titocis-india.org (primary contact) sunilcis-india.org (executive director of CIS)
Remarks
The text in the document attempts to follow Wikimedia Accessibility guidelines. A WCAG 2.0 check report may be seen here. A validation check by W3C may also be seen here
The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) is a non-profit organisation registered in India that works in different areas such as accessibility, openness, internet governance, telecom, research, etc. The organisation's official website may be seen at cis-india.org. Annual reports of the Centre for Internet and Society may be seen here.
The Access to Knowledge (A2K) program of CIS[2] is dedicated to supporting and serving Indian Wikimedia projects and the communities. In the last few years, CIS-A2K has worked towards creating sustainable programs and building community capacity. The primary objectives of CIS-A2K are:
supporting and serving the Indian Wikimedia communities in all possible ways
designing and executing projects with community participation.
strengthening the Wikimedia volunteers.
fostering and enabling an appropriate legal and technological ecosystem.
In 2018–2019 is working with Kannada, Marathi, Odia, and Telugu communities as Focused Language Area, and Punjabi Wikisource as a Focused Project Area. Some of the major events conducted by CIS-A2K in last 1 year are:
1. Please provide a brief description of your organisation's work in the upcoming funding period.
The Centre for Internet and Society – Access to Knowledge is submitting the work-plan for the period 1 July 2019 to 30 June 2020. Our plans and programs may be divided into the following verticals:
in Content Enrichment, we are proposing activities like edit-a-thons, Wikisource proofread and validation campaign, Wikidata label-a-thons and data-thons, photowalks etc. We'll also work with like-minded institutions and organisations to conduct thematic edit-a-thons or similar activities that will help to improve content on different Indic Wikimedia projects;
in Skill Development Initiatives, we are proposing to conduct activities like Zonal Wiki workshops, MediaWiki Training, and Wikidata workshop etc. We will also conduct zonal and regional workshops on different Wikimedia projects.
in Partnership, we will continue our work with the existing partners, and we'll build new partneships. We are proposing activities like outreach, awareness sessions, and workshops for content donation, increasing awareness about the Wiki movement and bridging gender gap;
In this work-plan year, CIS-A2K will continue its transition from Focused Language Area (FLA) to Focused Project Area (FPA).
Focused Language Area: Focused Language Area is an approach of CIS-A2K, where we work with a community with all its projects and activities. In other words, CIS-A2K supports all wiki-activities of a particular language community. So far Kannada, Konkani, Odia, Marathi, Tulu, Telugu have been our FLAs.
Focused Project Area: Focused Project Area or FPA is an approach of CIS-A2K introduced in 2018–2019 work-plan where CIS-A2K mainly focuses on projects. In 2018–2019 CIS-A2K collaborated with Punjabi Wikimedians, and our focused projects for Punjabi Wikimedians were Punjabi mostly Wikisource and Institutional Partnership. In the same year, we increased our support towards Wikisource communities in India, appointed a Wikisource project advisor, and conducted and supported several Wikisource project events. In November 2018, we conducted a national-level Wikisource consultation.
Participants of Train-the-Trainer 2018
Indic Wikisource Community consultation (November 2018) participants
In addition to our activities, the focused projects of the upcoming year are,
We'll plan programs and activities accordingly keeping (Wikipedia) and Wikisource and Wikidata in mind. We will focus on these two projects as based on our interaction with Indian Wikimedia community members, we have found several Indic Wikimedia communities want further support and focus on these projects. CIS-A2K earlier put some effort to support these projects, and this work-plan year we will put more effort.
CIS-A2K will continue working towards creating an inclusive Wiki atmosphere in the Indian subcontinent. With an emphasis on creating safe spaces, promoting gender gap bridging activities A2K team would like to work with all the Indian communities, projects and individuals with interesting ideas and for the overall development of Wikimedia movement. Bridging gender gap will remain as a primary focus of CIS-A2K. We'll try to ensure at least 25% of female participants in all the events conducted by CIS-A2K. We'll conduct a quarterly audit, and present the report in our newsletters.
