Most people still see data as ordinary knowledge or information best subject to 'open access' regimes. This is also the moral basis for the advocacy of free global flows of data. It is an argument that many, if not most, civil society activists worldwide often fall prey to.
This research paper attempts to develop a theoretical basis for…
Digital data and the pervasive intelligence it provides about people and artefactual and natural phenomenon, is the very basis of a digital economy. With the industrial revolution, machines soon became practically unavoidable everywhere. The same will be true of much of digital intelligence-based economic processes and systems as a digital…
There are two ways to look at the digital economy. One is just as progressive automation of production processes that has been going on for many years, now hitting a whole new level. Another is to see it as a distinct discontinuity, much like the industrial revolution was. The latter, within a few decades of some rapid techno-economic…
The paper, developed for the Commonwealth Secretariat, London, examines, the nature of digital economy in a developing country context, focussing the study partly on Bengaluru, often called the Silicon Valley of the South. It distinguishes digital industry from the earlier software industry and then the Internet industry.The paper defines…
For long, Internet activists considered the Internet as being beyond law, politics and governments. J.P. Barlow made the famous Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace in 1996. It was fine when this phenomenon was just shaping up and challenging established institutions. But with the Internet and data becoming central to new social and…
A global Internet with unrestrained global flow of data has been held up as the ideal. However, while there is great value in it, there are also other, often competing, imperatives of ensuring rule of law over the internet and data, and using local and national data for encouraging domestic digital industry and for policy making and governance…
The paper, developed for the Commonwealth Secretariat, London, examines, the nature of digital economy in a developing country context, focussing the study partly on Bengaluru, often called the Silicon Valley of the South. It distinguishes digital industry from the earlier software industry and then the Internet industry. The paper defines…
On 20th July, 2013, Parminder Jeet Singh drafted a position paper reflecting on the current nature of e-governance schemes upon sampling and studying recent developments in the area, where he posits that the increasing role of ICTs in governance is resulting in a de facto…
The UN Internet Governance Forum (IGF) has spawned similar initiatives in many countries and regions. However there has been concerns whether some of them merely legitimate corporate lobbying, making it more respectable and institutionalised now. In this context, it is important that IGF like institutions are carefully nurtured, from within the…
IT for Change deliberates on the outcomes of the International Telecommunication Union’s World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) in this op-ed for The Hindu. We consider the refusal of the US and its allies to sign the International Telecommunications Regulations (ITRs) to be a historic turning point in…