Centre for Internet and Society

Despite apex court order, IOC proceeds with Aadhaar-linked DBT

praskrishna — 2014-01-31T06:50:33Z

Once DBT starts, there is no other method to avail of subsidy: IOC official.

The article by Deepa Kurup was published in the Hindu on January 6, 2014. Sunil Abraham is quoted.

Despite an interim order by the Supreme Court disallowing the government from making the Aadhaar number mandatory for accessing State subsidies and benefits, Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) Ltd. continues to inform consumers that they will not get their LPG subsidy if they do not seed their Aadhaar-linked bank accounts to the IOC database.

SMSes and publicity material released by IOC in the past week indicate that the company is going ahead with the Union government’s deadlines for the Direct Benefit Transfer scheme for LPG. While the deadline for Udupi and Dharwad districts has been extended till January-end, the “grace period” for Bangalore Urban will expire on March 1.

Over the past week, LPG consumers have been receiving frequent SMSes requesting them to submit their Aadhaar number to their LPG distributor and their bank, with “no further delay”. Though the SMS does not state whether or not this is mandatory, frequent messages have been instilling a sense of urgency and panic among consumers. Further, several consumers told The Hindu that, upon enquiry, distributors had been telling them that they would have to forego their subsidy amount (for nine cylinders a year) if they failed to register their details with the IOC database. Once the DBT scheme is enforced, the IOC will migrate customers entirely to the new system — that is, consumers will have to pay the market price, and the subsidy amount will be credited to their bank accounts.

‘No other method’

Senior IOC officials said that while the oil manufacturing company was desisting from making statements on whether or not this was mandatory, in effect those whose details would not be seeded to the database would not be able to avail of the benefit. “Basically, once the DBT scheme starts there is no other method to receive or avail of the subsidy. As of now, there is no alternative method,” said R.K. Arora, executive director, Karnataka State office. He pointed out that in rural areas several other subsidies were already linked to Aadhaar, and the DBT scheme was at 100 per cent in Tumkur and Mysore districts.

As of January 1, an IOC official said, only 30 per cent of LPG consumers in the Bangalore Circle had ‘seeded’ their accounts to the IOC database, while in Udupi and Dharwad it was roughly around 50 per cent.

“We are not claiming it’s mandatory, and currently all companies have submitted an affidavit seeking the order be reconsidered. Meanwhile, we have just asked people to submit the details to the distributor as soon as they can,” the official said. He added that IOC was likely to keep extending the deadline to “be on the safe side”.

Meanwhile, there is confusion among consumers on the issue. Krishnan Pillai, a resident of R.T. Nagar here, said Aadhaar numbers were being delayed, and there was huge anxiety among people. “Last week, I saw an advertisement that implied that I will lose subsidy if I don’t submit my number. Is the Supreme Court verdict not applicable?” he said. Sumitra Gupta, a charted accountant from Majestic, said distributors were telling them to “ignore news report on the Supreme Court verdict”.

“This is arm twisting,” she said.

‘So-called voluntary’

Sunil Abraham of the Centre for Internet and Society, a Bangalore-based NGO that has been part of the anti-Aadhaar campaign, said IOC was “pushing the boundary”. “From the very beginning, people have been objecting to the so-called voluntary nature of the scheme. It’s unfortunate that the will of the Supreme Court in its interim order on such as a critical component of our citizenship is also being ignored,” he said.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/hindu-january-6-2014-deepa-kurup-despite-apex-court-order-ioc-proceeds-with-aadhar-linked-dbt

Design!Public PDF

praskrishna — 2011-03-03T10:59:02Z

pdf

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/advocacy/design-public-invite.pdf

Design!PubliC — Third Conclave in New Delhi

praskrishna — 2012-05-30T07:03:33Z

On the 20th of April 2012, the third Design Public Conclave, organized by the Center for Knowledge Societies in collaboration with IBM, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Google and the Centre for Internet and Society, was held at the National Museum, New Delhi. The Conclave brought together thought-leaders and decision makers from the government, the media, multinational organizations and academic institutions for a conversation about transforming India into an Innovation Society.

Sunil Abraham was a panelist along with Aditya Dev Sood, Arun Maira, Aditya Mishra, Sukumar Ranganathan, Bhairavi Jani, Ashwin Mahesh, Yamini Aiyar, Scott Burnham, Samanth Subramanian, Shanker Annaswamy, Ashok Alexander, Jeby Cherian, Pankaj Jhunja, Chakshu Roy, Ekta Ohri, James Crabtree, Theo JJ Groothuizen, Sam Pitroda, Darshana Gothi Chauhan, and spoke in the session on Participation, Collaboration and Innovation. The varied audience included representatives from the Planning Commission, the Embassies of Netherlands and Sweden, the American Center, the Ford Foundation, Premsela, DFID, PRS, Lirneasia, Sir Dorabji Tata Trust, Financial Times, Carnegie Mellon, Cambridge, NID, Asian Paints, Yes Bank, MTS, and many others.

The conclave began with three panel discussions exploring the relationship between trust, participation and innovation.

Participation, Collaboration, Innovation

The discussions touched upon different means to generate citizen participation in key decision making, including using social media, mobile phones and other technological platforms. These new networking technologies help create spaces for discourse, debate, and an opportunity for collective organization and activity. They also have the capacity to transform the agency and voices of previously remote societies. However, despite their potential to garner massive public participation, they have not really been utilized by most private, public or social institutions.

Mere participation is not enough. It is necessary to moderate the conversation and make respondents accountable for their comments, so that it does not lapse into a meaningless cacophony of anonymous voices. The challenge that remains, then, is to design a platform where both citizens and the government can engage in a meaningful way, without the barriers of language and literacy, and collaboratively arrive at meaningful, actionable solutions.

Imagining India as an Innovation Society

This conversation dove deeper into ways in which the necessary elements of trust and participation could be better incorporated in all the sectors of society in order to enable an innovation culture in India. Existing conceptions of innovation in India, including price-pointing innovation, and the need to move beyond this and create a culture that values systematic, routinizable innovation processes were discussed. When innovating in the public sector and designing systems and processes that affect the larger public, it is especially important to respond to the specific needs of the people. This is where avenues for civil society participation and the design of public spaces become especially crucial, as they function as interfaces between decision-makers and the public. Each panelist spoke about different aspects of this large challenge, touching upon user needs, education systems, intellectual property laws and methods of innovation.

It was clear, as the conversation ended, that a lot more work and planning is needed to even begin to articulate and come to a consensus on what an innovation society looks like.

Click to download the full report (published by Center for Knowledge Societies) [PDF, 2.18 MB]

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/design-public-delhi-event-report

Design!PubliC — Innovation and the Public Interest

praskrishna — 2012-01-16T08:48:25Z

On the 14th of October, 2011, the Center for Knowledge Societies organized the second edition of the Design Public Conclave, a conversation on how innovation can serve the Public Interest. The conclave was held at the lovely premises of the National Gallery of Modern Art in Bangalore.

The conclave was highly interactive and brought together representatives from technology houses like Intel, GE, TCS, Infosys, and Seimens, with social sector organizations like Arghyam and funding agencies like the Gates Foundation and HIVOS. Officials from the National Planning Commission and Karnataka State Innovation Council were also involved. Speakers included the philanthropist Rohini Nilekani, interaction design expert Reto Wettach, policy advisor Ashwin Mahesh, design thinker M.P. Ranjan, among other experts from India, Sri Lanka, Norway, Finland, Denmark, Sweden, Germany, the UK and the US.

The Conclave began with three panel discussions, each of which focused on the relationship between innovation and a specific sector of society: the private/corporate sector, the social sector, and the public/government sector. Each panel consisted of a moderator and four to six domain experts, but the audience was asked an encouraged to participate freely along with the discussants.

