Centre for Internet and Society

My First Wikipedia Training Workshop – Theatre Outreach Unit, University of Hyderabad

vishnu — 2013-08-19T06:51:16Z

On March 8, 2013, a day-long Telugu Wikipedia training workshop was organized by the Centre for Internet and Society's Access to Knowledge (CIS-A2K) team at the Golden Threshold, Nampally, Hyderabad in collaboration with Theatre Outreach Unit, University of Hyderabad. This blog post gives a concise account of the event.

CIS-A2K had planned a day long Telugu Wikipedia training workshop in collaboration with Telugu Wikipedians at the English and Foreign Languages University (EFLU), Hyderabad on March 8, 2013. The intention was to target research students at EFLU who are using Telugu material or working on topics related to Telugu and Andhra Pradesh. This event was also to be part of the Wiki Women’s month events across India. However, this event had to be cancelled in the last minute as a Research Student of EFLU committed suicide on the campus and there was major unrest. The faculty from EFLU though had informed of the possible cancellation of the event earlier, had only confirmed it on March 7, 2013. Rahmanuddin Shaik (Telugu SIG, Wikimedia India Chapter) and Dr. Rajasekhar (Telugu Wikipedia Administrator) had already blocked an entire day for this training workshop. In fact a lot of background work was already done for the EFLU event.

When I got the news of cancellation of the workshop, initially I was very dejected at the thought of informing the two active Telugu Wikipedians about it, which I had to do. As my tickets were anyhow booked to Hyderabad and there was no point cancelling them, as I was already on my way to catch the flight, I decided to go ahead with my journey. I made some couple of quick calls and with some effort managed to organize a Wikipedia Training Workshop in collaboration with the Theatre Outreach Unit (TOU), University of Hyderabad (UoH). I was anyhow planning on visiting them to explore an institutional collaboration. The Project Director of TOU Dr. Peddi Ramarao, though agreed to spread the word about the workshop, yet was not sure how many would turn up at such a short notice of one night.

	Rahmanuddin and Dr. Rajasekhar giving hands-on training to edit Telugu Wikipedia at Golden Threshold, Hyderabad

So on March 8, 2013 Rahmanuddin, Dr. Rajasekhar and I landed at the Golden Threshold hoping against hope to see at least 3 or 4 participants. But alas there were only 2 people when we reached the venue by 10 a.m.. By 10.25 a.m. we had 9 participants, which excited us all. The training workshop began with an introduction of all the participants. Following this a presentation was made on the significance of Wikipedia in the digital era and how Indian language-Wikipedias are pivotal in preserving the vernacular language and culture. This session was interactive with participants asking many questions. Dr. Peddi Ramarao, later, spoke about his experience of using Wikipedia as a reference tool and how he got introduced to contributing Wikipedia. Further, the discussion went on to the poor quality of articles on Telugu Wikipedia and how the participants can take part in improving the existing articles and contribute new articles. Rahmanuddin and Rajasekhar practically demonstrated the process of editing on Telugu Wikipedia. This was followed by a hands-on session where the participants actively participated in creating their Wikipedia User name on Telugu Wikipedia and did editing of few articles. The training programme was to officially end at Lunch time but even post lunch some of the participants were enthusiastic about learning more nuances of contributing on Telugu Wikipedia. The hands-on session thus continued until 4 p.m.

Post the Wikipedia training programme, I have had interactions with the Project Director of TOU to explore possible future collaborations. TOU, UoH agreed to offer space to host all Telugu Wikipedia meet-ups. As the Golden Threshold space was in the central part of the city, having this infrastructure accessible was a major boost for the Telugu Wikipedia community in Hyderabad. Further, in the discussions we have agreed to collaborate with TOU, UoH in hosting the first mega Telugu Wikipedia community event Telugu Wiki Mahotsavam 2013.


Telugu Wikipedia Orientation in progress

Outcomes and Impact:

Out of the 9 new Users, who were trained during this workshop, 5 people have done more than 5 edits.
One person has become a very active editor on Telugu Wikipedia with more than 1000 edits in 3 months. A detailed account of this event was put up by this user on Telugu Wikipedia here [*]
Because of CIS-A2K’s efforts, Telugu Wikipedians in Hyderabad now have a good meeting space.
The availability of this space has also encouraged the Telugu Wikipedians to meet more often than before. Since March 8, 2013 Telugu Wikipedians had a total of 6 meet-ups, and all these were held at Golden Threshold.
Golden Threshold also became a venue for hosting Telugu Wiki Mahotsavam 2013.
This visit to Hyderabad triggered a discussion about organizing Telugu Wiki Mahotsavam, which was successfully organized in a month’s time.

Looking back, though this event was done as a last minute measure without many expectations, yet it turned out to be a lucky break! Especially, because this was my first ever event as the CIS-A2K Programme Director. It will remain a very memorable one. More so because it was done in collaboration with two of the active Telugu Wikipedians. Even more so because it has created some positive energy for the Telugu Wikipedia community, which has since then become a home turf.

[*]. http://bit.ly/17WYq7X

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/my-first-wikipedia-training-workshop

Musician donates Gwalior Gharana songs to free e-library

praskrishna — 2015-01-22T15:25:49Z

A few years ago, Mumbai-based musician Neela Bhagwat realized that her old notebooks filled with lyrics and notations of age-old 'bandishes' were in tatters. Afraid that she might lose them forever, Bhagwat decided to make fresh copies.

The article by Sandhya Soman was published in the Times of India on January 20, 2015. T. Vishnu Vardhan gave his inputs.

Once she wrote it all down, Bhagwat handed over the notebooks to a team to upload her collection of around 330 bandishes of the Gwalior gharana to a free, online library.

"I was always keen on sharing the compositions with others. Digitization is the way to go as it can be accessed from anywhere," says Bhagwat. Based on her notebooks, around 337 bandishes have been converted to PDF format by student and music researcher Tejaswini Niranjana. "I will be uploading them soon to Wikisource, which is one of the platforms of Wikipedia," says Niranjana.

Bhagwat and a few other music-lovers like her are taking up digital archiving projects to preserve India's cultural heritage without any institutional support or grant. "I have about 337 bandishes, my guru had more than 1,000 and his guru would've had still more. So much has got lost now," says Bhagwat. Even if she is willing to teach, few are able to understand, internalize and work on these classical compositions. "No student of mine has learnt all of it. So I thought it best to keep them in the public domain," says Bhagwat.

Along with music students, scholars also find these projects helpful.

For example, Andhra Pradesh-based lexicographer Peddi Sambasiva Rao has created a master index of all the compositions of Annamacharya for Telugu Wikisource recently. Now, he is in the process of digitizing the lyrics of all the 15,000 songs of the 15th century composer along with a fellow enthusiast. "Carnatic music lovers find it difficult to locate individual songs as there are 29 volumes of Annamacharya's works. Instead of publishing the index as a book, I thought of approaching Wikipedia, which is known to everyone," says Rao.

As the index is in Unicode, the standard text encoding format, the Telugu kirtanas will soon come up on search engines, says T Vishnu Vardhan, programme director, Access to Knowledge, CIS, which helped host these projects. "By June, we hope to have the entire Annamacharya kirtanas at a single source and eventually do the same for the songs of the Gwalior Gharana. This is the only way to make our cultural heritage accessible to future generations," says Vardhan.

