Advocacy statements

IT for Change submitted its input to the UN Working Group on Discrimination Against Women for its report on the issue of discrimination against women in law and in practice in public and political life. The position paper problematises public spaces in the network age from the standpoint of gender justice also suggesting considerations for action by the Working Group.

Based on our advocacy work relating to National Policy on ICT in School Education, the issue of 'vendor driven ICT programs' was discussed in the Central Advisory Board of Education (CABE) and a sub-committee was setup to study the issue.

CABE accepts ICT in school education policy - June 2012

Read the final version of the policy on ICTS in School Education

In January 2008, MHRD released a draft policy on ICTs in school education. This policy, created by a committee that included big businesses interested in the 'ICT in education' space was hugely problematic - in a way looking at education as a process of private sector training of public system teachers in its resources and models, creating labour force for the global economy. Many educationists were uncomfortable with both the process and substance of this and organised consultations on this policy, networked (the ict-education-india googlegroups was created for this) to build broad positions, submitted several policy advocacy letters as well as substantive comments on the policy, some of us met officials in MHRD and other institutions to explain how ICTs in education required a deep understanding of education, rather than of just technology.  In November 2008, the MHRD minister cancelled the privatised policy making process (http://www.indianexpress.com/news/ministerial-panel-to-draft-hrds-ict-policy-for-schools/401222/). The policy itself had three more drafts over the next 3 years -  the second policy draft included many of our suggestions - education perspectives, focus on teacher education, support constructivist approaches to integrating ICTs in education, systemic integration rather than just hardware and software procurement, resource rich environment, FOSS etc, and was quite different from the first one. The fourth and final version, which further refines the second draft is available here.

The issue of 'vendor driven ICT policy/program' was also raised by Vinod Raina in the CABE. He was part of a CABE sub committee which looked into this and their report provides several ideas on the role ICTs should play in education. 

Both the final ICT policy in school education and the CABE committee report were unanimously adopted at the last CABE meeting on June 6 2012 and these documents can guide the design and implementation of ICT programs in school education, whose budgets will only increase exponentially over time... (UP budget presented this month earmarks 2200+crores for laptops/tablets for students. Hopefully this will support some of the ideas in the policy rather than just continue the failed PPP/BOOT models)

• National policy on ICT in school education - 2008
• National policy on ICT in school education - 2009
• Public Private Partnerships models in education - 2009
• National policy on ICT in school education - 2011
• Related resources

In 2008, the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) published a policy draft on 'ICTs in  School Education'. IT for Change (ITfC) actively campaigned to challenge the draft policy, advocating for a greater participation of educationalists in the policy design promoting thereby a constructivist ICT at schools model for both teachers and students. 

The Heads of the States of IBSA acknowledged the importance of the IBSA Dialogue Forum as an instrument to promote coordination on global issues and deliberated on a few topics that are recorded in the Tshwane declaration. The Rio seminar also accepted to set up an IBSA Internet Governance and Development Observatory, which was a proposal first made by IT for Change.

Government representatives of the three IBSA countries asked for creating a new UN agency for looking into global Internet governance issues in a paper that came to be known as Rio Recommendations. In this context, the meeting agreed that the models proposed by the Working Group on Internet Governance in 2005 provided useful guidelines for establishing such a new global body . The meeting also affirmed the need for IBSA countries to take leadership on issues pertaining to global Internet Governance.

IT for Change participated as one of the five civil society members of the UN Commission on Science and Technology for Development's Working Group on Improvements to the Internet Governance Forum (WGIIGF). IT for Change submitted two input papers arguing that processes need to be developed to strengthen the IGF for more concrete outcomes.

IT for Change (ITfC) was one among five civil society organisations invited to make submissions before the Working Group on Improvements to the Internet Governance Forum (WG-IGF) of the United Nations Commission on Science and Technology Development (UNCSTD), in January 2011. The WG-IGF has been set  up to provide recommendations (process related as well as substantive) for the democratisation and pro-poor sensitisation of the IGF, a multistakeholder policy dialogue forum on Internet related issues. The report of the WG-IGF will be tabled by the UNCSTD at the next session of the UN General Assembly.

Prepared for a workshop on Open Development organised by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) in Ottawa (Canada) in May 2010, the paper presents a comprehensive critique of the concept of openness, taken from the technology discourse. The paper critically analyses the elements of openness – greater access, participation and collaboration – citing empirical evidence from the field of Information and Communication Technology Development (ICTD) and Internet Governance.

The Department of Public Instruction, Government of Karnataka and Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India, have initiated a public software based ICT education programme imed at all the high schools of the state. This entire programme, including the classroom training, has been outsourced. However, preliminary implementation suggests that vendors are finding it challenging to impart an ICT based education in the selected schools.