"When designing public and social initiatives, both structure and intuition are invaluable, and neither should be ignored in favor of the other." Sunil Abraham Centre for Internet and Society		"Where there is no trust, there will be no creativity, and therefore no innovation." Aditya Dev Sood Center for Knowledge Societies
"In startups, people are free to experiment without always being bogged down by commercialism, like in large corporations." Aditya Mishra Headstart Foundation			"When discussing the public interest, it is important to think about which public we’re talking about, and to specify whose interest we are working towards." Harsh Srivastava National Planning Commission
	"There is a general perception that the government doesn’t listen to us, but my perception is that not enough of us are trying to be heard." Ashwin Mahesh Mapunity
"There are many interest groups and each one believes that only their interests matter. We have to be able to compromise and collaborate." Rohini Nilekani Arghyam		"Design is like dancing while wearing handcuffs; you have to work with constraints and try and create the best possible solutions." Reto Wettach Interaction Design Studios
"Innovation is about designing something radically new, which transforms our experience of the world." M.P. Ranjan Design for India		"Public-private partnerships are often the best way to ensure that innovation happens in the public interest." Sneha Raman Center for Knowledge Societies

PANEL 1 Innovation and the Indian Corporation

This discussion focused on whether Indian corporations and how they can help bring about a culture of innovation. Panelists agreed that while Indian society is highly innovative, large Indian corporations are usually not.

The successes of large corporations often render them less willing to take risks. Also, the hierarchical decision-making structure of corporations can inhibit innovation, leaving little incentive or opportunity for subordinates to be creative.

Large corporations can play a substantial role, though, by collaborating with small entrepreneurs and working on social issues. This way, the technological expertise and infrastructural capabilities of large companies can be married with the empathetic, lived knowledge of grassroots innovators.

PANEL 2 Is Innovation in the Public and Social Sectors Possible?

This discussion focused on whether the public and social sectors can innovate. Panelists agreed that collaboration and participation are the key ingredients when innovating for the public interest. This also makes the entire process more transparent and hence keep power imbalances and misuse in check.

Private-public partnerships are the best means for innovation to happen, where governments can provide the policies and structures that support innovation, and private firms provide their expertise in developing solutions.

Another major concern that was brought up is the challenge of trust, the lack of willingness to take risks, and the fear of failure. These are all institutional challenges that need to be overcome before the social and public sectors can become capable of innovation.

PANEL 3 The Challenge of Startup Innovation

The panelists talked about startups in India and how people’s conception of them is often limited to technological products and services, largely because people are unaware that there can be startups for governance, for the social sector, for public services, and more.

They spoke about the need for a more robust and supportive startup ecology, for which the biggest problem now is no longer a lack of funding, but rather a lack of consumer belief and trust in startups. Additionally, cultural factors can contribute to the success or failure of this startup ecology: Indian society, for example, is too risk-averse and unforgiving of failure. There is, therefore, the need for an ‘innovation incubator,’ with the right architecture, guidance, mentorship, financial support and other necessary resources, to help make socially valuable startups happen.

PANEL 4 The Theory and Practice of Innovation

After lunch, panelists grappled with the question of whether innovation can be routinized, and if design is the means to do so. They talked about how good innovation necessarily stems from good design, which means adding meaningful value to a product or service.

Design can be seen as any expression of intentionality, rather than being relegated to the realm of the purely visual. All human beings, not only trained designers, are capable of designing, and erroneously think of ourselves as non-designers. This is especially true in social redesign, where citizens from any walk of life can contribute meaningful information and ideas. Hence the need for active community participation in service and policy design, as participation during the solutioneering process will mean fewer problems with implementation and realization.

In the afternoon, participants broke out into groups to brainstorm how innovation can help solve three grand challenges of Indian society. CKS researchers first presented information collected from field visits prior to the conclave in order to focus the session.

INCLUSIVE HIGHER EDUCATION	QUALITY MATERNAL AND CHILD HEALTHCARE	INDIA’S TOILET PROBLEM

Despite many government efforts, the number of students pursuing higher education in India is still dismally low. Reasons for this lie in a lack of access to institutes of higher education, insufficient finances and restrictive cultural practices and attitudes. In order to understand the challenge, CKS researchers and domain experts visited an alternative education center that utilizes omputers and online platforms to teach. Possible Solutions The success of online higher education lies in locally relevant solutions Human interaction is necessary to complement the technological interface. Create shared learning platforms to encourage collaborative learning. Insights Financial and cultural factors are the greatest barriers to education, especially for girls. Lack of awareness about opportunities, and an absence of local mentors. Language is the key barrier to using computers and the internet for education.	Maternal and child health in India is amongst the poorest in the world. This grim situation is preventable, however, with good health services, better dissemination of information, and by ensuring proper nutrition and care through pregnancy. CKS researchers conducted research on ante-natal healthcare in rural areas, in order to understand the the gaps in the delivery of these services. Possible Solutions More campaigns to make beneficiaries aware about the services they can avail. Offer incentives to healthworkers for providing better care to patients. Local government should be made stronger and more accountable. Insights Healthcare providers are three-fold: field healthworkers, public (government) clinics,and private clinics. Public clinics are cheaper but lower quality, while private clinics are expensive but are better equipped and offer better services. Field healthworkers are usually more trusted though they may be less knowledgeable.	74 percent of rural India still does not use toilets, which has wide-ranging implications on health, hygiene, safety, convenience, and privacy. The government introduced the Total Sanitation Campaign to bring toilets to all of rural India, but huge gaps in implementation still remain. CKS researchers and domain experts from Arghyam spent a day in the village of Dandi Kanahalli to understand toilet usage patterns from different respondents. Possible Solutions Support more NGOs working in this area. Create communal toilets that target women Build stronger local government Insights Most respondents did not construct toilets until it became compulsory to do so. The main challenge to toilet construction is the lack of financial resources. Despite financial constraints, communal toilets are nonexistent.

INCLUSIVE HIGHER EDUCATION

QUALITY MATERNAL AND CHILD HEALTHCARE

INDIA’S TOILET PROBLEM

Despite many government efforts, the number of students pursuing higher education in India is still dismally low. Reasons for this lie in a lack of access to institutes of higher education, insufficient finances and restrictive cultural practices and attitudes.

In order to understand the challenge, CKS researchers and domain experts visited an alternative education center that utilizes omputers and online platforms to teach.

Possible Solutions

The success of online higher education lies in locally relevant solutions
Human interaction is necessary to complement the technological interface.
Create shared learning platforms to encourage collaborative learning.

Insights
Financial and cultural factors are the greatest barriers to education, especially for girls.
Lack of awareness about opportunities, and an absence of local mentors.
Language is the key barrier to using computers and the internet for education.

Maternal and child health in India is amongst the poorest in the world. This grim situation is preventable, however, with good health services, better dissemination of information, and by ensuring proper nutrition and care through pregnancy.

CKS researchers conducted research on ante-natal healthcare in rural areas, in order to understand the the gaps in the delivery of these services.

Possible Solutions

More campaigns to make beneficiaries aware about the services they can avail.
Offer incentives to healthworkers for providing better care to patients.
Local government should be made stronger and more accountable.

Insights
Healthcare providers are three-fold: field healthworkers, public (government) clinics,and private clinics.
Public clinics are cheaper but lower quality, while private clinics are expensive but are better equipped and offer better services.
Field healthworkers are usually more trusted though they may be less knowledgeable.

74 percent of rural India still does not use toilets, which has wide-ranging implications on health, hygiene, safety, convenience, and privacy. The government introduced the Total Sanitation Campaign to bring toilets to all of rural India, but huge gaps in implementation still remain.

CKS researchers and domain experts from Arghyam spent a day in the village of Dandi Kanahalli to understand toilet usage patterns from different respondents.

Possible Solutions

Support more NGOs working in this area.
Create communal toilets that target women
Build stronger local government

Insights
Most respondents did not construct toilets until it became compulsory to do so.
The main challenge to toilet construction is the lack of financial resources.
Despite financial constraints, communal toilets are nonexistent.

Quo Vadis

This edition of Design Public made it clear that innovation was a high priority for different stakeholders in society, but also that many players lack a clear understanding of how to actually go about the process of creating a new product or service. This would suggest that what is really required in India today is training around the fundamentals of innovation, including the process of understanding needs, developing concepts, protyping a solution and then further enhancing the new and innovative solution. In addition, we realized that many of the large scale challenges being faced by Indian society have to do with deficiencies of trust, inadequate avenues and channels for people to participate in decision making processes and that these are the more fundamental barriers to broadbasing a culture and associated practices of innovation in this society. These are the themes that we have resolved to work on further in future editions of Design Public.

A participant questions the panelists during a discussion on startup innovations

Opportunities for Sponsorship and Partnership

The Design Public consortium is now soliciting support and sponsorship from organizations, agencies and corporations that are particularly interested in these topics. Sponsorships follow the following tiered structure:

Institutional Sponsor US $10,000/-
Dinner Sponsor US $5,000/-
Event Partner US $3,000/-

We also welcome contributions of content and other kinds of support in kind that might allow the event to proceed to greater effect. These may include travel support for speakers, accommodation bursaries for worthy cases, student scholarships, sponsored dinners, paid breakfast tables and special expert and media access by arrangement.

