Press Release: A Caribbean Initiative will Promote Open Data for Policy Research
(re-produced with permission from IDRC Web site)

(photo by F. Perini)

Canada’s International Development Research Centre (IDRC) brought together international experts and stakeholders in the Caribbean to explore opportunities for strengthening policy-oriented research in the region. The meeting, titled “Towards a Caribbean Open Institute: Data, Communications and Impact” took place June 30 – July 1, 2010 at the Jamaica Pegasus Hotel in Kingston, Jamaica. The meeting was attended by 40 high-level stakeholders in the area of public policy research from across the region. Participants examined international experiences and explored the possibilities of collaborating to drive the process of making more data available online in order to strengthen the collaboration between governments, researchers and the civil society.

The meeting established guidelines for a region-wide initiative that will explore how open institutional data approaches, Web 2.0 communications, and monitoring and evaluation methods can become forces that increase regional collaboration on key issues for the region such as agriculture, fishing, trade, tourism, immigration, ICTs, entrepreneurship, and others. IDRC’s Regional Director for Latin America and the Caribbean, Federico Burone noted that “the intention of this meeting was to explore the importance of making data available for knowledge production, and the need to strengthening the effective communication of this data by civil society groups and ordinary citizens. We think the effort was a successful one which proved enlightening for the participants about the many opportunities for collaboration”.

(photo by F. Perini)

Among the international experts, Steve Bratt, CEO of the Web Foundation, presented how governments around the world are increasingly making government data available online as a strategy to increase the provision of information services to the population. According to Steve, “I hope a Caribbean open government data policy will be one vision from this workshop, and that the Web Foundation can continue to support this vision through raising awareness, capacity building and coordinating collaborative fora in this region and around the world”. Founded by Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee, the Web Foundation has pioneered the concept of open data with a focus on its developmental potential.

According to one participant, Dr. Hopeton Dunn, Director of the Telecommunications Policy and Management Programme, Mona School of Business, UWI, the two-day event “exposed regional participants to the values of open access to public and policy related data as part of a regional strategy for more evidence-based policy making. But further, it raised the matter of the paradigm shift that is required to making more data available and accessible to the public, which will no doubt improve public and business processes toward regional growth.”

Several of the participants expressed commitment to promoting the concept of open data in their ongoing work. Secretary General of the Caribbean Telecommunications Union, Bernadette Lewis, who also participated in the meeting, commented that her organization “will begin immediately to endorse the implementation of Open Data systems among our 20 member governments as we see the value that more open government systems will bring to our region”.

The event concluded that collaboration will continue in the form of a joint initiative to promote open data for policy-related research, driven by a regional group of researchers and organizations and supported by the IDRC. Among the institutions represented were UWI, Caribbean Telecommunications Union, Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States, CARICOM and United Nations – Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean.

Welcoming participants and outlining vision for workshop

The International Development Research Centre (IDRC) is currently convening a very interesting workshop entitled, “Toward A Caribbean Open Institute: Data, Communications, and Impact”, being held in Kingston, Jamaica from 20 June – 1 July 2010.  I was invited to give a talk entitled, “Open Government Data”.  About 40 experienced and energetic policy and technical experts from regional and international organizations (including the UN), non-governmental organizations, universities, and the finance and communications sectors are actively engaged in discussion.  A key aim is to explore how open institutional data approaches, Web 2.0 communications, and monitoring and evaluation methods can become forces that increase regional collaboration on issues such as agriculture, fishing, trade, tourism, immigration, ICTs, entrepreneurship, etc.

The workshop concludes later today with brainstorming on the kinds of pan-Caribbean initiatives and pilot projects that might lead to economic development and better governance.  I hope a Caribbean open government data policy will be one vision from this workshop, and that the Web Foundation can continue to support this vision through raising awareness, capacity building and coordinating collaborative fora in this region and around the world.

“Technology … has created the means by which voices, often anonymous, can be heard saying things they would not be brave enough to say with their lips. With power comes responsibility.  But too often the Internet has divorced the two. Now anyone can say anything with impunity. …  May your generation be the one to stand up to reflexive extremism and on-line hyperbole … and say enough — this will not stand”.

