Internet Governance/Research

In collaboration with The Balanced Economy Project and People vs. Big Tech, we at IT for Change are pleased to release a White Paper titled, Beyond Big Tech: A Framework for Building a New and Fair Digital Economy.

The White Paper sets out an initial high-level framework for states,…

Accelerating Bharat's Digital Agenda is about addressing two critical divides -- the digital divide in meaningful access, and the development divide in the data paradigm

1. The access divides…

Anita Gurumurthy, Nandini Chami, Amay Korjan, Eshani Vaidya, Sandeep Radhakrsihnan, and Merrin Muhammed Ashraf, prepared inputs that fed into UNCTAD’s Issue Paper on Data for Development. The input comprehensively discussed issues of neo-colonial dynamics of data economy, infrastructural and…

IT for Change’s Anita Gurumurthy and Nandini Chami contributed a chapter to the book, Global Communication Governance at the Crossroads. The book engages in debates and discussions focused on the current trends and challenges of communication governance, in addition to analyzing relevant actors…

Twenty years ago, stakeholders gathered in Geneva at the first World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) and affirmed a “common desire and commitment to build a people-centred, inclusive and development-oriented Information Society.”

In preparation for the WSIS+20 review set to take…

Abstract

Twitter, the social-networking platform which serves as a socio-political barometer, was recently purchased by Elon Musk, owner of Tesla. Musk has fired 50% of Twitter staff, toyed with its policies on registration and posts, making it an oligarch’s doll. Clearly the world needs…

Over the last two decades, information and communication technologies have become an important part of the implementation of different types of programs and schemes by the Government of India in the form of ‘large-scale public digital information systems’, designed for the implementation of…

The entry of generative AI applications in the digital marketplace has intensified recent public debates about AI. Silicon Valley’s ‘move fast’ techno-optimism is now under the scanner. A humane and just AI system requires a radical restructuring of the global political-economic regime of…

A data-propelled tendency for economic concentration and the policy deficits that have fueled the rise of Big Tech companies have brought to the fore a critical realization – market power is coterminous with data power and the entrenched control of Big Tech over the data value chains is at the…

The Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act of 2023 has rightly been criticised for failing to uphold good consent and data subject rights. One provision that has been largely overlooked is Section 16, which pertains to the transfer and processing of personal data outside India. Section 16…

In the last few years, data has been likened, aside from the hackneyed comparison to ‘oil’, to any number of tangible entities such as mineral deposits, dividend deposits, and even the Alaskan Permanent Fund. Metaphors as a tool could re-entrench existing power asymmetries or resist them,…

As procurers of all the civic tech that surrounds us, municipal authorities today find themselves in a unique position — they have become the custodians of personal and aggregate data generated by the world’s largest human concentrations. Rich or poor, large or small, democratic, autocratic, or…

In this paper, the authors argue that there is substantial scope for data governance policies for the Global South to draw from theories and practices informed by the idea that data can be a subject of decentralized, community-centric governance. First, the paper highlights the importance of…

Increasing digitalisation has spawned a system-wide disruption resulting in a reorganisation of production on a global to local scale. This is evident in both traditional value chains and in newer forms of work organisation, like platform work, cloud work, microwork and…