To find out how to become part of the Design Public Consortium, please contact CKS team members in New Delhi and Bangalore as below:
New Delhi: Khushboo Hasija | khushboo.hasija@cks.in | +91 97115 18587
Bangalore: Anand Vijayan | anand.vijayan@cks.in | +91 93437 87505

December 2011 | Published by Center for Knowledge Societies

Jamuna Ramakrishna (HIVOS) in conversation with Dilini Wijeweera (Lirneasia)

Participants from the audience contribute to the discussion on policies and programs for innovation

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/design-public-2014-innovation-and-the-public-interest

Design!PubliC — Event in Delhi

praskrishna — 2012-04-11T11:45:04Z

Centre for Knowledge Societies in partnership with IBM, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Google, HeadStart, India@75, LiveMint, and the Centre for Internet & Society is organizing the third edition of Design!PubliC event in Delhi on April 19 and 20, 2012.

Design Public is a high-level conversation among a select group of thinkers, decision-makers and opinion-leaders who seek to transform India into an innovation society. It brings together influential actors from all sectors of society to deliberate the best ways in which innovation can serve the public interest. The larger goal of the Conclave is to serve as an enabling platform for building the necessary partnerships and consortia that will bring this agenda to practical realization.

This third edition of the Design Public Conclave is focused on issues of trust and participation and how they relate to innovation. We will be addressing key questions like:

How can we overcome deficiencies in trust and participation to better facilitate innovation?
How can we better imagine India as an innovation society?
How can we build smarter cities and ensure sustainable urban development?
What does rural innovation really mean and how do we do it?
What are the necessary consortia and cross-sectoral alignments for driving innovation?