Bhagwat says cultural and educations institutions should take the lead in digital archiving as the benefits are multi-fold. Once the bandishes are online, Bhagwat's students abroad will have the text along with the DVDs that she has brought out. "By the second or third Skype lesson, they would've learnt it," says Bhagwat.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/news/the-times-of-india-january-20-2015-sandhya-soman-musician-donates-gwalior-gharana-songs-to-free-e-library

Mozilla Open Web Talks

radha — 2011-04-05T04:19:15Z

Give a talk, or just listen - On December 16 in Bangalore, Mozilla and The Centre for Internet and Society are holding an evening of talks about the future of the open internet.

We're inviting you to to give a 5 minute talk, or just to come listen:

https://wiki.mozilla.org/Drumbeat/CIS-Bangalore

Presentations will either:

Explain the open web and why it matters and
Describe a concrete project idea that will make the web better.

If you're interesting in giving a talk, please sign up here:

http://fcroadshow.net/?page_id=7

If you'd like to simply attend and listen, please RSVP here:

http://bit.ly/51OOXf

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/events/mozilla-talks

Mozilla is funding a way to support Julia in Firefox

Catalin Cimpanu — 2019-07-10T01:33:52Z

Mozilla is funding a project for bringing the Julia programming language to Firefox and the general browser environment.

The blog post by Catalin Cimpanu was published in ZD Net on July 8, 2019.

The project received funding part of the Mozilla Research Grants for the first half of 2019, which the browser maker announced on Friday.

In April, when Mozilla opened this year's submissions period for research grants, the organization said it was looking for a way to bring data science and scientific computing tools to the web.

It said it was specifically interested in receiving submissions about supporting R or Julia at the browser level. Both R and Julia are programming languages designed for high-performance numerical, statistical, and computational science.

Mozilla engineers have worked in previous years to port data science tools at the browser level, as part of Project Iodide.

Previously, as part of this project, Mozilla engineers ported the Python interpreter to run in the browser using WebAssembly.

"This project, Pyodide, has demonstrated the practicality of running language interpreters in WebAssembly," Mozilla engineers said.

In April, Mozilla said it was willing to use a research grant to fund a team of developers to port either R or Julia to the browser via WebAssembly as well.

The end result should be a Firefox plugin, similar to how Pyodide works.

Valentin Churavy, an MIT Ph.D. student and a member of the official Julia team, has applied for a Mozilla research grant, which he subsequently received.

The Julia programming language was created in 2009, publicly released in 2012, and has gained a huge following ever since. It has quickly climbed the ranks of the world's most popular languages entering the Tiobe Top 50, has a huge following on GitHub, and was one of 2018 biggest risers.

In April, Mozilla engineers also offered a grand for porting Tor to work inside Firefox, to power a Tor-powered Super Private Browsing (SPB) mode for Firefox.

While there was no grant for a project of sorts, Mozilla will be funding a research project that aims to study the performance and anonymity features of the HTTP/2 and HTTP/3 protocols on the Tor network.

The full Mozilla research grants for H1 2019 are as follow:

Lead Researchers	Institution	Project Title
Valentin Churavy	MIT	Bringing Julia to the Browser
Jessica Outlaw	Concordia University of Portland	Studying the Unique Social and Spatial affordances of Hubs by Mozilla for Remote Participation in Live Events
Neha Kumar	Georgia Tech	Missing Data: Health on the Internet for Internet Health
Piotr Sapiezynski, Alan Mislove, & Aleksandra Korolova	Northeastern University & University of Southern California	Understanding the impact of ad preference controls
Sumandro Chattapadhyay	The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), India	Making Voices Heard: Privacy, Inclusivity, and Accessibility of Voice Interfaces in India
Weihang Wang	State University of New York	Designing Access Control Interfaces for Wasmtime
Bernease Herman	University of Washington	Toward generalizable methods for measuring bias in crowdsourced speech datasets and validation processes
David Karger	MIT	Tipsy: A Decentralized Open Standard for a Microdonation-Supported Web
Linhai Song	Pennsylvania State University	Benchmarking Generic Functions in Rust
Leigh Clark	University College Dublin	Creating a trustworthy model for always-listening voice interfaces
Steven Wu	University of Minnesota	DP-Fathom: Private, Accurate, and Communication-Efficient
Nikita Borisov	University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign	Performance and Anonymity of HTTP/2 and HTTP/3 in Tor

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/news/zd-net-july-8-2019-catalin-cimpanu-mozilla-is-funding-a-way-to-support-julia-in-firefox

Mozilla DevDay 2010, Bangalore

radha — 2011-04-05T04:12:42Z

Mozilla, Mahiti & The Centre for Internet and Society are joining hands to organize an informal developer-oriented conference in Bangalore on Saturday February 27, 2010.

The Mozilla DevDay will be an opportunity for developers, open source enthusiasts, and web aficionados who live in and around Bangalore, to meet Mozilla staff and learn about the Mozilla Project and its technologies. The DevDay is a free conference open to the general public.

For more information please visit: http://j.mp/BLRMozDevDay

All interested participants are requested to register by following this link: http://j.mp/MozDevDayBLR

For the event poster, click here

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/events/mozilla-devday-2010-bangalore

Mozilla brings Indian Communities together Twice in One Month

subha — 2014-07-23T07:06:58Z

I took part in two major events, Indic FirefoxOS L10n Sprint 2014 and MozCamp Beta – India organized by Mozilla in India as a voluntary contributor. In this blog post I am sharing with you my experience of the events.

The guest post was published on Mozilla' website on July 8, 2014. It can be read here.

Mozilla, in the process of putting its best effort on people that make it, has organized two larger and national events in India: Indic FirefoxOS L10n Sprint 2014 and MozCamp Beta – India. The first is being a more implementation based sprint with the goal to motivate Indic language localization teams to translate strings for its upcoming Firefox OS based $25 phone where the second one was an event for meeting mentors, planning for the future and strategizing Mozilla’s mission in India.

Indic FirefoxOS L10n Sprint 2014 was held at Redhat’s Pune office during 7 – 8 June. This was the first time 13 Indic language communities came under one roof to translate interface strings together, says Mozilla’s Community Manager Arky. During the two day sprint most language communities with the strength of 2 – 4 members each completed more than 40% of the localizations that will appear as interface strings for Firefox OS, an upcoming operating system for mobiles and tablets. Mozilla, after releasing its developer test phones starting with GeeksPhone Keon in April last year also started thinking of the mobile users from the emerging nations leaving the west for Android, iOS and Windows 8. Bringing cheaper phones to people with an interface of their own language could help to make phones more smarter for common users. Assamese, Bangla, Hindi, Gujarati, Maithili, Malayalam, Marathi, Kannada, Odia, Punjabi, Telugu, Tamil and Urdu are the 13 language communities that took part in the event.

