Centre for Internet and Society

Stakeholders' Meeting of USOF - Presentation by Nirmita Narasimhan

praskrishna — 2011-09-13T10:25:36Z

Nirmita Narasimhan participated in the meeting held in New Delhi on September 7, 2011 and made a presentation.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/accessibility/usof-stakeholders-meeting.ppt

Stakeholders meeting to discuss the NCAER Report on "Parallel Imports"

praskrishna — 2014-04-01T10:42:04Z

Nehaa Chaudhari will be participating in this meeting to be held in New Delhi on March 26, 2014.

The Ministry of Human Resource Development is organizing a meeting to discuss the comments/views of all stakeholders on the Report of National Council for Applied Economic Research (NCAER) on "the Impact of Parallel Imports of Books, Films/Music and software on the Indian Economy with special reference to students". The meeting will be held under the Chairpersonship of Smt. Veena Ish, JS (BP&CR) on March 26, 2014 at 2.00 p.m.

Download a copy of the Report of the NCAER on Parallel Imports here.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/stakeholders-meeting-to-discuss-ncaer-report-on-parallel-imports

Stakeholders Meeting of the USOF on Facilitating ICT Access to Persons with Disabilities in Rural Areas

praskrishna — 2011-11-08T05:55:39Z

The Universal Service Obligation Fund (USOF), a fund set up to provide universal access to telegraph services to rural and remote areas in India organized a stakeholders meeting on 7th September in New Delhi to launch a new scheme for supporting pilot projects for facilitating access to persons with disabilities in rural areas. Nirmita Narasimhan participated in this meeting and made a presentation.

The meeting was attended by representatives of the associations of service providers and manufacturers like Telecom Equipment Manufacturers Association of India (TEMA) and Sasken Communication Technologies, civil society organizations working for the disabled like Accenture on "ICT Initiatives for Connecting Persons with Disabilities" (AICB), Saksham, Equal Opportunities Cell from Delhi University, technology companies like Intel, educational institutions like NIOS and representatives from other ministries and departments such as MHRD.

The meeting began with a key note from the Administrator, USOF and a presentation from the Joint Administrator (Finance), USOF, introducing the scheme. This was followed by presentations from various stakeholders. It was agreed that the first step towards inviting projects would be the identification of problems by disability organizations to ensure that project ideas would be in line with the needs of persons with disabilities. Importantly, the Joint Administrator stressed that although projects could only be submitted by service providers, it would be important for each project to have a strong partnership of service providers, content developers and disability organizations to ensure that the solutions sought to be achieved through the projects would be a holistic one. The USOF has not yet settled on any upper ceiling for the projects: this will be determined once the projects start coming in. Projects will be evaluated by a select committee on a qualitative basis. The size of the pilot projects is to be small, possibly at a district level. Based on the success of the projects, these would then be considered for scaling up.

Download Nirmita's presentation here [Powerpoint file, 227 kb]
For agenda, click here
For more info about the event, see the USOF website

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/usof-meeting

Stakeholders Meeting of the USOF - Agenda

praskrishna — 2011-09-13T10:35:10Z

Stakeholders Meeting of USOF was held on September 7, 2011 in New Delhi, the agenda for the meeting is enclosed.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/accessibility/usof-meeting-agenda.doc

Stakeholder share in MAG

praskrishna — 2017-02-19T14:28:17Z

Stakeholder share in MAG

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/TechnicalCommunity.jpg

Stakeholder representation across regions

praskrishna — 2017-02-19T14:30:00Z

Stakeholder representation across regions

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/Industry.jpg

Stakeholder Group

praskrishna — 2018-07-16T14:21:02Z

Stakeholder Group

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staff

praskrishna — 2014-05-27T09:03:02Z

Staff training

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St.Xavier GLAM

praskrishna — 2013-01-25T09:49:06Z

Participants@St.Xavier

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/GroupSt.Xavier.png

SSRN-id2756486.pdf

praskrishna — 2016-06-20T01:51:25Z

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/SSRN-id2756486.pdf

Srividya's Presentation

praskrishna — 2013-06-05T10:30:14Z

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/gaad-presentation-1

Sriram

praskrishna — 2012-07-10T08:53:41Z

Sriram

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/sriram.jpg

Spyware

praskrishna — 2013-05-07T10:29:35Z

Spyware

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Spy agencies, IB and RAW, put spanner in proposed privacy law

praskrishna — 2013-11-19T09:50:05Z

The country’s intelligence agencies are out to scuttle a law that’s being drafted to protect your privacy.

