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:
  1. Methods of Investigation – Internet and Society
  2. Status of Frontier Technologies in India
  3. Digital Governance
  4. Platform Companies and Their Approaches to Upholding Citizens’ Rights
  5. Open-Source Technologies for Public Goods
  6. Gender, Intersectionality, and Digital Rights
  7. Circular Economy and Sustainability

 

  1. Types of Workshops

Workshop

Type 1

Workshops will be conducted theme-wise, with experts steering the deliberations and will be participatory in nature.

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

Panel Discussions:

Theme-wise, panel discussions will be organised. Participants will be offered a choice to join any panel discussion as they will be conducted parallelly.

Format:

1. Moderator would introduce the theme and the format of discussion

2. Each panellist will provide an introductory note

3. It will be followed by structured questions of the moderator

4. If time permits, some questions from the audience will be taken

 

Poster presentation:

The poster presentations will be active all day. Universities and research centers will be encouraged to present their research through posters. Some of the selected posters will be taken up by DEF or CDPP to conduct further research.

 

Dialogues:

This emphasizes on a single person/organization’s perspective. A moderator would be steering the conversation (which is usually a structured one).

 

Lightning Talk:

Each speaker gets five minutes and must use a limited number of PowerPoint slides. The main goal is to spark new conversations and collaborations across disciplines with fast-paced presentations.

 

  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 call for papers has been closed