Advocacy statements

2021

IT for Change recently responded to the call for consultation by National Health Authority (NHA) and National Digital Health Mission (NDHM) on the Unified Health Interface (UHI).

ITfC deems the creation of digital public goods in the health sector a critical imperative and appreciates the NDHM’s initiative in setting up the UHI. However…

2021

IT for Change responded to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights’ (UN OHCHR’s) call for comments and textual suggestions on the Draft Convention on The Right to Development. Our submission focused on strengthening obligations on State Parties by specifically addressing the development challenges of the digital…

2021

IT for Change responded to the call from the Ministry of Consumer Affairs for public consultation on the proposed amendments to the Consumer Protection (E-commerce) Rules, 2020.

Read the full submission here.

In light of the growing recognition of the dominance of certain platforms in the e-commerce domain, the Draft Rules are an…

2021

The Just Net Coalition (JNC) made a submission with comments and text suggestions to the Zero Draft of the Doha Programme of Action for Least Developed Countries. The Zero Draft was released by the co-chairs of the Fifth United Nations Conference on the Least Developed Countries (LDC5), Bangladesh and Canada, on July 12, 2021.

The…

2021

IT for Change inputted to the public consultation on the Draft National Geospatial Policy, 2021 put out by the Department of Science and Technology.

Our submission emphasized on the fact that physical locations are a shared public resource and the policy supporting wider democratization of geospatial data should allow for equal digital…

2021

IT for Change responded to the Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare public consultation white paper for the India Digital Ecosystem of Agriculture (IDEA). The key points of our submission are summarized below.

The full submission may be found here.

IDEA will prevent corporate capture of core structures of the digital…
2021

IT for Change is part of a coalition of NGOs and labor unions that has called on the Reserve Back of India (RBI) to not proceed with licensing corporations to run parallel financial infrastructures like Universal Payment Interface (UPI) on a for-profit basis. This coalition includes the workers' union of the State Bank of India, the largest…

2021

On behalf of the Just Net Coalition, Anita Gurumurthy presented the following input at the Consultation of Civil Society with the Co-Chairs of the Preparatory Committee for the Fifth United Nations Conference on the Least Developed Countries (LDC5) on May 20, 2021.

Respected Co-Chairs,

Digital technologies have emerged as an…

2021

The draft Digital Markets Act envisages the obligations of data sharing by large gatekeeper platforms along with ex-ante oversight by the regulator of such platforms, in the EU. This regulation is framed as a part of the Digital Services Act Package, being discussed by the EU to regulate the digital economy.

The feedback by IT for Change…

2021

Just Net Coalition, along with more than 170 civil society groups addressed an Open Letter to the UN Secretary General urging him to shelve plans for a High Level Multistakeholder Body which, if set up, can be expected to become the default apex global digital governance and policy body. This body is to be privately funded, with strong hints…