2007 IGF in Brazil

Stakeholders from around the world met in Geneva last week to finalize the program for the sixth annual 2011 Internet Governance Forum (IGF) which will be held in Nairobi in September. The focus of this year’s event will be on how to govern mobile Internet.

The consultations this past week garnered consensus for the final program and agenda for September.

Participants from around the world met in Geneva with the aim of maximizing the opportunity for the IGF to enable open, inclusive dialogue and draw on their experience.

Alice Munyua, Project Director for Catalyzing Access to ICTS for the Communications Commission of Kenya (CCK), chaired the second preparatory consultations of the IGF.

The finalized program is developed through and open process that began earlier this year and is overseen by a “Multi-stakeholder Advisory Group” of experts appointed by the UN Secretary General.

This year’s theme for the 2011 IGF is, “The Internet as a Catalyst for Change: Access, Development, Freedoms and Innovation”.

The stakeholders had an extensive discussion about what workshops would be important to include on the role of mobile, Internet, technology and their contribution to development.

A question to be highlighted in the forum was posed by a representative of the International Code Council (ICC): how will governance for the mobile Internet be differentiated from the wired world?

She divulged that governing this divide must be addressed as mobile has become a crucial part of how developing regions can tap into the marketplace:

On the area of mobile services and in particular for the region, it’s really an entry point to the Internet for many points of the world. There’s a leapfrogging, in essence, into this space. And I think examples of the mobile banking have been really exemplary in that.

With more than 4 million Kenyans accessing Internet through their mobile phones, this year’s IGF will prove to be an important forum for discussing and considering these issues, how they affect people in developing regions, and how it should be governed.

“…As you know, the lack of experts in capacity in relevant Internet governance issues is hampering participation of developing countries, especially Africa, on the policies, standards and also critical issues,” a representative for the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) stated in the consultations.

During the four days of the IGF in Nairobi, the main workshops will focus on issues such as broadband and mobile access; the resources critical to the stabilization and secure operation of the Internet; cybersecurity, privacy and Internet rights; along with innovative entrepreneurship and digitalizing local content.

Additionally, the multi-stakeholder team of experts have organized over 90 workshops to  cover a broad range of Internet policy and technology issues.

Esoko application billboard in Accra, Ghana

The global movement to improve agriculture and natural resources management through ICT takes center stage this week at the fourth InfoDev Global Forum in Helsinki.

Though in its nascent stage, the forum attracts a wide cross-section of attendees (business incubator managers, policy-makers, SMEs, financiers and development agencies)  from around the globe “for a unique South-South and North-South networking and knowledge-sharing experience”.

The four day forum, which ends on June 3, zeros in on mobile applications for agri-businesses and clean technologies. Yesterday, a  high level panel discussion featuring experts from the World Bank, FAO, AgriCord, Uganda and Kenya examined the varied use of mobile technology in agriculture and the management of natural resources, namely forestry. The discussion was a prelude to the launch of a new virtual resource that the experts believe will function as a “living updatable document”.

The e-Sourcebook “Information and Communication Technologies for Agriculture” will be released in October. The resource will feature a plethora of ICT innovations and examine their potential to improve agricultural development.

This year marks the fourth staging of the bi-annual event, which is functioning within the framework of a joint program with the Government of Finland and Nokia to create sustainable businesses for a knowledge economy. The $17 million program seeks to enhance the competitiveness of the information and communication technologies (ICT) and agribusiness sectors in small and medium sized emerging markets.

A key feature of the two year initiative is the use of mobile technologies to provide content, services and applications for developing countries. This development comes less than a year after global mobile subscriptions topped five billion, according to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU).

Despite improvement in mobile subscriptions, access to fixed phone lines and internet usage, the ITU says one billion people worldwide still lack connection to any kind of ICT. This is particularly problematic for the drive to improve agriculture as  most  people without access to any form of ICT depend on agriculture to some extent  for their livelihoods.

The Global Forum was last held by Brazil in 2009.

On May 16-20^th, world leaders gathered in Geneva for the annual World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) Forum.  Speakers emphasized the role of incorporating ICTs into all aspects of the MDGs as opposed to the previous goal of providing ICT access.

This type of rhetoric respecting the role of ICTs is different than previous global summits and conferences.  In 2000, when the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) were first released, the eightieth goal – Global Partnership – included a specific target to “make available new technologies, especially information and communications.”  Subsequently, the 2010 MDGs Report included measurements of ICT availability and number of users.  In this report, ICT usage was the primary goal.

