Expression of Interest

for

Workshops during Digital Citizen Summit 2023

Digital Empowerment Foundation (DEF) and Center for Development Policy and Practice (CDPP) is inviting Expression of Interest (EoI) from experienced Institutions / organisations for organising Workshops during Digital Citizen Summit (DCS), 2023.

  1. Introduction to DCS

India and other South-Asian countries have made multiple advancements in the technology sector to adapt to digital lifestyles. In recent years, there has been a disturbing trend towards mass surveillance by government agencies, the invasion of privacy, and acts to curb free speech online accompanied by massive spread of misinformation and fake news. The Digital Empowerment Foundation (DEF) organized Digital Citizen Summit in 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019 to address some of these issues. The annual summit is getting ready again from November 2nd, 3rd and 4th, 2023. The key objective of the summit is to generate actionable policy-based recommendations and lay down steps to promote democracy and digital governance that anchor on human rights. Taking this initiative forward, DEF and CDPP will be organizing the fifth Digital Citizen Summit in November 2023 in Hyderabad.

We invite scholars, researchers, academics, civil society organizations, and Government representatives to engage by presenting papers, participating in sessions, conducting workshops and demonstrations, and attending the summit. We hope to make this a truly multilateral summit by inviting all stakeholder groups to participate.

  1. Objectives
  • To deliberate and arrive at a roadmap for enhancing digital democracy anchoring on digital commons
  • To define and provide solutions that ensure digital human rights
  • To promote and ensure the digital empowerment and development using digital and internet technologies
  • To bring out the best practices around the globe regarding the digital governance
  • To construct a common platform for India to deliberate and draft policy frameworks, make new cohorts that work on digital inclusion, internet governance, and related works

We hope to explore the complex strands of policy, practice, and social reality in order to understand legal and social challenges for developing effective regulation of social media and to identify effective models of governance that the digital technology provides.

  1. Scope of work

The Summit is aimed to facilitate 15 workshops during November 3rd & 4th, 2023. Details of the Workshops and themes are provided below:

Themes Work shops
Methods of Investigation – Internet and Society Workshop 1 Workshop 2 Workshop 3
The Status of Frontier technologies in India Workshop 4 Workshop 5 Workshop 6
Digital governance Workshop 7 Workshop 8 Workshop 9
Platform Companies and their approaches to upholding citizens’ rights Workshop 10 Workshop 11 Workshop 12
Open-source technologies for Public Goods Workshop 13 Workshop 14 Workshop 15

 

  1. Types of Workshops

Workshop

Type 1

Workshops will be conducted theme-wise, with experts steering the deliberations. For example, under the theme of data privacy, a brief introduction will be provided by the expert, and the participants will be asked to break into groups. Each group will be provided with some specific subtopic within the theme. The deliberation will go for half an hour, and then the sub–topic themes will be discussed for another half an hour. Finally, the key points of the deliberation will be the outcome of the workshop.

Type 2

Organisation’s interventions, and how can other organisations adopt them (Learning from each other). Partner organisations can reach out to the stakeholders and share their frameworks.

Type 3

Workshops that depend on the expertise of a single person.

  1. Selection criteria

The four major criteria in the evaluation process will centre around:

  • Proposed Topic – its relevance to 2023 Digital Citizen Summit theme “Commoning the Internet for a Vibrant Democracy” and proper alignment with one of the 8 sub-themes
  • Workshop Content – including its clear focus on one of the 8 selected sub-themes
  • Outcome-Oriented – including whether they relate closely to the proposed topic and connect to outcomes. Outcomes can be policy questions, citizen awareness frameworks, risk assessment frameworks and academic frameworks
  • Engagement – whether the proposal lays out an effective strategy for the interactive engagement of participants and takes the hybrid nature of the meeting into account

The proposals will be selected on a rolling basis. We will accept proposals till July 11, 2023.

To apply: Click here