Research papers

This report was produced as part of the research project ‘Policy frameworks for digital platforms - Moving from openness to inclusion’.The report provides evidence from the Nigerian context to complement the global debate on designing appropriate regulatory frameworks for platforms that ensure accountability of platform providers to the…

Anushka Mittal published a research paper as part of the Data Governance Network project titled, ‘Exploring the Constitutional Tenability of Data Sharing Policies’, analyzing the recommendations of the Draft Non-Personal Data Committee Report for community ownership of data and data sharing, from the perspective of its constitutional status in…

Parminder Jeet Singh authored a working paper titled, 'Breaking Up Big Tech: Separation of its Data, Cloud and Intelligence Layers', arguing that traditional competition frameworks are inadequate to address the rapidly building digital power concentration. Competition frameworks need to be combined with perspectives from technology governance…

Translation is seen as a high-skilled professional activity, which restricts its reach. Three members of an NGO, that works with government schools, attempted to translate text from English to Kannada, using easily accessible digital tools; the NGO also supported teams of student-teachers and teachers to use these tools for translating…

Schools and educational institutions have tended to use proprietary software applications: software that is not sold, but ‘licensed’, by the vendor. Here, the institution is only a ‘user’, and neither owns the software nor has any control over it. Over the last decade, however, the Indian public school and higher education systems have made…

This is the third issue paper, written by Anita Gurumurthy, for the Feminist Digital Justice -- a collaborative research and advocacy initiative of IT for Change and DAWN (Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era).

The platform economy -- dominated by a few firms -- is extractivist,exploitative,and expedient. It is based on an…

In the past, Open and Distance Learning (ODL)  was primarily conducted through snail mail where institutions sent reading and other materials to learners. With the advent of Internet and related digital technologies, this has gradually changed. This paper explores how a free and open digital technology like MediaWiki, and Wikimedia open…

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…

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 percentage enrolment of children in government schools overall, is declining every year and that of private schools increasing, as the statistics collected by the Government of India indicate. ‘Private’ has become a buzzword for ‘quality education’, or at least to making a claim to be better than ‘government’.