Research

2020

This is the third issue paper, written by Anita Gurumurthy, for the Feminist Digital Justice -- a collaborative research and advocacy initiative of IT for Change and DAWN (Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era).

The platform economy -- dominated by a few firms -- is extractivist,exploitative,and expedient. It is based on an…

2020

Ensuring wide data availability may help India develop its AI industry and avoid external dependence.

Geo-political and economic power in the industrial age was determined by one’s expertise in manufacturing. In a digital society, it’s likely to be based on command over artificial intelligence (AI). As an information age takes over,…

2020

In the past, Open and Distance Learning (ODL)  was primarily conducted through snail mail where institutions sent reading and other materials to learners. With the advent of Internet and related digital technologies, this has gradually changed. This paper explores how a free and open digital technology like MediaWiki, and Wikimedia open…

2020

As employment in India bounces back from the Covid lockdown, platform-mediated work is expected to come into its own. Indian legislation must take the right steps to protect the status and labour rights of gig workers in these changing times, while unions also need to bring these new workers into the fold.

Under the Covid-19 lockdown,…

2020

IT for Change's paper on 'Breaking Up Big Tech: Separation of its Data, Cloud and Intelligence Layers' for the Data Governance Network argues that traditional competition frameworks are inadequate to addressing the rapidly building digital power concentration. These need to be combined with perspectives from technology governance that focus on…

2020

Disasters are gendered. They play out differently for men, women, and gender non-conforming people. So also the COVID-19 pandemic. In the domestic-private spaces, an incredulous increase in levels of violence against women during these weeks, a “shadow pandemic” — as the UN Under-Secretary-General referred to it — has laid bare the patriarchal…

2020

We are pleased to announce that Fondation Botnar has commissioned IT for Change to develop a framework focusing on ‘Health Data as Global Public Good' that centrally includes community ownership of data into it. The research for this project will lay out the nature, role and governance of health data in the emerging digital society and economy…

2020

IT for Change has responded to the Government of India's consultation white paper for the Strategy for National Open Digital Ecosystems (NODE), by recognising the role and potential of NODE(s) not just as a much needed digital evolution of governance in India, but as also providing an alternative vision of digital ecosystems to the dominant…

2020

The Data Governance Network (DGN) was established by the IDFC Institute in 2019 to bring together some of India's leading policy think-tanks. It identifies policy gaps in data governance and seeks to bridge them through policy interventions, research and advocacy. IT for Change was selected to be one of the four research nodes in the DGN for…

2020

IT for Change and Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES), with support from the European Commission (EU), are undertaking a five-year (2020-2024) project on Gender and the Digital Economy, called 'Re-wiring India's Digitalising Economy for Women's Rights and Well-being: An Action-oriented Knowledge Intervention'. This project is supported by a grant…