connecting ICT policy debate
For those of you who couldn’t attend the forum on March 24th last month, here’s a video of the event, produced by The African Commons Project. You’ll get a good overview of the day and the issues that were discussed by the participants, as well as an idea of the next steps for broadband strategy in South Africa.
A World Café discussion in action
In the final session of the National Broadband Strategy Forum, facilitator Steve Song invited attendees to comment, add to and generally edit the draft framework which had informed most of the day’s proceedings. “Think of it as policy haiku,” he said, “the best possible scenario for today is that a better version of the framework is written, rather than expanding upon the current content.”
This led to quite a complex and interesting discussion, with various participants raising questions around who exactly the stakeholders referred to in the document are, and whether this document reflected policy or was simply a framework document.
A general consensus was reached on the fact that the draft was not a policy document, but a framework document, and that it needed to be discussed now, so that the opportunity to make representation to government before the elections could be exploited. It was also acknowledged that more richness in the content of the framework could be developed by having broad consensus on the general principles, which could be supplemented by different groups (e.g. the Telecoms Workers Union) at a later point.
Much of the conversation revolved around the actual possibility of making a successful submission, and what that would entail in concrete terms. Detailed road maps and concrete targets were agreed to be the most effective tools, as they’re the most measurable by government, and are useful for holding people accountable when goals are not met. The environmental movement has used conservative targets very successfully in the past, and it was suggested the group look to that model for guidance.
These deliverables could be broken out into short, medium and long-term goals. Some things are easier to do than others, and it would be a good idea to set them now because the new government will be under pressure to deliver something substantial in terms of service delivery. Submissions that bring with them the promise of dramatic change will therefore be appealing to government far more immediately.
The participants in the Sunnyside Park Hotel ballroom.
These suggestions were met with general agreement, but actually nailing down these achievable goals proved to be more difficult. The devil, as always, is in the details, and there was much discussion as to when would be a good target for meeting these goals. 2014 was suggested, as it dovetails with some of the markers for the Millennium Development Goals, as well as marking the 20th year of democracy in South Africa.
In terms of targets, it was proposed that South Africa aim to regain it’s status as the ‘number one’ African country in terms of broadband access, and leapfrog over Kenya and Nigeria, both of whom have risen above us. But the nitty-gritty details of what this would mean in terms of measuring the connectivity of homes, municipal wards or towns was debated. Using another country like Kenya as a benchmark was also discussed, as was the possibility of using other countries that are development partners, like India or Brazil.
The Draft Framework will be reviewed based on the discussions held at the Forum and will be made available online shortly.
Several participants raised the issue that there is a risk of falling into the “broadband for broadband’s sake” trap, and suggested that the framework document also look at the application of ICTs as a measurable goal, as well as looking at the issue of energy. Energy and broadband will always be an issue, especially now, and if an inclusion was made for this in the document, it might have more traction with government as well as with other stakeholders.
By the end of the session it was generally agreed that there isn’t enough time between now and the election to really revise the targets in the framework document. Rather, it was suggested, use the existing indices and ensure that separate stakeholder groups have the opportunity to work on specific targets (like content policy and job creation) for the future.
Notes from the World Café sessions at the Broadband Forum.
Most conferences, forums, working meetings and workshops take a similar format. Everyone arrives full of vim and vigour, and the situation quickly deteriorates into a roomful of people hidden behind their laptops, or twittering in isolation. The real conversations, if there are any, tend to take place in the tea and meal breaks, or over a cigarette quickly sneaked outside.
So it was really refreshing that at the National Broadband Strategy Forum, I was able to be part of really engaging conversations during the sessions, under the very able facilitation of Steve Song. Using the World Café method for fostering collaborative discussion, participants were encouraged to talk openly and easily with each other throughout the day.
“We knew there was going to be a ton of expertise in the room,” says Song, of the decision to use this process of facilitation. “And we wanted to maximise this cognitive resource. Some top regulatory, business and legal people in broadband are here today and if they hadn’t been allowed to speak and speak often, they would have been pissed off.”
