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About the APC Communications and Information Policy Work
APC's
Communications and Information Policy Work in 2005
A. Global policy spaces
B. Regional policy spaces: Africa and Latin
America
C. APC’s policy work regionally in Latin
America and the Caribbean
D. APC’s policy work
regionally in Africa
E. National policy spaces
F. National advocacy in Latin America and Asia
APC's previous policy and internet rights
work 2000-2004
Our
goal: To build
more inclusive ICT decision-making processes by facilitating
civil society engagement through building their capacity
and supporting advocacy, at national and international
levels.
Civil society inclusion in policy-making
will lead to their involvement in implementing and monitoring
policies, and ultimately to societies in which there is greater
citizen participation.
Citizens and organisations that want to ensure that the internet
remains a tool and a venue for promoting social, gender
and environmental justice, development and democracy, are
struggling to navigate the terrain of global, regional,
and national internet governance, policy and regulation.
They frequently do not know which issues are on the agenda,
who is debating and deciding them, how their work could
be affected, and how to get involved.
Through our Communications and Information
Policy Programme (CIPP) and the APC Women's Networking
Support Programme (WNSP) APC is implementing global and
regional ICT policy projects that raise awareness, build capacity,
tools and information resources to strengthen civil society
participation in decision-making. APC has been taking advantage
of global processes such as the World Summit on the Information
Society (WSIS) to galvanise civil society awareness of ICT
policy issues, but our ultimate objective is to build participation
in ICT policy at national level.
APC's Communications and Information
Policy Work in 2005
CIPP is active in three policy spaces—global, regional
and national—in response to the priorities laid out
in APC’s strategic plan for 2004–08. Why do we
spread ourselves across these spaces, given the fact that
APC is a small organisation and the policy programme even
smaller?
Holistic approach to ICT policy challenges
centralism
Part of the reason is to approach ICT policy holistically.
APC wants to ensure that policy is not simply handed down
from the dominant policy centres in Washington DC or the European
Union. We want to learn from what stakeholders with real experience
of ICT policy formation
and implementation either regionally or in their own countries
are doing, and apply that learning to policy developments
in each space.
Another
reason is that in an era of the rapid growth of the internet
and broadband networks, in an era of globalisation, ICT policy
cannot be coherently addressed in any one policy space without
reference to what is happening in other spaces. Governments
and international organisations within the UN system traverse
all three spaces. So does the private sector through its International
Chamber of Commerce. CSOs have only recently begun to do the
same.
A.
Global
policy spaces
APC was
active in the UN-coordinated World Summit on the Information
Society (WSIS), a process that started for APC in 2001 and
which culminated in Tunis in November 2005 with the unanimous
adoption of the Tunis
Commitment and Agenda
on the Information Society by all 191 UN member states.
WSIS:
The first UN conference in which all stakeholders were involved
APC supported the interventions of civil society organisations,
making a material difference to the outcomes of WSIS in Tunis
by enriching the debate thanks to civil society’s specific
expertise and experience in ICTs. The greater involvement
of CSOs and other non-state actors may have stemmed from the
specialised technical nature of the WSIS, and does not necessarily
create a precedent for other UN processes. Nonetheless, a
step has been taken in changing the nature of the intergovernmental
process. We believe other global public policy spaces that
require the full involvement of non-state actors in order
to shape policy environments which benefit all could do well
to follow the model.
Prior
to WSIS, UN summits were largely closed spaces for intergovernmental
debate and negotiation on issues of global public policy,
such as sustainable development or gender policy. Civil society
summits ran in parallel to those of government, at venues
usually miles away from the government deliberations. In WSIS,
there was a certain recognition that, where the information
society was concerned, governments were just one of the stakeholders.
So the
WSIS process became the first UN conference in which all stakeholders
were involved—until the point of negotiations, which
remained the prerogative of governments. The private sector
and civil society were nevertheless able to make statements
to the plenary meetings of government, while they were negotiating
the text for the outcomes of the Geneva and Tunis summits.
In addition to this, the atypical Summit format of a two-year
process, starting in Geneva in 2003 and ending in Tunis in
2005, also created spaces in which civil society could get
organised and make a difference.
Internet governance: The creation of a global public policy
space of a new kind—open to all stakeholders
A range of civil society organisations and academic institutions
took up the issue of internet governance—how the internet
is run and will evolve—using as our focal point the
internet governance caucus that was affiliated to the civil
society process within WSIS, and strong disagreement between
governments on internet governance gave civil society an unexpected
opportunity to engage more actively in the process.
