Internet governance

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 rights to various kinds of data, and how these rights…

IT for Change's paper on 'Breaking Up Big Tech: Separation of its Data, Cloud and Intelligence Layers' for the Data Governance Network argues that traditional competition frameworks are inadequate to addressing the rapidly building digital power concentration. These need to be combined with perspectives from technology governance that focus on…

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 alternative vision of digital ecosystems to the dominant…

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 be one of the four research nodes in the DGN for…

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 architecture for the new digital era, with very…

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 undertook a study, with support from Bread for the World…

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 Google into negotiating a remuneration deal with…

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-19 preventive measures. Being listed as an…

In October and November 2018, during the Great Indian Festival season in India, online retail giants — Amazon, Flipkart and Paytm Mall — sold goods worth $4.3 billion (Rs 29,947 crore), 43 percent higher than the last year.

Traders in physical retail must now reckon with the rather disconcerting reality of e-commerce. The press note…

How are booking platforms changing  the global tourism industry and the tourism value chain? Who are the big winners in the platformization of the Indian tourism industry and who is missing out? Does the integration of local tourism businesses into digital booking platforms democratise and  balance economic power structures by allowing for a…