The tone of these conversations were kept deliberately inclusive. “The language and metaphor we use around debate are the metaphors of war,” said Song, at the beginning of the Forum. “We say things like ‘I demolished his argument’ and that’s just not constructive.” To counteract this aggression, and the fact that in conference discussion scenarios some participants tend to be less forthcoming, each table appointed a host, whose role was, among other things, to make participants feel welcome at the table. As the groups moved around the tables, the hosts welcomed participants, updated them on conversations, and kept the conversations flowing. One of the challenges around broadband in South Africa is developing a common mindset around the challenges facing the sector. The World Café method, because of it’s inclusive nature, allows people to develop this common mindset, and think about meeting those challenges more effectively.
By covering the tables in large sheets of paper, and leaving colourful markers on the table, the organisers also encouraged participants to draw, write, doodle and colour-in during the sessions, and kept proceedings and conversations informal and flowing.
And flow they did. Several times participants stopped, sat back and said “Wow, this has been a great conversation.” At one of the tables I sat at, even the call for lunch wasn’t enough to break up the discussion. We sat, and continued to discuss the potential for broadband in South Africa to change the way rural children are educated. When you consider that one of the objectives of the Forum was to work collaboratively on refining the Broadband Policy Framework, it is easy to understand how a facilitation method like World Café can be a successful tool.
Ory Okolloh discusses how government and civil society need to prepare for broadband.
Ory Okolloh addressed the audience at the National Broadband Forum to give her perspective on the draft framework based on her experience with e-citizenship, e-government and democratic participation. Ory is a Kenyan blogger and open-government activist who runs Mzalendo, a civic website that tracks the performance of Kenya’s Parliament and its Parliamentarians. She is also the founder member of Ushahidi.
She started off by speaking about how civil society should plays its part in the broadband revolution. Firstly, she pointed out that just as government needs to be held accountable for information made available online, so should civil society organisations. The questions to ask are: How open are we? How accessible is information from my organisation? Secondly, she said that civil society must prepare citizens for broadband by encouraging them to be content creators. In Kenya her organisation is preparing for broadband by running bar camps with local content generators in order to ‘localise the internet’ and make content relevant and usable to the public.
Ory spoke about how lucky we are as South Africans to have Freedom of Information legislation, something which Kenyans have been lobbying their government for eight years now. She encouraged South Africans to use the law in our favour – to demand that information is made available online and to challenge government, using relevant legislation, when these demands are not met.
The next step is making information accessible – and that means making data available in usable formats that can be remixed, mashed-up, mapped and interpreted by citizens, for citizens. Ory also spoke about how in preparing for broadband we should build applications or platforms for both the web and the mobile phone. While the advent of broadband is hot on our heels, at the moment people are most likely to access information through their mobile phones.
That brought her to her final point of how barriers to entry need to be as low as possible to enable citizen participation. She used the example of Mzalendo, which runs on $20 a month for hosting fees mainly, thanks to the strong user-generated aspect of the site. A strong online citizen movement is a powerful way to hold government accountable.
Steve Vosloo speaks about how broadband will change the way learners participate in the knowledge economy.
Steve Vosloo, 21st Century Learning Fellow at the Shuttleworth Foundation, painted an inspiring picture of what teaching and learning could be in the future if South African students were broadband-enabled.
Steve started off by reminding us of the hopes that South African leaders have had for South Africa even from 1996 – to be an information society, made up of knowledge workers who participate in the knowledge economy on a global level. What this means is that access to information through ICT is critically needed to allow us to plug in to this knowledge economy, not only as consumers or receivers of information, but as participants too.
Steve spoke about the skills that youth are gaining by being actively engaged with content – they are learning critical reading, skills problem solving, and how to share and collaborate - these kids are learning how to be active 21st century citizens.
In a non-broadband enabled world, education was about acquiring information, trusting the knowledge authorities and asking no questions, it was a one of instruction.
