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Kolkata: Tasting the Sweetness of Wikipedia!
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/kolkata-tasting-the-sweetness-of-wikipedia
<b>Recently, Access to Knowledge team member Subhashish Panigrahi spent some time with wikipedians in Kolkata. Through this blog post he shares his experience and learning from the interaction. This post explores the journey of three wikipedians — Jayanta Nath, Deepon Saha and Ashwin.</b>
<h3>Jayanta Nath and Deepon Saha — Lecture on Bangla Wikipedia</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Jayanta is one of the active contributors in <a class="external-link" href="http://bn.wikipedia.org">Bangla Wikipedia</a>. He has supported community building for Bangla Wikipedia in India. Apart from contributing articles Jayanta supports many wikipedians for fixing technical issues on various language wikis. Deepon is another active wikipedian from Kolkata who contributes mostly to English Wikipedia besides contributing to WikiCommons and Bangla Wikipedia and taking active part in community building in Kolkata and other places. I met both Jayanta and Deepon recently in Kolkata and discussed about Bangla Wikipedia and the role of contributors from India.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Over the last few years Bangla Wikipedia has seen enough growth — growth in number of articles, growth in number of outreach, growth in number of contributors and lot more. However, there is something missing in this list, and that is the growth in number of Bangla editors from India. Sadly, though Bangla speaking people constitute a major part of the intellectual sphere. Bangla Wikipedia has not seen many new faces in the recent past from the Indian subcontinent. "English has become like a mother language of most Bengalis in Kolkata and Bengalis residing in other major cities", expresses Jayanta with grief. "Most of the Bengalis speak and are adhered to Bengali language but the use of language is limited only to speaking. And they no more use Bangla in writing. That is what makes it more difficult to tell them about Bangla Wikipedia", adds Deepon. Bangla Wikipedia in India is facing one more major challenge: media coverage. There is not much coverage about Bangla Wikipedia in Bangla media, especially print media. "I was interviewed by the Times of India, Hindu, Telegraph and few other English newspapers but, surprisingly there was not much coverage in Bangla media. There are almost 12 Bangla newspapers being published from Kolkata and in spite of our efforts the outcome is far below expectation", explains Jayanta. Jayanta feels there is much scope for community building for Bangla Wikipedia in rural West Bengal. Unlike urban Bengal, Bangla is the primary medium of both verbal and written communication.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Computer literacy might be a big hurdle when it comes to spreading words about editing Bangla Wikipedia. But it is difficult to predict about the status of government schools, computer and internet penetration before initiating outreach for rural places. Deepon also suggests about making a small survey in Bangla medium schools in Kolkata to understand the scope for any Bangla education program in those schools. We discussed about the internet penetration to measure and assess the state of Bangla on internet and its public usage. Out of the ten Bangla newspapers only two are available in unicode for their online edition. The state of unicode and online usage of Bangla in unicode is much better in Bangladesh which also explains that Bengalis in Bangladesh are using Bangla to a great extent including reading, writing and upon internet.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Typing is another challenge to be tackled. DTP operators, government offices where Bangla typing is used normally use a different typing scheme and non-unicode fonts (mostly old ISCII or ASCII fonts). "We could bring many Bangla enthusiasts to Bangla Wiki projects by simplifying the typing solution and making people aware about the available typing tools. Simple video tutorials and smaller help pages with easy-to-understand guidelines will be helpful and these should be linked from other pages so the new editors will find them and make use of them to learn editing", adds Deepon.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">The Full Story Began with Loads of Curiosity and a Small [Edit] Button!</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Deepon was searching for some information online while he discovered the available information on wikipedia is incorrect. He was searching for a help desk to ask to correct it. Suddenly he discovered the "Edit" button, when he clicked on it a new page opened up with a warning: "You are not logged in. Your <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_address">IP address</a> will be publicly visible if you make any edits. Please <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:UserLogin&returnto=Pune&returntoquery=action%3Dedit">log in</a> or <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:CreateAccount&returnto=Pune&returntoquery=action%3Dedit">sign up</a> to have your edits associated with a user name, among <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Why_create_an_account%3F#Summary_of_benefits">other benefits</a>." He clicked, signed up and created a new account and corrected the mistake. That was the first time Deepon made his first edit on Wikipedia and never stopped after that.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Ashwin (User:AshLin): Passion to Contribute to Wikipedia still Flying like Butterflies</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">There was no book available in the early 80s when Ashwin wanted to know more about Indian butterflies. There was no article on Wikipedia about Indian butterflies and there were very less available resource on Indian butterflies. Ashwin along with Shyamal and other enthusiasts collaborated to start working on this project which brought many other contributors. The other project he was quite involved was about Indian snakes. One of his key motivations for contributing to Wikipedia was making the resource about Indian butterflies available for others.</p>
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<p style="text-align: justify; ">Ashwin is one of those active contributors from India who are active for the last few years for bringing more editors onboard to write on articles of Indian context, primarily on English Wikipedia. Out of his own passion Ashwin started contributing to several projects like <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Lepidoptera">WikiProject Lepidoptera</a> which brought many wonderful articles on Wikipedia. Ashwin is greatly appreaciate for his participation in projects like <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:OWIS">WikiProject Offline Wikipedia for Indian Schools</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:INCOTM">Collaborations of the month</a>. Ashwin extended his help to the Pune community when he was in Pune from organizing outreach events to bringing editors onboard to take leadership for new projects. "There is a lot of scope for regional language wikipedians to learn from the English Wikipedia projects. Projects on English Wikipedia involves more people and the lessons would be helpful for other regional language wikipedians and English wikipedians in India are always interested to help", expresses Ashwin. Currently he is in a small wikibreak and will be back soon!</p>
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For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/kolkata-tasting-the-sweetness-of-wikipedia'>http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/kolkata-tasting-the-sweetness-of-wikipedia</a>
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No publishersubhaAccess to KnowledgeWikimediaWikipediaVideoInterviewOpenness2012-12-04T07:19:54ZBlog EntryAn Interview with Nishant Shah
http://editors.cis-india.org/news/interview-with-nishant-shah
<b>Jamillah Knowles from BBC Radio interviewed Nishant Shah about Indian Internet issues.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">"I think what we need to do is perhaps say that there is something happening with the internet in India and then maybe we can move on to figuring out what is happening to the anonymous because we had a series of challenges on freedom of speech and expression and online space in the country. Just around the end of 2011, the Information and Broadcasting Minister was summoning social networks like Facebook and MySpace and Google and asking for a regime of pre-censorship so that everything you and I write from what we had to breakfast to which lunch and video we like the most ... that all the info needs to be first reviewed by somebody to make sure that it doesn't commute the larger moral thinkabilities of the nation."</p>
<p>Listen to the full interview <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/interview-with-bbc-radio" class="internal-link" title="An Interview with Nishant Shah">here</a></p>
<p>Originally published by <a class="external-link" href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/pods/all">Outriders</a>, a BBC Radio 5 live's programme dedicated to exploring the frontiers of the Web.</p>
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For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/news/interview-with-nishant-shah'>http://editors.cis-india.org/news/interview-with-nishant-shah</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaInterviewInternet Governance2012-07-06T05:05:36ZNews ItemAn Interview with Stephen Song
http://editors.cis-india.org/telecom/interview-with-stephen-song
<b>Stephen Song, the founder of Village Telco, an initiative to bring practical and inexpensive communication network infrastructure to rural and remote areas, speaks about factors that catalyzed the initiative, the benefits of the network, some challenges, and the Mesh Potato.</b>
<p><strong>Yelena Gyulkhandanyan</strong>: When and how did the Mesh Potato come about?</p>
<p><strong>Stephen Song</strong>: It came about after I joined the Shuttleworth foundation in 2008. I was aware of the potential of low cost wireless mesh technologies to create affordable infrastructure, but there seemed to be a challenge in getting these technologies to scale, and we had done some interesting pilot work, but nothing had really taken off. And so I convened a workshop in the middle of 2008 with some of the smartest wireless networking people I knew and so began to explore what were the key barriers. </p>
<p>There seemed to be at least a couple of key barriers – one was that setting up a wireless mesh network was a complex procedure that required expertise. And second was that in many areas where we were interested in providing services, people were as interested in voice services as they were in data. Simply delivering data to a particular community, at least to rural communities anyway, seemed to be only solving half of the problem. So the result of that workshop was that we came to the realization, the conclusion, that what we needed was a hybrid of technologies, something that didn’t exist yet, which was a combination of voice and data technologies together.</p>
