UNESCO is pleased to present the first draft of “Internet Universality Indicators”, as an interim outcome following the first phase of consultation which included 24 face-to-face consultation meetings in 21 countries and attracted 165 online contributions in six UN official languages. UNESCO thus kicks off the second phase of the consultation and invites all stakeholders to provide further inputs on these proposed indicator framework and indicators till 15 March 2018.
Stakeholders are invited, in this second consultation, to review the first draft indicators document and respond to the three questions below by 15 March 2018. All submissions should be sent via email (internetstudy@unesco.org (link sends e-mail)), and/or through an online submission platform to be available in six UN official languages in late December 2017. Submitters are also requested to indicate their name, organizational and stakeholder affiliation, country and nationality if applied.
All submissions will be published on the Internet Universality website for transparency purposes, unless submitters indicate they would prefer to be anonymous. General enquiries can be issued to UNESCO focal point Xianhong Hu (link sends e-mail) and Josselyn Guillarmou (link sends e-mail).
Consultation questions:
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Are there any additional themes, questions or indicators which you believe should be included in the framework?
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Are there any suggestions that you wish to make in respect of the proposed themes, questions and indicators which are included in the framework as it stands?
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What sources and means of verification would you recommend, from your experience, in relation to any of the questions and indicators that have been proposed?
The indicator framework is structured around the four ROAM Principles of UNESCO Internet Universality concept (openness, accessibility, and multi-stakeholder participation), alongside cross-cutting Indicators concerned with gender and the needs of children and young people, sustainable development, trust and security, and legal and ethical aspects of the Internet. There are a mix of quantitative and qualitative Indicators.
UNESCO’s Internet Universality Indicators were developed to enrich the stakeholders’ capacity for assessing Internet development, broaden international consensus, and foster online democracy and human rights towards knowledge societies engaged in sustainable development. These Indicators will help governments and other stakeholders to assess their own national Internet environments and to promote the values associated with Internet Universality. The work on the project to define Internet Universality Indicators is being led for UNESCO by the Association for Progressive Communications (APC), and the draft Internet Universality indicators will be finalized by the end of April 2018.
The consultation document of draft Internet indicators is available at this link.