Development and Democracy/Advocacy

IT for Change's research and advocacy track on labor aims to consider the emergent challenges for workers and laborers in the digital economy, and build a new frontier of labor rights for the 21st century. Our work is primarily concerned with the working conditions of and social security for gig…

Statement of the APRCEM S&T Constituency on COVID-19.

The world is presently facing a global health pandemic as many countries battle the widespread transmission of COVID-19 that has already cost the lives of almost 42,000 and afflicted nearly 858,000 people. The healthcare community…

IT for Change was among 150 signatories to an open letter led by Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders (MSF), urging Gilead Sciences to give up its exclusive rights on patents and regulatory and trial data in remdesivir. Monopoly-based patents regime in this could obstruct access to…

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…

Anita Gurumurthy participated in a session on Technology and Surveillance for the Janta Parliament, a virtual peoples' Parliament, on Tuesday, August 18, 2020. Some of the participant organisations and individuals presented resolutions before the parliament that were voted on at the end of the…

India and the US are close to signing a limited trade deal that includes some key agricultural and dairy products, medical devices and some issues of digital trade. However a more ambitious Free Trade Agreement (FTA) is being discussed between the two countries and talks may be launched soon.…

The Indian Parliament is currently in the process of overhauling the country’s labour laws. Unfortunately, this exercise has sidestepped platform workers, a constituency whose needs and challenges have become…

The Government of India, through the National Health Authority, released the draft Health Data Management Policy on August 26, 2020. As stated in its objectives, the Policy is meant to act as a guidance document across the National Digital Health Ecosystem (NDHE) and…

IT for Change provided feedback for the EU Consultation for the New Competition Tool and the Digital Services Act Package.

This was followed up with a questionnaire that included our inputs.

The EU proposal for a New Competition Tool is one of the measures aimed at addressing gaps…

The Political Economy of Data

Data and data governance are hotly contested issues in the 21st century. Typically, they have been perceived as questions of policy and political economy. Data is attributed multiple characterizations…

Working closely with the trade unions All India Gig Workers Union & Indian Federation of App-based Transport Workers, and the civil society organisations Aapti Institute, the Centre for Internet and Society, Tandem Research and TWN Trust, IT for Change co-drafted an input from the standpoint…

Current trajectories of the network-data complex relying on corporate partnerships cast data and intelligence as purely market goods. Investment by state in public data architectures could show the way for new possibilities in this direction. Read more for  Anita Gurumurthy's take on 'data for…

Developing countries need to recognise that in the datafying economy, any step towards creating a level playing field for local platforms must foreground and tackle the question of data in digital trade regimes. Read more in our submission to the Intergovernmental Group of Experts on E-commerce…

In March 2018, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights invited all stakeholders to provide input on human rights challenges relating to the right to privacy in the digital age, including on principles, standards and best practices with regard to the promotion and protection of the…

E-commerce platforms have radically reorganized economic activity, given rise to new structures of intermediation and changed the conception of global trade altogether. And yet structural inequities in opportunities and access between actors in developed and developing nations continue to…