FINISHED TRANSCRIPT
EIGHTH INTERNET GOVERNANCE FORUM
BALI
BUILDING BRIDGES – ENHANCING MULTI-STAKEHOLDER COOPERATION FOR GROWTH AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
SESSION NUMBER AND SHORT NAME
25 OCTOBER 2013
WORKSHOP 62
THE INTERNET SOCIETY, SMART DEVELOPMENT, AND BUILDING KEY INTERNET INFRASTRUCTURE
The following is the output of the real-time captioning taken during the Eigth Meeting of the IGF, in Bali, Indonesia. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid to understanding the proceedings at the session, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
>> MODERATOR: Good morning, everyone. Hope everyone is well. We'll just wait a few moments for people to take their coffee and take their seats and we'll start in about two minutes.
>> KAREN ROSE: Okay. This is the Internet Society, Open Forum. I would like to welcome everyone here this morning. I'm Karen Rose and I'm the Senior Director for strategic development and business planning at the Internet Society. And we've structured today as an informational session and are hoping to get your questions and have some interaction around the floor. So we'll be really informal today.
But just to kick things off, as many of you may know, the Internet Society is a global nonprofit organization founded in 1992 by some of the early pioneers of the internet. And our mission is to promote the open development evolution and use of the internet for all people throughout the world. We're also the organizational home of the Internet Engineering Task Force which is the open forum right before ours in this room. And the IETF works to establish the open and voluntary standards that make the internet work.
So by working with a broad community and we'll talk a little bit about some of our community outreach and our outreach around the world today, but working with a very broad-based community and helping to really connect the world and advocating for an open and sustainable internet, we really strive to make the world a better place.
ISOC is a truly global organization. At present, we have five Regional Bureaus, including in Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean. Europe, North America, Asia Pacific. And we'll be opening our sixth Regional Bureau very soon in the Middle East and we're very excited about that and our ability to reach more individuals and more deeply in that very important region. We have 99 local chapters around the world, literally from Argentina to Zimbabwe, so our community and our footprint is truly global.
If I can see a show of hands, how many of you here are Internet Society members? Individual members? All right, well congratulations. You're among a community of 60,000 people around the world that are Internet Society members that are committed to our mission. And if you're not, you can join up for free on our website at internetsociety.org.
Since the theme of this IGF is building bridges, enhancing multistakeholder for cooperation and growth and sustained development, we thought we'd focus our discussion around the work we do about internet development and capacity building and asset assistance and other types of projects around the world. And since our founding in 1992, internet development has been key and core to the Internet Society.
The key in the early founders of the Internet Society and the internet wanted to spread this technology around the world and one of the reasons that they formed the Internet Society was to do just that. Between 1993 and 2002, almost every country connecting to the internet between that time, between 1993 and 2002 did so with the help of Internet Society workshops and other assistance from the Internet Society itself and also from our broad range of partners and members.
Of course, putting such a great focus on internet development and really looking to achieve sustainable results requires a big effort. And it really requires a big effort throughout our entire organization. In fact, there are few places in our organization that don't touch on fundamental internet development issues in some way or another.
In addition, our broad community and the broad range of partners that we work with also touch on development issues. So, it truly takes a community and that goes within the Internet Society itself and our many partners external to the organization. So what I'd like to do in just a moment is turn it over to some other individuals in the organization to talk a little bit more about their work with the emphasis on development and also some other areas of their interest.
But before I do, just very briefly, I'd really like to talk about a couple of key takeaways, real key takeaways that we've had in our 20 years of experience in development. So sustainable internet development, how you'd really get the internet to develop and grow in a sustainable way in countries, it's not just built on technology alone. It's not just built on boxes and wires and blinking lights, what we've seen over our 20 years of experiences that internet development projects that just focus on technology alone usually fail.
So over our 20 years, we really sort of looked at key factors that make the internet sustainable and we call this approach the smart development approach. So what is smart development? Smart development is really a holistic approach to internet development and capacity building to focus on three fundamental pillars required for any internet development program at any scale to really succeed.
