Sharada Srinivasan

Strategic Negotiations and Diplomacy

Education

Master of Public Policy, National Law School of India University
Bachelor of Engineering (Electrical and Electronics), Ramaiah Institute of Technology.

Profile

Sharada Srinivasan is currently at the Office of the Chief Economist, Infrastructure Vice Presidency, conducting research on digital development issues. She supports World Bank operations on digital infrastructure in South Asia and East Asia and the Pacific regions. In addition, she contributes to analytical and advisory work across Eastern Europe and Central Asia and Latin America and works on data governance issues globally. She has contributed to the World Development Report 2021 evaluating the effects of data infrastructure and on the enablers and safeguards for trusted data sharing. She is passionate about digital inclusion of women and marginalized communities more broadly, and is a co-author of the Digital Development Global Practice Gender Strategy.

Sharada Srinivasan joined the World Bank from the Center for Technology, Innovation and Competition, University of Pennsylvania where she served as a Research Fellow. At 1 World Connected, a global research project, her research focused on the empirical validation of innovative initiatives that address supply-and demand-side challenges to improve broadband adoption globally. She has conducted fieldwork in rural Rwanda, India, and Vanuatu focused on understanding the link between digital infrastructure rollout and development outcomes.

She was part of the EQUALS Research Coalition on Access, served on the IEEE Humanitarian Activities Committee’s Assessment sub-committee and is part of the United Nations’ Dynamic Coalition on Innovative Approaches to Connecting the Unconnected. In the past, she has engaged with regulatory barriers to Internet deployment in the developing world, cybersecurity and encryption policy in Europe, and debates around network neutrality and zero-rating while at the Global Public Policy Institute, Berlin, and the Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore.

Research Interests/Work

Digital development, digital inclusion, data governance, technology policy, telecommunications regulation

Publications

• Srinivasan, Sharada and Comini, Niccolo and Minges, Michael, The Importance of National Data Infrastructure for Low and Middle-Income Countries (March 2, 2021). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3898094 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3898094
• Pellissery, Sony and Srinivasan, Sharada (2019). Politics of the Making and Unmaking of the Indian Planning Commission: Destiny of non-statutory institutions. In Transformative Law and Public Policy.
• Srinivasan, Sharada and Semlani, Mili (2017). Policy Options for Connecting and Enabling the Next Billions – Phase III Output Document. In Internet Governance Forum
• Godwin, Mike and Srinivasan, Sharada (2016). Charting the Way Forward for Internet Access in India. In R Street Institute