I think along with my community informatics colleagues, that decisions should be made as close to those impacted as possible. I think that those impacted by decisions should be involved in those decisions. I think that multistakeholder processes potentially provide a means for the otherwise voiceless to have a voice in broader policy and programme decisions.

What I don’t believe in are multistakeholder processes that are surrogates for transferring additional power to self-appointed elites or insiders. What I don’t believe in are processes of decision making which are done without transparency, accountability, explicit procedures, or even-handedness in governance. What I don’t believe in is the transfer of otherwise democratic processes of decision making to multistakeholder processes because it seems easier to talk with a small group than with a larger one, to deal with one’s friends rather than with outsiders, to make decisions among those with explicit private interests rather than basing decisions on due and inclusive considerations that recognize and incorporate the public interest and the general good.

I’m currently, with others, working on behalf of the e-Africa Directorate of the African Union to find ways of further enabling the broadest base of participation in a series of multistakeholder processes which I consider to be very successful in their domain. I consider these to be successful because they are locally anchored and are re-nationalizing planning processes which had, to a considerable degree, been taken over by external donors; they have clear and transparent processes of internal operation and inclusion; they work to be representative and broadly based within contexts where this is extremely difficult do achieve.  These processes aren’t perfect by any means but they are striving towards improvement and are willing to engage in self-examination.

I think these processes are consistent with Anita Gurumurthy’s comments to the WSIS +10  Review where she said:

Multistakeholderism is a framework and means of engagement, it is not a means of legitimization. Legitimization comes from people, from work with and among people. We need to use this occasion of the WSIS plus 10 review to go back to the the touchstone of legitimacy – engage with people and communities to find out the conditions of their material reality and what seems to lie ahead in the information society. From here we need to build our perspectives and then come to multistakeholder spaces and fight and fight hard for those who cannot be present here.

Multistakeholder processes could and should enhance democracy by increasing opportunities for effective participation by those most directly impacted by decisions and particularly those at the grassroots who so often are voiceless in these processes. It should enhance democracy by ensuring that decisions made are reflective of and responsive to local concerns and to the broadest range of those who must bear the consequences. It should enhance democracy by making democratic processes more flexible and responsive, able to adjust to changing contexts circumstances, technologies, impacted populations.

To do this means shifting away from multistakeholderism as a “means of legitimation” to being one among many strategies for making democracy more workable in this era of enhanced communications, enhanced interactivity and accelerated change. But in order to do this these processes must be even more vigilant about ensuring that they operate within all of the requirements for effective democracy.  They must be representative and inclusive, they must be transparent to a fault, they must accept the highest standards of accountability. With sufficient creativity and imagination, digital and Internet based technologies I believe can provide additional means for achieving all of this even in ever larger contexts and ever more complex domains. It will take time and immense good will, but the outcome should be strengthened structures of democratic governance rather than hollowed out shells replaced by governance by self-perpetuating special interests.

]]> http://gurstein.wordpress.com/2013/02/25/world-summit-on-the-information-society-looking-back-and-looking-forward-my-comments-to-a-wsis-10-review-plenary/ Tue, 26 Feb 2013 05:53:28 +0000 Michael Gurstein http://gurstein.wordpress.com/2013/02/25/world-summit-on-the-information-society-looking-back-and-looking-forward-my-comments-to-a-wsis-10-review-plenary/ These were the comments I made as an invited speaker on behalf of Civil Society at a review meeting for the World Summit on the Information Society. The meeting, the WSIS +10 Review was held in Paris, Feb. 25, 2013.

Ministers, Director General, Mr. Chair, Distinguished Panelists, Honoured Guests

I am honoured and delighted to have the opportunity to make some brief remarks to this panel as a member of Civil Society and as an academic and researcher concerned with Information Society issues.

Many things have changed since we as a group concerned with the future of the Information Society were together at the WSIS summits in Geneva (2003) and then in Tunis (2005).  Mobile’s were only beginning to be found in the Less Developed Countries of the world and the role of mobiles as an element in overall economic and social development was still a far off dream. Broadband itself was still somewhat exotic as a source of high capacity Internet.

What is perhaps most significant however, is how over this period of time, the Internet has become normalized, a routine part of life for billions and something that is taken for granted even as it has transformatively penetrated into a vast range of actions and behaviours and even arguably (and dangerously because so much of this is privatized and corporate controlled) into the very fabric our structures of thinking, our patterns of governance, our intimate behaviours.

Concepts and movements in support of  the multiple facets of digital “openness”–open archives, open data, open access were at the time of the WSIS meetings limited to programs and strategies for software development as in Free and Open Source Software;. various forms of social networking were largely still gleams in their developer’s eyes and no one could have imagined the types of transformations which have resulted from their widespread and almost instantaneous popularity including as a platform for mobilizing and aggregating actions in support of the common good including quite notably and not without some irony in our host country for the Tunis Summit.

More negatively issues of security and privacy on the Internet and their operational evil twins censorship and surveillance did not figure so prominently in those, perhaps simpler, times. And notions of cyberwar and the threats and counter threats of a new Cold War in cyberspace were only found in the realm of science fiction. And finally the draconian and in many cases unreasonable current positioning concerning copyright were still only in their infancy.

In Geneva and Tunis and very widely elsewhere at the time there was continuing discussion and concern about the Digital Divide, its origins, its impacts and the possible means for its resolution.  Currently there is very much less discussion on the Digital Divide to the point where reputable bodies including some attending the Review are claiming that the Digital Divide and issues of Digital Inclusion have been resolved  and most notably by the mobile revolution.

But it should be noted that the promise of mobiles as a means to fully access and participate in the Information Society is still denied to many because of a lack of infrastructure (including electricity), the cost of service, the cost of devices, physical limitations in being able to use the devices and overall through the evident difficulty in linking mobiles even where there is wide accessibility and use to effective strategies supportive of broad based social and economic development.

And of course, alongside this must be placed those still very large numbers in rural areas, among indigenous peoples, among the very poor in urban areas worldwide for whom access and use of mobiles for participation in Information Society benefits is still an impossible dream. The issue is especially significant I believe for indigenous people’s because of whose relationship with the land there is often a particular set of opportunities which effective use of ICTs presents.

Even while so many are deriving such immense benefits from the Internet and the fruits of the Information Society, countries around the world including Developed Countries such as my own Canada are shamefully cutting back on support to ensure that all those who wish it can access and use the Internet. In Canada for example roughly half of the roughly 20% not currently using the Internet regularly or some 3.5 millions Canadians have indicated that they are not currently using the Internet because of the cost of service or of the access devices, or because of a lack of training and our national government has just recently cut the only program that was addressing the needs of this population.

In my own area of academic and research interest, Community Informatics, we see repeated examples of technologies, and implementations of technologies and developmental programs which fail because of an unthinking approach to community needs, grassroots practices and existing community resources and a failure to engage communities and the grassroots as partners in their development and ICT implementation and use. Equally issues of linguistic diversity in the Information Society are if anything becoming more acute as insufficient attention is paid to the very real opportunities that the Internet presents for encouragement and support to minority languages and minority language speakers.

Also, it is well to reflect on the evident decline in attention being given to the Internet as a public good and the governance of the Internet in the public interest with the current triumphalism of those who wish to extend the ideology of private interests as the fundamental nature of the Internet. This is occurring even while there is an ever widening recognition of the role of the Internet as a basic and empowering platform through which the rights and responsibilities of citizenship in the Information Society of the present and the Knowledge Society of the future can be most effectively realized.

It should also be noted that many of the cross-sectoral issues such as climate change, sustainable development, environmental degradation even the Millennium Development Goals (MDG’s) themselves which, were discussed only in passing in the earlier WSIS have now become so prominent that attention must be paid and directly within the Information Society framework.  ICTs are becoming, in these areas as in so many others fundamental supports and enablers without which little effective action is possible including as providers of fresh opportunities and particularly when it is recognized that programmes and implementations designed around the use of ICTs at the grassroots level in these areas will strongly influence longer term success or failure.

The Internet has been a remarkable even an astonishing success and this success has provided the basis for vast and widespread evolution into an Information Society and now into the beginnings of a Knowledge Society.  With this success has come vast opportunities for gain of individual wealth, power and prestige.  Looking back, many of those in this room perhaps naively expected that the Internet because of its networked and decentralized nature, its intelligence distributed to the edges, its enabling of the peer-to-peer, would serve to resolve some of the on-going bases of social and economic inequality and unequal distribution of opportunity.

In fact, I think it is arguable and even becoming evident that the overall effect of the Internet has been quite the opposite.  The rise of the Internet not I believe coincidentally, has taken place alongside what economists are noting is the greatest increase in concentrations of wealth and power into the smallest number of hands in human history — and it seems unmistakeable that the Internet has been a significant contributor to this–with the Internet enabling in such a way as to further enrich the already wealth and to empower the already powerful.

While providing opportunities for many, those without such opportunities from the Internet have been left even further behind, and rather than widely distributing opportunities there seems to have been a hidden coding that favours the concentration — most evidently of wealth — a combination of a winner takes all and first mover advantages — operating and even extravagantly in some instances in favour of certain companies. certain individuals certain regions and certain countries.

And similarly to concentrations of wealth have come concentrations of societal and cultural influence so that certain voices (and languages, and to a degree the values which are associated with these) which in the past have been most influential have been made in the Internet enabled era even more influential.