First of all, it's the technical infrastructure that's needed. Of course, when you're dealing with the internet, you're dealing a lot of times with the physical infrastructure. How do you make connections? How do you make connections more efficient? How do you make things go faster? You're dealing with the boxes and wires. That's only one element.
The second element, of course, is the human infrastructure. Do you have people on the ground that have the skills, the knowledge, and the capacity to sustain any project or to grow any project, that's on the ground? And third of all, the third piece of infrastructure is governance infrastructure. What are the policies that are in place? The procedures that are in place on a country-wide basis, things such as regulatory issues, broad public policies, or a veteran place to sustained development or on a smaller level like a particular project, what are the Governor's mechanisms, who's going be responsible? How are responsibilities going to be associated around the community that's supporting a project?
So the three pillars again of a smart development approach really of any development project, a governmental wide, regional wide or world-wide is to look at three major things -- the technical infrastructure, the human infrastructure, and the governance infrastructure that's going to make the project work.
So, with that, I'd like to turn to some of my colleagues for them to give you an overview of some of the projects that we work on and some of the different activities across ISOC on a broad basis. So I'd first like to introduce Jane Coffin. Jane, if you could introduce yourself and talk a little bit about your work on internet exchange points?
>> JANE COFFIN: Good morning. We're going to roam around the room to make this a bit more inclusive and interesting for all of you, we hope. So we're not going to just sit up at the table. I'm the Director of development strategy, I work with Karen but I work across the teams in the organization, try to. And work with partners like many of you in the room, people who have been here at this meeting to do what we do, to help promote more sustainable internet development.
And Karen was saying the human, the technical, and the governance infrastructure. The support and the communities where we work to help do what we do. The theme of this conference is very key to what we also try to do around the world to build the bridges through connectivity through people, the technology and the bottom up Internet Governance model. What I do specifically is work with Karen, Sophie, others in this room who you'll meet and Sebastian to try to work with communities to help build some of that infrastructure.
One of the projects that I'm working on is something called an ISP, internet exchange point tool kit and best practices project. This is through a in-kind grant from the Google foundation. There are no parameters required by Google for this project. What we've seen around the world is that ISPs are key to local connectivity. They keep local traffic local. You may have been at some of the sessions on internet exchange points. If not, check out the website at internetsociety.org.
There's segments on the IXPs. There's the technical boxes and wires. But the boxes and wires don't walk by themselves. We often say that building IXPs is 80% social engineering and 20% technical engineering, something Sebastian and Karen and others have found around the world and many of the experts we talk with.
Sofie may talk about Africa, but this global product we're working on is a tool kit, a report but a portal. We're trying to give you doors and give you information through a website. In addition to the website, we're going to do training around the world, focus on the best practices and a methodology for how you take an IXP from the initial stages of development to the middle stages to more advanced stages.
We would love help from all of you if you're interested in helping us grade the report, help us with training, take a look at the methodologies you're pointing out. The key again is on the ground work with all of you. We don't go to places where we're not wanted. We want to work with you. You need to come to us in some ways to ask us for help. And we will see what we can do to help build those communities of interests.
The regional teams around the world which Sofie will highlight in a moment do amazing work. They've worked for internet service providers, they've worked for the IXPs around the world. We've worked for government. We know all of the different angles involved in building the communities of interest. And it's critical to what we do. But we can't do it without partners. It's all of you, it's the other internet technical community experts.
I see Sierra in the room, the Canadian registry for the CCC in Canada for amazing catalysts for XPs in Canada. You may not think can at a needs IXPs, they do. Martin Levy, hurricane electric as well as nick Hilliard from Ireland who has an amazing IXP software back in management tools. These are the types of people we work with to try to set up workshops, do what we do, build the communities of interest.
The other thing that I'll highlight that we've seen related to the 20 years of experience -- human trust networks. You need to meet the people who are doing what they do on the ground that makes technology happen. If you don't know someone you might be exchanging traffic with as an operator, you're not sure, right? We hope for around the world to do just that.