<p>We were lucky enough to have a brilliant open hardware designer from Australia attending the workshop almost by coincidence, and he said, “Well, why don’t we build our own?” Up until that point I think our dominant way of looking at the world was by asking what sort of North American or European technologies could we take and repurpose in Sub-Saharan Africa to address this issue of access in a more affordable way. The notion of actually manufacturing our own technology wasn’t on the chart at all and it took a little while for the idea to sink in, because it just seemed infeasible at the time. But sink in it did, which led through my fellowship at the Shuttleworth foundation to the funding of a pilot project to see whether it was feasible to complete at least a prototype design. The created prototype design led to a partnership with the manufacturer in Shenzhen, China, and to a short run of production which led to a bigger run of production. And so one thing led to another and now we have our own device that we manufacture.</p>
<p><strong>Yelena Gyulkhandanyan</strong>: And how would you describe this device to a regular consumer?</p>
<p><strong>Stephen Song</strong>: Well, it is a wireless networking device that works with similar units of its kind to form an autonomous wireless network that delivers voice and data services. So you can open a box of Mesh Potatoes, plug them all in, and instantly have a voice and data network. It is a network for which you don’t require a special voice technology. All you need to do to be able to start making calls is to plug in an ordinary phone into the Mesh Potato. So it doesn’t require any sort of additional smart VOIP hand set technology or anything like that. We deliberately chose to do that because analog handsets are very cheap and lots of people have them already or they cost less than $10 to buy. So it seemed like a very affordable way of creating a voice network.</p>
<p><strong>Yelena Gyulkhandanyan</strong>: And how much does a Mesh Potato cost?</p>
<p><strong>Stephen Song</strong>: They are about a $100 each.</p>
<p><strong>Yelena Gyulkhandanyan</strong>: And how much does it cost to set up a network and what is the largest distance that it can cover?</p>
<p><strong>Stephen Song</strong>: The cost of the network is literally just the cost of the Mesh Potatoes and so once you have them and they are powered up, you have network infrastructure that is yours for as long as the technology lasts, which should be many years. So that’s really the core cost; it’s just the cost of the devices. Then if you connect your network to the Internet or to the public switched telephone network you might have to pay for the access to the Internet or for access to voice services.</p>
<p>Each Mesh Potato has a range of about three to four hundred meters but the way the Mesh Potatoes work is each device acts as a repeater for the next one. So as long as the next house that you can see is less than three to four hundred meters away, you can actually build quite a large network, because if you have two houses that are six or seven hundred meters away, as long as you have one house in the middle that’s got a Mesh Potato, then all three of them are connected. Mesh networking has been around for a while but just hasn’t become as mainstream as WiFi hotspots.</p>
<p><strong>Yelena Gyulkhandanyan</strong>: And in what frequency range does this technology operate in?</p>
<p><strong>Stephen Song</strong>: It works in the 2.4GHz range which is your standard WiFi technology, which means that for most countries you can use it without requiring a spectrum license.</p>
<p><strong>Yelena Gyulkhandanyan</strong>: So in what countries, other than South Africa, has this technology been deployed in? </p>
<p><strong>Stephen Song</strong>: Our biggest network is in the capital of East Timor in Dili. There is an NGO there called FONGTIL that has set up a large Village Telco network and there are a number of other smaller networks – one in Brazil, some networks in Nigeria and Cameroon, and then multiple other smaller more informal networks as opposed to formal Village Telcos.</p>
<p><strong>Yelena Gyulkhandanyan</strong>: Have there been barriers in terms of deploying this technology? </p>
<p><strong>Stephen Song</strong>: A barrier for us is bringing the cost of manufacture down. So one of the downsides of being a very small organization is that in terms of negotiating with manufacturers and arranging deals we have very little leverage. So we will want to bring the cost of the Mesh Potatoes down by another 50 percent, which is completely feasible, but it’s a challenge to actually build the relationships with the manufacturers to get things done quickly.</p>
<p><strong>Yelena Gyulkhandanyan</strong>: So what company currently manufactures this technology?</p>
<p><strong>Stephen Song</strong>: A company called Atcom. </p>
<p><strong>Yelena Gyulkhandanyan</strong>: Can you provide a successful case study of this technology being deployed where it has made a difference in the village or where it helped create other social endeavors because people had access to this technology?</p>
<p><strong>Stephen Song</strong>: Yeah, I think Dili in East Timor is probably the most successful example, in that the NGO that is running the network, FONGTIL, is kind of an umbrella organization for other NGOs in the region that need to connect and talk to each other on a regular basis. However mobile communication is quite expensive in Dili. So the NGOs have really valued being able to communicate easily and cheaply with their partner organizations through the Mesh Potato network. </p>
<p><strong>Yelena Gyulkhandanyan</strong>: Sounds good. Thank you very much for your time.</p>
<p><strong>Stephen Song</strong>: All right, bye for now.</p>
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For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/telecom/interview-with-stephen-song'>http://editors.cis-india.org/telecom/interview-with-stephen-song</a>
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No publisherYelena GyulkhandanyanInterviewTelecom2012-02-29T14:08:54ZBlog EntryAn Interview with Dr. Francis Jayakanth
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/interview-with-francis-jayakanth
<b>India has been losing out its best talents to the West, however, this trend could be reversed if we create adequate number of world-class institutions and research facilities, and our scientific productivity and quality of research will improve significantly, says Dr. Francis Jayakanth in an email interview with the Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore. </b>
<ol>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><b>First of all congratulations for winning the inaugural EPT Award for Open Access</b>.<br />Thank you very much.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><b>When did you first take an interest in Open Access and what are your research interests?</b><br />I have always been impressed with the electronic pre-print servers like the <a class="external-link" href="http://arxiv.org/">arXiv</a>, <a class="external-link" href="http://cogprints.org/">Cogprints</a>, etc. I wanted to do something similar for IISc research publications.<br /><br />One of the important activities of the National Centre for Science (<a class="external-link" href="http://www.ncsi.iisc.ernet.in/">NCSI</a>), Indian Institute of Science (<a class="external-link" href="http://www.iisc.ernet.in/">IISc</a>) has been the training programme. Till recently, NCSI was conducting an 18-month training course called Information and Knowledge Management. This was targeted primarily at students graduating from Indian library schools, with a view to providing them with classroom and practical training in the application of ICT. Essentially, the aim was to train the students in how to provide state-of-the-art, computer-based information services. I have been closely associated with this training programme by offering courses and overseeing projects.<br /><br />As part of the training programme the students are expected do a project. Around the year 2001, one of our students, <a class="external-link" href="http://www.linkedin.com/in/madhureshsinghal">Mr. Madhuresh Singhal</a> carried out a project work in implementing GNU Eprints.org software developed by the University of Southampton. Incidentally, ePrints is the first professional <i>software</i> platform for building high quality OAI-compliant repositories. The student project successfully demonstrated the self-archiving concept through institutional repositories. The project work was later implemented to set up the country’s first institutional repository, <a class="external-link" href="http://eprints.iisc.ernet.in/41239/1/Modeling.pdf">eprints@IISc</a> . Ever since, I have been an OA practitioner and an OA advocate.<br /><br />I’m not a hard-core researcher. My work interests lies in using free and open source software for providing web-based information services.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><b>Why Open Access is important to science and particularly India?</b><br />When researchers publish their works in journals and conference proceedings, they would want their works to be read, cited, and built upon by as wide an audience as possible. Much of the scientific publications are being published by commercial publishers. Subscription costs of such publications are very high, constantly increasing, and beyond the means of most of the libraries. The high subscription costs create an access barrier to the scientific literature because of which the publications do not get the kind of visibility that the researchers would like to. The lack of adequate visibility will reduce the potential impact of the publications. This in turn could affect the advancement of knowledge. It is therefore imperative that the access barrier to scientific literature created because of high subscription costs should be overcome and this could be achieved through OA publishing.<br /><br />The problems with respect to research literature that India and other developing countries have always faced are two-fold:<br />
<ul>
<li>Not being able to access high quality scientific literature because of the high subscriptions costs, and</li>
<li>Research reported in the national journals does not reach the global audience because most of the journals published from the country are not indexed by Web of Science (<a class="external-link" href="http://isiknowledge.com/">WoS</a>) and/or <a class="external-link" href="http://www.scopus.com/">Scopus</a> databases, which are leading <a class="external-link" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citation_indexing">citation indexing</a> databases.<br /><br /></li>
</ul>
