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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 col lection 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 childs 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 childs 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.)