The key
shift was in the establishment of the Working Group on Internet
Governance (WGIG) as a multi-stakeholder body in which all
stakeholders had representation. This created an open space
in which all stakeholders had a significant effect on the
outcome of the internet governance debate in WSIS. Within
the WGIG, private sector and civil society participants—including
two APC representatives, APC staff-er Karen Banks and APC
council representative Carlos Afonso—were on a par with
government participants.
The WGIG
report released in September made four sets of recommendations—on
the need for a forum to discuss broad public policy issues
related to the internet, on oversight models for internet
governance, on measures to promote development and access
to the internet, and on capacity building for “developing
countries” to participate more effectively in internet
governance.
With the
exception of the issue of oversight models, civil society
participation was decisive in the other three recommendations.
So the
decision in Tunis to establish an Internet
Governance Forum (IGF) was primarily the result of civil
society’s proposing the idea of a multi-stakeholder
forum within the WGIG and the fact that the WGIG enabled stakeholders
to interact on equal terms. In fact, the issue of a forum
became the key point of consensus in an otherwise unremarkable—as
regards actual ICT-related outcomes—Tunis summit (it
is worth recalling that the idea of a forum had been opposed
by the US government and the private sector during the second
phase of WSIS until it was clear that it had broad support).
After WSIS, the IGF will constitute a global public policy
space of a new kind that is open to all stakeholders.
Issue papers and research: Filling
the information gaps
APC looked for gaps where there was little or no research
or information available on crucial topics for including developing
countries in the information society. We published the findings
in our Issue
Papers series.
As part
of our advocacy on ensuring affordable access to the internet,
APC commissioned a discussion paper on interconnection costs,
which was made available in three languages at PrepCom-3 in
Geneva in September 2005. The paper, produced by South African
Mike Jensen, covered increasing North-South inequities (“paying
both ways”), and proposed strategies for minimising
the disparities in interconnection rates, accelerating the
restructuring of the communications sector, supporting the
establishment of national and international internet exchange
points (IXPS), and building local demand for national and
international backbones.
Paragraph
50 of the Tunis Agenda supports ‘the development of
strategies for increasing affordable global connectivity,
thereby facilitating improved and equitable access for all’.
This includes a focus on interconnection costs and ‘setting
up regional high-speed Internet backbone networks and the
creation of national, sub-regional and regional IXPs’.
APC also
commissioned Professor David Souter of Strathclyde University,
former chief executive of the Commonwealth Telecommunications
Organisation (CTO), to research developing
country participation in WSIS in order to develop recommendations
for measures to promote capacity building in developing countries
that will increase their participation in global policy forums
such as the IGF or the Global Alliance for ICT and Development.
Prof. Souter conducted extensive interviews with leading participants
in the WSIS process as part of an extensive review of the
process over its four-year duration. Seven country case studies
are being undertaken—of Ethiopia, Kenya and Nigeria
in Africa; Ecuador and Brazil in South America; and Bangladesh
and India in Asia. Questionnaires and analysis of WSIS documentation
also form part of the research. The research findings and
recommendations will be published in 2006.
One of
APC’s strategic crosscutting themes prioritised by our
membership since 2003 is the issue of ICTs and a sustainable
environment. In 2005, APC commissioned a paper
on e-waste.
The paper
aimed to raise the profile of e-waste issues in developing
countries so that the implications of ICTs for development
initiatives can be better understood, particularly in the
context of the increasing flow of old technology from developed
to developing countries. The focus is from South Africa, which
is thought to be at the forefront of waste management in Africa,
an assumption that the author questions. Three APC members
contributed to the paper and offered e-waste perspectives
from the United Kingdom and the Asia-Pacific.
International coalitions and partnerships
APC continued our work in other global policy spaces, such
as the UN ICT Task
Force and the Communications
Rights in the Information Society (CRIS) Campaign . Anriette
Esterhuysen, APC’s executive director, chaired the Working
Group on ICT Policy and Governance of the UN ICT Task Force,
and focused on the issue of the participation of developing
countries and CSOs in global policy spaces. APC also participated
in the process leading to the founding of Global Alliance
on ICT and Development, a multi-stakeholder network that will
be launched in Kuala Lumpur in June 2006 and will replace
the UN ICT Task Force.
APC was
active in the CRIS Campaign—an international network
of communications activists that advocates a human-rights
based information society. We co-coordinated CRIS forums at
the World Social Forum in Brazil in early 2005, and the forum
that was eventually cancelled due to government-led intimidation
at the WSIS in Tunisia in November 2005. Karen Banks, APC’s
WSIS coordinator, worked extensively on the CRIS advocacy
toolkit, Assessing
Communication Rights: A Handbook, which was launched at
Tunis. APC coordinated the handbook’s translation and
publication in three languages.