Thus, looking forward I see that the issues of digital economic justice, digital equality and digital inequality as well as digital inclusion will develop alongside and partially displace issues of the digital divide as the primary pre-occupation to be addressed as we go forward to WSIS +10 and beyond in the task of building an Internet for all and an Internet that enables in the broadest public interest and towards the broadest possible public good.

These results for my well-intentioned attempts to broaden and deepen the significance and audience for open data has generally left me feeling either frustrated or irritated or both.

And then I began to step back from the discussion and to examine it (and the overall ways in which open data is analysed and presented) in a broader and somewhat more philosophical light.

What is open data and is there more than one way to approach it?

Thus we have the definition of open data in “Open Definition”: “A piece of content or data is open if anyone is free to use, reuse, and redistribute it — subject only, at most, to the requirement to attribute and/or share-alike.”

Or that :

Open data is data that can be freely used, reused and redistributed by anyone – subject only, at most, to the requirement to attribute and sharealike.

The full Open Definition gives precise details as to what this means. To summarize the most important:

• Availability and Access: the data must be available as a whole and at no more than a reasonable reproduction cost, preferably by downloading over the internet. The data must also be available in a convenient and modifiable form.
• Reuse and Redistribution: the data must be provided under terms that permit reuse and redistribution including the intermixing with other datasets.
• Universal Participation: everyone must be able to use, reuse and redistribute – there should be no discrimination against fields of endeavour or against persons or groups. For example, ‘non-commercial’ restrictions that would prevent ‘commercial’ use, or restrictions of use for certain purposes (e.g. only in education), are not allowed.

Or we have the definition (taken at random) in this case from the City of Toronto: The City of Toronto makes data it collects available to the public via toronto.ca/open. By offering data sets for others to use, the City supports unfiltered access to its information.

If you go further down in the standard definition of “open data” this begins to become a bit clearer:

Interoperability is important because it allows for different components to work together. This ability to componentize and to ‘plug together’ components is essential to building large, complex systems. Without interoperability this becomes near impossible — as evidenced in the most famous myth of the Tower of Babel where the (in)ability to communicate (to interoperate) resulted in the complete breakdown of the tower-building effort.

We face a similar situation with regard to data. The core of a “commons” of data (or code) is that one piece of “open” material contained therein can be freely intermixed with other “open” material. This interoperability is absolutely key to realizing the main practical benefits of “openness”… (my emphasis).

That is, “open data” is a “piece of x (content, data, etc.)”,  with the attributes and capabilities of rendering of a “thing” or “object” or “product” (a data set) that in turn can be “used”, “re-used”, “distributed” etc. Or, in other words it can be seen as a “component”, as a lego like building block which can be stacked one piece on another to create further and bigger objects. Thus it is to be seen as a “products” where “products” are “bought as raw materials and sold as finished goods” in this instance, where the raw data is the input and the “open data” is the output.

As an object or thing the attributes and characteristics of the open data are more or less fixed once made available to the end user/consumer.  As well, the determination of the attributes or characteristics of the data (what the open data “is”) as seen/obtained by the end user is solely at the discretion of the producer and are uniform and stable as between end users.

But why shouldn’t we think of “open data” as a “service” where the open data rather than being characterized by its “thingness” or its unchangeable quality as a “product”, can be understood as an on-going interactive and iterative process of co-creation between the data supplier and the end-user; where the outcome is as much determined by the needs and interests of the user as by the resources and pre-existing expectations of the data provider.

We can define “service” as:

…a set of one time consumable and perishable benefits

• delivered from the accountable service provider, mostly in close coaction with his internal and external service suppliers,
• effectuated by distinct functions of technical systems and by distinct activities of individuals, respectively,
• commissioned according to the needs of his service consumers by the service customer from the accountable service provider,
• rendered individually to an authorized service consumer at his/her dedicated trigger
  

That is, redefining and re-conceptualizing open data as a “service” rather than as a “product” puts the emphasis on the “open” (and opening) as a transitive and interactive “process”, rather than as an “object”, and as an interaction and a relationship between the supplier and the end user; rather than the data (and its virtual “thingness”) as a once and for all discrete set of production and consumption activities.

Treating open data as a service rather than as a product implies a quite different approach to how open data is managed, in what form it is made available, how it is funded and what expectations are placed upon it by governments as suppliers and by end users.

Thus Open Government Data as a service:

• includes a concern for the end user and end uses in the overall planning and development
• includes those with an interest in end users and end uses in the project team
• recognizes the potential diversity and special needs of end users and their requirements for “effective use” including naive and inexperienced users–thus for example including the possibility of indigenous people, women, grassroots users, citizens and the public interest as possible end users and working interactively with these groups to make suitable provision
• applies a range of metrics to evaluation of the “success” of open government data including contributions to the public good

Why does this matter?

This matters because if one treats open data simply or exclusively as a thing or commodity then it is available solely as a product for purchase and use through the market place–where of course, market principles dominate and where for example, those with the most resources are able to command and control and thus precipitate the supply of the product i.e. the open data.  This of course, fits quite neatly into the current neo-liberal agenda of certain governments of marketizing public services by first packaging them as discrete bundles of consumer oriented “products” and then opening up the processes of producing those bundles to competitive tender (as per the links that Jo Bates makes between Open Government Data and neo-liberal developments in the UK). However, whether such an approach is in the public interest is of course currently being severely criticized by those critical of what has been termed “market fundamentalism“.

Further, in this context the criteria of success or “value” of open data is exclusively based on its success in the marketplace as determined by market value, consumer demand, return on investment and so on. If however, one looks at open data as a service then the potential value of open data can be equally measured in terms of the benefits (including or particularly non-monetary) that the service is providing to the end user and to citizens as a whole.

As well, there is the possibility, even the requirement that open data as a service is directed towards the specific requirements of a diverse group of end users (and not simply anonymous interchangeable consumers) including for example, not-for-profits, community organizations, women’s groups, trade unions, and citizens working for the public interest amongst others and also would include the variety of adaptations, supports, training and so on which would maximize the opportunities for the various types of end users to benefit from the data service.

This of course, is particularly significant if one is concerned with ensuring that open government data is not simply “open” but also “inclusive”–that data that is provided by citizens is not simply privatized and sold off to the highest bidder but is made available in a form and a context where the broadest base of benefit may be derived from the data through its effective use by marginalized groups and citizens at large along with those who may be able to take a commercial advantage from making the data more generally available.

There is the Justice League (of America) (JLA) who ended up being able to not sign a treaty agreed to by at least 2/3rds of the countries of the world and in the process get to reject “Broadband for All” and “Human Rights” in pursuit of “Internet Freedom (for who and what?”?. A noble set of interests errr…causes and really really PO everybody else (in the non-North, non-white universe…

There are the folks with the black hats (everybody else) who were basically told if you don’t like the way we run things (by the Justice League (of America)) “go get your own Vint Cerf and build your own Internet”. The world holds its breathe to see how they will respond (because at the end of the day they have the means, the talent, and now thanks to the JLA the motive, to do so–and in the process fracture, perhaps irretrievably, the golden goose the JLA was so adamant to protect…

There is Google who came into the fray wearing an aw shucks white good guys hat and left wearing the blackest of black top hats and tails courtesy of Eric Schmidt’s proud declaration (“Google’s Tax Avoidance is called Capitalism and I’m proud of it”) which probably didn’t surprise half the world but rather startled the other half, mostly dewy eyed Google employees and the folks who signed on to their Save the Internet (for us Capitalists) campaign. (Earth to Google, if you are being pursued for not paying your taxes by half the world and as potential prey for picking by the newly enabled regulators and tax and spenders from most of the rest of the world (the ones who aren’t billionaires or in your direct or indirect employ) probably not a good idea to be giving the world even more reason to become suspicious of your “don’t be evil” intentions… Please be aware that there are large parts of the world where public declarations that greed is good at the top your lungs doesn’t get you a get out of jail free card.

There is the ITU, but who wants to rub salt in their wounds except to say that belated and halting acts of commission aren’t enough to overcome decades of sins of omission.

And then there is the “technical community”.  Someone should have warned them to not get involved in politics and if you do, don’t back the losing side (not that there were many winning sides here, but that’s the point).  They are now sentenced to pushing the same rocks up different hills over and over and over again for the foreseeable future.

The only clear winner from the WCIT is Civil Society. Their well-being and cheerful participation (in multi-stakeholderism) was hailed at every possible turning both by the US and its allies and by the ITU. By staying on-side for the duration (mostly it would appear by being more or less invisible) CS was handed some very big chits to cash in with the USG and with the ITU.

Precisely how CS responds remains to be seen. This represents a very significant opportunity to become working partners in a variety of real world situations and much beyond the elaborate kaffeeklatch that is the Internet Governance Forum.  But for CS to have a truly meaningful participation it has to shift from its current pre-occupation with the issues of the North–privacy, freedom of expression, even human rights towards a balance with issues of more immediate interest in the South–digital inclusion/Internet access and use, distribution of the economic benefits of the Internet, local languages and cultures and so on–thus as much emphasis on Internet Justice as on Internet Freedom!

And perhaps most important it has to not allow itself to be captured by one or another of the financial honey traps that are being laid for it so artfully as we speak.

But the immediate future is for CS to lose; as, at least for the moment, all anyone really wants them to do is show up.  Having something useful to contribute would be a bonus or (for most of their collaborators) a necessary cost of to be endured having invited them (at a time of extreme duress) to the table.