The Panelists

	Aditya Dev Sood Aditya Dev Sood is Founder and CEO of the Center for Knowledge Societies (CKS), an innovation consulting firm that provides design services of a kind that Indian industry never thought it would even need — User Research, User Experience Design, Design Strategy and Innovation Management. Through his consulting work, and also through his writings and his public presentations, Aditya offers a compelling vision of the central role of design and innovation for emerging economies such as India. The focus on his firm has remained on lower income and rural groups, and through contractual consulting engagements it has sought always to bring about market successes as well as the greater societal good. Dr. Sood is a Fulbright scholar with two doctorates from the University of Chicago and a wide range of disciplinary competencies, gained through a long and diverse education, including Architecture, Art History, Critical Theory, Comparative Literature, Sanskrit Philology, Philosophy of Language, Cultural Anthropology, Social Theory and Political Economy.
	Arun Maira Arun Maira is a Member of the National Innovation Council, a part of the National Planning Commission of the Government of India. In addition to being a prolific author on leadership and organization transformation, as well as the future of India, he has worked as an experienced consultant for companies all over the world and for a diversity of industries, from automobiles and pharmaceuticals to international agencies for economic development. Prior to joining the National Planning Commission, Arun Maira worked with the TATA Group in India, the Boston Consulting Group, Save the Children in India, the Axis Bank Foundation, and CII’s National Councils, among many others. He received his M.Sc. and B.Sc. in Physics from St Stephen’s College, Delhi University.
	Aditya Mishra In addition to leading a sales team for Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) Ltd., Aditya Mishra began his own not-for-profit company to promote entrepreneurship in India called Headstart. Headstart is run by volunteers dedicated to creating space for and promoting innovation in India by fostering individual entrenpreneurs, research, and the adoption of new technology. Aditya advises early stage start-ups and incubators through Startup Saturdays events to aid in the development of products and service, busines planning, and sales and marketing. Headstart is headquarted in Bangalore, but through the Headstart Network of entrepreneurs, academics, and industry professionals, activities are carried out in Mumbai, Hyderabad, Pune, Delhi, Ahmedabad, Chennai, and Kolkata.
	Sukumar Ranganathan Sukumar Ranganthan was a founding member of Mint, a business paper of the Hindustan Times in association with the Wall Street Journal. Launched in 2007, Mint brings “Clarity in Business News” to readers across the country. He has worked in several capacities in business news, from Marketing Editor at The Hindu Business Line to Managing Editor of India’s leading business magazine, Business Today. In addition to a Master’s degree in Business Administration, Sukumar holds a Bachelor’s in Chemical Engineering and another Master’s in Mathematics.
	Bhairavi Jani After graduating from Miami University, Ohio, USA, and working with KPMG Consulting in Washington D.C., Bhairavi Jani returned to India in 2001 and began her career in business. After setting up and scaling up a fourth party logistics company, Bhairavi accepted the role of Director for all companies under the SCA Group in 2005, which manages shipping, customs, warehousing, logistics, and IT. As Group Director, she works with different teams from the respective companies withing the Group, providing them strategic advice. In addition to being a successful businesswoman, Bhairavi has worked closely with the late C. K. Prahalad on India@75 of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), a grassroots initiative for realizing an inclusive, sustainable, and developed India by 2022. It works to accelerate India’s transformative into an economically vital, technologically innovative, and socially and ethically vibrant global leader. Having served as a National Chairman of Young Indians, CII, Bhairavi has since 2011 taken a five year hiatus from her own businesses to serve as Executive Director for India@75.
	Ashwin Mahesh Ashwin Mahesh is a professor of Public Policy at IIM Bangalore, but his innovative ideas and dedication to service has brought him outside academia. In 1998, he co-founded India Together, an online magazine of public affairs, policy, and development in India. He has also started Mapunity, an independent R&D company designed around reversing the trend of government lagging behind technology. Ashwin Mahesh has a PhD in atmospheric remote sensing from the University of Washington, and he does research in exploring the expanding role of technology & IT in urban traffic management.
	Yamini Aiyar Yamini Aiyar is the founder and director of the Accountability Initiative, an organization working to strengthen accountability and engagement in Indian governance, which has received praise from Indian government officials and even President Obama. She is also presently a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Policy Research, focusing on understanding accountability tools in order to institutionalize accountability methods and strengthen public service delivery systems. Prior to the Accountability Initiative, Aiyar worked at the World Bank and the Ford Foundations in New Delhi. She holds a MSc in Development Studies from the London School of Economics, and M.A. in Social and Political Sciences from St. Edmund’s College, Cambridge University, and a B.A. in Philosophy from St. Stephens College, Delhi University.
	Scott Burnham Scott Burnham is a creative director, writer, and designer who has worked on strategies for cities to use design to reprogram relationships. He has created several projects for European cities including Urban Play for Amsterdam with Droog Design and Bairro Criativo for Porto, Portugal. Currently, Burnham directs the Trust Design project for Premsela, the Netherlands Institute for Design, exploring the relationship between trust and design from products and shared urban spaces. He is the editor of a special 4-issue publication series with Volume Magazine, and a guest lecturer at Design Academy Eindhoven. In addition to writing and speaking, Burnham worked as the Creative Director for the UK’s Urbis Center for Urban Culture from 2003-2006.
	Samanth Subramanian Samanth Subramanian is a journalist who has written pieces for The New York Times, Mint, Newsweek, the Wall Street Journal, the Boston Globe, Foreign Policy, Foreign Affairs, the Hindu, and many others. Though he prefers long-form narrative articles, he also has written several shorter pieces, as well as a non-fiction book Following Fish: Travels around the Indian Coast, which won the 2010 Shaki Bhatt First Book Prize. He currently writes for the New York Times’ India Ink blog. Subramanian completed his undergraduate degree from Pennsylvania State University in journalism and received his Master’s degree in International Relations from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs.
	Sunil Abraham Sunil Abraham is the Executive Director of The Centre for Internet and Society, which aims to criticaly engage with the interaction between the internet and the public, including concerns of digital pluralism, public accountability, adn pedagogic practices. While serving on the board of directors for CIS, Sunil has worked on many projects exploring the internet and information. He has been elected an Ashoka fellow, where he explored the democratic potential of the internet, and was granted a Sarai FLOSS fellowship as well. For the United Nations, Sunil managed the International Open Source Network for the Asia-Pacific Development Information Program between 2004 and 2007. The next year, he managed ENRAP, Knowledge Networking for Rural Development in the Asia-Pacific region, which worked to share knowledge amongst the projects and stakeholders of the International Fund for Agricultural Development.
	Shanker Annaswamy Shanker Annaswamy is the Managing Director for IBM India Private Limited, and Regional General Manager of IBM in India and South Asia. He is responsible for all sales, marketing, services, and delivery in India, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Sri Lanka. In addition to holding a senior position in IBM, Annaswamy has been President and Chief Executive Officer for GE Medical Systems in South Asia, Managing Director of Wipro-GE Medical Systems, and Adviser with the Ministry of Health for the Sultanate of Oman. He currently serves as Chair of the Confederation of Indian Industry’s (CII) National Committee on Intellectual Property Owners, having previously co-chaired CII’s advisory committee on its National Innovation Mission. In 2009, BusinessWeek listed Annaswamy among India’s 50 Most Powerful People. He received his Bachelor of Engineering degree from Madras University and a Diploma in Business Management Education from the All India Management Association, New Delhi.
	Ashok Alexander Ashok Alexander is Director of Avahan, the Global Health Program’s HIV prevention initiative in India, which was founded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in 2003. As Director, he works with India’s federal and state governments, NGOs, and corporate partners. Before joining Avahan, Alexander worked in Hong Kong, the United States, and India for 24 years. After joining McKinsey & Company in New York, he moved to India to become the head of its New Delhi office. In addition, he has extensive experience working with NGOs, being a leader in the creation of the American India Foundation (AIF) and serving on the Board of Advisors. Alexander holds graduate degrees in economics and management from Delhi University and the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad.
	Jeby Cherian Jeby Cherian is the Strategy Leader of IBM in India and South Asia, and also serves on the India Leadership Team. He provides guidance to IBM’s Corporate Development team in India, leads and positions IBM’s Security solutions portfolio to the Government of India, and provides executive sponsorship for growing the High End Server business in India. Before this, Cherian worked in Bangalore with IBM’s Global Solutions Delivery Center and with PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) in Finance Transformation services. Cherian is a CPA with a Master’s degree in Accounting from the University of Illinois and an MBA from the University of Chicago.
	Pankaj Jhunja Pankaj Jhunja, now General Manager of Design for Tata Motors, has had the opportunity to work in a diversity of businesses each with different responsibilities and complexities of products. Before Tata Motors, Jhunja worked for Dilip Chhabria Design (DC) specializing in Custom Built Cars, Homeflow Inc. in Pune as Product Manager, and with Renault Nissan India in Mumbai as General Manager Design. Jhunja holds a Bachelor’s degree from the National Institute of Technology, Silchar, and a Master’s degree in Design from IIT Mumbai.
	Chakshu Roy Chakshu Roy is a lawyer who heads technology initiatives at PRS Legislative Research (PRS), New Delhi. PRS is a unique initiative that provides non-partisan analysis to all Members of Parliament in India. Chakshu is developing a comprehensive technology strategy to engage large sections of the population in the policy process. He has conceptualised and developed India’s only online database of all state laws. Chakshu has conducted capacity-building workshops for over 1000 journalists on tracking the work of legislators. He specialised in real estate law and commercial agreements before joining PRS. He has earlier worked in corporate law with the Chamber of Law, New Delhi. He holds bachelors degrees in Commerce and Law from Delhi University.
	Ekta Ohri Ekta Ohri is the Head of Project Operations at the Center for Knowledge Societies (CKS). She holds experience of applying ethnographic and user experience research methods as well as principles of design thinking for addressing a variety of innovation challenges in emerging economies – ranging from improving rural public health delivery systems, providing financial services to the poor and bridging their information and communication gaps through telecommunications to enhancing urban mobility and luxury experiences. As the head of innovation at CKS, she works with different teams providing them strategic advice around innovation approaches, developing context (urban or rural) specific research methodologies and analyzing research insights in ways that leads to concepts that create maximum value for the users, as well as disseminating some of these ideas in the public domain through publications. Ekta has multi-disciplinary background in Architecture (Sushant School of Art and Architecture), Visual and Critical Studies (California College of the Arts), and Anthropology (Northwestern University) and is particularly interested in exploring linkages between design, culture and lived experiences.
	James Crabtree James Crabtree is the Mumbai Correspondent for the Financial Times since November 2011. He covers Indian corporate news and social and political trends in the country’s financial capital. James joined the FT in 2010 and was previously the Comment Editor based in London.He was previously an editor and essayist at Prospect. Before returning to journalism, James worked as policy advisor in the Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit, and also for various think tanks. He has also spent a number of years living in the US, first as a Fulbright Scholar at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, and then living in Washington, working as a senior policy advisor at the New Democrat Network, another think tank. James is a trustee of the charity mySociety.org, one of the UK’s most innovative technology organisations.
	Theo JJ Groothuizen Theo JJ Groothuizen is currently the Counsellor for Science and Technology at the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in New Delhi India. He is member of the steering committee of the Delhi Sustainable Development Summit 2008. Born in 1949 in the Netherlands, he graduated in industrial Design Engineering at the Delft University of Technology, and is since 1986 principle of Landmark Design Holding (Netherlands and Switzerland). Groothuizen served as executive board member of International Council of Societies of Industrial Design (ICSID) and the Association of Dutch Designers (BNO) and as advisor for the Bureau of European Design Associations (BEDA). He was active in several international advisory boards and was tutor in international design workshops, initiated international exhibitions and has been invited as speaker, guest lecturer and jury member all over the world. He is fellow of the Foundation Design for the World, advisor for the European Institute for Design and Disability (EIDD) and honorary member of the BNO. He taught at the Delft University of Technology and served as member of its External Research Advisory Board. He also taught at the Design Academy and functioned as international curator of the Gwangju Design Biennale 2005.
	Sam Pitroda Sam Pitroda is an international figure known for his strong support in India’s communications revolution and redefining the role that technology can play in India by linking it to better delivery of services to the underprivileged. He has long worked in government, business, and innovation in India. He served as Technology Advisor to Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, is founder and CEO of C-SAM, Inc., with offices worldwide, and chaired the National Knowledge Commission from 2005-2008. Now, in addition to Advisor to the Prime Minister of India on Public Information, Infrastructure & Innovations, chairman of India’s National Innovation Council, charting the roadmap for India’s ‘Decade of Innovation.’ Pitrota completed his Master’s in Physics and Electronics from Maharaja Sayajirao University and subsequently received another Master’s in Electrical Engineering from the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago. In 2010, he also received and Honorary degree from the University of Illinois at Chicago.
	Darshana Gothi Chauhan Darshana is an architect and urban designer. She has varied experience in designing new towns, regeneration of town centres, transport action plans and urban extension projects. She is passionate about participatory planning and the approach of empowering local people to create better cities. Darshana is currently working at Urban Initiatives in London as a Managing Consultant. Her recent works at UI include Southall Big Conversation, a public consultation process in a culturally diverse area in London . Darshana is also the Chapter Development Manager of INTBAU India, a charitable organisation promoting traditional architecture and urbanism in India . As part of INTBAU India, she has been instrumental in organising public consultation events backed with intensive baseline and capacity building work for the regeneration of the inner city of Pune in India. Darshana has simultaneously worked on projects for other consultancies such as The Max Lock Centre, London . Her works at Max Lock include a Spatial Planning Framework for Kaduna , a city of 3 million people for the Central Government of Nigeria. She has previously worked with the Ministry of Works and Human Settlements in Bhutan to develop the master plan for a new administrative capital in East Bhutan as part of Christopher Charles Benninger Architects.

Agenda

Day 1: Certificate in Innovation Management

Venue: CKS House, New Delhi: 19th April, 2012

09.30 a.m. Icebreaker Dialogue
Participants will introduce themselves briefly and talk about their perceptions of innovation and its application in their work. A CKS member will aggregate the thoughts that emerge from the audience in order to articulate the multiple definitions of innovation that emerge. This will be followed by a quick call out on the value of innovation.

10.30 a.m. Analysis of Innovation Case Studies
CKS Innovation Experts will present various case studies of innovation in order to present the different tools, approaches and stages of innovation.

12.40 p.m. UDE Approach to Innovation
CKS Innovation Experts to present the U-D-E approach to innovation and demonstrate different uses of the Innovation Cycle.

01.15 p.m. Wrap Up and Invitation to Innovation Consultations
CKS Innovation Trainers conclude the morning's session and invite participants to sign up for Innovation Consultations post lunch at the Chaia Innovation Campus.

02.15 p.m. Innovation Consultations
Participants meet mentors on a one to one basis to receive consultation on how they can apply this approach in the specific context of their work or a particular challenge? Where are the opportunities to apply the approach and what value can that have?