If all the journals that are being published in the country could migrate to open access platform then the visibility of research works reported in the journals published from the country will automatically improve with time. This has been the experience of several of the OA journals published by <a class="external-link" href="http://www.medknow.com/">MedKnow</a> and others.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><b>In terms of the number of papers published in refereed journals, the number of citations to these papers, citations per paper, and the number of international awards and recognitions won, India’s record is poor. What needs to be done to improve this?</b><br />For a long time now, our country has been losing out the best of the talents to mostly western and other countries. If this trend could be countered by the creation of adequate number of world-class institutions and research facilities, our country's scientific productivity and also quality of research done in the country will improve significantly. This may also trigger reverse brain-drain.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><b>Indian scientists lack access and visibility. They find it tough to access what other scientists have done, due to the high costs of access and libraries in India can’t afford to subscribe to key journals needed by users. Also other researchers are not able to access what Indian researchers are doing leading to low visibility. How can we overcome these deficits? Will adoption of Open Access within and outside India overcome the aforesaid handicaps?</b><br />Access to scientific literature in the country has improved significantly during the last decade or so. This is largely because of the several library consortia that have emerged in the country during that period. However, the existing consortia and the ones that are likely to emerge in the coming years, is not the solution for the access barrier to scientific literature that exists today. There has to be a world-wide adaptation of OA to overcome the access barrier.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><b>Do you support the movement towards making scientific publications as freely accessible as possible and create an institutional repository? What steps are being taken by the Indian Institute of Science to maintain an open access archive?</b><br />Yes. Open Access Journals and Open Access Archives or Institutional Repositories (IRs) are the two ways to facilitate OA to scholarly literature. As per the <a class="external-link" href="http://www.doaj.org/">DOAJ</a> statistics, today, there are close to 7500 peer reviewed OA journals and as per the Directory of Open Access Repositories (<a class="external-link" href="http://www.opendoar.org/">DOAR</a>) there are more than 2770 institutional repositories across the world.<br /><br />In a recent <a class="external-link" href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0011273">study</a>, <a class="external-link" href="http://www.hanken.fi/staff/bjork/">Bo-Christer Bjork</a> estimated that the overall percentage of scientific literature currently available OA is about 20 per cent. This includes both papers published in OA journals and those deposited in institutional repositories and directly on the Web. So, still a long way to go in achieving 100 per cent OA to scholarly literature! If all the research institutions set up their IRs and ensure that copies of post-prints are placed in the IRs then 100 per cent OA to scholarly literature could be achieved, at least, from now onwards.<a class="external-link" href="http://eprints.iisc.ernet.in/"><br /><br />ePrints@IISc</a>, the OA institutional repository of IISc was established by NCSI in 2002. The repository holds more than 32,400 publications of IISc making the century-old institute’s research far more globally visible than before. NCSI has also provided technical help and support to several other institutes and universities in setting up their repositories and OA journals.</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><b>What are the key challenges of the scholarly publications in India?</b><br />Poor visibility and readership of many of the journals published from the country affects the citations of the articles published in such journals. This in turn affects the impact factors (<a class="external-link" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_factor">IF</a>) of the journals. No author would like to publish in very low IF journals. </li>
<li style="text-align: justify; "><b>What message would you give to funding agencies, the government and policy makers particularly for implementing a nation-wide mandate for Open Access?</b><br />Most of the research projects in the country are being funded by the government agencies. It is therefore imperative that we should have a nation-wide OA mandate for research publications that emerge from research projects funded from tax payers’ money. Such a mandate will not only help in enhancing the visibility of research done in the country; it may also help in avoiding duplication of research projects carried out in the country. </li>
</ol>
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For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/interview-with-francis-jayakanth'>http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/interview-with-francis-jayakanth</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaInterviewOpennessOpen Access2012-11-24T06:09:54ZBlog EntryAn Interview with David Baines
http://editors.cis-india.org/accessibility/interview-mada-centre
<b>Maureen Agena interviewed David Baines, Deputy Director, Mada (Qatar Assistive Technology Center). Maureen asked questions regarding the status of disabled persons in Qatar, the level of ICT accessibility awareness for PWDs in Qatar, efforts of the Qatar Government towards Mada relating to policy measurements, schemes for PWDs, etc.</b>
<p class="callout"><strong>Following is the transcript of an interview by Maureen, a CIS consultant from Uganda with David Banes, Deputy Director, Mada Assistive Technology Centre, Qatar:<br /></strong></p>
<ol><li><strong>What is the status of disabled persons in Qatar or Mada in terms of number, age and gender and the kind of the work Mada is engaged in?<br /></strong>There are officially some 10,000 disabled people in Qatar across a wide range of needs. This doesn’t include people who are ageing and acquiring moderate disabilities as a result of their age. Mada works with any disability, any age for any purpose, supporting both Qatari citizens and residents. We work with both men and women including the Arabic and non-Arabic speaking visitors. </li><li><strong>What is the level of ICT accessibility awareness for PWDs in Qatar? </strong><br />As more and more people in Qatar use ICT every day so the awareness of barriers is increasing. Mada has been working hard to raise public awareness through cinema, television and radio ads and even video ads in the local shopping malls! More importantly we are working hard to make sure that disabled people are aware of the potential of technology to change their lives, and so we work closely in partnership with other services for people with a disability to integrate accessibility activity.</li><li><strong>Are there any efforts of the Qatar Government towards Mada in terms of policy measures, programmes, schemes for PWDs? How about efforts by companies or universities?</strong><br />IctQatar currently has an e-accessibility policy out for consultation. The policy is wide ranging and offers detailed expectations across the public sector for websites, but also requires accessible ATM’s, telephone and emergency services to be introduced. <br /><br /><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/David1.jpg/image_preview" title="Maureen Interview 1" height="266" width="330" alt="Maureen Interview 1" class="image-inline image-inline" /><br /></li><li><strong>What is the situation of copyright law in Qatar? </strong><br />Copyright and IPR are both respected in Qatar. We are delighted that creative commons is being introduced to the country allowing for alternative formats of documents to be more readily produced.<br /><em>Do you have an exception in your copyright law permitting conversion into any format for the disabled without permission?</em> <br />Not yet. </li><li><strong>What is the level of development at Mada in terms of assistive technologies? Specifically screen readers in Arabic.</strong><br />Mada is extremely busy in supporting both commercial and open source development of AT in Arabic. We have eight projects due to announce in the very near future. Screen readers are well developed in Arabic, but we are looking forward to seeing a more basic text to speech tool created to lower the cost of entry point for blind users on a limited budget.</li><li><span class="Apple-style-span"><strong>Does Mada have any collaborative development with surrounding Arabic nations?<br /></strong>We welcome collaborations across the region and internationally. We speak regularly to organisations in Dubai, Abu Dhabi and then more widely to Egypt and Tunisia. Collaboration is very much central to our approach.</span></li><li><span class="Apple-style-span"></span><strong>Approximately how many organizations are working actively in Qatar on accessibility for Persons with Disabilities? (Name any)</strong><br />Mada is the hub for accessibility in Qatar. But we work closely with the Shafallah Center for Special Needs, Al Noor Institute for the Blind and Hamad Medical Corporation. </li><li><strong>Kindly share some details about the different areas of work of Mada centre?</strong> <br />Probably best to look at our new updated website <a class="external-link" href="http://www.mada.org.qa/">www.mada.org.qa</a>, and <a class="external-link" href="http://mada.org/">http://mada.org</a> ;<a class="external-link" href="http://twitter.com/madaQATC">http://twitter.com/madaQATC</a> or <a class="external-link" href="http://facebook.com/madaQATC">http://facebook.com/madaQATC</a>.</li><li><strong>What do you feel are important factors/ resources which are helpful to you in your advocacy? </strong><br />Maintaining effective networks both within Qatar and beyond. One ambition is to establish an online forum whereby the views of disabled people on priorities for digital inclusion can be gleaned. </li><li><strong>And what are the kinds of resources that PWDs would find useful if they had access to?</strong><br />Great levels of Arabic accessible digital content and Arabic supported assistive technologies.</li><li><strong>There is a draft ICT accessibility legislation. What are the highlights of this draft policy? </strong><br />The policy is wide ranging and identifies targets for government websites, banks and telecoms.<br /><br /><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/David2.jpg/image_preview" alt="Maureen Interview 2" class="image-inline image-inline" title="Maureen Interview 2" /><br /></li><li><strong>How long do you think it may take to get it adopted and what are the implications for the Government, NGOs, industry and others?</strong><br />Unable to answer this currently.</li><li><strong>Do you at Mada have any digital libraries for the blind? If yes, approximately how many books are there? </strong><br />No. But we are collaborating with Bookshare internationally to deliver this. <br /><br /><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/David3.jpg/image_preview" alt="Maureen Interview 3" class="image-inline image-inline" title="Maureen Interview 3" /><br /></li><li><strong>Is Mada, Centre of Assistive Technology able to exchange books with neighbouring countries?</strong><br />Yes, where licences allow, we choose Bookshare as our partner to encourage international sharing of books for the disabled community.</li><li><strong>At Mada, you do focus a lot on training. What are your different target audiences?</strong><br />Training people with a disability in both accessible IT training and assistive technologies<br />Professionals including teachers and therapists<br />Parents and family<br />IT professionals including Web developers<br />Human resource professionals and employers.</li><li><strong>How many people have you trained to date? </strong><br />Over 200 including the first accredited AT training in Qatar for 20 participants. </li><li><strong>Anything about Mada disability legislation which is relevant to ICT accessibility? </strong><br />N/A.</li><li><strong>Did Qatar sign the UNCRPD? How is implementation going on?</strong><br />Yes, Mada is a direct response to that action.</li><li><strong>Any specific details about web accessibility, audits/ evaluations conducted to look at accessibility of public web sites- details. (Any report which is available in English?)</strong><br />We are completing an initial benchmarking study currently – no details have yet been made available. We are completing around 2 full site audits a month on major private and govt sector websites and feedback is being provided directly to those organisations to develop an action plan.</li></ol>
