{"id":3476,"date":"2024-10-13T17:39:51","date_gmt":"2024-10-13T12:09:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/annual-reports.itforchange.net\/reports\/?page_id=3476"},"modified":"2024-10-13T18:55:45","modified_gmt":"2024-10-13T13:25:45","slug":"note-from-directors-2023-24","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/annual-reports.itforchange.net\/reports\/note-from-directors-2023-24\/","title":{"rendered":"Note From The Directors 2023-24"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\tA Note From The Directors\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/h1>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>
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In the digital realm change is a constant. The ebb and flow of the field demands alacrity in directions, agendas, and strategies. At IT for Change, we have attempted to make sense of, and respond with agility to, the ever-shifting frames of the digital, keeping alive the political project that is digital justice.<\/p>\n

Even by the old normal that demanded careful attention to techno-social upheavals, both big and small, the past year marks a tectonic shift. For one, the tech discourse moved decisively into the space of public discourse. The racialized and gendered margins powering artificial intelligence (AI) value chains, the colossal energy footprint of Big Data, the dreadful hate churned out by algorithmic social media circuits, the near-impossible enormity of bridging inequities in digital cultural capital are now a part of public discourse. They are also at the center of policy preoccupations.<\/p>\n

The \u2018liberalize or perish\u2019 dogma in digital trade experienced a setback from an unexpected quarter. In late 2023, the US dropped digital trade demands at the World Trade Organization (WTO). Big Tech lobbyists in the US had convinced the Trump administration in 2019 to slip into the North American Free Trade Agreement the laissez-faire idea of \u2018free cross-border data flows.\u2019 This would restrict governments, especially in the South, from intervening to protect citizens\u2019 privacy, market competition, and regulatory space, even preventing the necessary scrutiny of algorithms by courts. With mounting pressure from digital rights and trade justice activists, the US withdrew the proposal at the WTO.<\/p>\n

Additionally, there have been critical gains for labor in the feisty battle with digital capitalism. For platform workers, the European Parliament\u2019s vote early this year in favor of new rules to improve their working conditions was an important victory.<\/p>\n

Further, renewed multilateral attention to addressing the democratic deficit in global digital cooperation has led to an array of measures, including the recent Global Digital Compact.<\/p>\n

Closer home, in India as well, we have seen some positive trends. State governments have come forward to recognize gig workers\u2019 entitlements; nine out of 10<\/a> lower-income Indian households, including in rural India, are now online; and the publicly provisioned Unified Payments Interface (UPI) system has created ripples everywhere.<\/p>\n

However, technology cannot and does not transform the social opportunity structure on its own. The Digital India story is equally about gendered barriers to access and the lack of online safety for women and girls. Also, with little change in the lived realities of the marginalized, a focus on the basics of systemic change \u2014 a complete overhaul of economic and social policy vision \u2014 must lead the new techno-institutional order.<\/p>\n

Globally and locally, the fight for our common future hinges on the architecture of societies and economies in the emerging political economy of digitalization. Yes, there is broad consensus that Big Tech\u2019s shenanigans need reining in. But the devil is in the details, and a new digital reality needs much more than tweaking at the edges.<\/p>\n

For organizations and movements who have engaged consistently with issues of institutional transformation and development justice, 2023-24 was a watershed moment as the digital agenda became integral to their imagination. Global justice now means working closely with digital justice issues whether at national levels on internet access and free speech; digitalization of welfare, agriculture, education, and health; AI-related harms, or with regional and multilateral fora on equitable, inclusive, and democratic digital societies. The tragic consequences of the weaponization of digital technology \u2014 the terror of mindless intelligence deployed for war \u2014 have also galvanized people\u2019s movements the world over. Many are calling out Big Tech\u2019s nexus of violent greed with the imperial powers.<\/p>\n

People\u2019s movements and organizations are keen to explore alternative imaginaries vigorously, and we are seeing confident articulations of the tech we want from gig workers of the world, feminists doing tech design, indigenous people reclaiming their data, and climate justice activists protesting digital extractivism.<\/p>\n