A recent thread on the Community Informatics e-list brought together a range of separate issue areas that combined, indicate a significant push in a number of OECD countries to de-universalize access to the Internet and perhaps, not incidentally, to undermine the basis for the social contract in the English speaking democracies.
•    Implementation of “digital by default” provisions for access to public services in the UK (where an electronic account will be necessary for example to receive social assistance payments)
•    Moves toward the implementation of a digital only transaction system by the Canadian government.
•    The (Conservative) Harper Government of Canada cancels funding for the Community Internet Access program (CAP)
•    Movement in the US to remove High Cost area and Universal Service regulatory provisions ensuring Universal telephone service to all

To connect the dots a bit— access to public services and social support payments are increasingly requiring the use of electronic media to support the transactions including through online access, digital signatures, electronic funds transfers and so on. The Cameron government in the UK has adopted a “Digital by Default” program which means that all services will be “born digital” and made available in analogue form only on an as required and secondary or tertiary basis. This is paralleled by developments in Canada by Cameron’s great friend in Conservatism Steven Harper which is moving towards an even more draconian “digital only transaction system”. It would appear that both of these initiatives will result in access and use of the government services and benefits will require the use of the Internet and other digital media.

Meanwhile, funding for facilities providing free or very low cost public access to the Internet is being eliminated in Canada, regionally within the US and elsewhere (the argument being in Canada at least that in the age of Internet accessing smart phones public Internet access facilities are no longer required: “in 2010 about 79 per cent of Canadians had access to the Internet at home.” Thus those without personal in-home access to the Internet (the other 21%) will either have to access it through libraries (where only limited if any training and support is likely to be available and whose own means for providing access are being further restricted because of overall funding cuts) or go without.

All this is happening when even those with in-home Internet access for the poor is under threat through the relaxation of requirements for balanced rates for remote areas, for landline services to high cost service areas, and to basic low cost life line service in the US (and likely to be followed quickly in other jurisdictions) as telecom carriers make a somewhat similar case that mobile telephone service (where there are no public service requirements) eliminates the need for landline services. Access to low cost in-home Internet service via dial-up or even ADSL is thus about to be severely restricted.

Thus those wishing to access and make use of government services or benefits may be quite out of luck if they can’t afford in home Internet service, live in a remote area, don’t own a computer and/or lack the necessary knowledge, skill, physical facility, and cognitive capacity to manage computer and Internet access and use.

Individually each of these developments represents a significant cut-back in service availability to the poor, marginalized, recent immigrants, internal migrants and so on. However, separately, there are available workarounds which at least in the short run would partially minimize their impacts.

However, taken together (and while each of these is particularly identifiable in one country there are indications that similar processes are taking place in parallel in a number of countries) these represent a quite significant undermining of one of the basic provisions of citizenship which is equal access to government services and operations. In fact, the likelihood is that these developments combined would create a totally new category of those who have been “pushed off the grid” in this case the ubiquitous and increasingly essential electronic Internet enabled grid through which government and its relationship to citizens are increasingly being made operational.

While on the one hand in the name of austerity governments are making frontal assaults on basic provisions of the social contract in areas such as pensions and employment insurance on the other hand they are making quite serious and basic if rather less visible assaults through the undermining of the basic provisions of universal access and universal service. Without the means to access the services the uptake in the services will necessarily be restricted and thus the cost to the treasury for those services will of course be less.

Are those who are having increasing difficulty imposing austerity onto reluctant populations looking to achieve the same ends but by other if rather less frontal means?

To answer my own question, I don’t think it is in fact a conspiracy but rather an unhappy conjuncture of a variety of social and economic pressures looking to undermine the long term commitments of governments to ensure universal access, universally available services, and ultimately universal inclusion within the social contract of the modern democratic state.

Since about 2006 my primary email address and thus interface with the e-world has been gurstein@gmail.com. Nice, clean, functional (my kids are envious and I’ve had semi-serious discussions about to whom among the half dozen or so people in the world with the same last name (in that spelling it is quite rare) I’ll ultimately bequeath it to…

My email pattern is to use my gmail account as the reception point and then POP my mail off into an Outlook 2003 client that I’ve dragged along with me through 3 or 4 computers over the last 5 years. This process has worked for me reasonably well over the last years and I’m comfortable with it and the couple of thousand folks in my email directory are also comfortable with the name and how I’m communicating with them.

Anyway, earlier this month I was in Dhaka, Bangladesh working on an ICT and Development project.  About midway through my stay in Dhaka one night during my regular jet-lagged 2 am email fest my Internet suddenly stopped working. I checked around and it seemed that the problem was with the hotel’s wireless provider.  When the Internet came back on there seemed to be some continuing problem with the POP connection with my Outlook… I was getting mail coming in on my gmail account but it wasn’t POPing properly to my Outlook account.

(I’m not a technical whiz… so I started fiddling with my Outlook and somehow, I can’t really remember how, I ended up installing a new (but the same) account on my Outlook and the email started rolling in as usual into my Outlook–POPing off of gmail. (for those with little or no technical interest, bear with me a bit, there is a Community Informatics, and a policy point at the end of this that I think is worth thinking about…

To my dismay however, what was entering into my Outlook wasn’t the usual stream of email rather it was long forgotten (and ultimately by-passed) email from 2006. It turns out that when you create a “new” Outlook account as I had just done when you POP your mail off of gmail it doesn’t start at the end of your inbox, rather it starts at the beginning!

Now remember, I’m an email guy and I’ve been using my gmail account for storing mail that I would “POP” and then work with in Outlook.   Of course, gmail has a maximum free storage of something like 7 gigs or so but my gmail file exceeded that 2 or 3 years ago and I’ve been paying Google a modest amount ever since for extra storage space. My current gmail file is at around 12 gigs and 120,000 emails–yes a lot, and yes, I should have been systematically going through this mail and sorting, discarding etc.etc. but I didn’t and I was willing to pay Google to not have to do this.

Realizing that downloading 12 gigs of mail (120,000 emails) in 3-500 email bursts (all that Outlook (or gmail) seemed to allow) was going to be a long and tedious exercise I turned to gmail “help” to see if there was some other way around this (I had had something similar happen to me 3 years ago while I was in South Africa and at the time there was nothing for it but to download all the mail (at $30 or so a gig) in order to begin again at the end

So I turned to what Google laughably identifies as its “help” function… “Settings” –> “Forwarding and POP/IMAP” etc.etc. and after an astonishing number of steps I’m taken to this gmail Help Forum where I am told that there are (among other things)

38137 discussions ·  Ask a “how to” question

Use this category if you want to know how to do something.

and

33348 discussions ·  Computer email program (please specify: Apple Mail, Outlook, Thunderbird, etc)

Email programs are also known as POP or IMAP email clients.

Clearly gmail is popular and other people also seem to have problems.

So I go into this “help” function and I am literally placed in the middle of an ocean of information and techie geeks without a paddle or a usable glossary.

I have no idea what search terms to use for my particular problem and the ones that I am able to figure out seem to take me to one or two year old comments from people like me with similar issues who were complaining about having to download their entire gmail inboxes as I was ending up doing.

I formulate and post a couple of queries to the forum trying to indicate what my problem is but no replies…

So, I set about downloading my 120,000 emails at 3-500 emails a chunk (that is a very large number of chunks and takes a considerable length of time since Outlook has its own set of issues including a maximum size for its mail files.

Four days later I am getting close to the end of the process when my capacity to download from Gmail is suddenly closed off “temporarily” because of “unusual activity” but according to the page that turns up when I try to access the account it will be turned back on fairly soon (they say) and it was.

Of course, there is no direct communication–the “messages” from gmail/Google are all in the form of standard web screens that appear when attempting to access gmail with no pointers anywhere except back to the gmail forums and a Google “help” search window which isn’t very useful if you can’t figure out the appropriate search terms! (and I tried dozens…

So, an hour or so later I get access to my gmail account again and resume where I left off with the downloading (I’m up to the end of 2010 by this time and the present is beckoning in a most tantalizing fashion and anyway I still have no idea of any alternative to what I’ve been doing over the last number of days…

One more day along and I’m getting into the home stretch (mid-June 2011) when this below appears when I try to access my gmail account.

That was roughly 4 days ago.

My first reaction was panic… what am I to do… Not only can I not download my mail but I can’t even access it, nor can I access my mail file (and thus my entire 6 year mail archive!)

I send off an email to “gmail-maintenance”, feverishly scan Google for points of entry into the Google Borg-o-sphere for my problem, send an email to the only person I know in Google who might be in a position to help, then another email to “gmail-maintenance” … and I wait… Nothing… I wait some more… nothing.. I’m incommunicado in the e-world, the only world that I’ve been really communicado in for the last dozen years or so!

Everything comes to a halt, my class, the Journal, my elists, the 3 or 4 projects I have on the go around the world… everything…

Folks, if you haven’t experienced this you have no idea the feeling of having been broken off in your communications capacity with your world and as well the loss of your e-memory of everything and everyone that you have been in touch with since you bit the gmail apple!

And folks attempting to communicate with you of course get this form email

This is an automatically generated Delivery Status Notification

THIS IS A WARNING MESSAGE ONLY.

YOU DO NOT NEED TO RESEND YOUR MESSAGE.

Delivery to the following recipient has been delayed:

gurstein@gmail.com

Message will be retried for 13 more day(s)

Technical details of temporary failure:
Account temporarily disabled

(I particularly liked the slightly ominous and potentially shameful–”explanation” (“Account temporarily disabled”)–for this lack of communicability. What could he possibly have been doing that has provoked those nice people at Google to “disable his account”?