The article by Nagender Sharma and Aloke Tikku was published in the Hindustan Times on November 2, 2013. Sunil Abraham is quoted.

The Intelligence Bureau and the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) have told the government to water down the proposed law that makes it a crime to leak sensitive personal information collected by government departments and the private sector.

The agencies conveyed their views to national security adviser Shivshankar Menon at a recent meeting at the prime minister’s office. With home secretary Anil Goswami backing the spooks, even arguing that “the very need for such a bill” should be reviewed, Menon has called for revisiting the provisions the agencies have objected to.

The Right to Privacy Bill 2013 lays down privacy principles and standards, and stipulates jail terms and fines for leak of sensitive personal data.

“If such a bill was to be considered, intelligence agencies should be exempted from its purview,” Goswami argued at the meeting.

The intelligence agencies also spoke about how the bill would “adversely affect or compromise” the functioning of many agencies and projects, such as the Central Monitoring System that is used to intercept phone calls and internet communication, and the National Intelligence Grid that would give law enforcement agencies access to information combat terror threats.

The proposed privacy law was initially conceptualised to address data privacy, particularly in the context of data handled by the Indian IT industry for foreign clients.

But the Department of Personnel and Training – that drew up the bill – expanded its scope to cover information collected by the government and interception by intelligence agencies.

Sunil Abraham of the Centre for Internet and Society, a Bangalore-headquartered advocacy group, said the security establishment’s attempts to scuttle the privacy law were a step back.

“Civil society isn’t against surveillance by security agencies. All that we ask for is due process and oversight,” Abraham said.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/hindustan-times-november-2-2013-nagender-sharma-alok-tikku-spy-agencies-ib-and-raw-put-spanner-in-proposed-privacy-law

Spread awareness through Malayalam Wikipedia: Gadgil

praskrishna — 2016-05-05T15:43:59Z

"Contribution of information by people of Rukadi village near Kolhapur to Marathi Wikipedia, by referring to media reports, helped spread the word about mass fish deaths in the region. Similar efforts should be initiated in Kerala so that information about local movements like Plachimada campaign would be available in the public domain," opined environmentalist Madhav Gadgil. He was speaking at the Malayalam Wikipedia workshop hosted by Swadeshabhimani Media Study Centre at Vakkom Moulavi Memorial Hall here on Wednesday.

The article was published in the Times of India on May 5, 2016.

The scientist spoke at length on how the information technology in general and the Wikipedia in particular, could help create awareness among commoners about the harmful effects of environmental degradation. He added that though Malayalam Wikipedia is ahead of other Indian languages in documenting geographical details, the content doesn't stretch beyond official information. He suggested that controversial information too must be documented with reference to media reports.

Fuad Jaleel, volunteer editor of Malayalam Wikipedia, explained Wikipedia policies on notability and reliability. The two-day workshop is organised in association with Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) and Malayalam Wikipedia community. On Wednesday, the event focused on identifying topics for wiki-articles and creating basic village/town data by making use of census. Forty participants attending the workshop will contribute articles to Wikipedia on Thursday. Representatives from CIS Bengaluru and members of Malayalam Wikipedia Community will assist them.

"The intention is to add wiki-articles on environmental issues at panchayat level. Malayalam Wikipedia could be used as a medium for citizen journalism. We will organize more workshops and classes," said Ram Kamal, one of the coordinators of Swadeshabhimani centre. V K Damodaran delivered welcome speech and A Suhair presented vote of thanks in the inaugural session.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/news/the-times-of-india-may-5-2016-spread-awareness-through-malayalam-wikipedia