Compare this to an information-rich broadband enabled world (this is the electrifyingly exciting picture of learning that Steve paints!) - where homework becomes user-generated content, that is not written for the teacher to read, but is written for a wider audience, a change of focus which has shown that students improve their writing ability and quality. And when your homework is published on the web, it means that your circle of friends broadens – you learn inter-cultural competence and awareness, and are positioned for peer-to-peer learning. And with a global outlook it means your eyes are opened so that problem solving become global, you have a broader audience and a bigger voice. Essentially this opens learners up to an information rich world that is about constructing meaning from multiple sources, and involves debating, questioning, and interacting.
Steve gave some exciting examples of the type of homework that could be assigned to children in a broadband-enabled learning environment. For example, instead of asking students to read the opening scene of Macbeth at home – how about asking them to find a few video examples on YouTube, and then get them to write a critical comparative analysis of these on their homework blog? The second example he used was one that is actually happening through the popular chat application Mxit – it’s called Dr Math where kids can log in and ask for help with their maths homework from University of Pretoria students.
The point that Steve made through the latter example was how broadband need not give rise to ‘high tech’ education tools, it can enable in different ways, at different speeds, depending on the level and needs of a community. The point is that it enables an array of interactive, participatory, skill-building opportunities for young people.
The other critical point that Steve made was that this approach is completely aligned with outcomes-based education – it teaches learners how to be critical, analytical, communicative, and how to work in a group. He also said that it won’t suddenly turn bad teachers into good teachers – what it will do is empower learners to keep teachers accountable.
Without access to affordable broadband, the ‘participatory gap’ is widening in South Africa - what this means is that South African youth are faced with unequal access to the opportunities, experience, skills and knowledge that will prepare them for full participation in a knowledge economy. This is where broadband steps in as a critical enabler that will truly fulfill the vision of a participatory, information society in South Africa.
Indra de Lanerolle at the National Broadband Strategy Forum
The second presentation from today’s National Broadband Strategy Forum painted an exciting picture for the future of content in a fully wired South Africa. Using the small platteland towns of Rosendal and Ficksburg as an analogy, media consultant Indra de Lanerolle pointed out that the founding fathers of Rosendal made the decision to do without a train station, while Ficksburg went the opposite way, and decided to allow the train to run through the town. As a result, Rosendal has remained small, isolated and remote, while Ficksburg has grown into a developed, thriving town. The phenomenon of preferential attachment – that connections will flow to entities that are already well linked, is the same, says de Lanerolle, for broadband users and small towns.
According to de Lanerolle, the arrival of broadband has several consequences for the creation, distribution and use of content, and he painted several possible scenarios for the content industry in South Africa.
The first was that broadband might mean the end of content as we know it. As mass media outlets battle with the Internet for advertising revenue; newspapers, television stations, record labels and the publishing industry have begun to lose out to the online world. He cited the case of ITV in the UK, who, until 2007 had been the largest recipient of advertising in the United Kingdom, although they had to spend 1.3 billion pounds on content per year to make themselves so. In 2007, however, Google UK, who spent nothing on creating content, beat them out of the advertising battle. South Africa hasn’t yet reached that point in the competition cycle, but as Ronnie Apteker, the founder of Internet Solutions, and now a well-known local film producer has pointed out, without mystery there are no [profit] margins.
Content is threatened by broadband because distribution networks and business models are threatened by broadband. In South Africa, media distribution methods have always been controlled by monopolies or oligopolies. There is one plant in South Africa that makes compact discs, and it’s owned by one of the record labels. Newspapers have to fit into the production schedules of the few entities that own printing presses. There are no real “independents” in the music industry because the major record labels control the distribution channels.
Regulation of these channels is also controlled. Telecoms, radio and television are controlled through regulation, and you need a license to broadcast. Traditionally, these monopolies have been able to sustain their control because they reach agreements with the regulator to clamp down on competition in return for meeting various obligations, including content obligations.
Distributors of content have also been able to control the physical and intellectual property of the content – physically through the technology (the sheer size of boxes of film made it easy, in the old days to control movies) and through law by the use of rights.