Toward the end of Day 2, and after the 5 or so unanswered/unacknowledged messages to the kind folks at gmail-maintenance@google.com I start to move from shock and awe to recovery and I set up a new account (gmail of course it’s so easy and it’s free after all… as a means to begin to re-establish contact with the outside world.

I’m now into Day 4 of “Account maintenance” mode i.e. I can’t access my normal gmail account or inbox (although last evening for a few very brief moments my inbox was accessible but this disappeared behind the outer carapace of the Borg once again–which is where it stands at the moment.

According to the Google search I just did some 720,341,564 people use gmail all over the world. This is a truly astonishing number and the access to the information about those people that Google obtains through the provision of the “free” gmail service has made Google one of the largest and most profitable and (at least in the tech and information world) most powerful companies in the world.

But with great wealth and great power comes (or at least should come) great responsibility and my little excursion into gmail hell indicates that not only is Google operating in a thoroughly irresponsible fashion but with its choice to offer a Borg-like interface with its users (and clients remember that I’m paying for the storage of my gmail file) it is crossing the line from neglect to actual “being evil”.

Probably many if not most of the roughly billion people currently using gmail aren’t as heavily invested in their account and e-address as I am but I would guess that a rather large are as or even more invested in a life and death way.

Some of the ways in which gmail/Google is not accepting its responsibility to its users/clients include…

That gmail can “temporarily suspend” my account with no explanation or recourse or even means of communicating back to them to provide the background to whatever my transgression has been,

That the “help” function for gmail is nothing more than a huge untended, unedited flea market of bits and pieces of expertise, experience, knowledge combined completely blind with inexperience, misdirection, and useless information,

That there is no accessible and responsive point of contact for circumstances such as mine (and anecdotally I’m hearing that these circumstances are rather more common than not)–remember that I’ve now sent 7 emails to gmail-maintenance@google.com without one reply or even acknowledgement!

Given the impact of the above on my personal circumstances gmail/Google has acted in an “evil” way towards me–not just irresponsible but actually evil in that I have had no recourse, no means of providing supplemental information, no way of pleading my case, no indication as to when my particular excursion into gmail hell might end or what form that final resolution might take.  I’m in limbo–Kafka’s Castle, the Borg, HAL–you name the nightmare scenario of dealing with implacable, faceless, unresponding authority/power/privilege and that is what you have with gmail in my life and ultimately and potentially in the lives of any of the other billion or so gmail users.

Why for example, gmail/Google hasn’t spent the money to set up an Ombudsperson service with an email that someone actually reads and answers is something that would, if Google were as I mentioned selling milk or mining coal, be something that legislatures would be compelling them to do… Providing instructions and “help” information that are intelligible to ordinary users would be the subject of regulation if they were selling toasters or refrigerators rather than an email service.  Giving an explanation about the “temporary suspension” of a vital service would be required by law if it were concerning the flow of clean water or electricity rather than the (arguably) equally necessary flow of information and communications.

If gmail was a service delivering milk, or providing electricity or supporting financial transactions they would be regulated and the kind of behaviour I’m describing above would be subject to government intervention, legal sanctions, political inquiries.  Because the world of the Internet is so new, so shiny, so global it is a free-for-all and global utilities such as Google (which is what email/gmail is in practice and as it should be understood in law) can be as they are, with no recourse from individual users who after all are scattered and isolated and without any of the resources that a Google can command.

And notably the world has not yet managed to catch up so there are no frameworks available globally to deal with issues such as mine (or megaliths such as Google)… They will come in time but a lot of folks are going to feel a lot of pain, and Borgs like Google are going to get away with doing (and being) a lot of evil in the meantime.

I attended along with a diverse group of academic and government economists, professional national statisticians, heavy hitting business consultants (McKinsey and the Boston Consulting Group who provided a paper which was used as background), and a few others with areas of specific interest (think canaries in the coal mine) in how the Internet is (or in many cases is not) being measured in national economic statistics. I was there because exceptionally the OECD has now established a committee in the Information and Communications Technology sector giving Civil Society the opportunity to participate in “expert” discussions alongside similar committees representing business and labour.

This isn’t an area that I have paid a lot of attention to in the past and quite honestly as someone with a background in Sociology and Philosophy rather than Economics I’ve spent considerable energy in avoiding these kinds of largely theoretical and overwhelmingly statistical discussions. However, in preparation for this event I did some rummaging around on the net, precipitated some interesting discussions on selected professional e-lists and interacted with various colleagues and friends.

What I got out of this background reading and discussion were a few somewhat disconnected observations—

First, it appears that there is a quite significant hole in the National Accounting (and thus the GDP statistics) around Internet related activities since most of this accounting is concerned with measuring the production and distribution of tangible products and the associated services. For the most part the available numbers don’t include many Internet (or “social capital” e.g. in health and education) related activities as they are linked to intangible outputs. The significance of not including social capital components in the GDP has been widely discussed elsewhere. The significance (and potential remediation) of the absence of much of the Internet related activities was the subject of the workshop.

Second, I was reminded that there had been a series of critiques of GDP statistics from Civil Society (CS) over the last few years—each associated with a CS “movements—the Woman’s Movement and the absence of measurement of “women’s (and particularly domestic) work”; the Environmental Movement and the absence of the longer term and environmental costs of the production of the goods that the GDP so blithely counts as a measure of national economic well-being; and most recently with the Sustainability Movement, and the absence of measures reflective of the longer term negative effects/costs of resource depletion and environmental degradation. What I didn’t see anywhere apart from the background discussions to the OECD workshop itself were critiques reflecting issues related to the Internet or ICTs.

The third thing that I came to realize both prior to and even more strongly during the OECD event was that the implications of the limitations in the Internet accounting went beyond a simple technical glitch and had potentially quite profound implications from a national policy and particularly a CS and community based development perspective. The possible distortions in economic measurement arising from the absence of Internet associated numbers in the SNA (there may be some $750 BILLION a year in “value’ being generated by Internet based search alone!) lead to the very real possibility that macro-economic analysis and related policy making may be operating on the basis of inadequate and even fallacious assumptions.

But perhaps of greatest significance from the perspective of Civil Society and of communities is the overall absence of measurement and thus inclusion in the economic accounting of the value of the contributions provided to, through and on the Internet of various voluntary and not-for-profit initiatives and activities. Thus for example, the millions of hours of labour contributed to Wikipedia, or to the development of Free or Open Source software, or to providing support for public Internet access and training is not included as a net contribution or benefit to the economy (as measured through the GDP). Rather, this is measured as a negative effect since, as some would argue, those who are making this contribution could be using their time and talents in more “productive” (and “economically measurable”) activities. Thus for example, a region or country that chooses to go with free or open source software as the basis for its in-school computing is not only “not contributing to ‘economic well being’” it is “statistically” a “cost” to the economy since it is not allowing for expenditures on, for example, suites of Microsoft products.

All of this might be dismissed quite reasonably as economic/statistical folderol except that so much of economic policy and particularly by politicians in their assessment of relative well-being is based on these kinds of measurements and particularly the GDP tables. A country which chose to put all of its resources and purchasing power into open source p2p ICT efforts would, from an economic “growth” (as measured by conventional statistics perspective), be shooting itself in the foot and potentially causing a significant reduction in its GDP!

In practical terms there is a failure to measure or otherwise account for the vast voluntary not for profit (civil society and community) contribution to the development and growth of the Internet. Those activities, features and contents of the Internet which are most widely used and useful–Wikipedia, FAQ’s, Open Office and other free and open source software, as well as the almost overwhelming abundance of freely provided texts, documents, images and sounds which now constitute an enormous global commons and freely and widely accessible patrimony; is not accounted for and the result is to give a totally misleading picture of how the Internet developed, the overall contribution it is making (the “value it is creating”) and the economic and other significance of this to the actors involved and to the overall well-being of humanity.

One effect among many of this distortion is that there appears to have been no systematic attention paid to the relationship of the activities and growth of voluntary contributions to the Internet and the volume, range and depth of Internet activity, digital literacy and economic value being derived from the use of the Internet. Thus for example, while anecdotally the greater the voluntary activity around the Internet in a country the greater the volume and use of the Internet; there would appear to be little or no data in this area and no available means of systematically undertaking such analyses in the absence of a series of expensive one-off research studies—and certainly there is no way based on available national statistics to make this argument to politicians or policy makers who might benefit from such an insight.

Thus for example, an identified association (for example in OECD countries) between voluntary Internet involvement and overall digital literacy might suggest to policy makers (for example in Less Developed Countries) that one way to increase Internet use and activity in a specific country or region might be through encouragement and even incentives towards voluntary participation and contribution to the various elements of Internet activity. However, in the absence of data on voluntary Internet contributions this would be highly unlikely to come forward in policy discussions.

Those things that are not measured are not given “value”—either in formal and official terms as well as in more subtle and informal ways—they are not seen as having worth, at least when compared with those things that are being measured such as for profit software packages and services. Thus the millions upon millions of hours contributed by the technically proficient, those motivated by the driving force of intellectual curiousity and those simply with a motivation to contribute to public well-being through contributing to the development of the Internet are not assessed as “having value”. What should be seen as a triumph of civil society and of freely associated communities both physical and virtual – the building and maintenance of large parts of the infrastructure and operating elements of the Internet and many of its most significant and enduring outputs are devalued as compared to the activities of those whose motivation is for example, pure self-interest or even greed.