Day 2: Design Public Conclave

Venue: National Museum, New Delhi: 20th April, 2012

09.45 a.m. Word of Welcome
Aditya Dev Sood, Center for Knowledge Societies, gives a word of welcome and short introduction to the logic of the conclave.

10.00 a.m. Crises of Trust are Crises of Creativity, Design, and ultimately of Innovation
by Samanth Subramanian, Scott Burnham and Yamini Aiyar
This opening panel will address questions of trust and participation in the wake of the global spring. How can institutions respond creatively to include the networked public? What are the inter-relationships between trust, creativity, design and innovation and why are these important for our future?

11.00 a.m. Participation, Collaboration, Innovation
by James Crabtree Ekta Ohri, Sunil Abraham, Ashwin Mahesh and Aditya Mishra
Crises of trust are often linked to failures of participation and inclusion. How can activists and critics of institutions be more creative in their approaches so as to restore and repair the public trust? What channels for feedback and more substantive modes of participation must be created so as to promote innovation through dialogue and collaboration?

12.00 p.m. Imagining India as an Innovation Society
by Aditya Dev Sood, Ashok Alexander, Shanker Annaswamy, Sukumar Ranganthan and Arun Maira
This panel brings together industry and government experts to imagine the values, behaviors, ways of working, societal institutions and diverse other dimensions of society that would have to change in India to transform it into an innovation society. But first, what is an innovation society? Do we understand this correctly?

02.00 p.m. Breakout One: Smarter Cities
by Darshana Gothi Chauhan, Ekta Ohri and Jeby Cherian
Jeby Cherian of IBM will lead this breakout session on smarter Urban Management and Civic Administration.

02.00 p.m. Breakout Two: How can we do Rural Innovation better?
What should or could we mean by Rural Innovation? Is this the same old thing as jugaad, indovation and tinkering? This panel brings together designers and innovation experts to talk with management thinkers to describe the specific steps and stages involved in innovation processes and how they could apply in rural areas. What do steps individuals and organizations need to take to reeducate or empower decision makers at all levels in different sectors in India to bring about an awareness, understanding and orientation towards innovation?

02.00 p.m. Breakout Three: 50 Steps to an Innovation Society
by Theo JJ Groothuizen Bhairavi Jani
Bhairavi Jani will lead this thematic breakout session on specific steps governments, corporations, social agencies, academics and individual citizens can take to better imagine and then build an Innovation Society.

03.30 p.m. Mutual Presentations
Breakout sessions will cross-report to one another.

04.00 p.m. Concluding Plenary: What Do We Need to Do To Build an Innovation Society?
by Chakshu Roy Aditya Dev Sood Bhairavi Jani
This plenary session will include leading thinkers from government and media along with sectoral experts to discuss specific steps we must now undertake in order to work towards innovation in different domain and activity areas. In some ways this is the most challenging and important session of the day, for it will lay out the next steps and future path of the Design Public process.

06.00 p.m. Wrap-Up and Word of Thanks
Aditya Dev Sood gives a few concluding remarks and concludes the day with a vote of thanks to all advisors, sponsors, partners, speakers and participants at the Design Public Conclave.

07.00 p.m. Dinner
All participants are invited to a dinner and celebration of 10 years of CKS at the Chaia Innovation Campus in Chattarpur Enclave, New Delhi. Transportation will be provided.

For registration, click here

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/design-public-delhi

Design!publiC - News from Livemint

praskrishna — 2011-08-20T14:36:00Z

The Centre for Internet and Society in partnership with Centre for Knowledge Societies, Venkataramanan Associates, Centre for Law and Policy Research and LiveMint organised Design!publiC in Delhi on March 18, 2011. On the same day, livemint.com published a series of articles.

Design for the future

Consider this: The Indian government projects a total expenditure of Rs 1,257,728 crore for the year 2011-2012. If proper design thinking was to be applied in governance processes and efficiencies of just 2% annually were achieved through it, the result would be savings of a Rs. 25,000 crore per year or which can pay for almost half of the current government’s flagship gob guarantee scheme the MGNREGA.

Easy it may sound, but the process is a complex one. There are several challenges such as how the government should effectively control yet ensure privacy of citizens, or how it has to adopt the latest technology or global best practices yet keep a realistic approach considering the cultural diversity, scale and demographics of our country.

A conclave in New Delhi titled Public Design: Design thinking for Governance Innovation of which Mint is one of the organisers along with Centre for Knowledge Societies, The Centre for Internet and Society, MXV Consulting and Venkataramanan associates, is currently addressing some of these issues.

The talk points are varied from how design process can impact everyday lifes of citizens, how can design be effectively implemented in governance and what role can the social media play for ensuring better delivery of government services to citizens and other stakeholders.

Debating the pros and cons are a motley group of people including Younghee Jung, senior designer from Nokia Corporation; Daniela Sanghorgi, Lecturar at Lancaster University; Harsh Shrivastava from the Planning Commission of India; Anant Shah Programme Officer of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; Aparna Piramal Raje, Design Thinker, Mint; Sunil Abraham of the Centre for Internet and Society and Sukumar Ranganathan, Editor, Mint among others.

Read the above story in Livemint here

Should government be the face of design innovation?

The closing panel of today’s Public Design Conclave brought up an interesting counterpoint to the discussions that had mainly revolved around how to bring innovation into governance and policy: should innovation in fact be the role of the government?

Perhaps not said Arun Maira, member of the Planning Commission and the National Innovation Council. Maira argued that for any system to be innovative it also requires some stability. The role of government is to supply that stability, he said, and for that reason it should not be encouraged to embrace innovation without regard for the consequences that a radical change could bring. “I’m wondering whether government should actually be asked to innovate itself too much or not,” said Maira. “I think government has two roles: one is its policy and
regulatory role and the other is its delivery role.” When it comes to innovation, Maira said, government should step back in its delivery role and let other sectors experiment and provide the change.

Using the example of UID (Aadhaar), Maira noted that the scheme’s success relies on its autonomy from government combined with its partnership with existing system. “If you have to introduce a new idea into an organisation, which part should you put it into?” he asked. “Not into the heart, but into the periphery of the organisation, so that if it doesn’t work you can kill it without damaging the whole.”

“This is where the example of UID works perfectly,” he said, praising the scheme’s independent nature, headed by a charismatic leader, Nandan Nilekani, and celebrated by the larger governance system. Other innovative development schemes should look to UID as a model he said. “Frankly I’m looking for innovation in the way government is not regulating but reducing its role.”

Read the above story in Livemint here

Governance and Design

The terms “government” and “design” have too often proved oxymoronic in India, especially given the vast network of central, state and local bodies that jostle to administrate to a country of over a billion citizens. But at a public design conclave currently being held in New Delhi, titled “Design thinking for Governance Innovation” of which Mint is one of the organisers, exactly this juxtaposition is being debated. “How can governments use designers and design thinking?” asked a panel of speakers including representatives from the Nokia Corporation, Planning Commission of India and the Gates Foundation this morning.

The subject is as complex as the answer is elusive, they conceded. Younghee Jung, a senior designer at Nokia, said an initial hurdle exists in the way, “the word design is being perceived in the Indian environment- it’s very borderline.” One of the reasons, Jung postulated, was that the government sees design purely as an aesthetic discipline and neglects the innovative and economic aspects that should be equally as important.

Harsh Shrivastava from the Planning Commission of India agreed. In redesigning the way government works, he said, an entirely new outlook is needed. In preparing the Approach Paper to the 12th 5 year Plan, he said, the commission has chosen an entirely different tack: involving a far greater number of people, consulting NGOs and businesses as well as state governments. starting Facebook pages for feedback from the public, in an attempt to open up the process. The downside of this new approach, Shrivastava admitted, was that it made a lengthy process longer, and the response from state governments was lacklustre.

There’s still a disconnect, said Aparna Piramal Raje, Design Thinker, Mint, between the way states and national governments think and work. “We have to go from national conception to implementation on the local level,” she said. “I think it’s that last mile user experience and delivery of services that is important, the detail of implementation.” But state governments rarely take planning seriously, noted Srivastava, “you find that people who can’t do anything else are sent there. For state governments, it often boils down to how much honey will you give me next year, when it comes to planning.”