These rights were, in the past, governed by arcane systems, which divided the world of consumers into complex territories and markets. Ironically, it was these arcane systems that lead to piracy in the case of the local film Tsotsi – the systems of markets, rights and zones meant that many people pirated the film because it was unavailable to them through legitimate markets.
In a broadband world, however, every user has access to the means of distribution and broadband connects every point of production and consumption to every other point. The digital nature of the space also means that there is no physical property that can be locked down by distributors. DRM was an attempt to do this, but has proven to be, on the whole, unsuccessful, and is falling away as a method of control. DVDs had controls for different markets and zones, but the easy availability of crack codes has made this unfeasible. Broadband undermines all of these traditional business models.
So the question, says de Lanerolle is this: Should we care about the disintegration of old models? The answer, he says, is ‘yes’ only if we have a very narrow view of our (national) interests. He quoted Bill Clinton’s famous campaign phrase: “It’s the [whole] economy, stupid!” – the potential for development with broadband is so great that these opportunities should be embraced.
He cited a pilot project in the British region of Cornwall as an example of the potential of growth through broadband connectivity. Cornwall is a remote area, relatively inaccessible by car, and without any major cities. But it super-wired, as a result of a pilot project by the British government to connect the entire region through super-fast broadband connectivity.
As a result, labour productivity in Cornwall went up by up 5-10%, and the increased business process efficiency that resulted grew Cornwall’s GDP by up to 10%. What this example also showed, he said, s that the digital divide isn’t just a question of comparing the developed and developing world. It’s also about the degrees of ‘wiredness’.
Simple reductions of rates that make access cheaper are not, de Lanerolle said, a solution to the need for development. Reducing rates for telecoms, like Telkom had done for call centre development, will never be enough. If Skype or Google Voice allows calls to be made for what is, essentially, free, it makes no sense for telecoms’ offerings to be anything less than the benchmark of connectivity.
Deregulation, he says, is not the answer though. Content in South Africa is still regulated by the framework used before 1994, which is getting increasingly out of sync with the telecoms regulation as competition increases. As an example, digital migration of television is not introducing any more comepetition in South Africa. One possible cause of this is that there is no integrated approach from civil society or government to the issue of broadband content development or regulation.
Another challenge to content in the context of broadband is that of consumption. 93% of South Africans are reached by radio, 83% of South Africans can access television, and only 7% use the internet. How to make broadband as available as radio and television is a huge challenge.
Broadband, says de Lanerolle, should be defined broadly. It’s a moving target, and people’s levels of connectivity shift as their access to applications moves. It’s not possible for many people to access Web 2.0 applications and develop content because their connections and technology are not sophisticated enough.
The final scenario de Lanerolle painted is one where the flow of content shifts and becomes more of a conversation. With the potential collapse of traditional distribution methods, which operate in a one-to-many model, the potential exists for more horizontal, conversational models, and it’s this potential, according to de Lanerolle, that makes the possibilities for audiences much more exciting.
Arthur Goldstuck presenting on the state of broadband access in South Africa, during the first session of the S.A. National Broadband Forum
Arthur Goldstuck was the first speaker to kick off the SA National Broadband Forum, by providing an introduction to the importance of, and key challenges facing broadband development in SA. He presented ‘further findings’ from World Wide Worx’s Internet Access in S.A. 2008 report, which the company is officially releasing today. The company usually resists forecasting for more than a year ahead but for the first time they have ‘stuck their necks out’ to include long-term trends on internet access and usage in South Africa, with predictions up to 2013. Goldstuck noted that the predictions were based on a ‘fairly good case scenario’ for growth in the coming years.
At the moment South Africa has 1.058 millions unique broadband users, with the explosion of wireless broadband making a huge contribution to internet access in South Africa in the last few years. Interestingly, Goldstuck showed how Telkom prices for broadband access have consistently decreased, though from August ’07 no further price decreases have taken place.