The other event, MozCamp Beta – India was aimed to bring core contributors form the multiple communities housed under the Mozilla umbrella and engage with them in a participatory and learning mode. Staffers from Mozilla who are responsible for various projects and products together with these contributors spent three days (20 – 22 June) building strategies for best practices for recruiting new contributors, mentoring them and sustaining the communities in a long run. The project page says, “MozCamp Beta is an experiment. This is the first time Mozilla is testing how to train contributors to bring in more contributors across the project.” Mozilla’s core product Firefox browser’s expanding wing Firefox OS was the center of attention. Mozilla has tied up with two Indian brands Spice and Intex to produce these phones that are expected to be around $25 revolutionizing the smartphone world and breaking the stereotype of having smartphones in the hands of them who could afford them. Some of the sessions during the event were also aimed to break the notion of app making process being too technical. The newest web innovation Appmaker gives a user the option to create a web app and flash it into the Firefox OS device without even learning any coding. Similarly the User Centered Design process was helping users to go creating with creating their app by drawing them on papers and brainstorming about having useful functionalities in them. Three of the days ended with celebrating the success of the grand user contribution that makes Mozilla a creativity-seeking organization. “Mozilla is committed to make the web free and fun. We aim to have the maximum number of Maker parties in India this year to promote web literacy and having students to create and curate Open Educational Resources,” says Mozilla’s Global Strategist and Manager of Webmake mentor team Michelle Thorne.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/mozilla-brings-indian-communities-together-twice-in-one-month

Mozilla Brings Indian Communities Together

subha — 2014-07-23T07:30:06Z

The article was published on the website of Opensource.com on July 13, 2014. It can be read here.

Mozilla organized two national events in India during the month of June this year: Indic FirefoxOS L10n Sprint 2014 and Mozcamp Beta 2014.

Indic FirefoxOS L10n Sprint 2014 was more of an implementation-based sprint with the goal to motivate Indic language localization teams to translate strings for its upcoming Firefox OS based $25 phone. Mozcamp India Beta was an event for meeting mentors, planning for the future, and strategizing Mozilla’s mission in India.

Indic FirefoxOS L10n Sprint 2014

The Indic FirefoxOS L10n Sprint 2014 was held at Red Hat’s Pune office, June 7 and 8, 2014. This was the first time 13 Indic language communities came under one roof to translate interface strings together, commented Mozilla Community Manager, Arky. During the two day sprint, most language groups (2 - 4 members strong) completed more than 40% of the localizations that will appear as interface strings for Firefox OS, an upcoming operating system for mobile and tablet devices. Mozilla released its developer test phones, starting with GeeksPhone Keon in April of last year, started thinking of the mobile users from the emerging nations leaving the west for Android, iOS, and Windows 8. Bringing cheaper phones to people with an interface in their own language could help to make phones smarter for common users. Assamese, Bangla, Hindi, Gujarati, Maithili, Malayalam, Marathi, Kannada, Odia, Punjabi, Telugu, Tamil, and Urdu are the 13 language communities that took part in the event.


Photo by Subhashish Panigrahi (CC-BY-SA 3.0 License)

Mozcamp Beta 2014

The Mozcamp India beta event aimed to bring core contributors from multiple communities housed under the Mozilla umbrella and engage with them in a participatory and learning way. Staffers from Mozilla who are responsible for various projects and products worked with these contributors over three days (June 20 - 22) building strategies for best practices for recruiting new contributors, mentoring them, and sustaining the communities in a long run. The project page says, "MozCamp Beta is an experiment. This is the first time Mozilla is testing how to train contributors to bring in more contributors across the project."

Mozilla’s core product, the Firefox browser's expanding wing, Firefox OS, was the center of attention. Mozilla is working with two Indian brands, Spice and Intex, to produce phones that are expected to be around $25, thus revolutionizing the smartphone world. Some of the sessions during the event focused on breaking the notion that app making so technical that it can only be done by some. New projects like Mozilla's Appmaker give users the option to create a web app and flash it into the Firefox OS device without knowing any code. Similarly, a session covered the User Centered Design process, a new way for users to create an app by drawing it on paper and brainstorming on paper about useful functionalities.

These two events were a grand display of user contribution and what makes Mozilla a creativity-seeking organization. "Mozilla is committed to make the web free and fun. We aim to have the maximum number of Maker parties in India this year to promote web literacy and having students to create and curate Open Educational Resources," says Mozilla’s Global Strategist and Manager of the Webmaker mentor team, Michelle Thorne.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/mozilla-brings-indian-communities-together

More Than 40 Million People Await the Launch of Odia Wikisource

subha — 2014-11-04T13:58:48Z

Speakers of Odia will soon have mountains of books to read online in their mother tongue, following the launch of the Odia Wikisource, which will make accessible many rare books that have entered the public domain.

The article by Subhashish Panigrahi was published in Global Voices on October 18, 2014 and thereafter mirrored on the Wikimedia Blog on October 21, 2014.

Authors and publishers are also invited to donate their copyrighted work, possibly bringing open access to large volumes of books and manuscripts, creating a vast archive of educational resources. And everything will be in Odia.

One of the biggest advantages of Wikisource is that all its books are available in Unicode, meaning that Google's search engine indexes the texts’ entirety, and readers are able to copy easily what they wish. (Most conventional archival systems lack this feature.) A volunteer community administers Wikisource. To upload a book's content, volunteers either retype the books word-for-word, or, when possible, use Optical Character Recognition (commonly known as “OCR“), which converts scanned images into editable text. Available at or.wikisource.org, Odia is Wikisource's eleventh Indic language.

There are more than 40 million native Odia speakers in the world. Most live in the Indian state of Odisha and its neighboring states, but there is a large diaspora in countries like the US, UK, UAE, and across South and East Asia. Despite being spoken by so many people, Odia's online presence is relatively small.

As of October 2014, Odia Wikipedia hosted 8,441 articles. The state government's websites have Odia-language content, naturally, but none of the text is in Unicode, making the materials invisible to search engines and difficult to share. Thanks to individual and organizational efforts, some Odia-language websites have recently emerged with Unicode content.

With support from the non-profit organization Pragati Utkal Sangha and the National Institute of Technology Rourkela, a Bhubaneswar-based outfit has digitized about 740 books through the Open Access to Oriya Books (OAOB) project. Most of these texts were published between 1850 and 1950. The OAOB project is the largest existing digital archive of Odia literature, but the archived books are only available as scanned PDFs, restricting readers’ ability to search within the texts.

As a Wikimedia project, Odia Wikisource underwent a long approval process, after running as an active incubator project for nearly two years. Both the Language Committee and the Wikimedia Foundation's Board reviewed and endorsed the project.

Odia Wikisource has already digitized and proofread three books entirely. In collaboration with the Wikimedia-funded Centre for Internet and Society‘s Access to Knowledge, the Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences (KISS) has partially digitized another book, as well. KISS is also busy digitizing another Nine books by Odia-language author Dr. Jagannath Mohanty that were relicensed to CC-BY-SA 3.0 earlier this year.

In response to posts on Twitter and Facebook, four new contributors recently joined Wikisource to help digitize “The Odia Bhagabata,” a literary classic compiled in the 14th century. “Content that have already been typed with fonts of non-Unicode encoding systems could be converted by converters which was the case of Odia Bhagabata. New contributors did not face the problem of retyping the text, as the book was already available on a website Odia.org and is out of copyright”, says Manoj Sahukar, who (along with yours truly) designed a converter that helped to transcribe “Bhagabata”.

