in the implementation guidelines to be prepared by the ITE&C Department after the notification of the open data policy, since these terms relate directly to the final designing of the implementation process.

3.12. CIS is grateful to the ITE&C Department for this opportunity to provide comments, and would be honoured to provide further assistance on the matter.

Endnotes

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

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

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

[4] See: http://meity.gov.in/sites/upload_files/dit/files/GSR313E_10511(1).pdf.

[5] See Section 2 (1) (i) of IT (Reasonable security practices and procedures and sensitive personal data or information) Rules 2011.

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

[7] See: https://data.gov.in/sites/default/files/NDSAP_Implementation_Guidelines_2.2.pdf.

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

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

[10] See: http://www.archive.india.gov.in/allimpfrms/allacts/3314.pdf, Sections 2 (2) and 3 (1) (c).

[11] A similar process was undertaken by the IT Department of the Government of Sikkim when developing the implementation guideline document. The ITE&C Department may consider discussing the matter with the said department to exchange relevant learnings.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/comments-on-the-telangana-state-open-data-policy-2016