The failure to honour and give value to those who freely contributed and continue to contribute to the building of the Internet and its use in support of the public good—the coders, the system architects, the hackers, those spending hours training and supporting their fellow citizens in becoming computer literate, those contributing their thoughts and images to the massive and accelerating pools of freely accessible knowledge and understanding—means that those who are coming up, the young, those just getting on-board, those in Less Developed Countries on the wrong side of the Digital Divide aren’t provided with a clear picture of what has gone before and what is achievable outside of for profit software, the translation of the free contributions of the public into marketable packages for advertisers, the marketing of electronic communities and so on.

When I asked those at the workshop closest to the design of these measurement processes—why there were no procedures in place to measure the voluntary—civil society and community—contribution to the Internet, the answer was a simple—“it’s too difficult”. What they meant was that measurement starts with those things that are easy to measure, but unfortunately as is well known, in practice it stops there as well.

The effect of this of course, is to overall impoverish and diminish the public sphere. This should give us all motivation to insist that account be taken, and measurements, even if partial and inexact, be undertaken of the overwhelming output of support for the public good which the Internet represents.

As an aside it might be worthwhile as a thought experiment to ponder what the Internet and contemporary society/economy would look like in the absence of the the unmeasured and thus unvalued contributions.

I would be interested in examples of the ways in which the absence of measurement of the voluntary contributions to the Internet are having negative and impoverishing effects…

One of the basic understandings of the Philosophy/Sociology of Science is that we all tend to reduce our understanding of new phenomena down to a mode which is intelligible within our existing framework of understanding/knowledge. When it is no longer possible to do this then a new framework (paradigm) comes haltingly forward that allows us to explain those phenomena that remain inexplicable–incommensurable–with the attempts at imposing the existing framework and a new framework/paradigm of understanding is born and very soon becomes the new orthodoxy and in turn becomes “that of which it is impossible to consider an alternative”.

Among the core elements of these conceptual frameworks is the various systems of standards/definitions/measurements that allow us to order and “manage” our processes of knowing and thus our actions in the world. In the economics (and thus to a considerable degree the policy) world one of the basic frameworks is the SNA–the System of National Accounts which presents a means for a consolidated measurement at the national level (and thus comparative at the global level) of “all significant economic activity”.

Much of current economic policy nationally (and globally) (within the competitive market/neo-liberal policy environment) is founded on/driven by these measures as outputted as GDP/GNP etc. Various waves of civil society interventions have subjected these measurement procedures/strategies to what might be called “paradigmatic” critiques–the consumer’s movement critiqued the exclusive focus on production (and the absence of measurements concerned with consumption/consuming); the environmental movement critiqued on the basis of the absence of measures reflecting the lifecycle costs of goods and including impacts on the environment from resource depletion and contributions to environmental degradation and change); the women’s movement critiqued on the basis of a failure to include measures reflecting women’s contribution to domestic work; and as well there have been a number of critiques/alternatives proposed along the lines of the GPI–General Progress Index, and the recently widely noted “Happiness Index“–these latter being presented as more meaningful and significant from a “sustainability” policy perspective.

As well, the SNA has a very strong bias away from the measurement of “social capital” related activities (and towards the measurement of the production of physical goods). In many respects this area is perhaps the most damaging from the perspective of Less Developed Countries and the poor and marginalized in Developed countries since it tends to privilege (and give emphasis to) the production of consumer goods (and public policies supportive of this production) over for example, public investments in social capital related activities such as education, health and social support.)

I’m wondering in this context whether there are areas or issues concerning measurement and indices specifically associated with the Internet that would be of particular interest to Civil Society(CS) that might (or might not) be of interest from the perspective of a “critique” of the SNA and broad measures such as the GDP–parallel to the critiques related to the measurement of “women’s work” and “environmental costing” for example?

The obvious measurement(s) are of course related to the “digital divide” — those who have access and (I would add) the capability of using the Internet and those who do not. But I’m also thinking that there may be an additional set of arguments that quite significantly link back to the earlier critiques and those have to do with the linkage of the Internet with social capital.

Thus, it might be possible (and reasonable) to argue that the enhancement of social capital (internetworking, communication at a distance, speeding up of communications etc.etc.) while not unique to the Internet is so much accelerated and intensified by the Internet that “quantity” becomes “quality” that is, the Internet adds so much to these elements of social capital (and is so much a product of previous investments in social capital) that:

1. it would be impossible realistically to “measure” the economic impact of the Internet without including measurements of the intensification of social capital–social capital is of the very “essence” of the impact (social, economic, cultural) of the Internet that one is trying to measure (“the Internet changes everything” effect). The Internet fundamentally changes the nature of economic (and of course other) relations and activities and the intensification of social capital being of the very essence of the Internet means that this intensification of social capital must similarly be accounted for in one’s measurements associated with the SNA.

2. the Internet through its intensification of social capital is transformative (and not simply summative) of the overall economy, economic relations, transactions, production, distribution and consumption; such that it is impossible to describe let alone measure the various components of the SNA without including various of the Internet (and thus social capital) related impacts in any assessment and thus measurement of each of these components (the “Walmart effect“). Thus, for example, a company such as Walmart would not be possible without the affordances provided by telecommunications/the Internet and hence any measurement including Walmart as a component needs to include measures reflecting this relationship.

The value of such an argument from a civil society perspective I think, is that it links overall economic activity (GDP) with the Internet, and links the Internet with the production of social capital which in turn becomes something of a backdoor way of arguing that investment in ICT (and our understanding and measurement of the benefits of the Internet) should be as much focused on education, health, and social support as it is on bits and bytes–hardware and software–something I’m assuming CS all agrees with but also something which is not taken as a necessary given by those folks managing current economic policies.

On looking at his list, especially in light of what I consider to be the major (policy and other) deficiencies in Canada`s current response to ICT developments (and opportunities) I thought of doing my own list.

I would love to see these questions below addressed by each party (or candidate) individually so that voters could have a clear understanding of where the current parties (or candidates) stand on issues critical to Canada`s technology (and socio-economic) future such as how

1. to ensure affordable broadband Internet access service to all Canadians.
2. to ensure that those Canadians who, for whatever reason do not have the means to access and use Internet service in their homes (because of homelessness, literacy or computer literacy issues, cost, etc.) have an available service within easy reach.
3. to ensure that all Canadians are in a position to make effective use of broadband Internet access for the various purposes which might be of value and interest to them including for training, job search, access to information, communications, access to government services and others.
4. to ensure that Canadians are able to make the most active use of the Internet for purposes of creative expression, community development and innovation, advocacy and democratic participation and the range of other emerging areas of Internet enabled activities.
5. undertaking research and development activities concerning ICT enabled community based approaches to land and resource management, environmental management and remediation, provision of primary health service, emergency and disaster response, among other areas and to put Canada back in a leading position in these approaches particularly in rural and remote and aboriginal communities.
6. redeveloping Canadian skills and approaches for effective ICT enabled citizen participation in policy development and review and thus retaking Canada’s former global leadership in this area thus moving the Canadian government’s pre-occupation with efficient e-government towards an approach which emphasizes effective e-governance.
7. redesigning copyright and information access laws so as to support Canadian citizens in achieving effective levels of artistic and political expression.
8. to ensure that citizen rights and interests are of paramount importance in policy making and regulation in the emerging area of ICT and including such areas as equitable access to Internet carriage (i.e. Net Neutrality) and online content to be treated in a similar manner as any other form of transmitted content.
9. to ensure that there are appropriate opportunities for the expression of the range of Canadian interests and voices on the Internet including linguistic and other minority through support for Canadian content creation.
10. to ensure that there are appropriate programs in place for young people (and adults) to realize the maximum benefits from Internet use while avoiding some of the dangers as for example through fraud, identity theft, online bullying, and so on including through education, appropriate advisory services and intervention facilities where such might be required.

But perhaps the most significant long term impact of social media use in the events is only now starting to emerge as the wondrous surprise of what we have been watching on CNN and Al Jazeera wears off, if only slightly, and we begin to reflect on how the world has changed.

That there will be many impacts some profound, many geo-political, even more unanticipated may be taken as a given.  However, perhaps we received a signal of what may be one of the be the most important of all as it will potentially impact the way in which our world creates values and works towards an implementation of our highest aspirations. If such an impact is occurring then the effect will not simply change how we do and can behave but also how our technologies are defined and determined and perhaps most importantly how our relationship to our technologies acts so as to reinforce our humanity.

As an evident response to the events in Egypt the following statement has been issued by a group of United Nations associated independent human rights experts through the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights

Governments must pay more attention to people’s voices – UN experts

GENEVA (3 February 2011) – …Over the past several weeks, men and women in many countries, including Belarus, Egypt and Tunisia, have expressed grievances related to, among others… the denial of their right to participate meaningfully in decision-making, underscoring the indivisibility of all human rights: civil, cultural, economic, political and social…We are alarmed at increasing limitations on the right to freedom of expression and information imposed by Governments actively seeking to suppress the rising number of voices who wish to be heard…We are disturbed at the major disruptions in communication networks and transmissions of news so essential to the modern world. The freedoms of peaceful assembly and association are among the most fundamental rights underpinning a democratic society.

Underneath the rather predictable headline to this press release, what is particularly interesting is the way in which the human rights notion of “freedom of assembly” – or as they phrase it in the above — “people’s voices” — appears by inference to be applied to freedom of assembly on the Internet, that is in this instance of course, referring to the freedom to express and assemble (and collaborate) by means of Facebook and to the freedom of expression via Twitter and YouTube.