Rising Voices contacted some of those whose efforts made this happen.

Mrutyunjaya Kar (MK), Long time Wikimedian who has proof-read the books on Odia Wikisource
Rising Voices (RV): Youre there with Odia Wikisource since its inception. How you think it will help other Odias?
MK: Odias around the globe will have access to a vast amount of old as well as new books and manuscripts online in the tip of their finger. Knowing more about the long and glorious history of Odisha will become easier.

Nihar Kumar Dalai (NKD), Wikisource writer
RV: How does it feel to be one of the few contributors to digitize Odia Bhagabata. How you want to get involved in future?
NKD: This is a proud opportunity for me to be a part of digitization of such old literature. I, at times, think if I could get involved with this full time!

Nasim Ali (NA), Oldest active Odia Wikimedian and Wikisource writer
RV: Do you think any particular section of the society is going to be benefited by this?
NA: Books contain the gist of all human knowledge. The ease of access and spread of books are the markers of the intellectual status of a society. And in this e-age Wikisource can be helpful by not just providing easy access to a plethora of books under free licenses but also aiding the spread of basic education in developing economies. Together with Wikisource and cheaper internet this could catalyze a Renaissance of 21st century.

Pankajmala Sarangi (PS), Wikisource writer
RV: You have digitized almost two books, are the highest contributor to the project and also one of the main reasons for Odia Wikisource getting approved. What are your plans next to grow it and take to masses?
PS: I would be happy to contribute by typing more books on Odia so that they can be stored and available to all. We can take this to masses through social, print and audio & visual media and organizing meetings/discussions.

Amir Aharoni (AA), Wikimedia Language Committee member and Software Engineer at the Language Engineering team at the Wikimedia Foundation
RV: What you feel Wikisource could do to a language like Odia with more than 40 million speakers?
AA: In schools in Odisha, are there lessons of Odia literature? If the answer is yes, then it can do a very simple thing – make these lessons more fun and help children learn more! Everybody says that in Kerala this worked very well with Malayalam literature.

Clearly, strong passions motivate Odia Wikisource's volunteers, like Nihar Kumar Dalai, who writes on Facebook:

Hindi and English are fine, but our native language it bit more special! Who of us does not now about the art, culture, noted personalities, tourist spots and festivals of Odisha? But if you search online about all of these then there is very little available. There comes a simple and easy solution Odia Wikipedia. Like Odia Wikipedia, Odia Wikisource is another great place and this is my small contribution to bring Odia Bhagabata on Odia Wikisource.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/global-voices-subhashish-panigrahi-october-18-2014-more-than-400-million-people-await-launch-of-odia-wikisource

Monitoring Sustainable Development Goals in India: Availability and Openness of Data (Part II)

sumandro — 2016-04-12T04:14:27Z

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are an internationally agreed upon set of developmental targets to be achieved by 2030. There are 17 SDGs with 169 targets, and each target is mapped to one or more indicators as a measure of evaluation. In this and the next blog post, Kiran AB is documenting the availability and openness of data sets in India that are relevant for monitoring the targets under the SDGs. This post offers the findings for the last 10 Goals. The first 7 has already been discussed in the earlier post.

The first part of the post can be accessed here.

Goal #08: Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all

There are fourteen indicators to monitor the goal 8 and the data is available for all the indicators mapped to their respective targets. For most of the indicators, the data availability is not what the indicator demands, but has to be derived from the available dataset.

The data can be accessed freely in the public domain for all the indicators. However, for the subparts in some of the indicators, the data is not accessible freely. There is a cross agency dependency over the data, to arrive at the required indicator.

Data is collected annually for most of the indicators, while the indicators, viz., Indicator 8.3.1.: Share of informal employment in non-agriculture employment by sex; Indicator 8.5.2: Unemployment rate by sex, age-group and persons with disabilities, which are measured by the Census or the planning commission the frequency of data collection becomes decennial or quinquennial. And the Indicator 8.8.2 : Number of ILO conventions ratified by type of convention, which lists the number of conventions the frequency cannot be determined as it's just a list updated whenever there is a ratification of any ILO conventions. Some of the available data are restricted to particular years and most of them are not till date.

Two indicators, i.e., Indicator 8.5.2 and Indicator 8.10.1: Number of commercial bank branches and ATMs per 100,000 adults, which are measured at the level of districts, whereas Indicator 8.7.1: Percentage and number of children aged 5-17 years engaged in child labour, per sex and age group; Indicator 8.8.1: Frequency rates of fatal and non-fatal occupational injuries by sex and migrant status, are measured at the state level. The remaining are measured only at the national level.

Most of the data are collected from the international organisations like ILO, UNEP, UNWTO, etc., from whose source the data are not updated regularly. There is also a need to disaggregate according to the indicator.

Goal #09: Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and foster innovation

When development is through industrialization, sustainable and inclusiveness should be the necessary conditions to attain it. Having said this, the data is available for all the indicators, i.e., twelve indicators, corresponding to the targets as defined for the goal 9. For most of the indicators, the data have to be derived for the required measure to monitor the goal.

From among these indicators, the data is collected annually for most of the indicators, while for the two indicators, Indicator 9.3.1: Percentage share of small scale industries in total industry value added; Indicator 9.3.2: Percentage of small scale industries with a loan or line of credit, the frequency of data collection is once in five years.

Excluding two indicators, i.e., Indicator 9.2.2: Manufacturing employment as a percentage of total employment; Indicator 9.1.1: Share of the rural population who live within 2km of an all season road, for which the data is available at the state level and district level respectively, for the remaining indicators the data is available only at the national level.

The data pertaining to eleven indicators are freely accessible in the public domain, however, for the Indicator 9.b.1: Percentage share of medium and high-tech (MHT) industry value added in total value added, the data is not freely accessible. Most of the freely available data are obtained from the international organisations, along with the official data from the government in India.

Goal #10: Reduce inequality within and among countries

Bridging the gap between the global north-south divide through co-operation – social, economical, political, etc., would promote equality. There are twelve indicators for measuring this goal, of which the data is not available for one of the indicators and are available for the remaining indicators.

From the data available, for six of the indicators the data is accessible freely in the public domain, whereas for the five of the indicators – Indicator 10.2.1; Indicator 10.3.1; Indicator 10.4.1; Indicator 10.7.3; Indicator 10.a.1, the data is closed.

Most of the data available are of the national level and for the Indicator 10.7.3: Number of detected and non-detected victims of human trafficking per 100,000, the data includes from the states as well. However, since the goal refers to inequalities within the country as well, the granularity of the data should have been from the state/district level as well.

And, the frequency of data collected are annually for some of the indicators and for some the details cannot be determined or not valid. For most of the indicators the data has to be derived from the available dataset and disaggregated as needed. Also, for some indicators the data is partially available.

Data Not Available:

Indicator 10.7.1: Recruitment cost borne by employee as percentage of yearly income earned in country of destination

Goal #11: Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable

Housing and the type of settlements determines the human development and the progress of development of a nation. Therefore for monitoring the goal 11 is implicit to human development. There are thirteen indicators to monitor this goal and out of which the data is available for ten indicators and for the three indicators the data is not available.

