Session
Organizer 1: Juliano Cappi, NIC.br
Organizer 2: Alexandre Costa Barbosa, NIC.br / CGI.br
Organizer 3: Hartmut Richard Glaser, Brazilian Internet Steering Committee - CGI.br
Organizer 4: Beatriz Barbosa, Braziian Internet Steering Committee
Organizer 5: Everton T Rodrigues, NIC.br
Speaker 1: Eric Terena, Civil Society, Latin American and Caribbean Group (GRULAC)
Speaker 2: Berhan Oumer, Technical Community, African Group
Speaker 3: Sonia Jorge, Civil Society, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
Beatriz Barbosa, Civil Society, Latin American and Caribbean Group (GRULAC)
Alexandre Costa Barbosa, Technical Community, Latin American and Caribbean Group (GRULAC)
Juliano Cappi, Technical Community, Latin American and Caribbean Group (GRULAC)
Round Table - U-shape - 90 Min
1. How to assess meaningfulness within meaningful access policies and frameworks? What are the ups and downs and the limitations of the existing definitions?
2. What is a reasonable set of concrete measures and solutions to integrate meaningful access definition in order to orient digital inclusion policies to improve people’s lives?
Connection with previous Messages: Within the scope of the track on Economic and Social Inclusion and Human Rights, this session establishes a direct dialogue with, at least, the first line of concern with "adequate enabling environments", as supportive social environments are a fundamental part of the more recent discussions on a meaningful access framework. Several topics of the track on Universal Access and Meaningful Connectivity are also covered, as this is the main theme of this session. Of course, many issues raised within the other tracks of the 2021 messages are also connected or even present as cross-cutting issues, such as inclusiveness, sovereign, autonomy, and sustainability, among others.
9. Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure
10. Reduced Inequalities
11. Sustainable Cities and Communities
10.3
9.1
9.a
9.c
Targets: The session is more than anything a people-centered discussion. And because of that the dialogues and debates will be naturally linked with several of Sustainable Development Goals. More specifically, the session will mainly connect to SDGs 9, 10 and 11, in a more broad perspective of technology for a more equal and sustainable society.
Description:
Digital inclusion is a global value. Historically, public policies aimed at reducing the digital divide have been mainly focused on connectivity issues. However, beyond the lack of infrastructure there is a broad research agenda warning about the new forms of exclusion emerging from a world mediated by the massive adoption and use of Information and Communication Technologies. Digital inclusion policy frameworks haven’t properly considered emerging problems related, for example, to discrimination (e.g. algorithmic and data discrimination or surveillance), local content promotion, internet user agency and autonomy, cultural diversity promotion etc, although academic research has pointed out to the overall negative externalities of Internet usage, especially among the vulnerable population.
In this sense, the IGF’s Policy Network on Meaningful Access (PNMA) has been working out a concept related to the challenges of providing access to the Internet and making a meaningful contribution to the improvement of people’s lives locally. The concept encompasses three pillars: affordability, meaningful connectivity, and supportive social environment. All of them, if considered to the development of digital inclusion policies, may produce effects at the local environment in a wide array of possible ways, some unexpected and some undesired. Otherwise, despite affordability and meaningful connectivity concepts have already reached a broad consensus, the third pillar, supportive social environment, require further discussions. Until now, PNMA has already considered to include human rights, digital skills, and local and relevant content. However, other elements are at the core of this debate on the establishment of a scope that meets meaningful enablers for the people in different geographic contexts which can be translate into policy targets.
The discussions carried out at the Workshop #248 “Framing meaningful access for inclusive digital policy” which took place in the IGF 2021, highlighted two key points:
1. The debate highlighted the existence of a divide between government policy and initiatives to circumvent connectivity challenge which are mainly carried out by local civil society organizations, especially community networks initiatives. From one side, this divide can deteriorate public agents understanding of the local communities context and weaken their capacity to produce public policy able to address adequately the issues of local population given that they lose the opportunity to learn with actors involved with community’ structural challenges. From another side, it may also weaken the sustainability of civil society organizations projects which are carried out without the financial and technological support of the State.