<div><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/David4.jpg/image_preview" alt="Maureen Interview 4" class="image-inline image-inline" title="Maureen Interview 4" /><br /><br />Thank you</div>
<div>Maureen Agena </div>
<div> </div>
<div>
<h2>About the Mada Centre </h2>
<p><strong>Mada (Qatar Assistive Technology Centre)</strong> is committed to using assistive technologies (AT) as a means of creating more accessible workplaces. As part of connecting people with disabilities to the world of information and communication technology, Mada launched a nationwide accessibility initiative with its partners, Qatar Telecom (Qtel) and Vodafone Qatar on 7 December 2010. The purpose of the initiative named "Connected" will ensure that persons with disabilities do not have to pay more than others to use mobile telecommunications technology.</p>
<p>The centre enables adults and children with disabilities to use computers, mobile devices and the Internet at home by offering a full range of services and resources related to assistive technologies. At Mada, people of all ages, with any type of disability are able to visit the interactive resources centre to try out the latest assistive technology and access assessment and training services. The Mada team is able to assist in choosing a suitable solution through impartial and expert advice.</p>
</div>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/accessibility/interview-mada-centre'>http://editors.cis-india.org/accessibility/interview-mada-centre</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaInterviewAccessibility2011-11-08T09:33:07ZBlog EntryQ&A on open access with Subbiah Arunachalam of the Centre for Internet and Society (Bangalore)
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/an-interview-with-prof-arunachalam
<b>Amrit Dhir, a 1L at Harvard Law School, has been working with the Harvard Law School Library on open access activities. He recently had an opportunity to interview Subbiah Arunachalam of the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) in India. The interview was published by the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University on May 5, 2011.</b>
<p><i>Thanks to the <a class="external-link" href="http://www.law.harvard.edu/library/">HLS Library</a> for permitting us to share this Q&A!</i></p>
<p><b>Amrit Dhir</b>: What is your association with the Bangalore-based <a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/" class="external-link">Centre for Internet and Society</a> (CIS)?</p>
<p><b>Subbiah Arunachalam</b>: I am one of the founding members of the Board of the Centre for Internet and Society. Mr Sunil Abraham invited me to join and I agreed as I found the group to be a talented bunch of people much younger to me and interested in questions, the answers to which would be of interest to me.</p>
<p><b>AD</b>: What has been your involvement with the Open Access (OA) movement for the past ten years?</p>
<p><b>SA</b>: For the past ten years, I have been literally breathing OA! I always believed that knowledge should be free and open, but my formal engagement with OA began in 2000. That was the year when Eugene Garfield, the well-known information scientist, turned 75. He has been a great influence in my life and so I wanted to celebrate his 75th birthday with a conference. Gene had written hundreds of essays and he had put all of them together in fifteen volumes (Essays of an Information Scientist). What is more, long before the formal movement for OA began, Gene had put all his essays - in fact, all his writings - up on the University of Pennsylvania website.</p>
<p>For the conference, I invited another friend of mine, Alan Gilchrist, Editor of Journal of Information Science, and a world leader in advancing knowledge about thesauri. For the second speaker I invited Stevan Harnad, as I had read his article on scholarly skywriting (which was included in Garfield's Essays). I was working as a volunteer at the M. S. Swaminathan Research Foundation whose main thrust was development, but my chairman Prof. M. S. Swaminathan helped me raise some funds. From then on I started dividing my time between development and promoting OA in India and the developing world. My prior experience as editor and publisher of science journals (at the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) and the Indian Academy of Sciences) was a great help. For one thing, I knew a large number of scientists and academics. For another, as I had no big official position I was free to make statements freely. And I took advantage of both.</p>
<p>In 2001, I persuaded the Indian Academy of Sciences to convene a meeting of editors of Indian S&T journals and convince them of the advantage of their journals going electronic. About 50 editors were trained in two three-day workshops. One of them, Dr. D. K. Sahu is today the world's leading OA publisher who neither charges the authors nor the readers [<a class="external-link" href="http://www.medknow.com/">http://www.medknow.com</a>].</p>
<p>In 2005, the Open Society Institute (OSI) invited me to Toronto to plan a conference. I had proposed to bring scientists from India, Brazil and China and to promote OA in these three countries. I believed then, and continue to believe now, that if OA takes roots in these three countries then it would be easy to promote it in the rest of the developing world. The conference itself was held at the Indian Institute of Science in November 2006, with support from OSI and the Indian Academy of Sciences. It was at this conference, with the help of Barbara Kirsop and Alma Swan, that we produced the Bangalore Declaration, which could be used by governments and funding agencies in developing countries to mandate OA.</p>
<p>In January 2006, I organized a full session on OA as part of the Annual Science Congress held at Hyderabad. In 2008, I spoke to Prof. Samir Brahmachari, Director General of <a class="external-link" href="http://rdpp.csir.res.in/csir_acsir/Home.aspx?MenuId=1">CSIR</a> and convinced him of the need to adopt OA. He accepted the idea immediately and opened up all the sixteen journals published by CSIR's publishing arm, NISCAIR. I persuaded the Indian Academy of Sciences to set up a repository for all papers by all Fellows and currently the repository is getting ready and I expect it to be available online in July or August. The Academy took nearly four years, but I am glad it is finally happening.</p>
<p>I have groomed a number of young people to take up OA advocacy and implementation. In particular, Muthu Madhan (now at ICRISAT) has done well. He has helped six institutions set up their repositories. I took him along with me (CIS funded his trip) to the International Conference on Repositories in Amsterdam jointly organized by <a class="external-link" href="http://www.jisc.ac.uk/">JISC</a>, <a class="external-link" href="http://www.surf.nl/en/Pages/home.aspx">SURF</a> and <a class="external-link" href="http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/">UKOLN</a> in 2009.</p>
<p>I have written about OA both on my own and in coauthorship with Peter Suber, Barbara Kirsop and Leslie Chan. I have given interviews to key outlets and spoken at many national and international conferences including two A2K conferences organized by Yale University, several Berlin conferences, and the ICSU-UNESCO conference where I was one of two keynote speakers.</p>
<p><b>AD</b>: What is the potential of OA, and what makes it unique to India?</p>
<p><b>SA</b>: OA has tremendous potential not only to India, but to the world as a whole. But its value to developing countries is much greater than to advanced countries, because the serials crisis and the access to knowledge problems are felt far more acutely in developing countries. Currently higher education and R&D (Research and Development) are in an unprecedented expansion phase and therefore we would need huge investments to meet information needs if only traditional methods of access were available to us. As large publishing corporations are raising subscription costs year after year at an unacceptably high rate, Indian researchers and students would benefit if more and more scientists in the West were to make their work OA.</p>
<p>There is nothing unique about OA in India. Whatever applies to India applies to the larger developing countries (China and Brazil, South Africa). That is why I believe these four countries should work together in promoting OA.</p>
<p><b>AD</b>: What do you see as the future of the OA movement in India?</p>
<p><b>SA</b>: As far as India is concerned, currently, a higher proportion of Indian work (12.5%) appears in OA journals than the world average (estimated to be between 8.5 and 10%). The two major Academies and CSIR in favor of OA. I and others are trying to persuade other funding agencies and research councils to adopt OA. It is a question of time before OA becomes accepted by at least some of the leading institutions. There are about 40 active repositories, but the number has started increasing.</p>
<p><b>AD</b>: What are the impediments to realizing that future? Are there any legal concerns or legal obstacles that you anticipate approaching?</p>
<p><b>SA</b>: There are no impediments. At least I do not see any. You may then ask why the progress is slow. It is largely because of author inertia and general ignorance. Yes, ignorance. Not many scientists really know about what is possible and what is not possible with regard to depositing their papers in a repository. They are needlessly afraid of copyright infringements. Thus all the 'impediments' are imaginary!</p>
<p>When it comes to journals, it is easy. We publish the journals and we decide if we want to be closed or open. MedKnow publishes 150 journals, of which 148 are open. All 11 journals of the Indian Academy are open. Even when they entered into an agreement with Springer [Publishing], they retained the right to keep all of them open on their site!</p>
<p><b>AD</b>: How would you compare the institutional openness of India and the US to the potential and needs of OA?</p>
<p><b>SA</b>: I have already explained why I believe OA is far more important to developing countries. But even in the West, the serials crisis is forcing librarians to adopt OA. In the West, prestigious institutions such as Harvard, MIT, NIH, Wellcome Trust, RCUK (Research Councils UK), have adopted OA and that has made a big difference. Now the US Congress is considering the FRPAA (Federal Research Public Access Act). Eventually, all institutions will have to adopt OA.</p>
<p>There is one advantage of institutions in the developing countries adopting OA that may be missed by many. Often research done in the South in problems like SARS, tsunami, HIV/AIDS, climate change will be of global relevance. These issues do not know any national boundaries.</p>
<p><b>AD</b>: You have spoken of a social mission and a human-rights-based justification for supporting greater OA, particularly with regard to the hard sciences and scientific research. What is the relationship between justice and OA, both on an international scale and as it relates to India more specifically?</p>
<p><b>SA</b>: A very good question. When Kofi Annan was heading the United Nations, it came up with the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). On top of the list was poverty alleviation. What use is all the science that we do if fellow human beings are unable to even buy food and keep dying of hunger and malnutrition? This is the basis for the argument on opening up of scientific knowledge as an issue of justice. In India, the government has invested millions on R&D in atomic energy, space science, new biology and biotechnology and so on, and yet more than 60 years after we had became a Republic, poverty is rampant, the gap between the rich and the poor is increasing and both the number of billionaires and the number of people below the poverty line are increasing every year. All our science and technology have not ensured basic necessities for the poor. We do not use what we know, and what we know is not known widely.</p>