CIS-A2K Proposal Overview Infographic
2. Name, fiscal year, and funding period
Legal name of organisation: The Centre for Internet and Society
Organisation's fiscal year: 1 April – 31 March
12-month funding period requested: 1 July 2019 – 30 June 2020
Executive director of the organisation: Sunil Abraham (sunilcis-india.org)
3. Amount requested
#
Currency requested (INR)
US$
Total expenses for the upcoming year
15,477,240
217,919.54
APG funding requested for the upcoming year
15,167,040
213,552
Amount of funding received from WMF for the current year
14,888,963
223,334.445
4. How does your organisation know what community members and contributors to online projects need or want? Does your organization conduct needs assessments or consult the contributors and volunteers most involved with its work?
CIS-A2K conducts an extensive community consultation before writing annual work-plan. CIS-A2K plans activities and events keeping communities' need, requests, and suggestions in mind. This year CIS-A2K conducted a community consultation, in which 68 Indian Wikimedians shared their views and suggestions. Apart from this Needs Assessment conducted by CIS-A2K other mechanisms to collect suggestion from Indic Wikimedians:
IRC, national-level or language/project IRC's conducted by CIS-A2K. (Examples: 1, 2)
Community evaluation, detailed community evaluations submitted by community members.
One-to-one conversation with Indic Wikimedians, our team members are in regular contact with Indic Wikimedians and these interactions help us to understand the need of the communities.
Van Bodh Workshop in Gadchiroli, October 2018
Copyright workshop at Bangalore, October 2018
Annual plan summary
1: CIS-A2K strategy
CIS-A2K's strategy for 2018–2020 may be seen here (and strategy for 2016–2018) may be seen here). CIS-A2K's 2018–2019 work-plan may be seen here. (and community discussion around annual plan) CIS-A2K's 2019–2020 work-plan (upcoming year's) may be seen here.
CIS-A2K's main strategies to engage Wikimedia and other free knowledge communities in India:
Content Enrichment: Content in Indian languages is directly proportional to the popularity of the subject. As popularity drives the content there is inherent bias, lack of rigour and easy assumptions. A2K would aim to work towards defining and developing strategies that embody the values of NOPV, Verifiability and is of help to readers.
Sustainable Partnerships: While there have always been champions who have tirelessly espoused a cause, these initiatives are often one time movements and lose steam due to the apathy of general public and non-cooperation of the civil society. A2K team would like to establish partnerships with educational and research institutions and developmental organisations which will provide anchor, leadership and support for the Wikimedia movement in the Indian subcontinent.
Create Inclusive movement practices: While the internet is still to be democratised in a real sense, the politics of access to the internet is already visible in the Indian subcontinent. It is also visible in the way Open Knowledge Networks are operational and influence in the Indian context. A2K would like to play a lead role in creating inclusive spaces for all contributors celebrating diversity.
Wikimedia Strategy 2030 and CIS-A2K Strategy 2020–2022: In this work-plan year CIS-A2K would conduct a detailed needs-assessment involving participants from all Indic Wikimedia communities, and like-minded organisation before preparing CIS-A2K strategy 2020–2022. CIS-A2K will also closely follow the development in the Wikimedia movement strategy 2020–2022. Our next strategy document will surely reflect the recommendations and activities of the larger Wikimedia movement vision and program strategy.
India is a culturally diverse country with over 122 major languages and 1,599 other languages. With the country’s ancient history and world-class cultural values, we believe that we have a responsibility to grow our languages digitally, and reanimate cultural heritage for new and diverse people. In India, there are more than 23 language Wikimedia communities. CIS-A2K is committed to serve Indic-language Wikimedia communities in all possible ways (financial, non-financial and tech support).
Priorities for 2019–2020
CIS-A2K priorities for 2019–2020 work-plan year are:
Build on our earlier works: In the previous years, CIS-A2K has conducted and supported several programs and initiatives which are well-received by the communities. This year we'll continue programs such as Train-the-Trainer, MediaWiki Training, Wikimedia Summit (India), regional workshops on different Wikimedia projects.
Focus Project Area: Doing the analysis of the needs-assessment we conducted before writing this work-plan, and also from our interactions with the members of different Indic Wikimedia communities, we have understood the importance of providing dedicated support to Wikidata and Wikisource. In the past couple of years, we saw rapid and consistent growth in these two projects in India. Wikisource and Wikidata will be our focused project area in this year.
