The World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) Forum 2018 represents the world’s largest annual gathering of the ‘ICT for development’ community. The annual WSIS Forum is a global multi-stakeholder platform facilitating the implementation of the WSIS Action Lines for advancing sustainable development. The Forum provides an opportunity for information exchange, knowledge creation and sharing of best practices, while identifying emerging trends and fostering partnerships, taking into account the evolving Information and Knowledge Societies.
The WSIS Prizes contest, an integral part of the WSIS stocktaking process, serves as a mechanism to evaluate and recognize individuals, governments, civil society, local, regional and international agencies, research institutions and private sector companies for outstanding success in implementing development-oriented strategies that leverage the power of ICTs.
90 Champions of the prestigious WSIS Prizes contest while the 18 Winners, out of these 90 Champions, were recognized at separate ceremonies at the Geneva International Conference Centre today, as part of the annual WSIS Forum 2018. The submission phase which began from 11 September 2017 to 10 January 2018 received a record number of 685 project submissions, out of which 492 exceptional projects were nominated for WSIS Prizes 2018. Close to a million online votes were cast from 29 January till 18 February 2018 for these projects and following a comprehensive review by the Expert Group lead to the selection of 90 extraordinary ICT-related projects and initiatives for the seventh edition of the WSIS Prize contest.
ISIF Asia was recognized among other 4 projects as a Champion on Category 18 for International and Regional Cooperation. The winner on the category was the Internet Society Digital Schools Chapterton. The other Champions on the category are: African fiber optic Backbone Trans-Saharan (BTS); IST-Africa Institute; and the Satellites for Sustainability project from Inmarsat and the UK Space Agency.
We are honored to share the recognition among such distinguished organizations and we remain committed to champion regional and international collaboration around Internet for development.
Evaluating BGP Replay Tool (BRT) using generated BGP updates and past BGP events
The Centre for Advanced Internet Architectures (CAIA) from the Swinburne University of Technology, explored a new technique that quickly detects different BGP anomalies as part of their Internet Operations Research Grant they received from ISIF Asia during 2016 and implemented during 2017.
The Internet’s default inter-domain routing protocol, the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) is vulnerable to different types of anomalies such as hijacking, misconfiguration, and Denial of Service (DoS) attacks. Although considerable research has been carried out into BGP anomalies, existing approaches were not able to mitigate or identify BGP misconfiguration and lack of ground truth time stamps for BGP events.
In this project, CAIA’s team introduced two new tools, real-time BGP Anomaly Detection Tool (RTBADT) and BGP Replay Tool (BRT), to detect BGP anomalies in real-time. Specifically, RTBADT can be used by ISP operators to monitor and detect BGP anomalies through peering it with the intended peer AS, while BRT is able to replay past BGP updates with time-stamps. These tools enable network operators to protect their network from the worst consequence and mitigate the threats of Internet stability.
In the last 10 years, ISIF Asia has supported women led teams to research and develop Internet-based solutions to improve social and economic outcomes, as well as funding projects focusing on women’s access to services and economic empowerment.
As the celebrations for International Women’s Day continue across the world, we salute these remarkable women for their amazing contributions and their endurance to improve the lives of other people. Some of them have moved on from the projects and organizations that intersected with ISIF Asia, but we follow their success.
Award winners
Nashin Mahtani is the Project Co-Manager and Lead Designer of PetaBencana.id, an Indonesian disaster mapping foundation, where she creates data visualization strategies and new representational forms to explain information and communication technologies and systems. With a background in architecture, her research and design work investigates the relational complexities of urban infrastructure, computation, and neuroscience.
Swati Ramanathan is co-founder of Jana Group, a clutch of social enterprises aimed at urban transformation in India. These include the Janaagraha Centre for Citizenship and Democracy where she leads Janaagraha’s innovations in the use of social media and mobile and internet technology for civic participation.