Whether it's in Latin America, Africa, hopefully soon in the Middle East and other places. We bring people together so that they can actually see the people they might be working with, meet some of us, and extend the benefit of those trust networks of people. It's really something amazing when you start to see the technologies, the policy types, the development types come together and make something happen because technology has succeeded.
It's not a failed aid project where lots of money may have gone in and nothing came out. We've seen this around the world replicated through this model that Karen was talking about. So I think I'll stop with that. Turn it over to another colleague. Thank you for your time. If you have in I questions, you uh can -- you can find us on our website underneath who we are and staff.
>> KAREN ROSE: Okay. Thank you so much, Jane.
[ Applause ]
>> KAREN ROSE: Now I'd like to turn to Michael Kinde. He's not quite the newest employee of the Internet Society, but pretty close. Michael just joined us as our Chief Economist.
>> MICHAEL KINDE: Okay, thank you. I'm going to talk about a few projects by way of start. By way of background, I joined in August. Before that, I was in consulting and did some projects for the Internet Society. And one of them was to look at the benefits of an IXP. Now, these were really well understood -- people understood you could go to a country, you could go to a company and explain the benefits of an IXP. But what we decided to do was quantify them.
Instead of saying this could be great, we could say these are exactly the benefits that were taking place. We looked at two very good IXPs, one in Nigeria, one in Kenya. And we went in and we showed the improvement and latency by being able to exchange traffic locally, the savings and costs not having to go to Europe to download traffic. And then we even saw some increases in revenues. And this is largely driven by YouTube or Google putting YouTube caches near the IXPs in Kenya and Nigeria. The international connectivity was so expensive, people weren't downloading YouTube, it was too slow and they gave up.
So Google put a cache in Kenya and in Nigeria. And as soon as they did that, suddenly the connection time -- the download type increased. People started to use it more. And more -- so the amount of traffic tripled pretty much overnight.
And since the ISPs are charging per megabits in those countries for downloads, the revenues went up -- in Kenya, I think they said it went up by $6 million. We're putting numbers to things that people understood. And that helps when you go into a new country and say here's the benefits of an IXP. We can quantify it and you can see the benefits and then the ISPs can see that their revenues are going to go up and the users can see that they'll be able to download traffic more quickly.
So based on that and a few other studies that we did similar we did before we joined, I was asked to join. I joined in August. I would like to talk about two new products I'll be starting here, both really driven by observations. So one of my last projects before joining ISOC, I was helping to put an IXP into the Gambia. And they were just about to put a new submarine cable there.
And in December, they turned on the submarine cable for two days and then for various reasons they shut it down until March.
And while we were there, somebody who didn't know about the submarine cable said, since you seem to know a lot about the internet, can you tell me what happened last week, you know, my family lives in Germany. Every day I try and Skype them, sometimes the voice barely works, bull for two days I could do video to my family in Germany and then it shut off again. So clearly the two days the submarine cable was up, suddenly the connection got really good. That's exactly what we want to see.
Then I thought, this is great, they spent $700 million on the submarine cable to connect eight new countries on the coast of Africa. Let me see the benefits. I tried to find somebody who invested in the cable who showed how much better the internet got when the cables went on-line. There's no data. No one thought to put in measurement tools to show how much faster the internet got since these cables went up.
So one of the things we want to do is aggregate the existing data of the economic benefits of the internet and we'll put a portal up on our website that has all of that. Just so that we can see what's available and then we'll try and leverage and gather more data and we might -- we might have a program where we have something that all of our members can download to their phones or to their computers that will systematically measure the speeds and hopefully they'll do it in all of the countries that we have members in so that we can almost realtime see the performance of the internet in these countries.
And that has a lot of benefits because if it gets faster, we can send an e-mail to the Gambia, what happened? We can say the cable came on-line. If it gets slower in Sudan, we can e-mail the members there and say -- once it comes back up, they can tell us what happened. We can get a realtime view of the internet with these types of tools.
That's the first project. That should be going up on our internet within the next three, four weeks. It's really just a portal of all of the existing data about the performance of the internet, the economic benefits of the internet. And then we'll start to add to that. And hopefully researchers and others can use that to figure out the benefits of the internet around the world.
