[Telecentres] Sustainability and Scaling-Up Concerns

[Don Cameron]

"WSIS, yes its a disaster, but we allowed it to be a disaster because we
have not got our act together and our input is dependant rather on
coincidences than organized and informed" (and) "we would not be treated in
the WSIS process like the poor relatives but would have been a serious
partner all the others sectors had to respect and take serious." (snip)

Klaus may I offer some more thinking aloud, and perhaps a change of tack
from a group of Telecentre proponents and practitioners debating the
mechanics of a Telecentre (as members of this group we really should all
know what a Telecentre is)... so for a moment may I offer a perspective on
WSIS.

I have a slightly different take. Like yourself and the great many
practitioners who promoted and supported the concept of a summit on the
information society a decade ago, I am likewise disappointed at the current
direction and outcomes. Grandiose statements like "We, the representatives
of the peoples of the world" are not indicative of a reasonable process
(laughable when we read the 90-plus page document of input from the
Governments of the world as well as the more than 150 page document of input
from Observers all citing areas of disagreement with the current Declaration
and Plan of Action - WSIS is yet to become representative of its own
participants, much less the peoples of the world (1). Likewise the "Plan of
Action" that isn't (a plan) - more a series of rather ambiguous motherhood
statements with a too-strong focus on short-life technologies and failing at
the fundamental gatepost of civil engagement.   

Yet despite these shortcomings I remain firmly supportive of the concept of
WSIS and would argue that WSIS remains as essential today as it did when
first conceived. I think we need to remember that WSIS is not targeting us
(Telecentre's and affiliates) yet we need WSIS nonetheless. WSIS is a
political process born from our efforts and designed to foster political
support. We should not expect WSIS to speak our language; we need it to
speak the language of politics. WSIS is as much a tool for us to deploy as
any Telecentre or other resource. 

I also do not think a majority of ICT practitioners unduly worry about being
treated by WSIS like "poor relatives". Yes, many of us would like (and
certainly deserve) to have higher levels of input into WSIS because we are,
after all, the ones who built this information society - Telecentre's in
particular are the foundation elements that brought ICT to many of the
world's communities. We, together with our affiliates of small ISP's and
other community CI initiatives, built the networks that created this
information society without any support from Governments or the UN (in fact
to the contrary, a great many initiatives came to fruition in the face of
political opposition - fortunately for the most part this is now history). 

The great challenge of WSIS (and the reason we promoted the concept on so
many forums during the mid '90's), is to foster political support so as to
stop the trend of the world's ICT practitioners tearing down the great works
we have built - Surely anyone who has connected to the 'net over the past
few years knows only too well the reasons why many of the worlds ISP's and
gateway administrators now block the net range of entire country's - it is
not because we are "power-crazed egotists"; it is because we alone can no
longer sustain the massive investments required to counteract the failings
of our legislators. Nobody wants to block all Email from Nigeria or from
some of the largest ISP's of North America, but neither can we afford to
manage the massive amounts of Spam and other illegal content originating
from these countries. Nobody wants to block entire Class C IP net ranges.
Many of which also serve poor and impoverished communities; but again...
until Governments intervene and stop the flood of paedophilia and fraud we
have no choice. We cannot manage this alone; we will not again open the
gateways until we have demonstrable political support.

The great threat to WSIS is that it will become so enthralled with its own
state of being and perceived power, that rather than encourage cooperative
(and maybe one day ICT-enabled interactive) participation, it will place
itself above national politics and become just another of the many
"contentious issues" confined to the filing cabinets of political archives -
Given lip service by politicians in public forum but otherwise discarded.
The threat is real and increasing. I just hope WSIS still retains enough
objectivity to see the threat and implement appropriate countermeasures
(maybe a forlorn hope - of the many documents on the WSIS web, most
noticeable by omission is that most basic of management protocols - a SWAT
analysis of WSIS itself).

So to adopt an overused phrase :-) We, being the true representatives of the
information society, have built an open global system designed to free the
peoples of this world through access to knowledge, skills, awareness, and
most of all, through development opportunity. We are now systematically
closing this system because political will has failed. We need the process
of WSIS to break the walls of political apathy and support our mission.


The history is absolute and inarguable. Prior to Telecentre's, community
ISP's, the local BBS, newer community WiFi ventures and the myriad of other
civil society ICT initiatives, the "information society" as we understand it
today was nothing more than a club for academics and military interests. We
are the information society. WSIS is a step in our mission to stop tearing
down what we have built out of frustration over this lack of political will.
We know that politicians don't listen to us; we don't speak the language and
too often play by our own rules... These are not political attributes albeit
they are the very attributes that enabled us to garnish community support
and build this information society long before WSIS was formed - just as we
will continue to do long after WSIS dissolves. What we need right now is for
WSIS to play the game of politics on our behalf.

(1)
http://www.itu.int/wsis/documents/doc_single_bynum.asp?lang=en&num=WSIS/PCIP
/030721/TD/GEN/0003 (recommended reading for anyone interested in the
perspective of WSIS participants)

Rgds, Don