<p>In an excellent article “The Digital Provide: Information (Technology), Market Performance, and Welfare in the South Indian Fisheries Sector” in 22 Quarterly Journal of Economics 879 (2007), Robert Jensen of Harvard's Kennedy School used the example of how the introduction of mobile phones in coastal areas of Kerala opened up information and brought many benefits to the community as a whole and not just to fishing families.</p>
<p>There is another angle to the urgent need to reduce poverty, viz. the security angle. Two years ago, I was invited to write a short essay on information and livelihood and I began my essay with these words: "We live in a divided world where far too many people live in abject poverty. To help these people get out of poverty is good for the world as a whole, for great disparities in wealth will lead to violence and terrorism and no one can live in peace and harmony."</p>
<p>There is yet another issue. This is related to drugs and pharmaceuticals. Many pharma companies do not want to bring to market products from their latest research because the previous products are still doing well. Profit is the motive, and it trumps public good. Also, Western pharma companies send out scouts to the old world and learn from local wisdom the medicinal value of plants and herbs and take advantage but without sharing the profits with the local people. A clear case of the North exploiting the knowledge of the South. And yet their own drugs are all under patent protection!</p>
<p><b>AD</b>: Some see Indian civil society and even Indian government insisting on greater transparency and access to information, with such movements as the one behind the Right to Information (RTI) Act as an example. Are you optimistic about such efforts at governmental and legal reform? And, how does it relate to your work and the broader objectives you advocate?</p>
<p><b>SA</b>: About two years ago, the Department of Biotechnology entered into a partnership with the Wellcome Trust. The was born with a view to providing generous fellowships to scientists at three stages of their careers. One of the features was that all papers published by these Fellows have to be OA. The Minister for science and technology (Mr Kapil Sibal at that time) announced this proudly. I wrote him that he should also make OA all papers by scientists receiving grants from DBT, but he did not bother to reply. There is a lot of political doublespeak. I also wrote to Members of Parliament belonging to all the major parties suggesting that they consider legislation similar to the one which brought OA to all NIH-funded research in the US. No one replied. The RTI Act and the recent happenings on the corruption front (the government yielding to the request of Gandhian Anna Hazare) are indeed very good. And I believe one day the need for OA will be recognized as important and worthy of legal status. But one may also achieve a lot through bottom-up approaches by talking to individual institutions, universities and scientists.</p>
<p>I am not losing hope. I will keep making my requests until OA is accepted as the norm.</p>
<p><b>AD</b>: How would you call upon American universities and institutes to act or reform in light of the OA measures you advocate?</p>
<p><b>SA</b>: The larger the number of American universities, research institutions and funding agencies adopting OA, the better it would be for us, as we would have more papers in the open domain. More than that, we could cite their example and convince Indian institutions to adopt OA.</p>
<div class="pullquote">Read the original interview published by the Berkman Center for Internet & Society <a class="external-link" href="http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/node/6825">here</a></div>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/an-interview-with-prof-arunachalam'>http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/an-interview-with-prof-arunachalam</a>
</p>
No publishersubbiahInterviewOpen Access2023-11-01T12:41:47ZBlog EntryAn Interview With Arjen Kamphuis
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/an-interview-with-arjen-kamphuis
<b>In an email interview with the Centre for Internet and Society, Dutch open source activist Arjen Kamphuis discussed his experience of successfully working with the government for a policy mandating open standards for all government IT in the Netherlands. </b>
<p><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://events.ccc.de/congress/2007/Fahrplan/events/2342.en.html"><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span></a>In<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://events.ccc.de/congress/2007/Fahrplan/events/2342.en.html"><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span></a> 2002 Arjen Kamphuis co-authored a <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>parliament motion to mandate open standards for all gov<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://events.ccc.de/congress/2007/Fahrplan/events/2342.en.html"><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span></a>e<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://events.ccc.de/congress/2007/Fahrplan/events/2342.en.html"><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span></a>rnment IT in the Netherlands. The motion was unanimously accepted and, in <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>2007, became policy. The Netherland<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://events.ccc.de/congress/2007/Fahrplan/events/2342.en.html"><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span></a>s thus became the first <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>western country to make the use of open standards in public sector IT <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>mandatory. Arjen is now workin<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://events.ccc.de/congress/2007/Fahrplan/events/2342.en.html"><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span></a>g t<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://events.ccc.de/congress/2007/Fahrplan/events/2342.en.html"><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span></a>o e<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://events.ccc.de/congress/2007/Fahrplan/events/2342.en.html"><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span></a><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://events.ccc.de/congress/2007/Fahrplan/events/2342.en.html"><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span></a>xport this set of policies to <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>other European countries with the help of local political parties and <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>business partners.</p>
<p>Arjen discussed his experience of lobbying for this policy change and some other questions related to<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://events.ccc.de/congress/2007/Fahrplan/events/2342.en.html"><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span></a> his<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://events.ccc.de/congress/2007/Fahrplan/events/2342.en.html"><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span></a> work as a consultant on IT strategy and the implications of nanotechnology and biotechnology in an email interview with the Centre for Internet and Society.<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://events.ccc.de/congress/2007/Fahrplan/events/2342.en.html"><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span></a><br /><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span></p>
<p><span class="moz-txt-citetags">
</span><strong>The Centre for Internet and Society: What is the Dutch government's policy on FOSS and Open <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>Standards specifically and intellectual property rights in general? Provide some history, name <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>the main lobbying factions in the Netherlands and their policy <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>positions. What was your role in the formulation of these policies?</strong></p>
<p><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span><span class="moz-txt-citetags"> </span><strong>Arjen Kamphuis:</strong> The national action plan 'The Netherlands in Open Connection' is the <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>government's answer to a unanimous vote in parliament in November <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>2002. The parliament stated that the market for desktop software was <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>not functioning as it should and that significant vendor lock-in <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>effects were harming both individual citizens and society as a whole. <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>It requested maximum efforts from the government to change this <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>situation. The suggested method for changing was mandating open <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>standards in all public sector IT and actively supporting the adoption <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>of open source software wherever functionally and <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>technically feasible. <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://events.ccc.de/congress/2007/Fahrplan/events/2342.en.html"><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span></a></p>
<p><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>I was one of the people who got this process started by contacting a <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>member of parliament from the Green Party. This was triggered by <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>my inability to access the website of the national railway on 1 January <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>2002. The website had been redesigned and only allowed access to <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>visiters with Internet Explorer. As a Linux user, I had previously had comparable <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>problems with local government websites and electronic tax forms <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>(usage of which was mandatory for small businesses like my consulting<span class="moz-txt-citetags"> </span>start-up).</p>
<p>After the unanimous vote in parliament, several people in the <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>Dutch open source community, including me, kept the pressure on the government by <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>monitoring major procurements and writing questions for the Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) to ask <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>the government. In 2004 this led to a breakthrough when the <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>Justice Ministry ra<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://events.ccc.de/congress/2007/Fahrplan/events/2342.en.html"><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span></a>n a project to procure 147 million euros' worth of <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>desktop software without going through a proper multi-vendor selection <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>process. They only talked to one vendor, and that is against European Union<span class="moz-txt-citetags"> </span>regulations. Since some of the civil servants working on this project <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>were gagged, we can conclude that some people were aware they were <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>breaking the law, yet went ahead anyway. <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span></p>