The apparent extension and application of these human rights notions into the virtual sphere is an implicit acknowledgement of the equivalence and equivalent validity of those relations, activities and processes which are taking place in the virtual sphere; that is, is there any reason to see virtual connections and relationships as for example, via Facebook, Twitter or Facebook groups as being any different from the similar (or parallel) connections and relationships that individuals have in physical space? The implicit answer here seems to be no!

If these virtual manifestations of assembly and expression do have the same value and legitimacy as their physical manifestations then the implicit connection made by the UN’s Human Rights experts on the actions of the Egyptian governments in cutting off the Internet and thus disrupting the opportunity for assembly and expression via Facebook and Twitter would appear to be a clear violation of human rights (Egypt of course being a signatory to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights).

The “association” that Egyptian (and of course Tunisian) young people were carrying out via Facebook, Twitter and YouTube can be understood as a counterpart to the similar association that might have taken place on a university campus, in a coffee shop or in a community hall or mosque.  Thus in this context, the closing down of the Internet so as to disrupt Facebook and Twitter was not simply a political (and evidently failed) act of desperation but was also a violation of the human rights of these Egyptian young people and particularly their right of association and assembly and specifically Article 20 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which says that” “Everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association”. 

Freedom of association is the individual right to come together with other individuals and collectively express, promote, pursue and defend common interests.^[1] The right to freedom of association has been included in a number of national constitutions and human rights instruments. (It actually is not included in the US Constitution, which is why it is debated.) The Constitution protects assembly, not association and the European Convention on Human Rights and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Thus interventions such as that of Egypt through Vodaphone in closing down access by Egyptians to the Internet and thus to their means of assembly via Facebook, Twitter and so on would appear to provide a potential framework of rights within which to assess and respond to those actions and ultimately bring to account those responsible..

If one accepts this argument then would this not necessarily change the way in which we must approach the social media.  In this, the social media would not simply be commercial operations and competitive brands—do we look on our getting together in physical space to form political groups, formulate social actions, collaboratively create civil society–as something which can or should be commercialized or branded. In fact, in many jurisdictions there are significant restrictions on introducing commercial considerations into a variety of types of civic engagements.

If we transfer the conventional behaviours and types of “association” as understood under Article 20 from physical to virtual space could we then see Facebook and Twitter not as companies, brands or applications but rather as (commercial) venues in which necessary and legally protected social behaviours – assemblies and associations –take place in a manner legally and otherwise indistinguishable from any other similar behaviours and associations.

And might the further implication of this be that for example, there would be a need to design and regulate those venues in a way similar to the manner in which we regulate physical venues including for example ensuring accessibility for the physically disabled, regulation to ensure non-discriminatory access, even the virtual equivalent to “fire regulations” which in virtual space would likely be regulation concerning privacy and personal security.

If we see human rights as seamlessly encompassing activities and associations in both physical and virtual environments perhaps then we must begin to look at the virtual world as something other than a normless wild west which to this time has been the broad perception . Rather cyberspace should be seen as a “place” where the kinds of protections and regulatory frameworks (including existing human rights legislation) would apply equally as for off-line behaviours. It follows then that owners of platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube should be seen not as owners of the space and behaviours being manifest through their systems but rather as proprietors of virtual venues where these behaviours are taking place.

…the Open Information Foundation (has the intention) to bring to the world of information, what Open Source had brought to the world of software. Namely, the free exchange of ideas and knowledge, without borders, without limits and without financial constraints. Hopefully, by breaking down the traditional, properitary (sic) barriers to gaining knowledge, everyone can grow.

It is a bit surprising that there has been relatively little and mostly rather defensive discussion on the fairly obvious connection between WikiLeaks and the various manifestations of the “open” movement and particularly “open information”, “open data” and “open government” and what it tells us about the opportunities, limitations and risks of “open” in a governmental context.

Open data is a philosophy and practice requiring that certain data be freely available to everyone, without restrictions from copyright, patents or other mechanisms of control.

(see also a number of other “Open” movements and communities such as open source and open access”).

This of course, is quite similar and consistent with the rationale given by WikiLeaks for the making available of the US government diplomatic cables and other leaks as in “Help WikiLeaks Keep Governments Open”!

This isn’t to make any judgments concerning the appropriateness (legal or otherwise) of the WikiLeaks file but simply to suggest that if open data is a necessary element of “open government” then one would expect that open information might be an equally significant component as well. Thus WikiLeaks brings to the fore certain of the dilemmas, radical challenges and contradictions raised by but not resolved in the framework of the “open data/open government” movement.

Arguments for “open data” such as the democratization of opportunities for analysis and assessment, increased public capacity for participation in consultation and decision making processes and the role that multiple additional open data enabled contributors would make to governmental processes would apply equally with “open information” a la WikiLeaks. However, where Open Data has chosen to adopt a collaborative approach to its efforts—working with governments to find ways of “opening up” government data in ways which are presented as being mutually beneficial, WikiLeaks has taken a rather more radical and conflictual approach, forcibly opening information to broader public scrutiny against the wishes of its current owner, the US Government.

This seeming difference in strategy doesn’t however, seem to imply a difference in longer term objectives i.e. both Open Data and WikiLeaks seem to have as their longer term goal—Open Government—whatever precisely that may mean.

In this context then the recent interview (last 20 minutes) by Birgitta Jonsdottir of Iceland,  a former member of the WikiLeaks team and a current Member of the Icelandic Parliament and somewhat parallel ones by another defector from WikiLeaks (Daniel Schmitt/Domscheidt-Berg)  is of particular interest. Ms. Jonsdottir broke with WikiLeaks in October and explained her differences with the group by referring to the emergent tendency of WikiLeaks to be concerned with “MegaLeaks” (her term) and to have moved away from micro and community-based approaches to “leaks” and information access.

Her argument goes on to discuss this in ways familiar from a community informatics perspective – arguing that the shift from a community-based WikiLeaks approach to a MegaLeaks approach was one that shifted the process of “leaking” from that of making information available to those (at the grassroots) who could make the most effective use of the information as for example, in supporting their activist interventions on the ground, to simply providing access to leaked information to the media with little concern or responsibility for how or by whom the information might be used (my paraphrase).

In this argument, Jonsdottir mirrors those who argue that in the absence of linking the leaked information to specific campaigns or actions WikiLeaks would have little direct value but would more likely have the negative effect of making more difficult the longer term processes of access to information by advocacy and activist groups.

Jonsdottir’s argument is one that is very close to the community informatics position that “access” to the Internet, data or in this case information is of little long term value or significance if those to whom the access is being provided are not in a position to make effective use of that information.  Access to information (or data) is only of use if those to whom the information is being made accessible have the means to put that information into a meaningful context; have the means and capacity to analyze the information; or are in a position organizationally to translate access into uses which are meaningful and valuable to those to whom the access is newly being provided.

One gathers from the telephone interview with Jonsdottir that the initial conception of WikiLeaks was that initially the intention was to link their leaked information organically into various grassroots organizations, campaigns and activities.  Presumably in this model, the information being leaked would be directly linked to groups who could make more or less immediate “effective use” of that information as it became available as for example, in support of already on-going campaigns or critical actions of various kinds.

Thus, the underlying strategy would be that of an on-going iterative relationship between identified grassroots groups and actual (or more likely potential) information sources within the target organization.  The specific campaign would indicate either by its actions or more directly through personal linkages the need for certain information which would then be made available (or “leaked”).  An alternative but equally likely approach would be that the availability of certain leaked information would be made known in such a way as to signal to specific groups the opportunity for a campaign or action making use of the information to which the group now would have “leaked” access.

The obverse of this argument of course, is that information made available in this way is or particular value to those who are in a position to make direct and immediate use of it. This of course, is the argument being put forward by the US Government and particularly the military who are suggesting that the leaks are likely to be of immediate value to insurgents around the world who are in a position to respond more or less immediately to information concerning informers, security vulnerabilities and so on. This would suggest the basis of the dispute between Jonsdottir and Assange which is that the current WikiLeaks approach (Jonsdottir called it MegaLeaks) lacks nuance and the leaker lacks the means to influence the downstream use of the information. In this instance the leak becomes potentially dangerous not only to the institution from which the leak occurs but also to those innocently (or otherwise) linked to the leaked information and particularly may put at risk those who may be only innocent bystanders to the overall information being made available.

Assange evidently moved WikiLeaks away from the earlier approach as understood by Jonsdottir (and perhaps others) to a more journalistically oriented “open information” position.  In this latter approach the focus is not on the “use” of the information but simply on providing access to the information in the most transparent and spectacular way possible (as is evident by how WikiLeaks has behaved over the last several weeks). In this approach, the provider of the information has little or no interest or responsibility in the “use” that is made of the information to which access is being provided—the effect is not targeted but rather there is a (somewhat fuzzy even mystical or ideological) belief that somehow implicit in the very process of making data/information/government “open”, good things will result. And well they may; however, as many have suggested, the process of opening up the information through WikiLeaks may have resulted in a certain amount of unwanted but perhaps inevitable “collateral damage”—at least that is the argument that the US government is currently making.