2. In this sense, the session also made clear the importance of collecting at the local level inputs to understand what are the key elements to be agreed upon for a definition of meaningful access able to guide the development of public policy oriented to the needs of vulnerable or weaker social groups.
In order to advance in developing the concept of meaningful access, it is essential to take into account the perspectives and experiences of people from communities where Internet has not set its presence yet or, from communities where Internet configuration is not minimally acceptable considering the criteria defined by this very definition. The effectiveness of public policy is territorially dependent. In this sense, beyond improving the supportive social environment definition from a bottom up perspective, it is fundamental to have the scrutiny of people from communities over the emphasis given by meaningful connectivity on (i) the need for 4G-like speeds, (ii) smart-phone ownership, (iii) daily use, and (iv) an unlimited broadband connection at home, work, or a place of study and so on. The involvement of the local community representatives may help to build a concept of Meaningful access intended to promote not only an innovative approach to digital inclusion public policy frameworks but also one which is sensible to the diversity of environments in which communities are settled.
The workshop will bring representatives from vulnerable communities and territories to present the result of an intersectional discussion on the concept of Meaningful Access and to debate with the diversity of actors involved in digital inclusion discussions. The Workshop organizers will present the concept to the representatives of selected communities around the globe in order to provoke a discussion and promote the local contributions to the ongoing debate on the definition of meaningful access and its impact to the production of a supra national digital inclusion policy framework.
The proposed session is part of the actions and activities within a permanent and continued work under the Brazilian Internet Steering Committee - CGI.br, which has a specific group focused on the discussions related to Internet access and inclusion in Brazil: the Advisory Chamber on Universalization and Digital Inclusion. This Chamber is an multistakeholder advisory group to the Board of CGI.br and works throughout the year with diverse topics of the digital inclusion agenda in Brazil. The aim of this session proposed to the global IGF is to contribute with the debate over the concepts and perspectives embedded in meaningful access and connectivity ideas, tools, measures and policies considering the local perspective. As the session will count on diverse views from local communities, the main expected outcome is to set the scene for an in-depth and community-driven review of the meaningful access and connectivity proposed frameworks definitions, as mean to reach more concrete and realistic measures to move forward with the overall debate. It is also an objective of this session to collaborate with the several actors, organizations and spaces dealing with these topics. In terms of concrete outputs, the session’s report will be a rich material to be used by anyone interested in the topic. Other than that, the session will also create opportunities for building and expanding networks of actors dealing with access and connectivity issues. Ultimately, there is an intent to draw on the conversations and dialogues before, during, and after the session to put up a more concrete summary document with the main proposals from participants to be shared with the IGF community, and, eventually, with policymakers worldwide.
Hybrid Format: The session then will be divided in four main parts: introduction, community perspectives, specialists reactions and public interaction. The first segment will consist of the organizers’ overview of the meaningful access debate followed by operational procedures to help participants and attendees prepare (maximum duration of 10 minutes). The second segment will consist of representative of autochthonous communities on Internet access to ensure specialists and policy-makers take territorial dimensions into account when developing proposals for connectivity and digital inclusion. In this part each individual speaker presentation will have a total duration of up to 10 minutes, and some polls will be launched through the IGF platform or by an external tool (either Slido or Kahoot). Right after, the specialists engaged in the meaningful access agenda will react focusing on how to improve the aspect of ‘meaningfulness’ of meaningful access. The last segment will consist of the overall interaction between the audience and speakers. For this final part, questions from the Q&A will be gathered by the online moderator and given to the on-site moderator, who will select and distribute them among the speakers. Finally, the results from the polls will be jointly analysed, directing both the audience and the panellists to their final considerations or conclusions. The session will give same relevance to on-site presence organizers, dedicated people and tools to enable a hybrid session and online facilitators.
Usage of IGF Official Tool.