<p><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>When the news broke we made sure the MEPs were armed with the proper <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>questions the next day, and the contract was dropped. In reply to <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>questions asked to the government by the MEPs, the responsible <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>ministers admitted that the government was very dependent on <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>Microsoft for basic functioning of its office environments; that <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>this was a problem; and that the government would take active <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>steps to remedy this situation by moving forward with <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>the requests <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://events.ccc.de/congress/2007/Fahrplan/events/2342.en.html"><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span></a>made in 2002 by parliament.</p>
<p>Two-and-a-half years and an election later, a new under-Minister for <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>Economic Affairs, Frank Heemskerk, took up the challenge <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>and promised a comprehensive policy. I gave input for this plan in <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>mid-2007 and it was formally published and adopted later that year as <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>a national policy for all government and public-sector (i.e. tax <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>funded) organisations. <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span></p>
<p><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>The policy has three objectives:</p>
<ul><li>improving interoperability between <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>public sector organisations;</li><li>lowering the vendor-dependence of the <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>public sector;</li><li> improving the functioning of the software market <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>and supporting the Dutch knowledge economy <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://events.ccc.de/congress/2007/Fahrplan/events/2342.en.html"><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span></a></li></ul>
<p><span class="moz-txt-citetags"> </span><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>Some of the practical measures are the mandating of the use of open <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>standards in all public sector organisations. Whenever software is <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>procured, open source should be considered <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>and preferred whenever functionally adequate. These two very basic <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>rules change the entire market for IT in the Dutch public sector (40% <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>of the entire market) and is having a profound effect on the way <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>software vendors offer their products as well as the negotiating power <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>of the client organisations. <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span><span class="moz-txt-citetags"><br /></span></p>
<p><span class="moz-txt-citetags"> </span>I continue to advise both the decision makers and the civil servants <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>overseeing the implementation of the policy. <span class="moz-txt-citetags"> </span><span class="moz-txt-citetags"><br /></span></p>
<p><span class="moz-txt-citetags"> </span><strong>CIS: What is the current status on the implementation of these<span class="moz-txt-citetags"> </span>policies?</strong></p>
<p><span class="moz-txt-citetags"> </span><strong>AK: </strong>After a slow start the government organisation that is responsable for <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>overseeing the implementation is now up and running. The basic problem <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>is lack of awareness about both the practical value that open <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>standards and open source software can contribute and the underlying <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>political reasons for making it the preferred option for government <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>information processing. <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span><span class="moz-txt-citetags"><br /></span></p>
<p><span class="moz-txt-citetags"> </span>Thus a lot of the work for the next few years will <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>be communicating these ideas to civil servants (be the<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://events.ccc.de/congress/2007/Fahrplan/events/2342.en.html"><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span></a>y IT <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>professionals or managers who have other jobs). The policy helps a lot <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>because it puts some serious weight behind the whole process. The fact <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>that government organisations have to support Open Document Format for <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>instance significantly heightens their interest in the technical <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>subject matter!<span class="moz-txt-citetags"><br /></span></p>
<p><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>So the policy gives the drive needed to get things moving and now it <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>is up to us to communicate the how and the why in a way that is <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>understandable for people who are new to these concepts. <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>I have no doubt it will be a long process, we have over 20 years of <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>proprietary legacy built up in our public institutions. Replacing <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>those systems with open alternatives will take many years. All the <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>greater a reason to proceed with some urgency. <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span><span class="moz-txt-citetags"><br /></span></p>
<p><span class="moz-txt-citetags"> </span>The complete policy document has been translated into English and <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>released under Creative Commons Licence:<br /><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://appz.ez.nl/publicaties/pdfs/07ET15.pdf">http://appz.ez.nl/publicaties/pdfs/07ET15.pdf</a> <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span></p>
<p><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span><br /><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>In December 2007 I gave a talk in Berlin. Here a summary, slides and <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>video are available:<br /><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://events.ccc.de/congress/2007/Fahrplan/events/2387.en.html">http://events.ccc.de/congress/2007/Fahrplan/events/2387.en.html</a> <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://events.ccc.de/congress/2007/Fahrplan/events/2342.en.html"><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span></a><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span></p>
<p> <strong>CIS: What can a country like India learn from the Dutch <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>government's e<span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>xperience in eGovernance and ICT in Education?</strong></p>
<p><span class="moz-txt-citetags"> </span><strong>AK:</strong> I am not familiar with the Indian political process but these are some <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>of my lessons learned: </p>
<p>- The government will not do anything unless constant <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>and significant pressure is applied by citizens. Politicians and civil <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>servants only act if the pain of acting is less than the pain of not <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>acting. Change is achieved by citizens standing up and working on <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>these problems without guarantee of any reward or even achieving any <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>results (it took us five years to get from a unanimous vote <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>in parliament to an actual policy). <span class="moz-txt-citetags"><br /></span></p>
<p><span class="moz-txt-citetags"> </span><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>- Big IT companies may be your friend or your enemy. But even if they <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>are your friends they generally will not be at the forefront of <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>political action that could be seen as controversial. Once policies <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>are pushed beyond the co<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://events.ccc.de/congress/2007/Fahrplan/events/2342.en.html"><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span></a>ntroversial stage and have been adopted as <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>official policy some of them will support it. Others, with much to <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>lose, will fight you and the policy every step of the way. The more <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>money or loss of market share is involved the more radical the methods <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>that are employed. Massive lobbying, applying political pressure <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>through foreign governments, bribery and all kinds of other activities <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>are well-funded, well organised and very common. <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span></p>
<p><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>- In moving forward with these policies it's the lack of knowledge and <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>vision with the the management of institutions that is by far the <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>biggest bottleneck. Without a clear policy from the top it is <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>impossible to get things moving in most organisations.<span class="moz-txt-citetags"><br /></span></p>