The problem with the WikiLeaks approach to “openness” is that only those already positioned with appropriate resources and objectives are in fact likely to be able to take immediate advantage of the information as it is being made available, at least in the short term This argument is the argument being made by Ms. Jonsdottir in support of an approach to leaking/open information that comes from working from the ground up and linking directly with those who can best take advantage of information arguing that MegaLeaks has drowned out the much slower and more nuanced approach of developing both sources and users so that open/leaked information can be of most benefit as and when it comes available. (The risks inherent in the current approach are the basis for the argument that the US Government is making concerning the danger that WikiLeaks presents to its confidential sources).

To some degree Assange/WikiLeaks recognizes the potential danger from the approach that they have embarked upon and which Ms. Jonsdottir objected to.  Clearly they recognize and are concerned that the groups who might most immediately be able to make effective use of the information could be criminal or terrorist elements able to quickly contextualize the information into their short term activities (undertake retaliation against informers for example).  Reducing the risk of this happening is explicitly one of the goals for WikiLeaks in choosing to work so closely with existing newspapers in editing the cables for public release. However, by choosing this approach WikiLeaks has also chosen to have the information they are making available be presented in sensationalist rather than pragmatic terms.  There is nothing wrong with this but clearly this could not be the longer term strategy for an “open information” regime.

WikiLeaks demonstrates that the problems for the US Government arise not just from the “information” being made available (much of which is embarrassing, but not necessarily damaging tittle tattle); rather the real problems arise from the ways in which WikiLeaks are revealing the underlying US (and its allies) strategies/activities/norms of which the individual WikiLeaks are simply the revealing output. These underlying elements aren’t for the most part revealed explicitly but rather they are quite visible through a process of framing and contextualizing the individual pieces of information and analyses being presented.

This gives a very strong and potentially damaging (to the US interests) insight into the broader information context/strategic framework within which the individual pieces of leaked information are being placed i.e how the US government identifies, gathers, interpret, analyses and uses information as part of their on-going deliberation and policy development processes. (The leaks for example concerning Honduras on the face of it were simply reporting on contacts between the Embassy and individual Hondurans during the course of the coup—none of which appeared to be particularly damaging. However, what the individual leaks seen in context revealed was how the US was acting to at least implicitly support the Honduran coup in contradiction of its stated public policy on the matter.

What this dramatically demonstrates is the fundamental role of information context for information use particularly as a contributor to policy formulation in a government context and presents a boundary condition for “open information” (open government) both from the perspective of “open government/open data” advocates and from those within government who are supporting and facilitating these initiatives.  Thus “open information” in itself is insufficient and even extremely risky as a wild card, in the absence of the framing or contextualizing of this information.

Of course, governments intent on “open data/open information” have as a primary objective to control this framing or contextualizing process (better that they do it in advance of the information being made open than to have others, perhaps with critical political motivations doing this framing and contextualizing after the fact). On the side of the “open data/open information advocates, ensuring at least a shared responsibility in this framing/contextualizing process is a necessity for ensuring that their efforts aren’t simply a part of a governments political agenda, but do in fact contribute to the “free exchange of information”.

What this says (or at least should say) to Open Information/Open Access/Open Government advocates is that what they are likely to get will either be information which has already been sanitized of those elements revelatory of the real processes or in other cases the process of gaining access to “open information” will necessarily become a constitutive element of the deeper internal processes. Thus governments who move in this direction (and many at least at the more local levels appear to be sympathetic to this approach) must be prepared for this and willing to accept and respond to the consequences and not incidentally to ensure that those receiving access to the information are in a position to make effective and constructive use of it within a context being actively developed iteratively between both providers and recipients.

In this sense then WikiLeaks is a harbinger of what is to come and provides a set of lessons on how to respond both for those receiving access to this information and those who are intent on providing it.

Clearly to ensure that “open information” is not a series of “leaks” and ensuing scandals or becomes a form of information based cooptation and manipulation, those advocating for “open information” and those who are agreeable to providing it must provide a framing and contextualizing as effective use which goes much beyond anything provided by WikiLeaks in partnership with its press collaborators or beyond simply making various statistical runs or information files available to public users.

But perhaps one could hope that the folks on Parliament Hill might take a look at a report by the very highly regard publication and research group, The Economist Intelligence Unit’s: “Digital economy rankings 2010: Beyond e-readiness” .

This very valuable document provides its understandings and presumptions concerning the necessary building blocks for a “Digital Economy” and quite interestingly, those building blocks almost completely parallel the suggestions made in my earlier blogpost. Thus for example:

1. recognizing that a digital economy and a digital society are inextricably linked and that it makes little sense to plan for one without paying significant attention to the other

2. seeing the broad areas of digital literacy and overall education as being a necessary element in “e-readiness”

3. recognizing that there is a necessary shift away from thinking simply about “e-readiness” to thinking more broadly about the digital economy (and society)—the Canadian consultation in its details focuses almost exclusively on e-readiness related issues.

4. the inclusion of social and cultural matters as “drivers of digital progress”

5. focusing on “the levels at which consumers and businesses actually use digital services” and not simply being concerned with measures and policies in support of “access”… “our long-standing premise that progress towards a fully digital economy requires concerted action across all the areas addressed in the rankings”

6. recognizing that the scale for “Internet user penetration” should be based on 100% of the population now representing the highest penetration achievable in a country rather than the previous 75%.

7. E-ready governments supply their constituents—citizens and organisations—with a clear roadmap for the adoption of technology

On the index developed and applied by the EIU based on the above and related assumptions, Canada has fallen from 9^th to 11^th overall from the previous year (behind, Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand).

The following paragraph taken from the conclusion to the EIU’s report would fit most comfortably into the conclusion of any similar Community Informatics assessment of overall national progress towards the achievement of a digitally inclusive society.

“This benchmarking exercise has measured not only the availability and adoption of ICT (or “connectivity”) in each country, but also development of the social, cultural and economic building blocks necessary for its effective use. More recently, it has also attempted to gauge the extent to which ICT and selected ICT-enabled services are being used, given that it is the use of technology which ultimately contributes to the overall economic progress of a country.”

My job though, wasn’t to boast to the world about this statistic, rather at the direction of the company in turn responding to pressure from the regulator who in turn was reflecting Canadian government policy, my job for Bell Canada was to figure out how various upcoming programs might contribute to a reduction in that residual 8% of the population.  It was that 8% who didn’t have POTS whether because of the cost, the lack of accessibility because of physical disability, or possibly because of the lack of service in various of Canada’s remote and rural areas, which was of significant regulatory, policy and thus programme concern up and down the line.

In an attempt to reduce that 8% and to ensure that the figure didn’t, Bell Canada spent a considerable amount of resources and management attention on developing low cost basic telephone service (limited calling and restricted long distance). Among other activities Bell interacted on a fairly regular basis with various civil society groupings around these programmes and reported regularly on the progress of the programmes as part of its regular reporting to the CRTC as a regulated monopoly.

In addition, and most certainly not incidentally a very considerable portion of the Bell Family’s  attention (at the time including Northern Telecom (later Nortel), and Bell Northern Research,( the primary telecom research facility in the country) focused on means for providing telecom service into very remote and rural regions of the country via various (then exotic) platforms such as satellites, micro-wave and radio.  As well, the primary government owned research facility in the area, the Communications Research Centre also had major programs concerning remote and rural communications (presumably linked to military and defense requirements but with significant civilian applications as well).

The Connecting Canadians Agenda of the  late ‘90’s seemed to update this overall issue into the Internet age by looking to ensure that “all Canadians can benefit from this new digital environment” (John Manley, then Minister of Industry), but by placing the issue of connectivity clearly in the context of economic benefits.

The current equivalent initiative, the Digital Economy Consultation further narrows the issue by only referring to Digital Skills and overall with a failure to deal with the broader and societal issues and opportunities of digital connectivity and use. The themes presented for discussion are: Key themes being considered in the consultations are: Capacity to Innovate Using Digital Technologies; Building a World-Class Digital Infrastructure; Growing the Information and Communications Technology Industry; Digital Media: Creating Canada’s Digital Content Advantage; and Building Digital Skills for Tomorrow.

The most recent estimate was that some 75% (2009) of Canadians were able to access Broadband in their homes.  If one accepts as most now do,  that Broadband is the communications platform of the digital era then this figure of 75% -80% should be compared to the 92% penetration rate which was seen as unacceptably low some 30 years earlier by our policy and regulatory structures.

Interestingly a recent report by the a Committee of Canada’s Senate implicitly criticized the “consultation” and the narrowness of its mandate and recommended a policy to address the Canadian Digital Divide (to define “universal” as in “universal service” as 100% of Canadians) as well as suggesting a national Digital Strategy of which this would be significant component.

While the issue of “Digital Skills” is not unimportant, precisely what Digital Skills might be are left extremely vague with a reference to an equally vague OECD document.  As well, the issue of how or whether “Digital Skills” are in fact, the way for an advanced economy to proceed given the extremely rapid pace of change and volatility in the technology landscape where the more specific the skills the more likely that they are to become obsolete with the next generation of technology (typically 6-18 months in many spheres of the digital economy). In fact, most digital employers seem to prefer to train their own employees on their own systems which gives them an opportunity to introduce employees into local corporate cultures and proprietary systems and local corporate knowledge and practices.

The level of digital skills for the small business sector which seems to be something of a priority in this Consultation is equally murky and likely as well to not be the driver of small business development argued for in the paper in the absence of a broader base of digital literacy in the overall economy and society (and educational system) This is particularly the case for mobile communications which is driving a large proportion of the digital innovation in most parts of the world outside of North America.