With the huge growth in ADSL and wireless access, Goldstuck predicted the “death of dial-up”, he says that within 3 years dial-up will no longer be offered as a commercial offering, and no marketing spend will be allocated here.
There is certainly more to come – using this map, Goldstuck spoke about the many developments that the laying of underwater cables will provide for Africa and South Africa. At the moment we access the internet at 0.8 gigabytes per second, but with the laying of the Seacom cable (to be completed by June ’09), we’ll improve to 2.58 gigabytes per second. The ultimate goal, as predicted by Goldstuck - 10.5 terabytes per second in 2013.
According to Goldstuck there are four main drivers to affordable broadband access taking S.A. by storm. Firstly, as undersea cables are laid, ISPs will start having more flexible pricing schemes as they are freed from commitments to Telkom. This is predicted to only largely benefit the end-user after two years, though small decreases should start taking place before then.
This will also drop the barrier to entry for new ISPs, the second driver to affordable broadband. Small operators will be able to buy large-scale fiber capacity, giving them the opportunity to compete with the larger, more established ISPs.
Thirdly, Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) are playing a very important role in getting people connected to the internet, with 3,500 additional people being connected to the internet at work last year alone. As broadband access becomes more affordable, SMEs will provide an important platform for getting people connected to the net through their offices.
Cell phone connectivity is the fourth driver, though Goldstuck mentioned that this is not as significant as the media hype created around it. Interestingly, Goldstuck mentioned how there is a huge amount of ‘accidental’ access through cell phones – as people come across this quite accidentally, and don’t really understand how to effectively utilize the service on their phone. Cell phone access contributed 450,000 new users this year, but is set to grow exponentially by 2013, as we see cell phones being built to allow better access, and as people start discovering and building their experience in accessing the internet on their cell phones.
In summary, the forecast for broadband access in South Africa looks upbeat with a dramatic increase in the next five years. As Goldstuck mentioned in the beginning – this is a ‘good case scenario’ as more and more people are finding alternative ways of connecting to the net. This scenario would be an even better scenario if government were to get involved and take active steps to get South Africans connected as digital citizens, as both consumers and creators on the internet.
As a final comment, Goldstuck showed a music map of the world, which represents access to affordable digital content for entertainment purposes – the U.S. takes a large proportion with European countries coming in soon after – South Africa is shown as an almost invisible sliver. This also represents what Goldstuck calls the ‘access’ divide – it is not only about access to affordable broadband but use of this broadband that needs to be considered to make South Africans active participants on the worldwide web.
‘Welcome to the Broadband Strategy Café. This is not a conference; the aim is to foster engagement between people. There will be few presentations, and more contribution. Collectively we are smarter than we are individually. We need to ask meaningful questions and talk about them. We need to contribute, listen, understand and cross-pollinate.’
- Steve Song.
Steve Song shows world café methodology
The National Broadband Forum kicked off this morning with an introduction by Natasha Primo, National ICT Policy Advocacy (NIPA) coordinator for the APC. The forum has been convened by South Africa Connect, Sangonet, APC and the Shuttleworth Foundation. The purpose of the forum is to discuss, debate and work around ICT policy issues and affordable access to broadband for the South African public.
Access to broadband is the new digital divide. Although South Africans and Africans have access to mobile technology they nonetheless cannot access rich multimedia. The aim of this forum is look at how participants, who hail from a variety of different sectors of society, can build on interests and synergies at this day-long event. The objective of the forum is to discuss how to make a broadband strategy a national priority within South Africa, and how to engage people on key issues on this topic.
World Café methodology
Under the guidance of Steve Song from the Shuttleworth Foundation, participants are engaging in round table discussion for a large portion of the conference, in between the more formal presentations. Each table has been provided with large sheets of white paper and coloured pens. Participants have a 20-minute time limit to get creative - drawing, discussing, brainstorming - and develop ideas that will add to the main issues that the policy framework hopes to address. A table host remains at the table after the 20 minutes are up, and guides new participants on the ideas that were built during the previous session. At the end of the day, the ideas will be gathered together and put to the group for inclusion into the policy framework. We can already hear voices raised in excitement and enthusiasm!
