| Name | Parminder Jeet Singh |
| Institution | IT for Change, Bangalore |
| Nationality | Indian |
| Country of Residence | India |
| Nominated by | Gurumurthy Kasinathan
IT for Change, Bangalore |
| Endorsed by APC (Nominator) | Parminder has participated in the WSIS debates and processes on financial mechanisms, internet governance and implementation and has brought a development and public policy perspective to bear on his contributions. He is adept at asking the questions people often do not wish to engage with and will play a valuable role on the MAG in raising and exploring the development-related dimensions, which are an important mandate of the IGF. He is fully located within civil society, values working in co-operation with other stakeholders and will bring ideas about enhancing multi-stakeholder participation in the IGF and structuring the agenda to maximise participation from the developing world. |
| Endorsed by The Telecenters of the Americas Partnership www.tele-centers.net/ | |
| Endorsed by The Global Telecenter Alliance www.globaltcalliance.net/ | |
| Endorsed by The Community Informatics Research Network www.ciresearch.net | |
| Endorsed by Telecommunities Canada www.tc.ca/ | |
| Nationality | Indian |
| Country of Residence | India |
| Gender | Male |
| Short Bio relevant to Internet Governance | Parminder Jeet Singh is an Executive Director of IT for Change –a Bangalore based NGO (www.ITforChange.net), which has been active in the WSIS process, advocating for the priorities of the South. He spent nearly a decade in government, where he initiated innovative e-governance solutions. During this time, in 2001, he co-authored the book, “Government@Net: E-governance opportunities for India” (Sage Publications). Subsequently, he has worked with many ICTD field projects, as well as in policy research and advocacy related to information society issues. He was the lead researcher and author of the case studies from India that were part of the input into the deliberations of the WSIS Task Force on Financial Mechanisms. He has also presented papers on the role of the public sector and local governments in ICTD in the preparatory conferences and in the regional WSIS processes. He led the civil society response to the ‘Regional Action Plan’ of the Asia Pacific Regional WSIS Conference. Parminder also participated in the WSIS process as a part of the ‘Informal Coalition on Financing’ (a group of 7 NGOs), that made a number of contributions to process.
Parminder recently co-authored a research paper on the “Political Economy of the Information Society: A Southern View”. At present, he is leading a research project for developing a roadmap for re-structuring government institutions in India for taking the benefits of e-governance to the poor. He is also working on an ICT and gender policy framework for Asia Pacific countries for UNDP. Parminder is also the coordinator of a UNDP-funded field project, which aims to bring new ICTs to disadvantaged rural women, and co-coordinator of IT for Change’s research and advocacy project -‘Information Society for the South’ - which is an inter-regional partnership.
Parminder’s interest in Internet Governance is in making this important area accessible to development actors in the South, and in enabling these actors to engage with the gamut of issues in this area – from infrastructure and access to information, content and services - for influencing global and national Internet polices. Towards this, he has been active in pushing development agenda in the WSIS process and after, through the Internet Governance Caucus and other civil society forums.
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| Why the (self)nominee is a good choice for the IGF | Internet governance debates remain shrouded in technical mysteries while the Internet has begun to affect every walk of human life. The Internet is especially seen by developing countries as a major instrument for devising new paradigms of development. It is therefore necessary that issues relating to Internet governance are made accessible to development actors from different sectors and to have these actors represented in global public policy debates relating to Internet governance.
Parminder has been active both (1) in engaging with IG debates from a non-technical public policy perspective in a manner that is most relevant to developing counties, as well as (2) in reaching out to more development actors who may not come from a technical background to involve them in IG issues. |
| Capacity to serve on MAG | confirmed |
| Comments | |
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