What do you think?  For context, first listen to his entire address, which was eloquent and succinct.  You can find the entire speech starting at 49 minutes 50 seconds of the clip below (select the play arrow at the bottom (not middle), then drag the progress bar at the bottom to the desired time).  The quote above starts around 51:40.  Sometimes that video feed is slow…  so you can also see a large fraction of the speech on YouTube (with the quote above starting around 1:46).

Mr. Meacham suggests that the Internet is partially to blame for a loss of professionalism, authenticity, and attribution within the media, and within human discourse in general.  This is not a new or baseless assertion.  The 3 elements of his words that bothered me most were:

• Mr. Meacham did not acknowledge that there might be some virtue in providing more people on the planet with a voice –  distributing a power once possessed by a relative small, educated and largely-responsible minority in traditional media (newspapers, magazines, TV, radio)
• He did not acknowledge that many of the problems he cites have been with us for years through traditional media (but on a smaller scale): “anonymous” assertions, lack of responsibly-exercised power, people saying things in print “they would not be brave enough to say with their lips”, etc.
• Most importantly, I was disappointed that he could not envision the possibility of giving more people a global voice through the Web, while leveraging that technology to address more complete the problems cited in the previous bullet.  Perhaps the Web could be leveraged to improve our ability to assert and assess truth, to encourage and find quality, to skim the surface and dig deeper, to couple power to responsibility; and do these things in ways impossible through traditional media.

If I could re-write — with impunity — the tail end of Mr. Meacham’s above remarks, and do so for graduates of “Web University”, I would say:

“May your generation see a time when all people on the planet have the power to write, read and and collaborate on the Web, and that this collective power fosters an age of growing understanding and compassion, of improving lives and communities, and of solutions to this world’s greatest challenges.  May your generation, not fear or blame technology, but harness it to help each person make their own (or collective) judgments about what is true or false, right or wrong, good or bad, and safe or dangerous.”

OK, that was really geeky — but this is Web U.  Let us know your thoughts.

The Web has the potential to increase access to educational materials in Africa, and make it easier for people in Africa to contribute new materials to the world.

This is a belated post on the World Economic Forum on Africa, held last month in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.  First, this event has been in Cape Town, South Africa in past years, and it is critical that WEF moved it closer to the locus of matters of greatest importance to the continent.  Second, the gathering of leaders and practitioners from government, industry, and philanthropy provided the perfect mix for gaining feedback on the programs and plans of the World Wide Web Foundation.

I was invited to talk in the session, Higher Education in Africa, with a focus on the use of the Web to empower educators and students to access content from around the world, and, ultimately, to contribute educational materials for the benefit of the rest of the world.  The format of my talk, Web-Empowered Education in Africa — was the Pecha Kucha style — in this case 15 slides with a fixed 20 seconds per slide.  This was a fun challenge.  Following the presenters’ talks, the audience broke into groups to discuss in more depth each speaker’s topic.  I was honored that the Minister of Science and Technology of South Africa and the Minister of Education of Tanzania joined my group and provided very valuable input.

There were many other  incredible sessions at WEFA.  Please check out the official videos.  Given the Web Foundation’s initial work within the Web-alliance for Regreening in Africa, I found the session on A New Vision for Africa’s Agriculture particularly interesting.  However, I was surprised that access to information (techniques, weather, diseases, market prices, government regulations, etc.) for farmers and agriculture extension agents was not really mentioned.

I am already following up with most of the fine people I met in Dar es Salaam, and I look forward to participating in future WEF events.

Map of the first 10 laboratories in the new Web Science Trust Network

Raleigh, North Carolina was a busy place two weeks ago.  At the same time as the Web for All Conference, and just upstairs in the convention center, the second Web Science Conference took place.  The agenda for WebSci10, as it was tagged (Tim Berners-Lee commented that this tag implied the event had been around for more years that it has been) framed the diversity and dynamism of this new field of study.  Tim and Wendy Hall announced the creation of a network of Web Science laboratories — WSTNet.  I took the opportunity of the proximity of the two conferences to hear some Web Science talks, review interesting posters, and have valuable discussions with Web scientists.

