What We Do

Initiatives Overview

Web Rights - The Web Index

The decentralized, open, free and universal Web is under threat.

Governments—totalitarian and democratic alike —are increasingly monitoring and controlling people’s online communication. Wireless internet providers are being tempted to slow traffic to sites with which they have not made deals. Closed content silos are walling off information posted by their users from the rest of the Web. High costs and lack of locally relevant content, especially in the developing world, still exclude the majority of the world's people from the Web's global conversation.

If we, the Web’s users, allow these and other trends to proceed unchecked, the Web could be broken into fragmented islands and its transformative potential frittered away.

We promote the right to an affordable, universal and uncensored Web through research, advocacy and campaigning as well as technical innovation.

Our just-launched Web Index measures how well different countries around the world are harnessing the benefits of an open and universal Web.

Projects: The Web Index

Web for Civic Engagement

“The Web is vital to democracy, a communications channel that makes possible a continuous worldwide conversation. The Web is now more critical to free speech than any other medium.” Tim Berners-Lee, 2010.

Thanks to its open, decentralised and truly “world wide” nature, the Web is revolutionising people’s capacity to obtain information, participate in debate, and organise for change. The UN’s leading expert on freedom of expression, Frank LaRue, says it is “one of the most powerful instruments of the 21st century for increasing transparency in the conduct of the powerful, access to information, and for facilitating active citizen participation in building democratic societies.” (see the Special Rapporteur’s full report here )

We work with civil society and political leaders to use the Web to enhance participation and accountability, building more open societies for the 21st century. We do so by training civic organisations, journalists, entrepreneurs and activists to make use of open government data, and by empowering people to improve transparency by crowd-sourcing and publishing their own data and stories. The Web Foundation also supports governments with the practical know-how to develop open government data programs, and with support from Canada’s International Development Research Center (IDRC) we are building a research network to explore further the impact of open government data.

Projects: Open Government Data, Mobile Entrepreneurship

Web for Economic Development

We champion the Web as a tool for economic inclusion, seeking to expand economic mobility and value creation through a flourishing web eco-system. We help local entrepreneurs develop viable online applications and services that meet local needs, and we support marginalised groups such as smallholder farmers adapt ICTs to increase their market power

Our networks of young Web developers and entrepreneurs are receiving training and mentorship to exploit growing mobile internet markets. In Africa alone, mobile-broadband penetration - reaching 4% - continues to outpace fixed broadband subscriptions serving less than 1% percent of the continent's population.

We also work with people trapped in poverty, especially rural women, to exploit technology in order to move up the value chain. Since these groups have often been denied a basic education and frequently belong to minority ethnic groups, many of them lack sufficient majority-language literacy skills to use text-based (SMS) interfaces. We have developed voice-to-Web systems that run on the simplest mobile phones without any need for text, which are helping women forest producers in Mali to broaden their trading networks, negotiate better prices and improve crop quality in the face of climate change.

Projects: Research: Mobile Data Collection Opportunities in Sub Saharan Africa, Voice Browsing

What We Do

Current Work

Reports

Initiatives Overview

Web Rights - The Web Index

Web for Civic Engagement

Web for Economic Development