For three of the indicators the available data is not freely accessible, while for the remaining ones the data is accessible. And for most of the indicators the data has to be derived as needed.

The data is collected annually for most of the indicators and quinquennially for the Indicator 11.5.1, and for some data the data pertains to particular year and there lacks a sequence of data availability.

For four of the indicators – Indicator 11.2.1; Indicator 11.3.1; Indicator 11.6.1; Indicator 11.a.1, the data is available at the state/city level along with national level. And for the remaining indicators the data is available at the national level alone. Also, some of the data are not up-to-date and refers to data more than 3 or years old.

Data Not Available:

Indicator 11.3.2: Percentage of cities with direct participation structure of civil society in urban planning and management, which operate regularly and democratically
Indicator 11.7.1: The average share of the built-up areas of cities that is open space in public use for all, disaggregated by age, sex, and persons with disabilities
Indicator 11.b.1: Percentage of cities implementing risk reduction and resilience strategies aligned with accepted international frameworks (such as the successor to the Hyogo Framework for Action on Disaster Risk Reduction) that include vulnerable and marginalised groups in their design, implementation and monitoring

Goal #12: Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns

Production and consumption should go hand in hand, but over consumption or over production would only lead to destruction of the environment. Therefore goal 12 seeks to ensure a sustainability in both. The data is available for ten indicators out of twelve indicators, and for the two indicators the data is not available, so as to monitor the respective goals. Some of the data are partially available and using the available data the indicators can be derived.

Moreover, the data for six of the indicators which are available are freely accessible in the public domain whereas for the remaining four indicators – Indicator 12.4.1; Indicator 12.4.2; Indicator 12.5.1; Indicator 12.b.1, the data is not open.

While for most of the indicators say, Indicator 12.2.1; Indicator 12.3.1; Indicator 12.5.1; Indicator 12.a.1; Indicator 12.c.1, the data is collected annually, whereas for the others, the data which are available are for particular years or cannot be determined. Except for the Indicator 12.5.1, for which the data is available at the city level, the data for the remaining are of the national order. The data is collected from both the national institutions, ministries and also from the international organisations.

Data Not Available:

Indicator 12.1.1: Number of countries with SCP National Actions Plans or SCP mainstreamed as a priority or target into national policies.
Indicator 12.8.1: Percentage of educational institutions with formal and informal education curricula on sustainable development and lifestyle topics

Goal #13: Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts

The impact of climate change is severe, therefore taking an urgent action ensures could reduce the impact. The data is available for four of the indicators out of five, and for one of indicators the data is not available.

The data for three indicators are freely accessible in the public domain, whereas for the Indicator 13.3.1: Number of countries that have integrated mitigation, adaptation, impact reduction and early warning into primary, secondary and tertiary curricula, the data is not open and also not specific to the indicator. The data for some of the indicators are partially available and have to be derived.

The frequency of the data is not uniform and cannot be determined, by the virtue of the indicator itself. For example, the occurrence of a disaster event is random. However, for some of the indicators the reporting is either annual or quadrennial.

The data availability is at the national level and in case of the Indicator 13.3.1., the data is available for two states – Orissa and Tamil Nadu. Data for almost all the indicators are obtained from international organizations and very less data availability from the national databases.

Data Not Available:

Indicator 13.2.1.: Number of countries that have formally communicated the establishment of integrated low-carbon, climate-resilient, disaster risk reduction development strategies

Goal #14: Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development

Oceans are the torchbearers for all the countries. Therefore everything related to oceans, seas and marine resources have an impact on the human life. There are ten indicators corresponding to the targets, of which the data is available for nine indicators and for one indicator the data is not available. The data for some of the indicators are not direct, but need to be derived, while for some indicators the data is partially available. To derive some indicators we need to rely on cross agency data.

For the Indicator 14.a.1: Budget allocation to research in the field of marine technology as a percentage of total budget to research, the data on budgetary allocation doesn't specify to marine technology.

The frequency of data collected for most of the indicators are not available or cannot be determined or not applicable, whereas for some the data is collected annually. And for most of the indicators the data is available at the national level and for the Indicator 14.5.1: Coverage of protected areas in relation to marine areas, the data is available for the states also.

Data Not Available:

Indicator 14.6.1: Dollar value of negative fishery subsidies against 2015 baseline

Goal #15: Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss

This goal on restoring, promoting ecosystem and stopping biodiversity loss, etc., has fifteen indicators mapped to twelve corresponding targets. Of which, the data is available for fourteen of the indicators and the data is not available for the one of the indicators. Data for some of the indicators exist partially and for some the data has to be derived to match the indicators. To arrive at the indicators, the data has to be derived from different datasets available.

Most of the data which are available are closed and only five are accessible in the public platform – Indicator 15.1.1 : Forest area as a percentage of total land area; Indicator 15.4.2: Mountain Green Cover Index; Indicator 15.8.1: Adoption of national legislation relevant to the prevention or control of invasive alien species; Indicator 15.9.1: Number of national development plans and processes integrating biodiversity and ecosystem services values; Indicator 15.a.1: Official development assistance and public expenditure on conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity and ecosystems.

The frequency of data collected is not available or cannot be determined for majority of the indicators, while the data is annually collected for the ones which can be determined. Furthermore, the data is available at the national level for all the indicators, except the Indicator 15.b.1: Forestry official development assistance and forestry FDI, for which the data is available at the level of states as well.

The data available are collected by international organisations like OECD, FAO, Convention on Biological Diversity, etc., as well as by the national institutions and ministries like Planning Commission, Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, etc.

Data Not Available:

Indicator 15.2.2: Net permanent forest loss

Goal #16: Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels

A society which is inclusive, peaceful, provides justice and accountable in all its forms would ensure sustainable development, therefore to promote the aforementioned parameters one has to monitor them through an established measure. There are twenty-one indicators for this goal mapped to the respective targets and out of which the data is not available for five indicators to monitor the goal. From the available dataset, the values need to be derived for some of the indicators and for some indicators the data is directly/partially available.

From among the data which are available, for nine indicators the data is not freely accessible in the public platform, while the remaining six data set are open to access. They are available both from national and international agencies and most of the data are not up to the date.

The data which are available are collected/reported annually. And, excluding four indicators. i.e.; Indicator 16.1.3, Indicator 16.3.1, Indicator 16.4.2, Indicator 16.b.1, the data is available at the state level, while for the remaining indicators the data is available only at the national level. Most of the indicators require data from past 12 months, but the available dataset does not cater the needs, as they are not updated regularly. Finally, the indicators seeks disaggregated data for monitoring the goal.

Data Not Available:

Indicator 16.1.4: Proportion of people that feel safe walking alone around the area they live
Indicator 16.2.3. Percentage of young women and men aged 18-24 years who experienced sexual violence by age 18
Indicator 16.6.2: Percentage of population satisfied with their last experience of public services
Indicator 16.7.2: Proportion of countries that address young people's multisectoral needs with their national development plans and poverty reduction strategies
Indicator 16.a.1: Percentage of victims who report physical and/or sexual crime to law enforcement agencies during past 12 months disaggregated by age, sex, region and population group

Goal #17: Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the global partnership for sustainable development

Moving towards achieving SDGs in the global scenario requires support – financial, technological, etc. This support can be strengthened the relationship between the developing and the developed countries. There are twenty-four indicators to monitor the goal 17, out of which the data is available for twenty-three of the indicators and for one of the indicators the data does not exist.

