Helani Galpaya was selected as one of the stakeholders invited to speak at the United Nations General Assembly’s Informal interactive stakeholder consultation held at UN Headquarters in New York on the 2nd of July. The selection itself was done by a committee that reviewed applications by over a 100 organizations to speak at this event. Helani’s opening comments that were read out can be found here.
ITU have established a new study group titled “ITU-T Study Group 20: IoT and its applications, including smart cities and communities”. The decision to create this group was taken by Telecommunication Standardization Advisory Group (TSAG) at its assembly at the ITU Headquarters in Geneva early this month. The Internet of Things (IOT) technologies are expected to connect an estimated 50 million devices to the network by 2020. The group will develop standards to take advantage of IoT technologies to address urban-development challenges. This will be done by standardizing architectures for IoT and developing mechanisms for interoperability of IoT applications used by numerous industrial sectors.
CEO Helani Galpaya was invited as an expert participant at the UN-DESA (United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs) and ITU (International Telecommunications Union) organised Expert Group Meeting held at UN headquarters in New York, June 8 – 9th. Helani was invited to talk about issues of access and affordability, and how they contribute towards the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). LIRNEasia and RIA household survey data, LIRNEasia’s broadband quality of service test data, big data research was used in the presentations and interventions during the two day meeting. Slides here. Numerous UN Agencies, members of Permanent Missions to the UN from various countries (e.
Digital India Platform (DIP) will be launched in India soon to provide freelance opportunities to computer literate population in India. The Elance-oDesk’s Annual Impact Report 2014 ranks India as the first in top earning freelancer countries. Percentage of population using internet in India is 15.1% (2013) (International Telecommunication Union, 2013). This program will provide opportunities for computer literate to earn from the work open up for public.
WSIS is the is the UN’s annual gathering of ICT for Development stakeholders. The main organisers are ITU, UNESCO, UNDP and UNCTAD, though there is significant participation from other agencies such as UNDESA, FAO, UNEP, WHO, UN Women, WIPO, WFP, ILO, WMO, UN, ITC, UPU, UNODC, UNICEF and UN Regional Commission . The 2015 WSIS Forum, held in Geneva 25-29 May, was special in that this was the place where WISIS met the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the successor to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Most of the sessions at this year’s WSIS Was organised around specific SDGs that the nations of the world are considering unto at the end of this year. LIRNEasia CEO Helani Galpaya was invited by UNCTAD to participate and give input on how c7.
Indian Telecom Minister Ravi Shankar said that NOFN India is to be revised and renamed as BharatNet. The revised road map will emphasis the participation of states. Only 20,000 village panchayats were been given broadband connectivity by march 2015 although the target was 50,000. This proposed project is to be completed by December 2017. See here for more information.
Disaster response is an important element in the disaster management cycle. Post Nepal earthquake, a group of volunteers (Kathmandu Living Labs) is using crowd-sourcing for disaster response. They started their operations within 24 hours after the earthquake and consist of 36 locals and more that 4300 supporters from around the world. They use crisis mapping technique to map thousands of reports that come in to their workstation asking for relief. OpenStreetMap, a free editable map is used by them for this endeavor.
All eyes are on Nepal as the country is recovering from the earthquake that occurred a few weeks ago. This article discusses progressive trends that exist in Nepal despite its political instability. Uncensored internet, freedom of speech and inclusion of minorities are lessons that other countries in the region can learn from Nepal.
A special seminar on big data was recently organized as part of the 46th UN Statistical Commission meetings, which were held at the UN from 3-6 March 2015. ITU, which was participated in the seminar, mentioned LIRNEasia’s ongoing research on leveraging mobile network big data for development. LIRNEasia’s Team Leader for big data research, Sriganesh Lokanathan, was the main author on big data in ITU’s Measuring the Information Society 2014 report, which formed the foundation for ITU’s presentation at the event.
LIRNEasia’s Team Leader for Big Data Research, Sriganesh Lokanathan, and our former Researcher Manager, Roshanthi Gunaratne recently published a paper in the March 2015 special issue on big data of the journal Communications & Strategies. Whilst the journal article titled “Mobile Network Big Data for Development: Demystifying the Uses and Challenges” is not available for free an earlier version of the paper is available HERE.
Gujarat International Finance Tec-City (GIFT)- The first smart city in India- is under construction at Gandhinagar in Gujarat. The proposed city plan includes ICT enabled infrastructure such as smart grids and automated waste collection. India has allocated 60 billion rupees form its annual federal budget for this financial year towards developing smart cities. Going by numerous comments made by the vocal online population, there seem to be a certain amount of skepticism about the success of the planned city. Follow the link for more information on this in Reuters.
The 4-day residential course on ‘How to Engage in Broadband Policy and Regulatory Processes’ is currently held in Nagarkot, Nepal (28th – 31st March 2015). The slide sets of the sessions and reading materials of the event could be accessed through this link.
The review is that of an Internet Society report by Michael Kende and Karen Rose, based on evidence from Rwanda. The objective of this study is to understand the impact of content hosting decisions (within the country vs. overseas), as well as to develop a practical guide on creating an attractive enabling environment for hosting content locally. The paper defines and discusses the difference of locally relevant content and locally hosted content in Rwanda. Locally relevant content has proved to be aa factor that increases the overall use of the Internet in many economies studied by the Internet Society.
The XX Factor is written by Alison Wolf, the CBE Roy Griffiths Professor of Public Sector Management at King’s College London. The book outlines how working women of the modern workforce have changed the society. This change has occurred due to the fact that women are working in white collar jobs around the world hand in hand with men in contrast to past generations where both educated and uneducated women stayed at home once married. Author starts the book with the story of Jane Austen (1775 – 1817), an English novelist braking off her engagement with Harris Big Wither in 1802, which was something extraordinarily brave at her time. Then the book describes modern highly educated professional females, 70 million worldwide who stand in a direct line from Jane Austen.