digital democracy

2024

Towards Democratic Governance of Digital Society is the January 2024 edition of the WACC's Media Development Journal. This issue seeks to address growing concerns around the potential for governments, security services, and Big Tech to misuse digital technologies to suppress and exploit users. More importantly, it delineates pathways to ensure…

2022

Through this policy brief, our colleagues ask us to think beyond the current exploitative digital paradigm & re-imagine the rules of development, distribution, & use of tech, based on a feminist social contract grounded in human rights, social justice, & gender equality.

We're thrilled that this document was included in the…

2019

The United States’ blacklisting of the Chinese company Huawei — since reversed — represents an important milestone as the world splits digitally around its two digital superpowers, the US and China. Last year, the US disallowed Alibaba’s takeover of Moneygram and later embargoed US supplies to the mobile company ZTE. Amazon and Google recently…

2018

The Department of IT, Government of Rajasthan is developing a 'Jana Suchana' portal. The aim of this portal is to provide a 'panchayat' centric view to citizens, in which all the support agencies/departments information work/programs for the specified geography would be provided. This helps move the information system paradigm from MIS (…

2018

Current trajectories of the network-data complex relying on corporate partnerships cast data and intelligence as purely market goods. Investment by state in public data architectures could show the way for new possibilities in this direction. Read more for  Anita Gurumurthy's take on 'data for development partnerships'.

This post was…

2017

This paper examines the nature of e-governance in India, presents the implications of the changing nature of governance and state-citizen engagement particularly for groups at the margins, and makes suggestions for a digitalisation that strengthens participatory democracy in the country.

2017

The synthesis report of the multi-country research study titled 'the Voice or Chatter project' explores how ICT-mediated citizen engagement can promote democratic governance and amplify citizens’ voices. Digital choices for democracy can empower or disempower citizens; they can present citizens with real alternatives for equality, thereby…

2017

Gurumurthy wrote an article 'Use of Information Technology in promoting transparency' in elections, in the Common Cause publication.

2017

We have been actively engaging with the debate on privacy and data protection in India, that has gained traction in the context of the unique citizen ID/ Aadhaar project of the government. Through our media articles, we have emphasised the public value of privacy, bringing in an agency perspective to the debate. We have also foregrounded the…

2017

'Digital Democracy in India' is our ongoing attempt to examine the emergence of a new governance paradigm in the country, characterized by the rise of ‘governance by networks’ and ‘rule by data’, from the standpoint of inclusive citizenship. We are primarily concerned with tracing critical directions for institutional overhaul, so that the…