There’s no replacement for doing research in the field, said Anant Shah, a program director at the Gates Foundation, who works on health projects. He cited the example of the new vaccine delivery kits that have been developed by the Delhi-based innovation firm, Centre for Knowledge Sciences, for communities in rural Bihar. After research on the ground, the kits were designed so that even the shape of the vial was taken into account, tailored precisely to requirements for the community. “It’s easy to presume what we think will work,” Shah said, “and it’s easy to present ideas that have been conceived in hotel ballrooms halfway around the world. We should be making those decisions at the last mile. How can the perspectives of users be taken into account? How can we find solutions that are palatable and appropriate?”

Ultimately, Younghee Jung concluded, the answer lies in changing the mindset of governance from a user-designed solution to a benefit-designed one. “Benefits for citizens should translate into benefits for the government,” she said. Unfortunately, the panel’s consensus seemed to be that we are still a long way off.

Read the above story in Livemint here

Implementing Innovation

Conclaves and discussion forums like this one often get accused of throwing up more questions than they answer. That certainly happened in a group discussion on devising ways and means of implementing innovation
in India. “How can these grand ideas actually be put into action?” the group was asked.

The challenges of making innovative ideas a reality were cited first, and the list was long; from psychological hurdles, like ignorance and fear within existing bureaucracy, to changing the mindset of government workers who are resistant to change and comfortable with the status quo.

Workers in the field worried about the inherent conflicts between public design and commercial design, the difficulty of “selling” design innovations to government, building persuasive business cases and articulating the value of such schemes while keeping a tight focus on the project. They perceived a general gulf of thought between design-thinkers and the government, a corruption of good intentions, and warned of the difficulty of working with changing governments, who may only be in power for four to five years.

Eventually, however, and amongst much heated debate, some solutions began to emerge from all the challenges. To boost understanding of the uses of design among government workers, design and innovation should be part of the curriculum for Indian public administrators, someone suggested. Equally “design guys” need to understand a bit more about what governance is.

From the government’s position, said Harsh Shrivastava, there’s a frustration that designers don’t understand “the complexity of our country and the complexity of our work. It’s not just about the ministry changing its schemes or having a smarter graphic or logo, the aesthetic design of one agency will not change the government too much.”

An Obama-style branding of “Change” was mooted as a positive idea. Pilot projects in five or six chosen cities that have good business design bases might be a good move, said Shrivastava. “Maybe we should have a central resource centre to record what is happening across the country?”

Niels Hansen, projects manager at MindLab, a cross-ministerial innovation unit in Denmark, said that the emphasis ought to be on delivery. “Our experience from MindLab is that this isn’t about getting the best ideas, it’s also about change management, you have to orchestrate change processes,” he said.

Read the above story in Livemint here

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/news/design-public-livemint-coverage

Design!publiC - II - Event in Bangalore

praskrishna — 2011-10-07T12:03:37Z

The Centre for Internet and Society in partnership with the Centre for Knowledge Societies, Confederation of Indian Industry, Venkataramanan Associates, LiveMint, Centre for Law & Policy Research and MXV Consulting is organising the second edition of Design Public on October 14, 2011 at the National Gallery of Modern Art in Bangalore. There will be a series of pre-conference research outings on October 13 for which participants may register in advance.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/design-public-bangalore.pdf

Design!publiC - II

praskrishna — 2011-10-13T07:00:43Z

The Centre for Internet and Society in partnership with the Center for Knowledge Societies, Venkataramanan Associates, Center for Law and Policy Research, Headstart Foundation, Chaia Innovation Accelerator, MXV Consulting, Mint Newspaper and Confederation of Indian Industry is organising the second edition of Design Public on October 14, 2011 at the National Gallery of Modern Art in Bangalore. There will be a series of pre-conference research outings on October 13, for which participants may register in advance.

Innovation and the Public Interest

Design Public is a series of conversations about whether and how Innovation can serve the Public Interest.

At our inaugural event, in New Delhi on March 18th earlier this year, we focused on the question of whether innovation in governance is needed and how it can be achieved. An excellent overview of the event can be found in a Mint Newspaper article by Aparna Piramal Raje. While we discovered wide agreement in principle as to the need for innovation in India, there was much uncertainty about how government systems relate to innovation, and some doubt as to whether governments are in fact capable of innovation. At our upcoming event, we aim to widen the ambit of the discussion, to ask how innovation serves the public interest, thereby opening up the question of innovation to the social sector, to corporations, to venture capitalists, designers, students, academics and more.

Following Schumpeter, we understand innovation to be a fundamental part of modern economic and social life -- in fact the very source of the momentum that drives us forward into the future. However, we have also found that innovation need not be limited to entrepreneurs in the private sector, but can also be accomplished, in various ways, in government, in the public sector, and by social and developmental agencies. Moreover, if the specific components of innovation can be identified and learned, it would be possible for many more organizations and individuals to successfully drive beneficial social and technical change.

If the term Innovation describes the business or economic dimension of the forward movement of society under capitalism, then the immanent, cognitive or mental aspect of this forward movement can be captured by the term Design. It is the multivariate, parallel, sometimes collaborative process of finding solutions to problems that have no obvious and available answer. Whereas the language of design gained prominence in the Industrial Age as a means for the rendering of surfaces and finishes for the more effective marketing of consumer products (posters and toasters), the concept has far wider application in the present. Design and Innovation are by definition the strategies through which the most intractable, complex, and multivariate challenges encountered by individuals or groups.

At our event, therefore, we seek to articulate exactly how these strategies can be brought to bear on the Grand Challenges facing our society, in areas such as:

Complete and Effective Healthcare for Mothers and Children
Increased Use and Acceptance for Toilets
Broad-based Higher Education
Participatory and Responsive Civic Administration

Over the course of the day-long event, we will consider different approaches and paradigms of innovation and how they may be applicable to these grand challenges. We will break out into sessions in order to apply these perspectives and approaches to specific challenge areas. At the end of the day we will seek to expand the circle of innovation in order establish new ways of collaborating and sharing knowledge such that we are able to accelerate and intensify the application of innovation to addressing these and other grand challenges facing the public.

Panchayat meeting on Village Sanitation in Khera village, Budaun District, UP

Agenda

09.00 Word of Welcome and Mutual Introductions
10.00 Innovation and the Indian Corporation

- Samar Halankar, Hindustan Times (moderator)

- Anil Narayan Sondur, TATA Elxsi

- Harish Bijoor, HB Consults

- Ekta Ohri, Center for Knowledge Societies (respondent)

11.00 Is Innovation in the Public and Social Sectors Possible?

- Sunil Abraham, Center for Internet and Society (moderator)

- Rohini Nilekani, Arghyam Foundation

- Ramesh Ramanathan, Janaagraha

- Ashwin Mahesh, Mapunity

- Sneha Raman, Center for Knowledge Societies (respondent)

12.00 The Challenge of Start Up Innovation

- Amit Garg, MXV Consulting (moderator)

- Mahesh Murthy, Pinstorm

- Zackery Denfeld, Pacific Northwest College of Art

- Naresh Narasimhan, VA Group

- Aditya Dev Sood, Center for Knowledge Societies (respondent)

13.00 Lunch: Regional Cuisines of Karnataka prepared with Local Ingredients
14.00 The Theory and Practice of Innovation
- Aditya Dev Sood, Center for Knowledge Societies (moderator)
- Reto Wettach, Interaction Design Studios Berlin
- Shiv Vishwanathan, Sociologist of Science
- M. P. Ranjan, Design for India
15.00 Grand Challenge Breakout Sessions
A: Online Higher Education
Moderator: Sunil Abraham, Center for Internet and Society
Innovation Expert: Sneha Raman, Center for Knowledge Societies
Domain Expert: Udhay Shankar, Intel
B: Quality Maternal and Child Healthcare
Moderator: Jayna Kothari, Center for Law and Policy Research
Innovation Expert: Shehla Hussain, Center for Knowledge
Societies
Domain Expert: Lakshmi Menon, G.E. Healthcare
C: Toilet-training for All!
Moderator: Sudhir Krishnaswamy, Center for Law and Policy Research
Innovation Expert: Namrata Mehta, Center for Knowledge Societies
Domain Expert: Sunita Nadhamuni, Arghyam
Tea Served During Breakout Sessions
16.30 Reports Back from Breakouts
17.30 Conclusion: Planning and Policy for Innovation and the Grand Challenges of Society
- Sudhir Krishnaswamy, Center for Law and Policy Research (moderator)
- Harsh Shrivastava, National Planning Commission
- Anant Shah, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
- Jamuna Ramakrishna, Hivos Foundation
- Dilini Wijeweera, LIRNEasia
- Gaurav Gupta, Dalberg
- Riku Mäkelä, Finnode

Individual Participation

In order to make each voice count, entry to the conclave will be by arrangement only. Others who are truly interested, should please drop us a few lines on how they would like to contribute and we will be glad to get back in touch. There are no registration fees. However, we would like to see participants take their own initiative in covering their own travel costs and making their own arrangements for stay so far as possible. If specific needs are perceived, please communicate them to the organizers. If you are interested in participating in this conversation on innovation, design thinking, and the public interest please contact Anand Vijayan at anand@cks.in.