Bringing the regional to the global level
The Africa, Asia and Latin America and Caribbean (LAC) monitor
teams and APC members from the different regions were active
in the WSIS process, and brought a regional focus to bear
at the global level. See more in the next section.
B. Regional
policy spaces: Africa and Latin America
APC is
active in regional policy spaces in Africa, Latin America
and the Caribbean (LAC), South Asia and Europe. Regional policy
spaces enable stakeholders to engage in identifying issues
of common interest beyond the specific interests of individual
states. In Africa, for example, the New Partnership for Africa’s
Development (NEPAD) is promoting an open access approach to
the East African Submarine Cable System (EASSy) to ensure
that the costs of access to the cable’s bandwidth are
kept as low as possible. In LAC, states have adopted the eLAC2007
Action Plan to address common interests in ICT policy regionally,
such as FOSS, the introduction of digital television, universal
access and internet governance.
In 2005,
CIPP participated in the South Asia WSIS consultation meeting
in Dhaka and the Asia Pacific Regional PrepCom, Tehran, in
May, and began developing an Asia ICT policy monitor, but
most of our work regionally focused on Africa and LAC.
C. APC’s
policy work regionally in Latin America and the Caribbean
In the Latin American region, the LAC ICT Policy Monitor project
supports the involvement of civil society organisations in
regional and national policy spaces by building capacities
to understand and influence ICT policy processes.
The LAC
Monitor team participated in the WSIS Regional Conference,
held in Rio, 8–10 June 2005, which approved the Latin
American regional plan for the information society—eLAC2007.
Proposals made by APC members and staff were included in the
final eLAC2007 proposal. APC and other civil society groups
will monitor how the multi-stakeholder approach is assured
in the implementation of the eLAC2007 and will promote a regional
debate focusing on universal access policies.
APC regularly
translates our Latin American policy coverage into English.
We found that well-known international policy analysts were
unaware of the eLAC2007 initiative until APCNews reported
on it in November.
In 2005,
the LAC Monitor was part of a regional team convened by the
United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation
(UNESCO) to develop guidelines for the formulation of national
information policies. UNESCO has plans to disseminate the
guidelines among LAC governments as a tool to support the
shift in the conception of information policies only related
to media to a broader policy approach that integrates ICTs
and the information society into its formulation and implementation.
Strategies for poverty reduction
The LAC ICT Policy Monitor participated in a regional workshop
on ICT strategies for poverty reduction, convened by the International
Institute for Communication and Development (IICD) and the
Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), in La
Paz, Bolivia. The LAC Monitor team led the drafting group,
which developed the conclusions of the workshop. The conclusions
were used by the SDC for a book launched during the WSIS II
in Tunis: Information
and Communication Technologies and large-scale poverty reduction:
Lessons from Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean.
At Latin
America’s most prestigious regional training for network
specialists—WALC—the LAC Monitor team put together
a five-day ICT policy training workshop on “Internet
and Society” in Merida, Venezuela, 25–29 July
2005. By bringing together people from public institutions,
private sector and civil society organisations, the workshop
offered a space for planning joint interventions around specific
ICT policy issues at national level. People working in similar
fields and pursuing similar objectives were able to meet each
other and explore collaboration.
The LAC
Monitor commissioned research
into the analysis of legislation and statutes of internet
rights in eleven LAC countries. The different examples available
provide excellent background information for those civil society
groups preparing to get involved in ICT policy processes.
To help
orient our civil society readers in Latin America on major
ICT policy issues at stake in the region, in 2005 the LAC
Monitor released three thematic newsletters on technological
alternatives for rural development, and key updates on the
run-up to WSIS and what to expect in the aftermath.
D. APC’s
policy work in the Africa region
In Africa in January and August, the Africa
ICT Policy Monitor provided a space to support civil society
involvement in global spaces such as the WSIS through running
online policy discussions on ICT policy priorities for Africa,
internet governance and financing ICTD, as well as contributing
to capacity-building workshops at the Regional Africa PrepCom,
Accra, Ghana, in February 2005.
The Africa
ICT Policy Monitor continued its content and information selection
and gathering. Following the completion of the revamp of the
website in 2004, in 2005 the Africa project team focused on
adding content to the website, and from January collected
480 news items (an average of 10 items per week) and 200 resources
items (an average of 5 items per week). The content is sourced
by monitoring mailing lists, news sources, and through content
partnerships, and, as expected, the website usage continued
to increase, with an average of 6,300 pages visited each day.