Events with follow-up plans: Following Wikimedia Foundation's guidelines and CIS-A2K's strategy, we'll discourage one-time event/interventions. We will give more priority the plans and programs which have detailed followup plans.
Bridging gender gap: CIS-A2K will try to work on the gender gap(s) in a more holistic and sustainable way by embedding the gender gap bridging initiatives in our practices in each community and program which is organised by CIS-A2K. We will also focus on women's participation, content creation, and gender sensitisation should be a significant cross-cutting factor for activities.
Indian Wikimedians' Global Engagement: It is important that experienced and hard-working Indian Wikimedians participate in global and important Wiki-events. This does not only help the Wikimedians to improve their skill, but they also get an opportunity to share their expertise with others in a global platform. This year CIS-A2K will continue to provide such support, especially in an attempt to ensure more Indian participation in Wikimania, we will support 2 Indic Wikimedians' Wikimania participation. We will ensure at least one of the participants is female. The selection will be a transparent way, for Wikimania we will get the "waiting nominations from India" from Wikimania committee, and will select top 2 participants. Any other such support will surely be followed by detailed and open community discussion.
Research work: The Centre for Internet and Society is an internet research organisation. A2K program has sometimes been criticised for not able to properly utilise the research expertise of CIS. Based on the feedback and suggestions we have received from WMF and CIS senior management team, this year we would like to dedicate more time, effort and resources on research work related to Indic Wikimedia projects, community health, and especially bridging the gender gap. This will not only result in direct research papers, but we will also provide support to Indic Wikimedians in their Wiki-research work.
Goals:
CIS-A2K's primary goals are:
Program I: Content Enrichment
Program II: Skill development
To create high-quality content across different Indic Wikimedia projects (Wikpedia, Wikisource, Wikidata)
To enrich content across Indic Wikimedia projects by making credible and verifiable resources available for Wikimedians.
To encourage artists, illustrators, design experts to contribute to different Wikimedia projects to increase quality content.
To strengthen skills of Indian Wikimedians by conducting and supporting Wiki-workshops and events, so that they can contribute to the Wikimedia projects and Wikimedia movement
To build sustainable communities of creating and disseminating knowledge relevant to local needs
To further support/develop Wikidata and Wikisource community who can collaborate with open knowledge platforms.
Program III: Partnership
Program IV: Leadership
To establish content and training focused partnerships with research organisations.
Build sustainable partnerships and re-imagine and further improve existing partnerships;
To work with organisations that will support Wikimedians projects by providing in kind support regarding venue, resources and documentation support.
To groom Indic Wikimedians as global ambassadors for their communities;
To reduce possibility of burn out of experienced Wikimedians;
To build structures of support which can amicably resolve matters of dispute in Indic communities;
Program I: Content Enrichment
Creation of high-quality content has been a top priority of CIS-A2K's work-plan and strategy. It is our responsibility to improve content on Indic Wikimedia projects. We will conduct and support a series of Wiki-events which will help to produce quality-content in different Indic Wikimedia projects. We will continue to scale up earlier initiatives and projects that resulted in improving content and quality on Wikipedia projects across the country and will collaborate with groups of varied backgrounds to encourage diversity. We will conduct at least two national level edit-a-thons. We will also conduct/support project-specific edit-a-thons such as Karnataka Rajyotsava edit-a-thon.
We will continue and further improve the Resource Exchange Program which has been helpful for Indic Wikimedians to create and improve Wikipedia articles and other encyclopedic content. We will collaborate with like-minded organisations and thematic groups working on various social, legal, and cultural aspects and conduct different events to generate content in order to bridge the gender gap.
CIS-A2K will continue work with educational institutions such as Christ University, Bangalore, and VVIT, Andhra Pradesh and involve the students of the institutions in different Wiki-activities that will result in quality content-creation. In addition to the two mentioned institutions, we'll collaborate with at least 2 more educational institutions.