The data which are available are direct as per the indicators, whereas for most of the indicators the data need to be derived. Data is partially available for the Indicator 17.16.1: Indicator 7 from Global Partnership Monitoring Exercise: Mutual accountability among development co-operation actors is strengthened through inclusive reviews.

From the data available for twenty-three indicators, fourteen of the data set are freely accessible and the nine are not open. Also, some of the data which are open are not up to date or the latest data is not open.

The data is collected annually for most of the indicators and for some the data is available for particular year. Also for some of the indicators like Indicator 17.5.1: Number of national & investment policy reforms adopted that incorporate sustainable development objectives or safeguards x country; Indicator 17.6.1: Access to patent information and use of the international intellectual property (IP) system; Indicator 17.18.2: Number of countries that have national statistical legislation that complies with the Fundamental Principles of Official statistics, the frequency cannot be determined or not valid.

Since this indicator speaks at the national level, the granularity of the data pertains to the nation. Most of the data are obtained from the international organisations say UN, World Bank, IMF, OECD, etc., and some are from the national institutions/ministries like Planning Commission, Finance Ministry, etc.

Data Not Available:

Indicator 17.17.1: Amount of US$ committed to public-private partnerships and civil society partnerships

Conclusion

Decision making depends on data, a data should be representative, with high quality and has to be timely collected, which ensures precise assessment of the decision being made. From the analysis it was found that, most of the data which are available are either not freely accessible, outdated and not precise to the need. Most of the SDG indicators are based on disaggregation. The disaggregation is a key to measure to the precision, especially incidences like poverty, food security, health, etc. Therefore, to monitor different parameters we need to identify the different levels prevailing in the parameter to ensure inclusivity.

Said above, the frequency of data collection is either annual, quinquennial and decennial. To enable real time evaluation, the data should be up-to-date. Moreover, for most of the indicators the data availability is at the national level or at the state level and sometimes at the district level. The granularity of data ensures geographic inclusiveness.

In a country like India for close monitoring of progress/development of any sort the data availability should be;

at a granular level of district/block,
collected and updated regularly,
disaggregated by age, sex, and also by social group, and
the data should be open to be able to access in the public domain freely.

Open data will be a crucial tool for governments to meet the transparency and efficiency challenges. For this reason, government data should be open – freely accessible, presented in a format that is comparable and reusable and, ideally, released in a timely manner.

Author

Kiran A B, is a student of Master of Public Policy (MPP) at the National Law School of India University, Bengaluru. Kiran has an undergraduate degree in electronics and communications engineering, and he has three years full-time work experience as a software engineer, working in different technological platforms. His research interest includes interdisciplinary linkages between policy, law and technology.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/monitoring-sustainable-development-goals-in-india-availability-and-openness-02

Monitoring Sustainable Development Goals in India: Availability and Openness of Data (Part I)

Kiran AB — 2017-01-02T14:12:58Z

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are an internationally agreed upon set of developmental targets to be achieved by 2030. There are 17 SDGs with 169 targets, and each target is mapped to one or more indicators as a measure of evaluation. In this and the next blog post, Kiran AB is documenting the availability and openness of data sets in India that are relevant for monitoring the targets under the SDGs. This post offers the findings for the first 7 Goals, while the next post will cover the last 10.

The second part of the post can be accessed here.

Monitoring Sustainable Development Goals

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are an internationally agreed upon set of developmental targets to be achieved by 2030. These are universal goals and targets which involve the entire world, developed and developing countries alike. They aim at integrating and balancing the three dimensions of the sustainable development – economic development, social inclusion, and environmental sustainability. There are 17 SDGs with 169 targets, and each target is mapped to one or more indicators as a measure of evaluation, covering a broad range of sustainable development issues [1].

To initiate the visioning process for the SDGs, the United Nations established a High Level Panel in the year 2012, comprising of 27 members. The notion of "data revolution for sustainable development" has been one of the most remarkable categories of imagination and operational requirement to emerge from the final report of this High Level Panel. It identified a significant need for massive restructuring of infrastructures for generating global, reliable, comparable, and timely data. The Independent Expert Advisory Group (IEAG) on "data revolution for sustainable development" has also raised the need for opening up development data. It proposes that open data must be considered as an instrument of ensuring transparency and accountability of the government [2]. Further, in a recent post from the World Economic Forum meeting, Stephen Walker and Jose Alonso have noted that "Not only will governments that embrace open data improve their public accountability and efficiency, they will also reap the social and economic benefits of opening up data for citizens" [3]. Opening up of government data is expected to transform the relationship between the government and the various stakeholders.

Currently the data is used by the governmental institutions for self-monitoring and making only a limited data available for public access and usage. But SDGs are not only for the government to monitor and realise, the responsibility lies with various other actors as well.

Open data has a major role to play in transforming the vision of the SDGs into reality, by enabling the informed participation of multiple actors – private companies, non-government organisations, academic and research institutes, civic activists, etc. To plan, monitor, and actualise the path being traversed by a country, open data becomes essential. Also to facilitate public participation in the governance.

In this and the next blog post, I am documenting the availability and openness of data sets in India, which are relevant for the indicators identified for monitoring of targets under the 17 SDGs. This post offers the findings for the first 7 Goals, while the next post will cover the last 10. Along with questions of availability and openness, I have also documented the technical format of the available data, the level of granularity, and also the frequency of its collection, when applicable. The chart below describe the overall situation of availability and openness of data for monitoring SDGs in India.

Goal #01: End poverty in all its forms everywhere

The data is available for most of the indicators either directly or need to be derived, however, data doesn't exist for one of the indicators.

The data exists at the national level and at the state level or both, but data availability at the district/city level would give a better picture. Though NSSO sample survey data includes representative data at the state/UT level, such data is often not made freely accessible. Not all data which have been collected, i.e., from agencies like NSSO, National Family Health Survey, etc., are open in the public domain.

Also, the frequency of data collected for most of the indicators are either decennial or quinquennial, rather an annual survey would facilitate better/close monitoring. Health is an important measure associated with poverty, but the data is decennially collected. There is a need for regular data updation, while considering those data which are supposed to be collected annually.

In this context, to derive certain indicators, say Indicator 1.3.1., there is a cross agency dependency on data, and lacks disaggregation of data. The disaggregation is a key to measure inequality, especially incidences like poverty. So to monitor poverty we need to identify the different strata of poverty and policy can be formulated accordingly.

Data Not Available:

Indicator 1.3.1. Percentage of population covered by social protection floors /systems disaggregated by sex, and distinguishing children, unemployed, old age, people with disabilities, pregnant women/new-borns, work injury victims, poor and vulnerable

Goal #02: End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture

Indicators and the data corresponding to them reflects two things, what has been done and what has to be done. The data for fifteen indicators mapped to the targets in goal 2 are available for thirteen of the indicators. The data which are available are likely to match the indicator directly or the data has to be derived for most of the indicators. And for the remaining two indicators the data is not available.