The Africa ICT Policy Monitor launched the Francophone
Africa ICT Policy Monitor site at WSIS in Tunis in November.
APC participated
in OSIWA’s “Achieving
affordable bandwidth” workshop, held in Senegal
in December, which has led to APC’s role in supporting
a campaign for
open and affordable access to the East African Submarine Cable
System (EASSy) during 2006, and which has received major attention
in the international press.
While
much of APC’s work in Africa has focused nationally
as part of the CATIA process (more in next section), the association
also organised a regional ICT policy and advocacy training
workshop with local partners in Kinshasa, in February 2005.
One of the outcomes of the meeting was the elaboration of
a strategic plan for DMTIC
(Multi-sector Dynamics for Communication and Information Technologies)
—the first Congolese multi-stakeholder alliance working
on ICT policy.
E.
National
policy spaces
Through
the CATIA programme, APC, as the lead implementer of the CATIA
programme’s component 1c on African-led advocacy for
ICT policy reform, continued supporting five national advocacy
processes in Africa. Our CATIA work started in March 2004,
and is carried out through supporting existing initiatives
and developing the capacity of informed advocacy groups and
individuals from the private sector, civil society, and the
media.
In Kenya,
the liberalisation of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP)
is increasing competition in the internet services market,
and ISPs are increasing their number of customers and providing
an affordable service. The gradual process around FOSS in
Ethiopia may in the medium to long term have the effect of
reducing some of the costs associated with e-government.
In the
Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the possibility of developing
an open access metropolitan network in Kinshasa in the medium
term may have an impact on the high costs of accessing the
internet through cyber cafes in Kinshasa. The introduction
of a national backbone network may only occur in the medium
to long term.
In Nigeria,
there is some possibility of community radio regulations being
implemented to lower the cost of acquiring a community radio
licence. In Senegal, greater awareness of the value of ICTs
has been raised with the media in order to promote better
coverage of ICT policy issues.
So
how did the African national advocacy campaigns get on in
2005?
It was
really a year of planning and teething problems for the national
campaigns, and most results are expected in 2006. However,
positive policy and regulatory reform really took off in Kenya.
KICTANet,
as a multi-stakeholder advocacy network, undertook a range
of inclusive policy debates with the government, private sector,
the media and consumers, and collaborated
closely with the government in the formulation of the ICT
policy which was approved by the Cabinet in January 2006.
These include online and face-to-face consultations on the
Kenya ICT policy with stakeholders. At the regulatory level,
KICTANet advocacy played a direct role in the liberalisation
of VoIP by the regulator, Communications Commission of Kenya
(CCK).
Three
countries formed networks to take their advocacy process forward—KICTANet
in Kenya, EFOSSNet in Ethiopia, and DMTIC in DRC. KICTANet
has created a replicable model of a multi-stakeholder advocacy
network, which included participation of the private sector
(ISPs), civil society organisations and consumer groups, and
the permanent secretary of the Ministry of Information and
Communications. The main lesson emerging from the CATIA programme
is that national advocacy is most successful when driven by
a multi-stakeholder network.
F.
National
advocacy in Latin America and Asia
The LAC Monitor ran five ICT policy awareness-raising and
training workshops in three provinces of Ecuador within the
framework of the Infodesarrollo.ec (developmentinfo.ecuador)
network. The workshops provided the participants—from
civil society organisations and academia—with a space
for getting to grips with the impacts of ICT policy decisions
made nationally—crucial when considering that Ecuador
has some of the highest internet connection costs in the world.
Participants worked on defining strategies and collective
proposals, which included the creation of multi-stakeholder
mechanisms to fully participate in policy decisions around
ICTs at the national and local levels.
In a workshop
on ICTs for the development of indigenous people, held
in Quito, the LAC Monitor was invited to facilitate the ICT
policy-related sessions and look at the cultural diversity
aspects of ICT policy. The LAC Monitor was also invited to
introduce ICT policy issues to radio techies from Latin American
community radios.
In Bangladesh,
a national advocacy process on broadband policy to lower the
cost of internet connections began, in partnership with BFES,
with the aim of reducing poverty as part of APC’s work
in the Building Communications Opportunities (BCO) alliance.
Results are expected in 2006.
APC's previous policy and internet
rights work 2000-2004
Take a look at our annual reports from 2000,
2001,
2002,
2003
and 2004.
Each has detailed sections covering this programme's work
and they're easy-to-digest - we promise!
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ICT Policy & Internet Rights