Of course, what is missing from the consultation is the broader issue of building a digitally inclusive society in Canada (referred to in the Senate report) as for example can be found in the policy orientation in Hong Kong with its objective of eliminating through government funded programs the last 20% (quintile) of those currently not digitally enabled.

The recognition that a digitally enabled and effective economy is founded on a digitally enabled and effective society seems somewhere to have been lost.  Lost as well seem to be the recognition that the greatest skill in a digital economy as in any other economy or in society overall is the capacity to learn and that learning how to learn, a function of a broader and more humanistic education rather than a “skills oriented” one, is probably a more important and useful preparation for a digital future overall. Equally lost is an understanding that economic innovation is a subset of broader social innovation which in turn comes from a critical yet practical immersion in prevailing cultures and practices.

The response then from a Community Informatics perspective to the questions posed by the Digital Economy Consultation would be as follows:

Capacity to Innovate Using Digital Technologies

The capacity to innovate is a “social” capacity, that is the foundation for innovation comes from a widely dispersed knowledge and experience base coming to grips with important issues including (and particularly in the Canadian context) those having to do with the capacity to live together and be productive in a very diverse and scattered population in an environmentally and climaticly sensitive resource intensive economy.  The more widely dispersed the access to, knowledge of, and capacity to use digital technology the greater our capacity as a country to innovate and respond to competitive and other global and local challenges.

Recommendation: That the Government of Canada undertake programs to create the capacity for effective use of broadband based digital technology for the “last quintile” of the Canadian population.

Building a World-Class Digital Infrastructure

In support of the above recommendation a world-class digital infrastructure would need to be put into place.  This challenge here is to ensure access to and effective use of the infrastructure by the “last quintile” (20%).  Since this “last quintile” remains unconnected largely because this represents the least economically beneficial group in the society from a private sector perspective the requirement here will need to be for a government initiative and funding to bridge the “last quintile” divide.

Recommendation: That the Federal Government of Canada commit to ensuring through private and public sector partnerships and direct funding and ownership if necessary, that the advantages of participation in a Digital Society and Economy be extended to the “last quintile”.

Growing the Information and Communications Technology Industry

The objective of “growing the ICT” industry is in fact a goal to increase the requirements for ICT applications, systems and services in the Canadian economy.  Since much of the current requirement is already satisfied, growth in the demand and the industry to respond will to a considerable degree come from the “last quintile” of non-users who are currently not being served.

Recommendation: That the Federal Government in its funding and overall programming strategy recognize the significance of the “last quintile” for the Canadian ICT industry and put resources and programme supports in place to ensure resources for demand from and appropriate supply to the “last quintile” sector of the overall market for ICT goods and services.

Digital Media: Creating Canada’s Digital Content Advantage

Canada’s greatest strength as an originator and creator of digital (and other) content is its diversity and history in responding to a range of physical, climatic and social challenges.  This knowledge, talent and capacity is found in Canada’s communities, small and large; digital and ethnic; linguistic and experimental; urban, rural and remote. A policy of ensuring technology and financial support to the range of communities within Canada is the surest method of enabling a “content advantage” for our digital productions.

Recommendation: That the Federal Government provide a range of technology and other programmatic supports for the range of communities within Canada and particularly to facilitate the expression of the range of interests and activities within these communities in both digital and non-digital form.

Building Digital Skills for Tomorrow.

Whether “Digital Skills” are in fact, the way for an advanced economy to proceed given the extremely rapid pace of change and volatility in the technology landscape, where the more specific the skills the more likely that they are to become obsolete, is a significant open question. In fact, most digital employers prefer to train their own employees on their own systems which gives them an opportunity to introduce employees into local corporate cultures and proprietary systems and local corporate knowledge and practices.

Recommendation: That the Government of Canada focus on the development of a broad base of digital literacy in the overall economy and society (and educational system) as the basis for “building digital skills for tomorrow” and that there is an associated commitment to ensure the broadest base of social inclusion with respect to this educational priority and particularly focusing on the requirements of the inclusion of the “last quintile”.

I’ve had a personal involvement with CAP in various of its forms going back some 15 years to its very early origins as program for enabling rural Internet access and its piloting in Nova Scotia in 1994 and roll out as a program in 1995. From the beginning the program was seen as a means to universalize digital participation within Canada.  The specifics of what was being understood as the objectives of the program by its government sponsors in fact varied from period to period—at one time being concerned with ensuring participation as e-consumers, in other instances concerned with training of new users, and in other instances attempting to use it as a base for engaging Small and Medium size enterprises in digital communications.

One major difficulty with the program was that it lacked any research and development capability and thus it was unable to learn from its experience. Also, there was little interest or financial support from government to allow it to grow and evolve as the overall digital awareness and capacity (and thus requirements for support for those at an entry level) evolved with the technology and with the overall evolution of digital awareness and capacity in the broader society/economy.

What this has meant is that CAP as a program has been caught in a time warp since the end of its first round of major funding – sometime in the early 2000’s — with just enough financial support to keep the doors open (with the help of intern staff provided as job training by another government agency). It has however survived without either the resources or the vision to effectively modify or extend activities at the local sites, link into emerging technology developments that might have value in support of its core program and users (e.g. multi-media, or broadband) or to begin the process of redefinition of what the requirements might be to ensure a broad-based (universal?) digital inclusion for all Canadians in the second decade of the 21^st century.

Where Canada actively boasted about its program(s) for digital inclusion and went around the world promoting and even trying to sell these as implementable packages in certain (mostly Less Developed) countries  (as responses to the Digital Divide), Canada now seriously lags virtually the rest of the world in having no program or vision in support of a universal platform of digital inclusion. What appears to have happened is that Canadian politicians (and their civil servant advisors?) have understood the transition to a digital society/digital economy to be a once and for all evolutionary shift accomplished once and then forgotten; rather than recognizing that this transition is one where the underlying digital platform is in a continuing state of upgrading and evolution and that the user population must be encouraged and enabled to undertake similar such changes.

The most current developments—broadband as the basic infrastructure supporting digital activity and mobile communication as part of the device spectrum through which digital activity is undertaken are both, in the Canadian context seen as optional enhancements rather than as additions to the fundamental enabling infrastructure. That other countries (Australia and the USA) have committed to massive investments in extending broadband access (recognizing that they are lagging the leaders in this area such as Korea and Sweden) while others have created a regulatory competitive framework that provides cell and mobile (Internet) access at costs which are fractions of those available in Canada (India, Sri Lanka) simply reinforces how far Canada has fallen in these areas.

The failure of imagination and the blindness of the prevailing market ideology among Canada’s political and economic elites has meant that the issues of digital inclusion and broad-based digital participation are seen as issues to be resolved if at all by market solutions.  That, not surprisingly, Canada’s percentages of Internet utilization have fallen in the last several years is accepted as simply the result of lack of interest on the part of consumers rather than as failures in public policy which will have long lasting results both at the individual and at the national level.

The result of course is that individuals without the opportunity or means for being digitally enabled are denied effective participation in a political, social, economic and cultural world where digital elements are a seamless component of all of these activities. Equally of course, as a society (and economy) Canada as a country is the loser by not having access to the full economic, cultural and social participation and productivity of a significant portion of its population and where the nation’s capacity for innovation and change in response to external demands and opportunities are diminished directly as a consequence.

That this is occurring is of course, completely consistent with the process undertaken by the current Canadian government in consulting on a national Digital Strategy without evidently consulting with any groups other than those with a direct commercial interest in the outcome of such a strategy.  If Canadians are expected to respond to digital issues only as consumers then of course, there is little need to consult with Canadian digital users and producers on a Digital Strategy since this strategy is only meant to respond to the their (and the market’s) needs for them as digital consumers.

That Canadians may have interests in a Canadian Digital Strategy from their perspective as cultural and economic producers, as citizens, as learners, as residents of rural and remote regions, as those who are currently economically marginalized, and so on seems not to have occurred to politicians or officials who either don’t or wish not to recognize how deeply pervasive digital media have become in all aspects of daily life. That they seem to be failing to look beyond the very narrow elements of the digital economy in their consultations on the formulation of the strategy suggests how limited and ineffective the strategy will in the end be since for such a strategy to be effective it must begin by ensuring that there is the widest availability of the most current digital platform and the widest possible inclusion of digital participation and effective use built on that platform including in support of cultural creation/production, learning and including social learning, involvement from the social and geographical periphery as from the heartland and so on.

A CAP 2.0 with additional resources for extending the range of facilities to which access is being provided and for undertaking renewed and extended efforts in training, outreach, and community mobilization could provide a large component of the delivery channel needed for such a Canadian Digital Strategy for Social and Economic Inclusion.

A failure to provide such a strategy will leave Canada in the position of falling further behind its more imaginative and less ideologically constrained international competitors and ultimately both economically and socially poorer as a consequence. That CAP has been given renewed resources to limp along in its current state for another year should certainly be welcomed (the alternative dismemberment of CAP would leave scandalously many people without any opportunity for digital participation) but this additional funding should be seen for what it is, a response based on political expediency (too many people were going to be very angry if CAP was cancelled) rather than any measure appropriate to the requirement.

If, as seems likely, the Harper government’s Digital Strategy is presented without any linkages or consideration of its relationship to CAP or the issues which CAP has been attempting to resolve then the victory of blinkered market ideology over commonsense in a digital era will be complete and Canada will slip ever further behind its allies and competitors in these most crucial areas.