Useful links

Twaweza.org: It is “a ten year citizen-centered initiative, focusing on large-scale change in East Africa. Twaweza believes that lasting change requires bottom-up action. We seek to foster conditions and expand opportunities through which millions of people can get information and make change happen in their own communities directly and by holding government to account”.

Omidyar Network: A philanthropic firm that invests on market based efforts to social and political change. They have also invested in a number of initiatives to extend transparency by the use of technology.

Mamdawrinch: A Moroccan website that crowd sources incidents of corruption.

OMG Standard – The Open Municipal Geodata Standard Organization: OMG is a collaborative for promoting more openness in Municipal data. It seeks to develop technical standards for sharing information across municipalities, develop case studies on public geocoded data and other things that are of interest to the open data community.

Lessons from Michigan: David Eaves writes about the government of Michigan initiative to create an innovation fund to create software useful to the government through collaborative projects that involve public, private and not-for profit organizations. He laments at the same time that the executive order does not require the software to be made open source, even though the government is paying for the creation of the software. Incidentally, I had a conversation with a former Principal Secretary for Municipalities in the undivided Andhra Pradesh (this was in early 2014). He mentioned that they had given a contract to a firm to develop a software for monitoring the collection […]

Data.gov: The home of data from various parts of US Federal government. Data is provided in open formats and it includes various tools to analyze data from across departments and also to build applications on the basis of the large volume of federal government datasets.

David Eaves on technology, government and other topics: Prolific writer on the use of technology in government covering issues such as innovation, transparency, open data, etc.

Berkman Center for Internet and Society: A leading academic centre on the internet and society whose mission “is to explore and understand cyberspace; to study its development, dynamics, norms, and standards; and to assess the need or lack thereof for laws and sanctions”. It is a great source of information on debates around the cyberspace and the quest to shape it.

Internet World Stats – Usage and Population Statistics: A website providing up to date information on internet usage internationally along with data on population, etc. for insights on internet penetration internationally.

Rating of RTI laws around the world: This page contains information about a ranking of countries based on the strength of the right to information Law. Serbia has the highest ranking followed closely by India. Sweden, the first country to legislate the right to information, falls very low in the list.

Global Integrity: “Global Integrity champions transparent and accountable government around the world by producing innovative research and technologies that inform, connect, and empower civic, private, and public reformers seeking more open societies”. The website contains a good review of anti-corruption movements and initiatives from around the world.

New Stanford computing lab imagines the mobile-social future: Project on making the mobile phone social at Stanford.

Budapest Convention on Cybercrime: One of the conventions on governing the internet relating to cybercrime.

E-Democracy.org: “E-Democracy.org builds online public space in the heart of real democracy and community. Our mission is to harness the power of online tools to support participation in public life, strengthen communities, and build democracy”.

Cyberspace Policy Review by The White House: Documents on cyber space policy of the US government.

www.radiojamming.info: Website dedicated to Jamming of radio broadcast by various countries with cool photographs and sound recordings of jammed broadcast.

Center for Democracy & Technology: It is “a non-profit public interest organization working to keep the Internet open, innovative, and free”.

Global Network Initiative: GNI is a network for protecting and advancing freedom of expression and privacy in information and communications technologies

Information Technologies & International Development: Multi-disciplinary journal focusing on the relationship between ICT and development. Published by USC’s Annenburg school.