However, more recently, the ITU and UNESCO announced the establishment of the Broadband Commission for Digital Development, which embraces ICTs as “uniquely powerful tools for achieving the MDGs.”  One of the commissioners, Bruno Lanvin, boldly explains: “Broadband is not just about infrastructure…it presents the opportunity for a quantum leap.  …We may soon discover that Broadband has been the biggest absolute accelerator in our efforts to realize the MDGs.”

The shift in rhetoric surrounding ICTs is now beginning to affect international measurements.  For example, last month the World Economic Forum released The Global Information Technology Report 2010-2011, and announced new changes to the Network Readiness Index.  The WEF acknowledged that the original index “falls short in looking at the impacts of ICT usage,” and in their revised index elements such as business innovation, governance, citizens’ political participation, and social cohesion are incorporated, demonstrating the acceptance of ICTs as important development tools in all sectors.

A keynote speaker at the WSIS Forum, Mr. Mohammed Nasser Al Ghanim, Director General of the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority in the UAE, explained that ICTs are crucial for “every sector of the economy and contribute to areas so diverse as health, education, and public safety.”

Other forum sessions at the conference further emphasized the importance of ICT utility in achieving all of the MDGs, including “Better Life in Rural Communities with ICTs,” and “ICTs as an enabler for Development of LDCs.”

The second day of the conference, May 17^th, was the annual World Telecommunications and Information Society Day.  In a public video celebrating the event, ITU Secretary-General Hamadoun I. Touré states: “It is time for global action to connect rural communities to the opportunities offered by ICTs.”

The WSIS Forum 2011 verified the need to utilize ICTs to accelerate the completion of all the MDGs.  This change in rhetoric and measurements regarding ICTs will likely affect public policy in the short future.  The WSIS Forum 2011 was an important marker in the history of ICT4D.  ICT access and connectivity is the means to making sustained impacts in all the MDGs, but is not the end goal in itself.

When a large scale disaster strikes the world watches. Twitter gets flooded with reports, pictures and prayers. CNN, BBC, Sky News and Al Jazzera all break their regular programs to show us terrifying images of what is happening.

Thankfully only 2-3 large scale disasters strike every year. Depending on the magnitude and location of the disaster, the media and people loose interest within a few days or weeks. At the same time we have many medium scale disasters that happen around the world on almost a daily basis. If they strike US then we hear about them for a while, but if they happen in remote places of the world like Sri Lanka, Indonesia or Ghana then they at usually go un-noticed by most people. This is however usually not the case for the local media and the local population of the country affected.

In the last 2 years we have seen efforts being born around utilizing social media, social networks and digital volunteer groups to help deal with the explosion of information that we now get through mobile phones and social media. While these efforts are promising and do provide us with opportunities for gathering, processing, analyzing and disseminating information in ways we have not been able to do so far, then they do fall short in one important part and that is that they are not sustainable for the long-term and repeatable for the large number of disasters that occur every year.In my visits to disaster prone countries, where I have been speaking to them about the importance of preparedness, they all spoke of interest in all of these new technologies and efforts that have been getting so much attention in the press and at conferences around the world.

What they complain about is that nobody has reached out directly to them and shown them how they can make use of these tools. The reason is that we in the global humanitarian and technology community have been too focused on trying to figure out how to do things at a global scale that we have largely ignored the local perspective. Some might argue that the jet-setting trips of the leaders of the digital volunteer community to conferences around the world have been focusing on this effort, but I would like to argue that in most cases these have not necessarily resulted in more than short-term awareness building. Often these conferences have also been mainly attended by people who are not active in the disaster response community.One could also say that recent efforts of setting up crowd-maps following disasters in Pakistan, New Zealand and Japan, driven by local actors are samples of how things really work.

While I agree that great work has been done by those local actors, then I would also argue that much greater work could have been achieved if we had focused more on preparedness and building local capacity before these disasters struck. Then we could have ensured that the information gathered was actionable and relevant to the response. We could also have ensured that the response community was utilizing this new medium to the fullest.Over the last year we have put a lot of focus into building a global capacity to deal with crisis. We have established the Stand-by Volunteer Task Force, we have established connections with the global response community (UN, NGOs, Red Cross) and we have had great examples of how this effort can really provide information to the response community.A promising change to this was an effort lead by the US State Department that started last week in Indonesia under the name TechCamp Jakarta. There they brought together key people from the new technology community and some of the actors from the local response community. It was a great first step, but more is needed to follow up on this.

What we need to do is to put focus on building up local capacity in disaster prone countries, especially those in the developing world. We can then leverage the global capacity we have already built up to help support these local efforts when their capacity is overwhelmed. We can also leverage the technologies, processes and training we have already put together for these global efforts. So what is needed to build up that local capacity?

