advocacy

In September 2021, the United Nations Secretary-General released the 'Our Common Agenda' Report, which aimed to "report back before the end of the seventy-fifth session of the General Assembly with recommendations to advance our common agenda and to respond to current and future challenges". Over the course of February 2022, a series of 5…

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.

The Government of Rajasthan floated a tender for the purchase of 112,000 laptops in January 2013. In their bid document they have specifically asked for proprietary software to be provided by the vendor. IT for Change worked with the network of educationists across India, to write a letter to the Government asking it to re-consider the waste of…

Gurumurthy, IT for Change was a member of the MHRD 12 five year plan group on Teacher Education, and contributed to the chapter on ICT integration in Teacher Education, in the plan document for Teacher Education. The plan document recommends the adoption of free and open technologies to enable teachers to collaborate with one another to create…

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…

ITfC made a presentation at NUEPA, in a workshop for education Secretaries from different states, on the guidelines for ICT @ School program. The presentation discussed key challenges facing teacher education and the need to evolve new models of teacher education that are need based, self directed and self paced learning with…

ITfC made a presentation to the Secretaries of Education from different state governments. The presentation explains the need to move from 'first generation programs' where students only learn word, notepad, paint etc, through vendor faculty, bypassing teachers, to "second generation programs" - where teachers use software tools to create…

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 set-up to study the issue. ITfC was asked to make a presentation at the meeting of the sub-committee on ICTs in School Education of…

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Public software is 'software developed or procured, for the public good, which is publicly owned'. It is essential for participating in the digital society and thus needs to be provided to everyone as an universal right and entitlement. It includes operating system, text/image/audio/…

MHRD released a draft note on 'Public Private Partnership in school education' in October 2009.

The note made several assumptions about the inherent superiority of the private sector, and seemed to suggest that government school system has not worked and private schools are a systemic option.

IT for Change helped bring together…