Twittering for broadband
As resourceful and switched-on as ever, the forum participants are Twittering up a storm in between some interesting discussion and idea-doodling on paper. You can access the tweets here, please feel free to participate!
The South African National Broadband Forum, which is due to take place on the 24th of March in Johannesburg, will feature key presentations from some of South Africa’s most dynamic and enterprising thinkers in the online space. These speakers will guide and inspire the day’s discussion around developing a National Broadband strategy for South Africa.
All presentations, as well as the discussions from the day are going to be blogged on this site by the African Commons Project. Keep an eye on the front page for wrap-ups, summaries and interviews from the day’s proceedings.
Arthur Goldstuck
Arthur Goldstuck is a South African journalist, media analyst and commentator on information and communications technology (ICT), internet and mobile communications and technologies. Goldstuck heads the World Wide Worx research organisation, and has led research into ICT issues such as the effects of IT on small business, the role of mobile technologies in business and government, and the technology challenges of the financial services sector. He regularly provides strategic insights and guidance on trends at conferences and corporate events across Africa. His presentation “Broadband Infrastructure in South Africa: An Introduction” will examine the importance of and key challenges facing broadband develpment in South Africa.
Indra de Lanerolle
Indra de Lanerolle grew up in London, the son of a South African exile, and now lives in Johannesburg where he teaches, researches and consults on media for social change, mobile media and storytelling. He was a senior producer at the BBC and ran a television business in Johannesburg and has produced some of the most popular television shows in South Africa. His films and programmes have been recognised throughout the world including an Emmy nomination, a Peabody Award and the Silver Lion at the Venice film festival. He has presented papers on media for social change and IPTV. Indra’s presentation will examine the constraints and opportunities in the creation of South African creative content.
Ory Okolloh
Ory Okolloh is a Kenyan blogger and open-government activist. She runs Mzalendo, a pioneering civic website that tracks the performance of Kenya’s Parliament and its Parliamentarians. Okolloh’s own blog is called Kenyan Pundit, and it tracks her work with Mzalendo and her other efforts as part of the rebuilding of Kenya, following the post-election violence in late 2007. Okolloh is part of a wave of young Africans who are using the power of blogging, SMS and web-enabled openness to push their countries forward and help Africans to truly connect. Tools like Ushahidi help to link a people whose tribal differences, as Okolloh points out again and again, are often cynically exploited by a small group of leaders. Only by connecting Africans can this cycle be broken.
Steve Song
Steve Song is the Shuttleworth Foundation’s Telecommunications Fellow. He is focused on providing the organisation with support and thought leadership on access to communications infrastructure and its impact on social and economic innovation and growth. He has worked in the area of ICTs and development since 1991 and was involved in the early development of the internet for the non-profit community in South Africa, including developing some of the first websites for non-profits in the country, and pioneering the first online searchable newspaper archive in Africa.
Steve Vosloo
Steve Vosloo is Communication and Analytical Skills Fellow for the Shuttleworth Foundation, guiding the organisation’s strategy in terms of tackling the challenges that face South Africa from an education perspective. He began his career as a web developer, working in both Johannesburg and London during the dot-com boom. Since having moved back to South Africa he has developed a passion for the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) for socio-economic development. Steve was the Design & Usability Team Leader at the Centre for e-Innovation for the Provincial Government of the Western Cape and ensured that the award-winning Cape Gateway portal was as usable and accessible to as many citizens of the Western Cape as possible. He has also presented at numerous UN conferences on e-government, local digital content and youth and ICTs.
Steve has a Masters degree in Information Systems from the University of Cape Town and recently completed a one-year Research Fellowship at Stanford University, where he researched youth and digital media.
Natasha Primo
Natasha is National ICT Policy Advocacy (NIPA) coordinator for the APC, and a gender and ICT specialist, whose interest in broader policy issues led her to join the APC policy team. She was chair of APC from 2005 to 2007.
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