1) We need to bring together the various actors involved in disaster response in the country. This includes the government, the UN, the NGOs, etc. Often there may be existing forums that can be leveraged, but often these need to be extended to ensure inclusiveness of all the local actors.

2) We also need to bring in the local technology community. They are the ones who can help adapting the global solutions to the local needs. This includes members of the local open-source community, but also people from the private sector technology companies.

3) We also need to bring in the academic community. Students have in the past been the basis for any grass-root effort we have seen around crisis information management. Together these various actors from the different communities make up the local crisis information community.

4) We need to provide standardized & localized, on-line and in-person training to this community on how to utilize these technologies to achieve better information sharing during disasters.

5) We need to drive awareness of the potential of these efforts to the response community. Through that awareness building we can build the relationships needed between the volunteer community and the response community

6) We need to provide standardized yet flexible processes that the local community can utilize to ensure that their efforts are actually resulting in providing actionable and accurate information to the response community.

7) We need to work with the local mobile providers to establish short-codes for citizens to use for direct reporting into the systems.

8) We need to provide the local community with awareness building material (advertisements, banners, etc.) to build a volunteer community and to make citizens aware of short-codes.

9) We need to provide the local community with mentorship from the global community on establishing the community and running this effort.

10) We need to work with local web portals (newspaper, social networks, etc.) to get them to direct people towards the efforts of the local community instead of establishing their own.

11) We need to help the local community run simulation exercises where they can train their volunteers and first responders in utilizing the technologies.

12) We need funding from the donor community to help drive these efforts in 20 of the top disaster prone countries in the world.

In my discussions with the response community in Indonesia, then the recent TechCamp event generated an interest that we should leverage to pilot a local capacity building effort for one of the most disaster prone countries in the world. I know the interest within the response community is high and that the BNPB (Indonesia’s version of FEMA) would welcome better information sharing amongst the various responders. Big question is if we can leverage that interest to find donors who are willing to fund a crisis information management “revolution” one disaster prone country at a time.

Did Facebook really fuel the revolutions: (Photo credit: Harvester Solution)

On May 5th at American University, a group of international scholars and Internet governance policymakers engaged in informed dialogue on current Internet issues at the Giganet conference.

One panel entitled “Revolution 2.0” featured two Middle Eastern Internet experts from Egypt and Tunisia arguing that social media was an aid in helping citizens topple the dictatorships, not it’s catalyst.

Khaled Koubba of the Arab World Internet Institute in Tunisia shared his experience in the revolution where 20,000 cyberactivists and opponents of the regime gathered in front of the Ministry of Interior on January 14, 2011.

“It is true that we used the 2.0 tools but it is not for sure that [it was] the 2.0 revolution or the Facebook revolution,” he stated, “it has been made by people who fight for their dignity, for their life…”

He acknowledged the message reiterated in the press that Twitter and Facebook were used to mobilize people and share information; but pressed that these social media tools also helped citizen’s regain confidence in their liberties, freedoms, and abilities to make change.

“Even after Ben Ali left, we are continuing even today to put pressure on the government [in] many ways using the 2.0 tools to make change to attain what we want to attain,” Khaled asserted.

He cited two controversial videos, currently circulating on Facebook, of Farhat Rajh, Tunisia’s current interior minister, speaking about some very contentious issues of the ex-ruling party and the elections to be held on July 24.

Nivien Saleh, an Egyptian and professor of International Studies in Texas, echoed Khaled’s sentiments that technology does not necessarily liberate.

It is the people who liberate themselves from an authoritarian government onto democracy. Social media is only one of the communication avenues that drive the mass outlook.

She maintained alternate forms of communication, such as strategies for non-violent resistance through targeted outreach, coupled the latent feeling of dissatisfaction, are the real central pillars for a population to mobilize change.

Professor Shaleh also questioned the future role that Internet governance will take in regulating the content of social media

“What standard [do] providers of social media such as Facebook decide [in terms of] what kind of content can make it onto their media platforms and what cannot,” she wondered outloud to the crowd.

She referenced the Khaled Said group on Facebook, where the government asked Facebook to remove disturbing pictures of the deceased Alexandrian martyr posted by activists.

“Facebook forced the activists to take the pictures down, even though [they were there] in the first place to protest and show that stuff like this actually happens,” Shaleh said.

It is blazingly clear from these two Middle Eastern scholars that this was not a Facebook revolution, it was a citizen’s revolution and social media was merely a channel to funnel change.

Please view the video below of the Giganet conference’s panel “Revolution 2.0: the Internet and the Middle East and North Africa” and the panelists viewpoints on the role that social media played in the Middle East’s uprisings: