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How Cloud and Big Data are Helping Protect Children Rights in India

Child Right Trust, India and Hooduku IT Solutions have come together to use cloud, big data and advanced data protection mechanisms to help protect rights of children in Karnataka, India. This paper presents a brief of the initiative, the technology and how you can support their work. For any further information, please contact the companies directly.

The Data Collection Challenge in India

Accurate survey data collection in India has always been challenging due to coverage, quality and

timeliness issues. Non compatibility of figures collected by different organisations, restricted data, lack

of effective checks, non-exhaustive inputs, quality of data recording, delays and inconsistent data

have always presented major challenges.

Funds and policies based on incorrect data tend to be ineffective. Incorrect/no data of the number of

children and categories (disabled, educated, etc.) in a particular area/gram panchayat tends to

compromise the individual health and education requirements of these children. Without proper

monitoring, issues such as child labour, child marriages, child pregnancy, trafficking and run away

cases tend to become common and difficult to track.

This challenge has also been recognised by the Government of India in its Five Year strategic Plan

stating that “emphasis should be on building a robust child tracking, data collection and management

system”.

Project ‘Our Children Our

Progress’

The Child Rights Trust, a public charitable

organization has been working on various

initiatives to uphold children rights. One such

initiative is the ‘Our Children Our Progress’

project in which data collection of all children

in a gram panchayat is done through an

exhaustive house to house survey. This data

is then put on a cloud based server where it

can be used for various purpose (data can be

tracked, stored and analysed).

This project is funded by Everychild, a UK

based charity and all technical support and

implementation is provided by Hooduku IT

Solutions. The project has been tested over

the last two years, and the Government of

Karnataka has provided acceptance to initiate

this project in Raibagh taluk, Belgaum,

Karnataka.

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The information collected during the survey is extensive, covering all aspects of the child’s life from

birth till the time he/she attains adulthood. The parameters collected include the child status (Birth

registration, immunization, nutrition, pre-primary and primary school enrolment, health, marriage,

orphans – semi orphans). Other parameters tracked are related to the child’s movements (Migration

of children with parents/ self, trafficking, missing and run away children, child labour, school

dropouts). The data hosted on cloud servers is analysed and provided to service providers to help

effective tracking of children.

Child Tracking System Benefits

Create a forum for raising the

demand of children rights

Ensure greater transparency and

provide accurate data which can lead to

better policy making

Efficient and comprehensive data

collection with the help of a local

organisation, MASS and trained volunteers.

Not based on a ‘survey sample’ but a

comprehensive individual house to house

survey

Providing expertise and training to

local NGOs in collection, analysis of data

Sensitise and draw attention of gram

panchayats to children issues and develop

the concept of ‘children friendly’ panchayats.

Develop a channel for spreading the concept

of ‘children friendly’ panchayats.

Compilation of an overall all

comprehensive tracking and monitoring

sheet of children which can track the

progress of an individual child across various

parameters

Provide data which can be utilised by panchayats and service providers to plan and

implement remedial measures in case of any issues at a local level. This data can also be

used strategically by various committees to understand children issues far more effectively.

As per Mr. Vasudeva Sharma from Child Rights Trust “The data will help refer children in

need of help to child welfare committees”

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How was all this Possible through Technology?

Data Requirements

Small Business ‘Magic’ Technology

Hooduku IT solutions, a fast growing cloud and mobile technologies provider is the technical partner

in this project. Hooduku is responsible for all software and cloud related aspects-

design/development/testing and deployment of the application.

Hooduku used Cloud and Big Data. Why?

Cloud Computing is a technology providing strong computing abilities to the SMB (Small and Medium

Size Business) sector at reasonable costs. SMBs now need not invest in big end servers and

infrastructure at their end, but simply hire a part of the cloud vendor server space at an affordable

cost. Simply said, SMBs ‘get on the cloud’.

As the amount of data keeps increasing, traditional databases find it difficult to analyse and draw

meaningful results. Big Data refers to technologies and initiatives that involve data that is too diverse,

fast-changing or massive for conventional technologies, skills and infra- structure to address

efficiently. Big Data uses map reduce technology to ensure we get clear analysis and meaningful

conclusions.

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As per Mr. Kiran Kulkarni of Hooduku “Organizations get scared of large data sets and sometimes just

give them up for lack of processing power at the organizational level. The large number of school

children data collected meant we needed data processing and analytic power which could only be

addressed by a technology such as Big Data”.

As per Hooduku, “In this case, the schoolchildren data is a large set, but proper analysis can help us

draw important trends and behavioural patterns. These trends/patterns based on particular

demographic segmentation (example: caste of a child versus education levels) makes us smarter and

promotes greater understanding to take preventive measures”.

The specific technology used by Hooduku was LAMP Stack with Hadoop/Big data for processing

numbers in a distributed environment on AWS elastic cloud servers

Hadoop was used by Hooduku, who prefer using open source software often as “Open source

software implemented well can work extremely well for clients who want value for money. Hadoop is

super-fast and can even work on petabyte scale level data well”.

Social organizations and other SMBs can gain tremendously by getting massive computing and

processing data power at reasonable costs through using these technologies.

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Prevent Misuse of Data

The safety of the data is protected by advanced security measures and complete care is taken to

prevent any theft/misuse of data

Hacking Prevention

The software is developed and hosted on a cloud platform on cloud servers. The security

measure includes Advanced Secure Access Mechanisms (implemented from server side

through SSL encryptions).

Access to the software is only through a password-protected portal

Server Failure / Data backup/Continuance of Service Measures:

Hosted cloud servers are Data Redundant Servers (above 99.9% uptime of servers

guaranteed) with advanced data backup features enabled

Routine data backup & maintenance of software

Prevention of Unauthorised Access/ Snooping Measures:

Access to the software is limited and possible only though Login

Provision to block/delete any user login credentials provided for users

Activity Log & Access Monitoring is enabled

Funding Needs

The project has already been used to analyse information of over 18,000 children and provided

training to over 10,000 personnel on child rights. It is providing an important service to children in

order to protect their rights.

Though partners such as Hooduku are providing concessionary rates, the entire process of data

collection, co-ordination with various entities and software does involves regular funding needs. It is

extremely important that the project goes from strength to strength and does not prematurely stop due

to a lack of budgets. Individuals can come forward, as per Child Rights Trust, with as little as 1% of

their regular monthly income. Organizations can also look at donating and making this a part of their

CSR initiative.

In case you would like to contribute/learn more, please contact Child Rights Trust directly at

childrightstrust@gmail.com Any further information on Child Right Trust and Hooduku can be found at

http://blog.childrightstrust.org/ and http://www.hooduku.com/ respectively.

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The author, Rajeev Mehta (rajeevmehtajobs@gmail.com is a freelance consultant and writer in the Technology,

Media, Telecom space and writes regularly on technology and social related issues.)