Useful links

RTI laws in 5 countries – comparitive analysis: Examiles RTI laws in United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia and

Your Right To Know: A citizen’s guide to freedom of information act: Website of Heather Brooke, a journalist based in London.

DISE–District Information System for Education: The DISE dataset created by the worldbank is a major source of standardized information on schools in India.

Health Information of India: Health statistics for India.

Oxford internet institute webcasts: Webcasts of events at Oxford internet institute

Globalization, information and developing countries: A selective guide to information resources: List of watchdogs of multilateral organisations, corporations, etc.

Legislating RTI – A guide by UNDP: A detailed guide on preparation, legislation and implementation of RTI

Secondary education management information system at NEUPA: MIS on secondary education managed by NEUPA

Implications of registering, tracking, profiling by Usha Ramanathan: Usha Ramanathan argues that UID should be seen in the context of NATGRID that will enable security agencies to track personal information including travel, finance, immigration, etc. It infringes on privacy and creates scope for misuse. At a time when routine acts of life of the poor are criminalised, such projects can condemn large sections of the population to a life of perpetual illegality.

Apps4Africa: A contest to build mobile based technologies that could be used for social purposes in Africa

Technology for Transparency Network |: A collection of projects that use technology for promoting transparency. The case studies can be accessed by the country.

MyNeta – Candidate Affidavits for Elections in India: Information on all Members of Parliaments of India based on the affidavits they file with the election commission. Visitors are permitted to point out inconsistencies between the given information and the case on the ground.

Bus Routes.in: Website providing information on bus routes in Madras using information on routes gathered by crowd sourcing.

Think You Know What Ushahidi Is? Think Again | iRevolution: Article on the Ushahidi platform, what it is and how it could be used by Patrick Meiyer. Comments to the article are worth reading.

Crisis and Interaction Design: Presentation on the use of Crowd-sourcing information and tips on designing a good system.

I paid a bribe: The innovative crowd sourcing platform by Janaagraha to crowd source reports on demands for bribes in India. The website has inspired many such initatives internationally.

Climate Collaboratorium: Seeks to use the collective intelligence of people to develop a plan on climate change. It’s a project of center for collective intelligence at MIT.

Sunlight Foundation: The foundation is, “a nonpartisan nonprofit that advocates for open government globally and uses technology to make government more accountable to all. We do so by creating tools, open data, policy recommendations, journalism and grant opportunities to dramatically expand access to vital government information to create accountability of our public officials”. The website is a great source of information on open data policy, political financing and a range of other topics in the intersection of technology and transparency.

Public Database Indexing Guidelines: North Carolina is mandated by law to maintain an index of all electronic public records with description of available data. This is a guideline prepared by the State government to prepare an index of the databases

This We Know: Explore U.S. Government Data About Your Community: Collates data from various US Government databases and presents them at the community level that can be searched by zip code.