Shamila Keyani, co-founder of Jaroka mobile-based Tele-healthcare in Pakistan, integrating engineering, health provision and community care (*).
Nancy Margried CEO of Batik Fractal, is dedicated to transform traditional art with technology in Indonesia. Her products are internationally recognized and support thousand of artisans to improve their livelihood as the quality of their products increases.
Dr Sara Saeed Khurram, is the founder and CEO of Sehat Kahani in Pakistan, she is a health innovator, working to improve basic health care in communities through a spectrum of services focused on primary health care consultation, health awareness and health counselling.
Mary Rose Ofianga-Rontal, Philippines. From project manager of a pilot project focusing on health data management to feminist entrepreneur, co-founder of DreamSpace.ph and founder of WomenPowered (*).
Sadequa Sejuti, is an architect from Bangladesh, committed to support women entrepreneurs by developing e-commerce solutions fitted for the developing world. As Managing Director of Future Solution for Business.
Dr. Meenakshi Gauthamhealth researcher focused on rural health services, maternal and child health, equity and quality of healthcare and how mobile health applications for low resource settings can support health services delivery (*).
Chak Sopheap, was appointed Executive Director of the Cambodian Center for Human Rights when she was just 29 years old. She is a human rights activist, globally recognized for her work to defend human rights and support community development in Cambodia.
(*) Also a grant recipient.
Grant recipients
Alexis Chun – Legalese. A lawyer turned entrepreneur, working to solve the problem of contract / corporate lifecycle automation for start-ups.
Maureen Hilyard– Cook Islands Internet Action Group. An educator turned Internet-Governance champion, supporting development projects across the Pacific.
Diana Klein – CoralWatch. A scientific Illustrator/designer turned Citizen Science Project Manager at the University of Queensland in Australia.
Kanchana Kanchanasut – a pioneer for Internet access in Thailand, innovating on access provision with design of devices, networks and access solutions for community benefit. Internet Hall of Fame inductee.
Jacqueline Chen, Singapore. She used to be country director of OperationASHA in Cambodia and is now working at EMpower. An engineer with a public policy master, working to improve health and economic outcomes for women.
Bishakha Datta, is an Indian film maker, activist and a former journalist. She is the co-founder and executive director of Point of View, based in Mumbai, a non-profit working in the area of gender, sexuality and women’s rights.
Lisa Garcia is the Executive Director of the Foundation for Media Alternatives in The Philippines. A human rights expert working at the intersection with ICTs. She and Nica Dumlao led one of the earliest ISIF-funded projects around women’s rights on the Internet. Nica is a feminist activist who has been involved in the social justice movement, on the intersection between human rights and ICTs in The Philippines with regional projection. She works as Digital Rights Coordinator at EngageMedia.
Organizations that received ISIF Asia support around projects focusing on women’s access to services and economic empowerment
ISIF Asia has supported many wonderful women leading project teams during our 10 years of operations. We have also being lucky to support projects focusing on women’s health and economic empowerment. During 2018, and thanks t the support from IDRC, we are calling those working on Gender Empowerment and Innovation to apply for the grants and/or to nominate for the award. Applications are open now until 15 May 2018.
The Internet for Development Grants & Award for Gender Empowerment & Innovation will be allocated to projects/organizations working to achieve gender equality on the Internet industry, focusing on one or more of the following areas:
Building advanced digital skills among women and girls (coding, network management and security, IPv6, big data, sensors, IoT, devices, machine learning, cloud computing);
Supporting women to get involved in network infrastructure deployment to expand Internet access and adoption;
Encouraging the participation of women in digital markets to support women’s economic empowerment as well as capacity building initiatives that support employment paths in the Internet industry;
Promoting the safe use of the Internet for women and girls
Defending women and girls rights online.
I4D for Gender Empowerment and Innovation Grants
For projects working to achieve gender equality in the Internet industry.
2x USD 30,000 to scale up existing projects
1x USD 23,000 for a new project