Program II: Skill-development
Skill-development initiatives and activities are crucial in empowering Wikimedia communities. CIS-A2K, on a regular basis, receive a large number of requests to conduct and support skill development initiatives. In the upcoming year CIS-A2K will conduct events like:
Zonal workshops: In the previous years, CIS-A2K has conducted several regional workshops with specific communities, on specific Wiki-related topics. Mini-TTT and mini-MWT are follow-up events of TTT and MWT. We conducted focused regional workshops on copyright and free licenses in Delhi, and Bangalore (for Wikimedians in South India). We also conducted regional Wikisource training in Patiala, Ahmedabad, and Bangalore. In the upcoming year, CIS-A2K plans to continue organising such regional workshops. CIS-A2K will conduct four zonal workshops (North, East, West, and South zones), and we will include different topics related to Wikipedia, Wikisource, Wikimedia Commons, and Wikidata. Other than these main zonal workshops, CIS-A2K will conduct/support a minimum of six more workshops for different Wikimedia communities (state-level and language specific).
Wiki Advanced Training, Wiki Advance Training (WAT) is a residential workshop with the goal of providing Advance training on specific Wikimedia projects. In July 2018, CIS-A2K conducted the first iteration of Wiki Advance Training in Ranchi, Jharkhand, with advanced training for Wikipedia (content creation). This year, CIS-A2K would like to conduct the second iteration of WAT with advance training for Wikisource. Different topics related to Wikisource editing, proofreading, templates, gadgets, and tools will be discussed during this workshop. We expect the participation of around 20 active Wikisource contributors, from different Indian communities.
MediaWiki Training and Hackathon, MediaWiki Training is a training program that trains topics related MediaWiki environment, extensions, phabricator, bug fixes and patches etc. This year CIS-A2K will conduct MWT with more hackathon and hands' on the component. CIS-A2K is in communication with Wikimedia Foundation's technical team and asking inputs and suggestions for this event.
CIS-A2K would continue activities with the existing partners, and also explore the opportunities to collaborate with new institutions and organisations that help Indic Wikimedia projects and communities. Our goals of partnering with an institution are:
Bringing free content such as Images, videos, data etc to different Wikimedia projects.
Involving like-minded institutions and people in Wiki activities such as thematic edit-a-thons, uploading photos on Commons, label-a-thon and data-thon, proofreading on Wikisource etc.
Strengthening the communities using our partner resources such as the venue for meetup and Wiki event, access to libraries and restricted content which helps in better content creation.
Increase the awareness about Wikimedia's different projects, free knowledge, licences and training them to use different Wikimedia projects in a better and useful manner.
CIS-A2K will continue working with Christ University Bangalore and will conduct different activities such as:
CIS-A2K is a catalyst organisation and is committed to enhance leadership skills among Indic Wikimedians so that they can further improve the movement in India and strengthen the communities. CIS-A2K would like to extend all possible support to different communities and User groups in order to achieve this goal. Some leadership development initiatives we would like to conduct are:
Train the Trainer: Train-the-Trainer (TTT) is a residential workshop that attempts to groom leadership skills among Indian Wikimedia community members. TTT has been conducted in 2013, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019. This year in an attempt to further improve the event, at this iteration of the workshop, CIS-A2K would like to ensure participation of at least four Wikimedians from neighbouring countries, including Sri-Lanka, Bangladesh, and Nepal. There will be around 25 participants in the workshop and in our continuous attempt to bridge the gender gap, we will ensure at least 25% participation of female Wikimedians.
User group conference: In the last couple of years, several user groups have been recognised from India. Following our conversation with different user groups and their members, we felt the necessity to organise a conference for these active user groups, where they can interact with each other, and share their learnings about their plans, progress, and strategy. Hence, CIS-A2K proposes to conduct a user group conference in the upcoming work plan year. Two members from each user group will participate in the conference, and these participants will be decided on the basis of community discussion and consensus. We expect that this conference will help the user groups to obtain answers to their questions, and plan better for their future.
Request Page: The CIS-A2K Request Page is a platform for Indian Wikimedians where they can ask for support. The Request page supports a variety of requests, including support for organising events, support for participating in events, non-financial requests such as merchandise, etc. CIS-A2K received 36 requests between 1 July 2018 and 20 March 2019. The requests undergo the following steps before approval: Event page creation, community discussion and endorsement, and review by CIS-A2K team members to ensure that the request aligns with the Wikimedia Foundation, and CIS-A2K’s strategy and workplan.