<p><span class="moz-txt-citetags"> </span>- Another big problem in switching over local governments and other <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>smaller organisations is the fact that many of the advantages of such <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>a switch is national and/or macro-economic in nature while the initial <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>cost and risk is micro-economic in nature. Hence again the need for a <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>national policy. </p>
<p>- The funding required to make significant improvements is often not <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>that large compared to the existing operational budgets. Investing in <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>the smart use of IT in education for instance is something that can <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>pay for itself very quickly. This is generally also true for adoption <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>of open source and open standards in general. By just reducing the <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>yearly spend on software licences by 1% the entire government program <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>can be funded. <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span></p>
<p><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>- Simply stopping the procurement of new licences (while continuing <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>the use of those already paid for) can often free up enough money to <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>finance a migration process. This has been the case in the city of <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>Amsterdam and the French Gendarmes. <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span></p>
<p><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>- The actual value of better government services or education is hard <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>to quantify in monetary terms. H<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://events.ccc.de/congress/2007/Fahrplan/events/2342.en.html"><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span></a>ow do we value improved <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>responsiveness, transparency, national sovereignty in information <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>processing and supporting local service companies instead of foreign <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>software companies? <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span></p>
<p><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>- IT education should focus on understanding methods and principles, <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>not products. The product life-cycle is 18-36 months, the educational <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>process takes many years and the length of a career is decades. Any <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>education with a focus on products leads to knowledge that is <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>irrelevant by the time the degree is finished. Teach people to drive a <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>car, not just a Volkswagen or Tata. <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span><span class="moz-txt-citetags"><br /></span></p>
<p><span class="moz-txt-citetags"> </span>- The cost of physical books per student per year in the Netherlands <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>is now greater that the cost of a laptop. This is insane since the <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>content of those books is generally written by teachers who get paid <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>very little for it. Using the funds to pay those teachers instad of <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>the publishers and releasing the content under a free licence will <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>free up resources to develop better educational programs and provide <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>all students with computational tools to use them. All without <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>increasing the total cost compared to our current situation. The <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>financial numbers will be different for India but the <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>basic principle is the same and works even better given the larger <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>scale of India. The cost of producing and distributing electronic <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>educational content will drop practically to zero when compared to <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>physical on a per-student basis. Using funds to support teachers in <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>the use of e-learning with open content is the way forward. <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://events.ccc.de/congress/2007/Fahrplan/events/2342.en.html"><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span></a></p>
<p><span class="moz-txt-citetags"> </span> <strong>CIS: How can a local support environment for open technologies be <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>created? Can local SMEs ever substitute for the transnational <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>proprietary giants?</strong><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span></p>
<p><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span><strong>AK: </strong>Whether SMEs can supplant multinationals depends on the product being <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>replaced. CPU manufacturing requires a very high upfront investment in <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>R&D and manufacturing capability. This is usually far beyond any but a <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>handful of companies. With software development and services things <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>are very different. Software development only requires a human with <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>programming skills, a good idea and a computer. The Free Software <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>Movement has shown clearly that distributed methods of software <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>development can lead to high quality products with excellent local <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>support systems. Local organisations (or communities that are not even <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>organisations) can often understand local needs and respond to local <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>changes much better, faster and cheaper than large, lumbering <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>corporations. If local organisations work together globally to share <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>knowledge (and code) for those parts they all need they can beat any <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>centralised system. <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span></p>
<p><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>What many senior business and government leaders are struggling with <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>is the realisation that many of the 'truths' they have learned while <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>studying economics or business management or some such subject turn out to be <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>empirically incorrect. For example: it has become clear there is no <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>causal relationship between the cost of software and its quality or <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>utility. This must be a fact that is difficult to truly understand and <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>accept if you have been brought up believing the gospel of the <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>Anglo-Saxon economic worldview. The current economic crisis is a great <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>help in questioning some of those beliefs and opens up room for new <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>ideas about economic vs. societal value of technology and its <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>relationship to<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://events.ccc.de/congress/2007/Fahrplan/events/2342.en.html"><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span></a> businesses trying to earn a living. <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span><span class="moz-txt-citetags"><br /></span></p>
<p><span class="moz-txt-citetags"> </span> <strong>CIS: Could you tell us about the Dutch government's rollback on <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>electronic voting machines? What is your opinion on the use<span class="moz-txt-citetags"> </span>of <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>electronic voting machines in the upcoming elections in <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>India?<span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span></strong></p>
<p><strong>AK: </strong>From the mid '80s onward, voting computers were introduced in the <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>Netherlands. By 2006, the vast majority of all elections were being <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>performed by proprietary computer systems. Citizens would press a <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>button and then go home to watch TV. Some software that no-one could <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>control, monitor or properly audit would spit out a result and that <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>would be it -- new government. Only a handful of engineers (all working <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>for the companies that made the voting computers) actually knew what <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>the software did and could make the computer system say anything they <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>wanted. <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span><span class="moz-txt-citetags"><br /></span></p>
<p><span class="moz-txt-citetags"> </span>When the city of Amsterdam (the last holdout using paper ballots) <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>announced in 2006 that it was moving to voting computers, a group of <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>activists organised a campaign to ban voting computers. We felt that <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>the very nature of democracy was under attack by running the election <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>process in a way that makes it impossible for ordinary citizens to <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>check the validity of the election. It also makes fraud a lot harder <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>to detect. Detectability of fraud is the one of the primary properties <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>any election process should have. We all know election fraud is also <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>possible with non-electronic means but keeping it a secret is much <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>harder in such cases (as we saw in the US and Zimbabwean election over <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>the last years). There was a actual case of suspected voter fraud in a <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>Dutch municipal election and the judge concluded that while the fraud <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>seemed likely it could not be proven. Regrettably for the suspected <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>council member the fraud could also not be disproven. This <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://events.ccc.de/congress/2007/Fahrplan/events/2342.en.html"><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span></a>shows very <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>clearly that such a method is wholly unsuitable for application in <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>real democratic processes. <span class="moz-txt-citetags"><br /></span></p>