Institutional Participation

Confederations of industry, associations of management, departments of government and diverse development sector and civil society organizations are invited to express their interest in supporting this event.

Organizers

Center for Knowledge Societies (CKS)
Center for Internet and Society (CIS)
Venkatramanan Associates (VA)
Center for Law and Policy Research (CLPR)
Headstart Foundation (HF)
Chaia Innovation Accelerator (ChIA)
MXV Consulting (MXV)
Mint Newspaper (MN)
Confederation of Indian Industry (CII)

For participation: contact Anand Vijayan, Innovation Planning, CKS
For media: contact Ayesha Vemuri, Innovation Research, CKS (ayesha@cks.in)

For more info, click here [PDF, 496 kb]

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/events/design-public-in-bangalore

Design!Public (6th Edition)

praskrishna — 2015-11-30T02:11:45Z

The sixth edition of Design Public conceptualized and hosted by CivicLabs, an initiative of the Center for Knowledge Societies was held at Vihara Innovation Campus, New Delhi. Sumandro Chattapadhyay was a panelist.

The event created a platform through which urban administrators could engage with a wide range of expertise representing innovation, public policy, development, technology and entrepreneurship. The event brought together leading global and Indian practitioners representing these fields, to share and exchange best practices, learnings, approaches and philosophies in an attempt to chart a way forward for an ecosystem for civic innovation for India’s cities.

For more information see the Design Public website. Also see the blog post by Khusbhoo Dixit on this.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/news/design-public-6th-edition

Design!publiC

praskrishna — 2011-06-03T13:27:22Z

The Centre for Internet and Society in partnership with Centre for Knowledge Societies, Venkataramanan Associates, Centre for Law and Policy Research and LiveMint is organising Design!publiC on March 18, 2011. Design Public is a conversation about whether and how to bring design thinking to bear upon the challenges of government so as to promote governance innovation.

Background

The problem of governance is perhaps as old as society, as old as the rule of law. But it is only more recently -- perhaps the last five hundred years of modernity -- that human societies have been able to conceive of different models of government, different modalities of public administration, all having different effects on the configuration of society. The problem of governments, of governmentality, and of governance is always also the problem of how to change the very processes and procedures of government, so as to enhance the ends of the state and to promote the collective good.

Since the establishment of India’s republic, many kinds of changes have been made to the policies and practices of its state. We may think of, for instance, successive stages of land reforms, the privatization of large-scale and extractive industries, the subsequent abolition of the License Raj and so and so forth. We may also consider the computerization of state documents beginning in the 1980s, and more recently, the Right To Information Act (RTI). More recently there have been activist campaigns to reduce the discretionary powers of government and to thereby reduce the scope of corruption in public life.

While all these cases represent the continuous process of modification, reform, and change to government policy and even to its modes of functioning, this is not what we have in mind when we speak of ‘governance innovation.’ Rather, intend a specific process of ethnographic inquiry into the real needs of citizens, followed by an inclusive approach to reorganizing and representing that information in such a way that it may promote collaborative problem-solving and solutioneering through the application of design thinking.

The concept of design thinking has emerged only recently, and it has been used to describe approaches to problem solving that include: (i) redefining the fundamental challenges at hand, (ii) evaluating multiple possible options and solutions in parallel, and (iii) prioritizing and selecting those which are likely to achieve the greatest benefits for further consideration. This approach may also be iterative, allowing decisions to be made in general and specific ways as an organization gets closer and closer to the solution. Design thinking turns out to be not an individual but collective and social process, requiring small and large groups to be able to work together in relation to the available information about the task or challenge at hand. Design thinking can lead to innovative ideas, to new insights, and to new actionable directions for organizations.

This general approach to innovation -- and the central role of design thinking -- has emerged from the private sector over the last quarter century, and has enjoyed particular success in regards to the development of new technology products, services and experience. The question we would like to address in this conference is whether and how this approach can be employed for the transformation public and governmental systems.

What is the Evidence that Design Thinking Positively Impacts Governments?

Many European countries have government-supported design conglomerations for the purposes of enhancing business and the government’s interface with the public. Design Council in the UK not only works to create public identities but also helps formulate national design strategies that help the United Kingdom to differentiate its national brand and achieve broad national benefits. Elsewhere in the UK, a private organization, Think Public, and various governmental agencies, are working through a consultative approach with citizens to better target governmental services so as to maximize citizen benefits.

In the context of public health, the first major public health information system has been built in Canada, and in many ways it may serve as a reference and benchmark for other countries around the world. The first deployment of a public health information system in developing country contexts is in Ghana, where a specialized Resource Center is even now being conceived to enable the support and further development of this new system.

In India, early innovation research and concept development activities by the Center for Knowledge Societies for the Gates Foundation has shown promising results in terms of new opportunities to enhance the quality of health care delivery through the Bihar pilot itself, using the tools and techniques of ethnography, design, and user experience enhancement. In its studios in New Delhi and Bangalore, it has hosted innovation workshops with international health experts, public officials and other stakeholders to envision new kinds of technologies and solutions for improving public health delivery. In future, it may be possible to organize these kinds of efforts in the form of an Innovation Lab or Innovation Center.

Whereas, in the past, diverse attempts have been made to reform government, to make it more efficient, to reduce corruption and the arbitrariness of decisioning authority. Beneficial as these approaches may have been, they have not always been successful in fundamentally transforming the ways in which bureaucracies think about their mission, objectives and goals. They have not resulted in greater consumer orientation of these cadres, or greater public participation in the decision-making of these bureaucracies. These are the kinds of benefits that design thinking can bring to governmental and quasi-governmental bureaucracies.

In this conclave, our interest is to explore how design thinking and user-centered innovation might help such organizations better accomplish their mission and better serve their beneficiaries. We also seek to explore and establish particular modalities through which governance innovation can be achieved, as well as to identify key stakeholders and personalities gripped of the challenge of governance innovation. Our larger goal is to craft a path forward for integrating design thinking and innovation methodologies in the further re-envisioning, refashioning and improvement of public services in India and elsewhere in the world.

Specific Expected Outcomes

A shared understanding and common vocabulary around design thinking and innovation
A review of insights and outcomes from the event by members of government with a view to routinizing and institutionalizing innovation in government
A documentation of case-studies, concepts and perspectives from different participants emerging from the conclave
An emerging community of thinkers and practitioners interested in working together to share information and insights to accelerate governance innovation
A consensus on the modalities and occasion for the conduct of a follow-up conclave, possibly in Bangalore as soon as September 2011

An Invitation to Dialogue

Design Public is a conversation among a select group of high level thinkers and actors who care about public services design. No more than 50 persons will be in attendance. Presentations will be brief. Panel discussants will intersperse with the other participants for greater involvement and equal opportunity for dialogue and response. All attendees will be asked to participate in the emerging dialogue through the day.

Draft Schedule

10.00 am
What do Designers do? How can Physical, Informational and Interaction Design Impact the Everyday Life of Citizens?

Sunil Abraham, Executive Director, Centre for Internet and Society (Moderator)
Aditya Dev Sood, CEO, Center for Knowledge Socities
Abhimanyu Kulkarni, Design Director, Philips Design
Younghee Jung, Senior Designer, Nokia Corporation
Daniela Sangiorgi, Lecturer, Lancaster University
Sudhir Krishnaswamy, Founder, Centre for Law and Policy Research
Naresh Narasimhan, Principal Architect, VA Group

11.00 am

How Can the Government Best Use Designers and Design Thinking?

