[Bp_localcontent] Introduction, discussion & meeting schedule

[Seun Ojedeji]

Hello Michael,

Kindly find my response inset

sent from Google nexus 4
kindly excuse brevity and typos.
On 4 Jul 2014 09:58, "Michael Kende" <kende at isoc.org> wrote:
>
> Hello Susan,
>
> Great to have this opportunity to work with you and the rest of the
group.  By way of introduction, I am the Chief Economist at ISOC, and am
working on this best practice group alongside Konstantinos Komaitis, who is
the ISOC Policy Advisor responsible for digital content issues.
>
Nice meeting both of you, through this medium. ;)

<snip>

> For the second point, we would highlight three areas that need to be
addressed to meet the need for local content:
> Technical infrastructure.  Today in many African countries the bulk of
local content is hosted in Europe, while in Latin America it is hosted in
the US – this increases the cost of accessing the content and also adds
latency which makes it less usable.  Thus, in addition to focusing on
access infrastructure, it is important to focus on fostering hosting
infrastructure in-country or region:  data centers, content delivery
networks, servers or caches, connected to an Internet exchange point for
efficient routing.

You are spot-on with this, especially for the African region. Africa has
created quite a lot of content, however those content are not credited to
the region because they are hosted off the continent. There are quite a few
major factors causing this:

- Bandwidth cost: Bandwidth cost in the region is still relatively high
compared to other region; the reason for this is largely related to
in-country connectivity (local loop) that is not increasing at the rate
similar to that of the inter-country connectivity (submarine cables). This
makes hosting cost usually a little bit higher than other region
- Availability of service: The cost of ensuring service availability in
this region is also high and this is largely due to unstable power supply
in the region. This extra cost also translate to high hosting cost.
- Tradition: While the 2 point above are still valid, I can say that
hosting cost has really reduced in recent times. However because people are
used to such offshore hosting, making a change becomes a problem.

> Governance.  Issues relating to intermediate liability, defamation laws,
copyright, etc. that will increase the amount of local and international
content that will make use of the local hosting infrastructure.
>

Government really have a big role to play in developing infrastructure
locally. They also need to introduce and implement policies that will
encourage emergence of local service providers. Local content starts right
from the domain name, and up to the actual content; ways of marketing the
ccTLDs as a form of encouraging local content needs to be explored.

> Capacity building.  Increasing literacy and computer literacy on  the
demand-side, and computer training on the supply-side, will increase the
amount of content developed and used.
>
Educating decision makers is key; Ways to sell local solutions as being
superior to foreign equivalent is one of the puzzle to crack.

> Hope this is helpful – I am very much looking forward to working together
on progressing these important topics.
>
It's really helpful way to start us up.

Regards

> Michael
>
> From: Susan Chalmers <susan at susanchalmers.com>
> Date: Wednesday 2 July 2014 17:24
> To: "bp_localcontent at intgovforum.org" <bp_localcontent at intgovforum.org>
> Subject: [Bp_localcontent] Introduction, discussion & meeting schedule
>
> Greetings everyone,
>
> My name is Susan and I am pleased to serve, alongside Stuart, as a
facilitator of our discussion on local content.
>
> In the way of brief introduction, I am an independent Internet Policy
consultant based in Kalamazoo, Michigan, USA, and a member of the MAG. I
was the Policy Lead for InternetNZ for two years. I am a lawyer who, prior
to law school, devoted my life to music as a classically-trained pianist,
cellist, and director of a chamber music festival.
>
> I think that our topic is a fascinating, multifaceted issue. I look
forward to learning from this esteemed group, and to producing a
well-informed, balanced, comprehensive and, above all, useful document on
best practices for enabling the development of local content.
>
> Constance provided an 8-point template for our discussion. Because this
topic involves a broad number of issues, from Layer 1 up through the stack,
I propose that we take each item at a time in order to focus the
discussion. This approach should also make it easier for the consultants
who are synthesising the discussion into a background paper, and help us
all avoid a mad rush at the end of August before the meeting in Istanbul
begins.
>
>> 1.     Definition of the issue *2 - 9 July*
>
>
> Call on 10 or 11 July
>
>> 2.     Regional specificities observed (e.g. Internet industry
development) *10 - 16 July*
>>
>> 3.     Existing policy measures and private sector initiatives,
impediments *17 - 23 July*
>
>
> Call on 24 or 25 July
>
>> 4.     What worked well, identifying common effective practices *24 - 30
July*
>>
>> 5.     Unintended consequences of policy interventions, good and bad *31
July - 6 August*
>>
>> 6.     Unresolved issues where further multistakeholder cooperation is
needed *7 - 13 August*
>
>
> Call on 14 or 15 August
>
>> 7.     Insights gained as a result of the experience and 8.  Proposed
steps for further multistakeholder dialogue *14 - 20 August*
>
>
> This will leave a week and a half for concluding thoughts and to work
with the consultants to finalise our draft.
>
> We should begin our substantive discussion shortly on defining the issue,
provided there aren't any strenuous objections to the above schedule.
Either Stuart or I shall send out an email tomorrow on item no. 1. In the
meantime I propose that we all reflect on how to define the issue. If you
are seeking some reference materials to spark some thought, a search for
"local content" at www.friendsoftheigf.org will provide you with some past
IGF discussions on the topic.
>
> Many thanks all.
>
> Sincerely,
> Susan Chalmers
>
>
>
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