<p><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>Through lots of media attention, a few spectacular hacks showing the <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>technical insecurity of the systems, and legal pressure, we forced the <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>government in 2007 to reverse the approval of the voting computers and <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>go back to an all-paper balloting system. This reversal is part of a <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>global backlash against electronic voting systems. Comparable changes <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>have been going on in many US states and all over Europe. <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span><span class="moz-txt-citetags"><br /></span></p>
<p><span class="moz-txt-citetags"> </span>I think India should have voting process that can be understood and <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>monitored by its citizens. This understanding and monitoring should be <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>possible without requiring advanced degrees in computer science, <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>software engineering and electronics. The only way to have such a <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>process is when there is a paper ballot involved. Such a ballot could <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>be printed by a computer to increase the ease of use but <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>all-electronic solutions are ruled out by the basic demands of what a <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>democracy is. <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span><span class="moz-txt-citetags"><br /></span></p>
<p><span class="moz-txt-citetags"> </span>India should move to either all paper systems or voting computer <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>backed-up by a voter-verified paper trail. <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span><span class="moz-txt-citetags"><br /></span></p>
<p><span class="moz-txt-citetags"> </span>Are more extensive telling of the tale can be found here:<span class="moz-txt-citetags"> </span><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://wijvertrouwenstemcomputersniet.nl/English">http://wijvertrouwenstemcomputersniet.nl/English</a> <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span></p>
<p><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>This is a link to the Berlin CCC conference of Rop Gongrijp's 2007 <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>presentation (with video): <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://events.ccc.de/congress/2007/Fahrplan/events/2342.en.html">http://event<span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>s.ccc.de/congress/2007/Fahrplan/events/2342.en.html</a> <span class="moz-txt-citetags"><br /></span></p>
<p><span class="moz-txt-citetags"> </span><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.blackboxvoting.org/">http://www.blackboxvoting.org</a> has a wealth of information on this subject. <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span><span class="moz-txt-citetags"> </span><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span></p>
<p><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span><strong>CIS: What are the services provided by Gendo? Could you describe <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>some <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>of the projects that you have undertaken?</strong><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span></p>
<p><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span><strong>AK:</strong> My company (gendo.nl) also provides consulting services in the area of <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>IT strategy, development of open IT architectures and implementing <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>those in mixed open source/proprietary environments. We are currently <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>advising both national and local government organisations in the <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>implementation of policies and plans to move to open standards and <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>open source software. We are also involved in projects where we do the <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>actual development and implementation of new systems to enable <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>innovation and lessen the dependance of our client on proprietary <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>systems. Currently we are involved with a healthcare organisation <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>where we are assisting in re-architecting their entire IT environment <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>to allow service innovation, lower cost and increase information <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>security. <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span><span class="moz-txt-citetags"><br /></span></p>
<p><span class="moz-txt-citetags"> </span>We have also been involved in information security work and other <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>auditing in the financial services and government sector. Here our <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>activities focus on the grey area between technology and process. <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span></p>
<p><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>Outside the field of IT we also do other consulting work such as <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>scenario planning and strategic future studies, mostly for large <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>corporate clients. Most of the big Anglo-Dutch multinationals such as <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>Shell or Unilever are on our client list. We also have a large number <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>of clients in the financial services and insurance sector. <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span></p>
<p><span class="moz-txt-citetags"> </span>For all of these clients we organise presentations and brainstorming <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>sessions, often preceded by research. This helps the leaders in those <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>organisations think about the nature of rapid, technology-driven <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>changes in their markets and the world in general. These insights are <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>then translated into new products, services and ways of delivering <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>them. <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span><span class="moz-txt-citetags"><br /></span></p>
<p><span class="moz-txt-citetags"> </span>Forgive me if this all sounds a bit vague but with many of these <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>clients there is some confidentiality agreement involved. <br /><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span></p>
<p><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span><strong>CIS: Could you tell us more about yourself? Maybe you would like <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>to <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>share some formative experiences.</strong><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span></p>
<p><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span><strong>AK:</strong> Writing my first paper on black holes at age 11 showed me that <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>grown-ups usually also don't know what is going on in the universe <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>either. Despite rumours to the contrary parents, teachers, senior <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>managers and politicians are not all-knowing and are stumbling about <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>just like most two-year-olds where complex issues are concerned. <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span><span class="moz-txt-citetags"><br /></span></p>
<p><span class="moz-txt-citetags"> </span>Over the last quarter century I've had this intuition reconfirmed <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>again and again. In a world that is changing faster and faster <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>experience becomes obsolete rather quickly and wisdom is no longer the <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>sole purview of older, m<span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>ore senior, people. We need young smart-asses <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>who have not yet learned what is impossible, so they go out there and <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>do it. <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span><span class="moz-txt-citetags"><br /></span></p>
<p><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>-----</p>
<span class="visualHighlight">Arjen Kamphuis (born 1972) studied Science & Policy at Utrecht University and worked for IBM as Unix specialist, Tivoli consultant and software instructor. As IT-strategy consultant at Twynstra Gudde he was involved in starting up Kennisnet, the Dutch educational network. Since 2001 he is operating as an independent adviser of companies and governments. He co-authored, in 2002, a motion in parliament that ultimately turned, in 2007, into a full-fledged policy of the Dutch government mandating the use of open source software in all government and public sector IT operations. <br /><br />Arjen at present divides his attention between IT-policy and the convergence of IT, biotechnology and nanotechnology and its social and economic implications. His customers include: Shell, Unilever, Pfizer, Stork, and various hospitals, governmental institutions and insurance companies. Arjen guest lectures on technology policy at various universities and colleges. <br /><br />When not consulting Arjen is actively involved in (digital) civil liberties, the open source movement and criticizing the war on terror.</span>
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For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/an-interview-with-arjen-kamphuis'>http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/an-interview-with-arjen-kamphuis</a>
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No publishersachiaInterviewOpen StandardsFLOSSIntellectual Property Rights2011-08-18T05:01:53ZBlog Entry