For most of the indicators that have to be derived, there is a strong dependency on the dataset from NSSO sample survey for arriving at the requirement. This dependency comes at a cost, as NSSO sample data are not freely available in the public domain, thus making the overall monitoring dependent on closed data. There is a cross agency reliance on data, for arriving at the indicator, and the data on public platform are not up to date.

Also, the data for majority of the indicators are measured at the national as well as state level, but a goal like ending hunger – providing food security, would definitely require data in the order of district/village level. Though data is available for the Indicator 2.2.1: Prevalence of stunting (height for age <-2 SD from the median of the WHO Child Growth Standards) among children under five years of age, but, the data is from eight states only and the national data is derived from it, too small sample size to extrapolate as the nation's data.

On the frequency of data collection, Indicator 2.c.1: Indicator of (food) Price Anomalies (IPA), are collected monthly and some of the data are quinquennial or decennial. However, most of them are annually collected, enabling better accountability and close monitoring of the goals and to frame actionable policy steps.

Data Not Available:

Indicator 2.5.1: Ex Situ Crop Collections Enrichment index
b. Indicator 2.5.2: Percentage of local crops and breeds and their wild relatives, classified as being at risk, not-at-risk or unknown level of risk of extinction

Goal #03: Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages

Data is available for all the twenty-five indicators corresponding to the thirteen targets set to measure goal 3 on health and well-being. Some of the data are direct to the indicator, while some have to be derived from various data set to arrive at the indicator.

Data is open and accessible freely in the public domain for all the indicators, most of the data are from World Health Organisation (WHO) database. However, for finer tunings and up to date data there is dependency on National Family Health Survey (NFHS) which is collected decennially.

The WHO data lacks updation and ones which are available are pertaining to an year, thus making the analysis of the annual trend difficult. While the frequency of data collected for most of the data are annual.

The dataset available are at the national and state level, and two of the data set is measured in the order of cities. Most of the WHO dataset provides data at the national level, whereas NFHS, District Family Health Surveys and other agencies provide data at the lowest order, but such dataset are not freely accessible on the public domain. The updated data on health are not made available freely accessible in the public domain which are derived through health surveys.

Goal #04: Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all

Education in India is a fundamental right of every citizen, therefore achieving inclusive, equitable and quality education for all becomes necessary. Said this, to monitor goal 4, data is available for nine indicators out of eleven indicators, and for the remaining two indicators, the data is not accessible or in public domain for free access, and for the sub-part of the indicator on proficiency level. Though data exists for all the indicators, however, for most of the indicators we need to derive from multiple sources. Data does not exist for subparts like psychosocial wellbeing, in the Indicator 4.2.1 and proficiency in functional literacy and numeracy skills as in the Indicator 4.6.1.

The data are collected annually for seven indicators and for the two indicators Indicator 4.3.1 and Indicator 4.6.1, which relies on NFHS and Census data respectively, the data is collected decennially. Also, for some of the indicators the data availability is restricted to particular years or are not up to date.

The data which exists are collected at the national and state level for some of them and for some data set the data exists at the national level only, whereas for the Indicator 4.6.1, the data set is of the order of city. And the disaggregation issue prevails here as well, so to sort data based on the given parameter one has to consult NSSO sample survey or derive from the existing data.

Data Not Available:

Indicator 4.7.1: Percentage of 15-year old students enrolled in secondary school demonstrating at least a fixed level of knowledge across a selection of topics in environmental science and geo science. The exact choice/range of topics will depend on the survey or assessment in which the indicator is collected. Disaggregation: sex and location
Indicator 4.a.1: Percentage of schools with access to (i) electricity; (ii) Internet for pedagogical purposes; (iii) computers for pedagogical purposes; (iv) adapted infrastructure and materials for students with disabilities; (v) single-sex basic sanitation facilities; (vi) basic hand washing facilities

Goal #05: Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls

Gender as a social construct has been deprived of equality and equity, therefore, achieving equality and empowering women and girls lays down the path for an inclusive development. In this direction, to monitor the goal 5, data is available for eleven indicators and do not exist for three indicators out of fourteen indicators. However, the Indicator 5.3.2, is not relevant as India does not acknowledge FGM/C. Also, for most of the indicators, the data need to be derived from the given dataset.

For most of the data, the data is collected at the National or state level. Whereas for the Indicator 5.a.1, the data is available at the district/tehasil level and it is based on Agricultural census of India, carried out once in five years.

The collection of data is annual in most cases, decennial in the cases of NFHS data, quinquennial with regard to data on land ownership and rights based on gender. Also, in cases of proportion of women in parliament or number of legal framework – domestic/international, the frequency cannot be determined as its subject to change.

Regarding openness, though data exists, the data is not available to access freely. These data are either from NSSO sample survey and NFHS. For most of the indicators the data exists in general without disaggregation, but, as the goal demands sex based disaggregation, we need to derive from the existing data.

Data Not Available:

Indicator 5.3.2: Percentage of girls and women aged 15-49 who have undergone female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C), by age group (for relevant countries only)
Indicator 5.6.2. Number of countries with laws and regulations that guarantee women aged 15-49 access to sexual and reproductive health care, information and education
Indicator 5.c.1: Percentage of countries with systems to track and make public allocations for gender equality and women’s empowerment

Goal #06: Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all

Water is a life giving source, but ensuring water and sanitation in a sustainable way is a challenge indeed. Data is available for all the ten indicators to monitor the goal 6. While for most of the indicators the data has to be derived from the given data set or from other data set. The data set available are in absolute numbers, need to modify as per the indicators.

The data is collected annually for most of the indicators, however, for the indicators, Indicator 6.3.2: Percentage of water bodies with good ambient water quality; Indicator 6.4.1: Percentage change in water use efficiency over time, the data pertains to the specific year, without a time series.

Three of the data are measured at the state level, one at the district level – Indicator 6.2.1, and another at the level of cities – Indicator 6.3.1. For most of the indicators, the data are from international agencies like WHO, UNEP, FAO, etc.

The data for four of the indicators are not freely accessible on the public domain, though data exists. Also, for the Indicator 6.a.1, the available data is not specific to it, but gives an overview. Overall, for the close monitoring of the goal 6, the granularity of the data should be at the district/block level, and must be freely accessible.

Goal #07: Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all

Energy is considered one of the basic needs of human life, therefore, providing energy which is reliable and affordable has to ensure sustainability and the kind of energy being produced. The data exists for five of the indicators out of six indicators, however, the data does not exist for one of the indicators. The data for two of the indicators – Indicator 7.2.1, Indicator 7.3.1, have to be derived from the given data set.

For most of the data, the data is collected annually and the data is collected at the national level. However, as to the data availability for the Indicator 7.2.1, the data is available at the state level.

To arrive at the required indicator, there is a dependency over other dataset. Though most of the data are available, for three of the indicators – Indicator 7.2.1: Renewable energy share in the total final energy consumption (%); Indicator 7.3.1. Energy intensity (%) measured in terms of primary energy and GDP; Indicator 7.a.1: Mobilized amount of USD per year starting in 2020 accountable towards the US 100 billion commitment, the data is not freely accessible.