Betty in front of poster on her project to study the impact of mobile devices in developing countries

The Web Foundation was proud to be one of the sponsors of WebSci10, and our support paid for the travel and participation of Betty Purwandari.  Betty is a Web Science graduate student at Southampton University, is originally from Indonesia, and is embarking on a study of the impact of mobile devices in developing countries.  Best wishes for success, Betty!

People with disabilities, aging, reading poorly-supported languages, with low literacy and/or lack of technology experience.

Today and tomorrow, in Raleigh, North Carolina, USA, the 7th International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility is taking place. Most call this event Web for All or W4A. The focus this year is “Developing Regions: Common Goals, Common Problems?”, which is perfect fit for the Web Foundation’s initial focus.  I had the honor of delivering the opening keynote, entitled, “Breaking Barriers to a Read/Write Web that Empowers All” (PDF, PPT).

The vast majority in the room have a background in making the Web accessible for people with disabilities, and a great deal of progress has been made in this area.  The participants were receptive  to my message that perhaps an additional 1 billion people are being excluded by current Web technology and practice:  e.g.,  people increasingly challenged by age, people reading languages that don’t work well on the Web, people trying to create and find content in most of the world’s  nearly 7,000 active languages, people with low literacy, and/or those with little experience with technology.

I issued a call to action:  We need to increase our efforts  – individually and cooperatively – to make the Web accessible to all people.  We should leverage the experience in accessibility for disabled people to accelerate work to lower barriers for the other, above-mentioned groups of people in developed and developing countries.

I look forward to talking with others here in the next two days, as well as listening to presentations, to learn more about accessibility challenges and ideas for solutions.  Perhaps we’ll  find new collaborators. Follow W4A on Twitter at #w4a10

The work to the right is by the artist, Kabré, who does custom painting outside of our hotel in Ouagadougou. I asked him to illustrate the use of mobile phones, laptops and computers in his country. I also asked that the panel on the left be a farmer talking on his mobile phone. My French must be even worse than I thought, because he painted a tourist.  This cool work is now hanging in Boston office.

Below are a few of my favorite videos and photos (not yet posted) from the trip, taken from a larger collection of videos and  a larger collection of Burkina pics.  The last video below is a funny episode while touring through my temporary apartment-like hotel room, in Ouagadougou.  Enjoy …

If the player does not work well for you, go directly to video on the CNN site.

Tim was interviewed in the MIT Stata Center’s interesting Kiva Conference Room.  My interview took place in the Web Foundation offices in downtown Boston.  Close to 1.5 hours of video was taped. They used some still images and  video that I took on my trip to Burkina Faso last month as we kicked-off the Web-alliance for Regreening in Africa project.

What do you think of this segment?  Does it convey what you think we are trying to do — or should be trying to do — at the Web Foundation.

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Tim Berners-Lee gave a talk (see video above) in the Brussels, Belgium on 16 March to people from the European Union, industry and press.  He conveyed the motivation for the creation of the Web, for open Web standards, and for the creation of the Web Science Trust and the World Wide Web Foundation.

Tim also discussed the importance of enabling people in developing countries to more easily provide and access information, and the need to ensure separation, standardization, openness and neutrality across layers of technology stack that support the Web.  The principles that have made the Web a success up to now are critical for the Web’s future success and value to all of humanity.  I recorded the video from the back of the room, so apologies for the poor sound quality.

Tim and I were in Brussels at that time, in part to receive a grant from Vodafone. The grant will fund a project to empower entrepreneurs in Africa to create content relevant to others in the region.

http://www.websci10.org/registration.html

for WebSci2010!  This exciting conference is during the  WWW2010 week in Raleigh, North Carolina, USA.  The organizers seek papers that demonstrate the development, scope, and relevance of the emerging field of Web Science, which is taking off around the globe.  Web Science Conference 2010 is the 2nd such event, following a successful inaugural event in Athens, Greece last year.

Invited speakers at WebSci10 include Jennifer Chayes (Microsoft Research, Boston) and Melissa Gilbert (Temple University, Philadelphia) and Web Foundation founder and director Sir Tim Berners-Lee (MIT).