The groundswell for convergence towards action is here, and we as social change actors seem to be ready with a collective discernment about actors and motivations in neoliberal digitality. We know that big is not necessarily beautiful, and a people\u2019s tech, a public interest tech, calls for new institutions to be built for the people, by the people.<\/p>\n

The path ahead is not without adversity \u2014 the contradictions of a market-first model, which simultaneously entrenches corporate power in the economy while legitimizing infinite possibilities for state censorship, are unfolding every day. The discourse of digital sovereignty is on the political agenda of the far right. Governments the world over are bandying about the language of platform accountability while writing laws that happily acquiesce to surveillance capitalism\u2019s societal plunder, aggrandizing the powers to censor people\u2019s voice. As Rachel Griffin<\/a> argues, these developments are \u2018neo-illiberal.\u2019<\/p>\n

For the Global South the task is uphill. The political heat surrounding the recent banning of X in Brazil, and right-wing mobilization around agendas of free speech speak to a dangerous alliance of convenience between regressive political forces and the Big Tech lobby. What the turn of events in Brazil suggests is that the struggle to balance basic rights and combat the corporate takeover of society in a deeply polarized environment is tricky and tough. And one that Brazil is far from alone in grappling with.<\/p>\n

The canvas is webbed and super complex \u2014 we can agree. But this is no moment for paralysis. At IT for Change, we have taken on the complexity, tackling it with quiet gumption \u2014 with readiness, resilience, and resolve.<\/p>\n

This year, we initiated the mammoth work of cross movements-based advocacy through the Global Digital Justice Forum. We broached conversations boldly with the unconverted. We held briefing sessions for officials from the EU and Dutch Ministries on digital innovation and data governance. We were called in as resource persons to orient diplomats in the Permanent Missions in New York on various themes of global digital cooperation and international governance. In these intensive exchanges with policymakers, our inputs came across as pertinent and provocative.<\/p>\n

We collaborated with UN agencies on influential processes, shaping agendas, documents, and text, notably, the UN Global Digital Compact negotiations, UNCTAD\u2019s Data for Development Issue Paper, and UNESCO\u2019s Model Law on Platform Accountability. Government delegations from the South openly voiced their appreciation for our inputs stressing a decolonial data and AI governance paradigm.<\/p>\n

We co-developed digital platform services grounded in feminist design principles for marginal women farmers and women workers in the informal urban economy across three states in India, in partnership with leading social enterprises in the country.<\/p>\n

We worked with governments in India to concretely push for social justice in tech policies. Our Roots of Resilience conference, co-organized with the Platform Cooperativism Consortium and the Kerala Development and Innovation Strategic Council, was an important milestone: a civic-public partnership for sustainable and people-oriented tech models.<\/p>\n

We embarked on a simple and elegant AI model for language teaching, that puts the teacher at the center of designing pedagogic responses relevant to learner contexts and needs. The model facilitates multilevel, multilingual, and multimodal approaches to language teaching, fostering inclusive education, even as mainstream AI has, tragically, worsened stratification in education. For us, our experiments are not only about decentralized language AI models with the potential to build foundational language abilities. They are equally about demonstrating \u2018public AI\u2019 pathways: AI that is publicly owned, with local and decentralized custody and control of device, code, and data.<\/p>\n

We are proud to have assisted diverse movements and trade union federations, building their knowledge and tactical repertoire about vexatious questions on data and AI governance, while continuously learning about the frontier issues that escape the ivory towers of policy.<\/p>\n

We found enormous hope and joy in our work on digital media with adolescent girls from marginalized urban and rural communities, who creatively owned up the tech to find their voice, forge peer solidarities, and assert their rights \u2014 to mobility, education, and self-determination.<\/p>\n

We engaged closely with global networks, including the the OECD Watch, the T20, the Platform Cooperativism Consortium, the Coalition against Online Violence, and UN agencies, to shape and inform global guidelines for social media and platform governance.<\/p>\n

And we are grateful that our work is having a huge impact in:<\/b><\/p>\n