Data Not Available:

Indicator 7.b.1. Ratio of value added to net domestic energy use, by industry

References

[1] "Indicators and a Monitoring Framework for the Sustainable Development Goals." Sustainable Development Solutions Network. March 20, 2015. Accessed February 16, 2016. http://unsdsn.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/150320-SDSN-Indicator-Report.pdf.

[2] "A World That Counts - Mobilising the Data Revolution for Sustainable Development." Report. Independent Expert Advisory Group Secretariat, 2014. Accessed February 19, 2016. http://www.undatarevolution.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/A-World-That-Counts.pdf.

[3] Walker, Stephen, and Jose M. Alonso. "Data Will Only Get Us so Far. We Need It to Be Open." World Economic Forum. January 29, 2016. Accessed February 16, 2016. http://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/01/data-will-only-get-us-so-far-we-need-it-to-be-open.

Author

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/monitoring-sustainable-development-goals-in-india-availability-and-openness-01

Mini Unconference on Openness in Development, Bangalore

praskrishna — 2015-09-18T01:49:43Z

Singapore Internet Research Centre and the Centre for Internet & Society are partnering together to hold a mini unconference session on Openness in Development on Day 2 of SIRCA III workshop.

For registration, please visit here or click on the image below.

Poster of the Event

Contact: Sandy PEK Sin Yee (Ms) | Project Officer (SiRC) | Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information | Nanyang Technological University, 31 Nanyang Link, #04-22, Singapore 637718

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/events/mini-unconference-on-openness-in-development-bangalore

Mini TTT and MWT held in Kolkata

tito — 2017-06-28T09:53:55Z

A regional version of Train The Trainer and MediaWiki Training was recently conducted in Kolkata.

CIS-A2K’s widely well-regarded flagship skill building program was conducted in Kolkata between 7- 8 January 2017, in partnership with the West Bengal Wikimedians User Group. The two-day event was held at the West Bengal National University of Juridical Sciences. There were 20 participants at the event, of which 18 were male and only two female.

There were three thematic sessions, each broadly dealing with: Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons and Wikisource. The participants were taught article enrichment and how to upgrade articles into good category articles on Wikipedia. The participants learnt reference resources in detail in addition to discussing the different types of syntax required to apply the references meaningfully. The participants were also exposed to advanced search techniques on Google in order to gather relevant references.

During the Commons session, the participants were taught the basics of creating categories and subcategories in order to help narrow down searches and hence, image utility on Commons. Facilitating easy identification of an image helps enrich articles in need of descriptive photos. Additionally, participants were encouraged to give specific file names to their images along with a detailed description of the same. This was followed by a technical session on the following popular tools and gadgets that help frequent uploaders on Commons:

Cat-a-lot is a JavaScript gadget that helps with moving images (or subcategories) between categories or adding categories to search results
Google Images tab: On File pages, adds a new tab to easily search for similar images on the Internet using Google Images
OTRS is a tool used by the Wikimedia projects, including Commons, to manage and archive email conversations. The main use of OTRS in relation to Commons is to verify and archive licensing permissions.
Flickr2Commons - Tool to easily upload single and multiple files from Flickr to Commons. This tool uses OAuth to upload files to Commons.

In addition to these on-wiki discussions, a broader discussion took place on photography tips such as the rule of thirds which helps enhance the effect and purpose of the image.

The final thematic session was on Wikisource. Participants had a hands on lesson in proofreading methodology in addition to learning about image formatting, formatting table of contents, table access page break, text divider, and tools and script of Wikisource.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/mini-ttt-and-mwt-held-in-kolkata

MediaWiki Training 2017

Tito Dutta and Ananth Subray — 2017-06-07T08:43:57Z

MediaWiki Training 2017 conducted in Bangalore

The third iteration of the MediaWiki Training was conducted on 24-26 February at Bangalore, India (the first and second iterations of MWT was conducted in 2015 and 2016). 16 participants from 9 Indic Wikimedia communities attended the workshop. The following graph shows the participation from different Indic Wikimedia communities.

Malayalam Wikimedian User:Viswaprabha attended the workshop as a resource person. On behalf of the Centre for Internet and Society, User:Titodutta and User:Ananth_subray were the resource persons.

== Sessions ==

On the first day, the following topics were discussed

=== First day: technical audit ===

Introduction to MediaWiki Training: The first session of the day started with introducing the aims of objectives of MediaWiki Training 2017.

Introduction to MediaWiki software and platform: Following this User:Titodutta and User:Viswaprabha discused the MediaWiki software, different extensions, LocalSettings.php and some other important configurations related to MediaWiki.

Wikipedia technical audit: Wikipedia technical audit was the central theme of the day, and the phrase “Wikipedia technical audit” was coined by Rahul Desmukh of IIT Bombay. He suggested that once in a year a Wikimedia community should do its technical audit, when the community would solve issues like deadend pages, orphan pages, uncategorized pages, script errors, infobox errors, reference errors, and other errors and issues related to a Wikimedia project.

On the first day of the MWT workshop we discussed these issues and errors and how to solve these.

== Second day ==

On the second day of third iteration of MWT, we began with problems faced in different languages with respect to Templates and Imfoboxes. And continued with teaching how to create the basic info boxes. Each participant were thought how to add two digits in a single template and creation of LUA templates. Later we had thought them how to create a basic template by adding a label and data, and even localizing of some templates were also done.

After this use of Wikidata was thought and INfoboxes using wikidata.

Post lunch some of the tools and their uses and applications were thought Copyvio, Duplication detector, Google books citation, Citation generator and Hay's tool directory

== Third day ==

On the third day of MWT 2017, the first session started with a session where User:Viswaprabha discussed Wikimedia Labs Quarry (https://quarry.wmflabs.org/)

The major points of the session were:

Introduction to Quarry.
Importance of Quarry
Coding simple quarry.

User:Viswaprabha also showed how to integrate Google spreadsheet with Quarry. He showed a couple of examples where he had the most of it using the tricks.

For more details visit http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/mediawiki-training-2017

Centre for Internet and Society

My First Wikipedia Training Workshop – Theatre Outreach Unit, University of Hyderabad

Outcomes and Impact:

Musician donates Gwalior Gharana songs to free e-library

Mozilla Open Web Talks

Mozilla is funding a way to support Julia in Firefox

Mozilla DevDay 2010, Bangalore

Mozilla brings Indian Communities together Twice in One Month

Mozilla Brings Indian Communities Together

Indic FirefoxOS L10n Sprint 2014

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Monitoring Sustainable Development Goals in India: Availability and Openness of Data (Part II)

Goal #08: Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all

Goal #09: Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and foster innovation

Goal #10: Reduce inequality within and among countries

Goal #11: Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable

Goal #12: Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns

Goal #13: Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts

Goal #14: Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development

Goal #15: Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss

Goal #16: Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels

Goal #17: Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the global partnership for sustainable development

Conclusion

Author

Monitoring Sustainable Development Goals in India: Availability and Openness of Data (Part I)

Monitoring Sustainable Development Goals

Goal #01: End poverty in all its forms everywhere

Goal #02: End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture

Goal #03: Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages

Goal #04: Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all

Goal #05: Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls

Goal #06: Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all

Goal #07: Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all

References

Author

Mini Unconference on Openness in Development, Bangalore

Poster of the Event

Mini TTT and MWT held in Kolkata

MediaWiki Training 2017