Language
Count
Santali
2
others
10
Hindi
5
Punjabi
7
Telugu
3
Nepali
1
Tulu
2
Malayalam
3
Bengali
3
Research work:Sneha PP, programme manager at CIS's Researchers At Work (RAW) programme will also start work with the A2K team under the Wikimedia Project from the start of the new grant period.
We would like to work with colleagues from the WMF Community Programs team on the following tentative list of research outputs. If there is pushback from the community on any of these research proposals once they are announced - we will design alternative proposals that reflect the priorities of the community.
A2K research officer will work with various volunteers from the community and paid interns to produce a mapping of GLAM institutions across India, including high-level details of their offline and digitised collections, technical infrastructure and human capacities. We will also produce a series of infographics that will help alleviate the anxieties of potential GLAM partners.
the program associate at the Christ Education Programme to develop a detailed case study that captures the evolution of the programme of the last six years.
the Wikidata community advocate to produce a set of instructions for libraries that want to port their catalogue in Koha to Wikidata. We hope to collaborate with some of the luminaries from the Indian Koha community on these research outputs. Both India specific anxieties and also global anxieties will be covered in this series. Saumya Naidu, programme officer at CIS will be responsible for producing the graphics
the gender gap community advocate will produce a set of interview of leading women Wikimedians from patriarchial societies across the world in order to inspire women in India contributing in similarly challenging circumstances.
Apart from the specific research projects that have been listed above, Sneha PP will also conduct research training and workshops for the members of the Indian Wikimedia community during CIS events either as pre-events or as separate tracks or even as small evening discussions. These capacity building exercises can focus on the following topics:
properties of the good research question
introduction to various research methodologies especially for desk research
introduction to critical reasoning
the various steps in producing a methodology document
various models for peer and public review
ethics and handling of personal data
visualisation and design of research findings
an introduction to research dissemination.
We expect this to be a niche interest of Wikimedians so this will be an activity that is done at
small scale with lots of personal attention and care.
Budget
Line item number
Budget Head
FDC(INR)
FDC(USD)
Comments/Explanation
Conversion rate: 1 → US$ 0.01408
1. Program Expenses
1.1
Program Director
192,000
2,703
20% of Program Director's remuneration has been shown in Program Expenses. The Program Director will take part in different Wiki-programs to strengthen the communities, or improve the activities
1.2
Program Manager
720,000
10,138
60% of Program Manager's remuneration has been shown in Program Expenses. The Program Manager will lead most of the A2K wiki-programs and activities
1.3
Program Officer (Communications & Documentation)
540,000
7,603
Communication officer's work include writing blog posts, handling A2K social media channels, managing newsletters, working on documentation of events and activities, communication and collaboration with community members etc.
1.4
Research officer
840,000
11,827
Leading the research works conducted by CIS-A2K
1.5
Wikisource Advisor
504,000
7,096
Advisor for Indic Wikisource projects for CIS-A2K
1.6
Wikidata Advisor
456,000
6,420
Advisor for Indic Wikidata project for CIS-A2K
1.7
Community Advocates
1,480,000
20,838
Community Advocates for Marathi, Odia, Punjabi, Telugu. This year CIS-A2K will further transit from FLA to FPA.
1.8
Program Associate
420,000
5,914
To co-lead education programs in India with community members, supervised by the Program Director, and Program Manager, support A2K cohorts, and metrics
1.9
Research Intern
336,000
4,731
Bridging Gender Gap research work
1.10
Tech Advisor
540,000
7,603
To provide tech support for the Wikimedia projects in India
1.11
Volunteer support
1,200,000
16,896
1.12
Staff travel & stay
250,000
3,520
1.13
Events (includes Workshops and meet-ups)
1,200,000
16,896
Different Wiki-events to be conducted by CIS-A2K such as TTT, workshops, Wikimedia Summit, India and meetups like WikiTungi
1.14
Digitisation
180,000
2,534
1.15
Skill building
600,000
8,448
1.16
General Service & Support to the movement
720,000
10,138
1.17
Creating movement resources
200,000
2,816
1.18
Miscellaneous
120,000
1,690
1.19
Indian Wikimedians' Global Engagement
520,000
7,322
1.20
CIS-A2K members Global Engagement
280,000
3,942
Program Expenses Sub-total
11,298,000
159,076
2. Operational Expense
2.1.