Aditya Dev Sood, CEO, Center for Knowledge Societies (Moderator)
Niels Hansen, Project Manager, MindLab
Aparna Piramal Raje, Design Thinker, Mint
Anant Shah, Program Officer, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
Harsh Shrivastava, Consultant (Planning), Planning Commission of India
Kiran Dhingra, Secretary, Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation
Shubhagato Dasgupta, Senior Research Fellow, Centre for Policy Research
Steven Solnik, Member-Government Performance and Accountability, Ford Foundation

12.00 pm

How can Social / Media Promote Design and Governance Innovation?

Suresh Venkat, Executive Producer, CNBC TV18 (Moderator)
Vibodh Parthasarthy, Associate Professor, Jamia Milia Islamia
Yatish Rajawat, Editor-in-Chief, Business Bhaskar
R. Sukumar, Editor, Mint
Sashwati Banerjee, Executive Director, Sesame Workshop India
Aditya Mishra, Founder, Headstart Foundation

1.00 pm

Working and Networking Lunch

2.00 pm

Innovation Workshopping Breakout Sessions

Track One:

Conducting Ethnography to Inform the Innovation Process

The group is responsible for coming up with an innovative approach to curbing power theft in peri-urban locations in India. Many factors are responsible for this phenomenon. What questions will you ask and how will you collect information on the ground to inform any future innovations you might come up with? (Case Study subject to change)
Brainstorming and Concepting in Response to Ethnographic Data

The group is responsible for conceptualizing a new ways to promote maternal and child health using mobile devices. Data on this question has already been collected and will be shown to you in the form of a brief presentation. You must come up with as many different ideas or concepts as possible using post-its. Then you must prioritize these concepts and vote on the ones you would like to see implemented. (Case Study subject to change)
Approaches to Institutionalizing Innovation in Government

This group will consider ways and means for accelerating and institutionalizing innovation in governance, through for example, the provision of knowledge, best practices, support, training, and organizational change. Ideas may include, but not be restricted to new kinds of handbooks, online sources, academic and applied training and other ideas. Approaches should be evaluated and prioritized prior to presentation back to the group.

4.30 pm
Team Presentations (over tea served at tables)

5.00 pm
What institutional and organizational models can best foster Governance Innovation?

Amit Garg, Director, MXV Consulting (Moderator)
Arun Maira, Member, Planning Commission & Member, National Innovation Council
R. Gopalakrishnan, Member Secretary, National Innovation Council
Mohammad Haleem Khan, Director, CAPART
D S Ravindran, CEO, Center of e-Governance, Government of Karnataka
Aditya Dev Sood, CEO, Center for Knowledge Societies

Other Notable Discussants and Interactants

Anil Khachi, Deputy Director General, UIDAI
Narahari Mahato, Member of Parliament, AIFB
N. Cheluvaraya Swamy, Member of Parliament, JD(S)
Syed Azeez Pasha, Member of Parliament, CPI
Moinul Hassan, Member of Parliament, CPM
Amit Garg, Director, MXV Consulting
William Bissell, Managing Director, FabIndia
Kalpana Awasthi, Officer on Special Duty (OSD) to Sam Pitroda
Abhimanyu Kulkarni, Design Director, Philips Design
D. Raja, Member of Parliament, CPI
Josh Glazeroff, Visa Chief, US Embassy
Pooja Sood, Curator and Director, Khoj Foundation
Ravina Agarwal, Program Officer, Ford Foundation
Nita Soans, Advisor, Center for Knowledge Societies
Ekta Ohri, Head of Project Operations, Center for Knowledge Societies

Individual Participation

There are no registration fees. However, we would like to see participants take their own initiative in covering their own travel costs and making their own arrangements for stay so far as possible. If specific needs are perceived, please communicate them to the organizers.

Institutional Participation

Organizers

Center for Knowledge Societies (CKS)
Center for Internet and Society (CIS)

Sponsors

Venkatramanan Associates (VA)
Center for Law and Policy (CLP)

Date and Venue
The date for the event has been decided for Friday, the 18th of March, 2011. It will be held at the Taj Vivanta in Central Delhi.

Thought Leadership and Dialogue
Dr. Aditya Dev Sood, CEO, Center for Knowledge Societies
aditya@cks.in

Naresh Narasimhan, Principal, VA Associates
naresh@vagroup.com

Sudhir Krishnaswamy, Founder, Center for Law and Policy
sudhir.krishnaswamy@ashiralaw.co.in

Participation Enquiries

Sumeet Malhotra, Business Development Manager
sumeet@cks.in

Download the book here [PDF, 2.8 MB]
Download the case studies here [PDF, 641 KB]
Download the glossary here

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/events/design-public

Design!PubliC

praskrishna — 2012-05-30T06:32:35Z

This is the event report of the third Design!PubliC organised in New Delhi in April 2012.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/design-public-report.pdf

Design!Public

praskrishna — 2014-04-08T11:14:52Z

Centre for Knowledge Societies is organizing this event in partnership with Grameen Foundation India, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, UNDP, et.al. Sunil Abraham is a speaker at this event to be held in New Delhi on March 14, 2014.

Schedule

8.30	Registration and Coffee Background Track: Hamsa Dhwani
9.00	Breakfast Dialogue: Three Perspectives to Citizen-Centricity by Shazia Ilmi Somnath Bharti Namrata Mehta Aditya Dev Sood and Sunil Abraham Three distinct approaches to Governance Innovation are seen in India today: citizen activism, the open data and open governance agenda, and the integration of design and innovation into government processes. Representatives from each of these spaces begin the day with an open and friendly public dialogue.
10.20	Word of Welcome
10.30	Session One: The Elements of Governance Innovation by Sumandro Chattapadhyay Raman Jit Singh Chima Arndt Husar Esko Kilpi Chakshu Roy Divya Datta Namrata Mehta How are people thinking about Governance Innovation around the world in terms of process, data and systems change? What is the success of various Lab models and how do they exactly work? What is the relevance of these approaches to the Indian scenario?
12.00	Session Two: Social Innovation through Partnership with Private Sector by Nehal Sanghavi Daniel Radcliffe Louise Pulford Chandni Ohri Ada Wong Aditya Dev Sood How can we promote social innovation through new partnerships between the social and private sectors? How can we take advantage of the new Companies Act to develop new alliances and partnerships across sectors that will actually drive innovation? How does the concept of social innovation fit into these needs?
01.00	Networking Lunch Talk and connect with people outside your comfort zone!
02.00	Convene for Working Group Breakouts
02.30	Working Group One: Design a Social Innovation Exchange for India by Mike Knowles Nehal Sanghavi Daniel Radcliffe Louise Pulford Chandni Ohri Abhimanyu Nowhar Ada Wong Aditya Dev Sood The Social Innovation Exchange is a global organization with several regional hubs, such as SIX Asian in Hong Kong. What if there were to be a SIX India? What would be its mandate? What activities and goals should it pursue?
02.30	Working Group Two: Building an Action Plan for a Civic Innovation Lab The assembled group of thought leaders at this Design Public Conclave have the potential to reorganize as a new non-partisan community dedicated to achieving governance innovation. For this to be possible, however, they must first breakout into articulating challenges and goals in each of the three areas identified below.
03.30	WGII Breakout Two Alpha: A New Agenda for Citizen-centric Innovation by Sumandro Chattapadhyay Soaib Grewal Ambrish Arora Usha Alexander Ishan Khosla MP Ranjan Sunil Abraham How can design and innovation methods benefit the citizenry? How can mobile networks and different kinds of data be used to create better urban experiences? How can India’s new urban activism better align with design and data approaches?
03.30	WGII Breakout Two Beta: Institutionalizing a Civic Innovation Network by Lysander Menezes Suhas Mhaskar Rajesh Khati Shweta Banerjee Arndt Husar Jatin Modi Esko Kilpi Rajesh Sawhney Chakshu Roy How do we bring together the natural allies of Civic Innovation into a larger network? Which government agencies, startups, and social development organizations need to work together towards this goal? How could Civic Innovation be operationalized? What institutions, individuals and networks might support Civic Innovation?
04.30	Coffee Jam with Music
05.00	Public Presentations from Each Breakout by Prashant Bhushan Balasubramanian Munuswamy Harsh Shrivastava Anant Shah MP Ranjan Sukumar Ranganthan Thought leaders and decision makers critique and review public presentations made by each of the breakout sessions. An open dialogue ensues.
05.30	Dialogue: Framing Conclusions and Charting Next Steps An open dialogue to articulate possible next steps, possible coalitions, alliances, research programs and funding prospects for these areas of work.
07.00	Cocktails, Dancing and Dinner After a heavy day at the office, you deserve to twist that spine.