Internet Governance/Advocacy

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…

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…

The new Intermediary Guidelines (IL Guidelines), require messaging platforms that have over 50 lakh registered users (such as WhatsApp) “enable the identification of the first originator of the information”.

The challenge from WhatsApp is that this impinges on an individual’s…

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.

On March 24, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology issued an advisory to States, asking them to treat e-commerce as an essential service. A few days before, industry body CII had urged the Centre to exempt e-commerce (delivery and shipment) from Covid-…

Recently, governments in France and Australia have introduced measure to make news aggregators such as Google pay for re-use of news. The move will benefit news publishers struggling to navigate the platform-mediated digital era. While the competition regulator in France has effectively pushed…

The tourism industry across the world is staring at bleak prospects in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. In India, the sector is staring at a potential loss of Rs 1.25 trillion over the next two quarters while 38 million jobs stand in grave danger in the coming months.

In 2019, we…

The advent of a digital society is fundamentally transforming our social and economic relationships. The nature of the dominant model of digital society means that global digital corporations – based in the US, and some in China – are dictating the terms and shaping the global socio-economic…

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…

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…

Data is almost universally recognised as the most valuable economic resource today. Seven out of the top 10 companies globally by market capitalisation are data-centric. In these circumstances, it appears strange that there has hardly been any worthwhile attempt to look at who has economic…

The Gopalakrishnan Committee set up by the government on developing a governance framework for non-personal data recently put out its draft report for public consultation. The report’s main purpose is to ensure wide sharing and availability of data in society. To ensure that companies share the…

The Covid pandemic has starkly visibilized the underlying inequality and injustice of the global economic paradigm. It has not only exposed the cumulative failings of the neoliberal order, but also testified to the inevitability of crisis and catastrophe inherent to it. IT for Change…

During a global discussion led by Brazil in 2014, India maintained that the internet is not merely an open, free, global commons that should remain untouched by major governmental control, but also a resource that needs to reflect the values of an ‘Equinet’ – a platform for commerce, e-…

The Srikrishna Committee report on data protection (2018) is based on the fundamental belief that a legal framework for the protection of personal data is imperative for empowerment, progress and innovation in the 21st century.

In the words of Justice Chandrachud in Justice KS Puttaswamy…