Program Director
768,000
10,813
80% of Program Director's Salary has been shown in Operational Expenses
2.2.
Program Manager
480,000
6,758
40% of Program Manager's Salary has been shown in Operational Expenses.
2.3
Finance Officer
696,000
9,800
Over-all in-charge of CIS-A2K's finance-related work and support the communities
Participants: The number of people who attend your events, programs or activities, either in person or virtually. This definition does not include people organizing activities, social media followers, donors, or others not participating directly.
Newly registered: The number of participants that create new accounts on a Wikimedia project. These include users who register up to two weeks before the start of the event.
Content pages: A content page is an article on Wikipedia, an item on Wikidata, a content page on Wikisource, an entry on Wiktionary, and a media file on Commons, etc. This metric captures the total number of content pages created or improved across all Wikimedia projects.
Footprint tracker: CIS-A2K team would like to continue with the "Footprint tracker" metric. This metric is useful to understand active Wiki-communities, locations with frequent Wiki-engagements, and identify institutional partners for supporting active Wiki-communities. It helped CIS-A2K understand its reach over current plan period, and address concerns of not engaging non-FLA communities. This metric will track the number of outreach events that are organised by Indic Wikimedians with our support. This metric will be able to provide insights to support Wikimedia projects by local bodies and interest shown by communities. Further, this metric will help in devising efficient follow-up mechanisms and will avoid 'reinventing the wheel' regarding social events and needs assessment. A2K team would only count one footprint per city per project irrespective of the frequency of follow-up event or multiple venues for the event. This metric would utilise the geographical distribution of Wikimedians in India and also provide an excellent opportunity for participants of TTT to expand the reach of Wikimedia projects in their communities.
Gender ratio: CIS-A2K would like to introduce a new metric called Gender ratio. This metrics will help us to calculate the ratio of female and male participation in the events conducted by CIS-A2K. We will make sure that 25 % of female will take part in every activity conducted by CIS-A2K. The number of female participants in some of the activities conducted by CIS-A2K in the work plan year 2018-19 is as follows:
Train the Trainer Program (2018): 21.4% (6 out of 28)[3]
↑This includes only the state languages where CIS have offices. It definitely does not mention the language communities we are serving. CIS promotes diversity and inclusiveness, and respects all languages of the country.
↑The program is called CIS-A2K. Short form of The Centre for Internet and Society - Access to Knowledge.
↑ abIn 2018–2019 work-plan year TTT or MWT have not been conducted till 31 March 2019, so we are giving 2018 statistics
Please enter "yes" or "no" for the verification below.
The term “political or legislative activities” includes any activities relating to political campaigns or candidates (including the contribution of funds and the publication of position statements relating to political campaigns or candidates); voter registration activities; meetings with or submissions and petitions to government executives, ministers, officers or agencies on political or policy issues; and any other activities seeking government intervention or policy implementation (like “lobbying”), whether directed toward the government or the community or public at large. General operating support through the FDC may not be used to cover political and legislative activities, although you may make a separate grant agreement with the WMF for these purposes.
I verify that no funds from the Wikimedia Foundation will be used for political or legislative activities except as permitted by a grant agreement
Y Yes
Please sign below to complete this proposal form.
IMPORTANT. Please do not make any changes to this proposal form after the proposal submission deadline for this round. If a change that is essential to an understanding of your organization's proposal is needed, please request the change on the discussion page of this form so it may be reviewed by FDC staff. Once submitted, complete and valid proposal forms submitted on time by eligible organizations will be considered unless an organization withdraws its application in writing or fails to remain eligible for the duration of the FDC process.
Please sign here once this proposal form is complete, using four tildes.
On behalf of the Centre for Internet and Society, with best regards, Tito (CIS-A2K) (talk) 22:33, 31 March 2019 (UTC)
cis-india.org (primary contact)
The text in the document attempts to follow Wikimedia Accessibility guidelines. A WCAG 2.0 check report may be seen here.
Participants of Train-the-Trainer 2018
Indic Wikisource Community consultation (November 2018) participants.jpg)
cis-india.org)
Van Bodh Workshop in Gadchiroli, October 2018
Copyright workshop at Bangalore, October 20181.jpg)
1 → US$ 0.01408
Metrics Infographic
Gender Ratio Infographic
Yes