Leslie Shade
Monday 7/26/10
Slides are available here: http://www.slideshare.net/dmcolab/isdt-july26leslie

Interests: Social and policy aspects of information and communication technologies with a focus on gender, youth, and political economy. This talk with focus mostly on backgrounding historical and recent developments in Canadian Internet policy.

Canadian Internet policy – early 1990s. Reference: “Digital economy strategy” in Canada

Universal Access Research. “Social access,” not just technical access a focus

See “the access rainbow” slide – 7 layers from technical access, to digital literacy, to governance

Pub w/ Marita Moll for CCPA. Ex. Seeking Convergence in Policy and Practice

CRACIN, Canadian Research Alliance for Community Innovation and Networking. A series of case studies, urban and rural. Interested in how Canadian ICT programs, under “Connecting Canadians” agenda, succeeded in community access programs. http://Cracin.ca

Affective/emotional component to this study. Concern: What do you do when you are asked to quantify the financial significance of broadband access when you have lots of stories that involve how things may or may not have worked?

Concern: how do you involve community groups/public interest groups when you are also dealing with multiple successive governments with different agendas?

Alt.telecom forum, program set up to look at the issues of municipal broadband networks.

For Sale to the Highest Bidder: Telecom Policy in Canada w/ Marita Moll.

Recent structure of participation in policy issues. A closed door session on changes in policy in the “digital economy.”

March 2010 during Parliamentary budget, Minster Clement announced the “digital economy consultation.” 41 days to participate on the Web. Problem with this participatory model. Vote on your favorite idea! “To Compete you Must Compute” is top idea – high performance computing. It is questionable if this is an effective model. Who decides to participate in this forum? Is it “spurious”?

Digital Economy Consultation Roundtable. Key point: Look at digital economy in a more holistic, socio-cultural way.

CRTC (Canadian FCC equivalent) announced “Consultation on Obligation to Serve.” Key question: Should broadband be considered an essential service? How about mobile?  This is a new thing for CRTC.

Michael Gurstein – this needs to be seen in historical context. Canada has a long tradition of public consultation across the board. All of this has been cut off for these sorts of endeavors.

Leslie – Do we even choose to participate in these forms of consultation? If we don’t, then who does? Problematic issues in structures of participation.

New project. “Young Canadians, Participatory Digital Culture & Policy Literacy.” Age 15-25. Interested in how they are using Internet and mobile phones, their knowledge of digital policy issues. Use this information to create digital toolkit to educate.

See slides on DP Issues – Access/Content/IP and Copyright. Doing focus groups with young people on these issues.

Jennifer Stoddart, Privacy Commissioner of Canada. Played a large, international role in advocating for peoples’ privacy online, including players like Facebook, etc.

Lisa Feinberg, U of Ottawa law student. Filed a complaint to CIPPIC. “SNS know a lot about us, but we know very little about them.”
http://www.youthprivacy.ca

“Privacy and Social Networks” YouTube video. Search for OPC SOCIAL NETWORKING

Annual contest for high school students to submit creative work based on privacy issues. These videos are on YouTube. Channel: PrivacyComm

Matt McKeon on the evolution of privacy on Facebook. (see slide for website)

Things learned from working in these different environments:

Challenge #1: Structures of participation to policymaking process are difficult to comprehend, alienating, take resources. A “beginner’s guide to intervention” is needed.

Opportunities: We need to be proactive and reactive at the same time when policy opportunities present themselves. Even if the academic research isn’t quite ready for “prime time” it can still be phrased and worked in an effective way.

Challenge #2: Quantifiable evidence is most recognized in policymaking. “Give me the numbers”

Opportunities: Qualitative research adds richness and depth to policy evidence

Caveats: Coordination among different groups; sustained funding; takes emotional labor too. Activist/academic coordinations can be challenging; hard to fund community groups the same way that students are funded to compensate for time. Funding structures are biased toward academics rather than community partners.

Conor: How can we “hack” these funding structures, esp. with new forms of participation?

Challenge #3: craft modes of research dissemination to influence beyond peer-reviewed articles.

Opportunities: We need to frame research how policymakers understand. Working in the mode of the Powerpoint presentation. They don’t like terms like “hegemony,” no citing Foucault.
ISDT 1.0 and 2.0… questions/lessons learned.

Policymaking: how to make it more civically intelligent? A more transparent process? What are the best tools and tactics to orient policymaking towards the public interest? What audiences to reach?
Networked citizenship: what are its elements? Who’s included/excluded? Cultural context? What discourse (citizen vs consumer)

Infrastructures: mobile media, open data, logistics of access

Cautions against tech determinism. Whose digital transformation?

What are the roles of various stakeholders? The state, citizens, advocacy groups, academics?
Document the problem, research the reality, define the opportunity.

Rapporteur: Alexander Cho