So the second one -- the second project I'm going to look at is to build on our IXP work in these countries, but driven by the observation that even in the country like Kenya that has a good IXP, that's seen the benefits of the IXP and the benefits of having this Google cache of YouTube videos and how that improves in performance still doesn't have much local content.
So the top five websites, Kenyan websites are the newspapers and radio stations and things. And they're all hosted in Europe. And by hosting in Europe, they saved themselves a little money. I think it's cheaper because there's a lot greater scale if you go to London or somewhere in Germany and put your website. But they're imposing a huge cost on everyone else because if you're sitting in Kenya and you want to read the newspaper, someone has to bring that page back to you every same someone wants to look at it at $120, $200 a megabit per month.
So it's a huge cost that they're imposing. So the project is going to look at how can we get -- you know, what can we do? What economic numbers, what can we do to get people to bring their content back? Especially to a country like Gambia that has submarine cables. Once the data is in the country, once people can see the benefits of having it locally, it will kick start more development, more applications, and a greater concentration and this is part of this initiative to called 80-20 in Africa that we're trying to get 80% of traffic in Africa to be local. Not necessarily African, but hosted locally by the year 2020. We'll start that project towards the end of this year and next year with some papers, the economic benefits and some other studies going forward. So that's that. And I look forward to if you have any questions.
[ Applause ]
>> KAREN ROSE: Great. Thank you, Michael. We'll save questions until the end. And I'd like to introduce Sofie Maddens, the Senior Director for Global Services.
>> SOFIE MADDENS: Thank you, Karen. I'm Sofie Maddens, I'm Senior Director for Global Services basically working with the Regional Bureaus. We have five of those bureaus as Karen said. We have bureaus in Europe and Africa and Latin America and the Caribbean, the Asia Pacific region. And soon to be in the Middle East.
Our bureaus are part of our regionalization strategy. We work together with partners, with stakeholders in the regions, the chapters, the members, the organizations, so as not only to work with the different partners in the regions, but to listen to the voices on the ground and then to integrate the local and regional messages into our priorities and programs and to work to introduce our priorities and programs into the regions.
So we're really, really proud to work with our bureau of Directors. Some of them are here today. We have Sebastian Bellagamba, Director of Regional Bureau in Latin American region. Noel Guzman, she -- she has just joined us and we're very proud to have her join us.
I will also be talking a little bit about our development strategy in the different bureaus. As Karen said, we will be opening a bureau in the Middle East. We're looking for a Regional Bureau Director and hope to have that bureau Director onboard before the end of the year. So all of those bureaus, we work together.
Part of our core focus is really to collaboration. Collaboration with the other departments, with our colleagues in strategic development, with our colleagues in the public policy department, in the technology department, in the trust and identity departments, and, of course, with chapters, with members, and with other partners or organizations as Karen mentioned to do some of the fantastic work that's being done in the regions in terms of development.
So we drive the strategy together towards development and our bureaus implement the projects as Jane was saying in terms of technology and in terms of policy, and in terms of development. We do capacity building and I'm just going to represent some of the bureaus that are not here because the other bureaus will talk, give you some of the details of what they do, the bureaus that are here. But in Africa, for example, we have a number of projects in the development field in access and in infrastructure.
One of them, the access project, which is a project on IXPs in collaboration with the African union in which we do best practices, workshops, and technical assessment workshops all over Africa. A multiyear project. And many of you in the room has been in touch with this project and are fantastic team in Africa. All of them have worked very hard to make this the success it is. And obviously as well, working with partners and they call out our partners in the strategic development team as well who support us in that.
And we have just been granted a second project within that context. The access two project in which we will again continue on that work in terms of -- on a more regional basis. Part of the work we do in Africa is the AFPIF. It's the African pier and interconnective forum. We talk about the peer interconnective forum. It's a multiyear project held in the fifth year. It was held in Morocco in September of this year. Which partners are being brought together in which they can exchange on peering and interconnection and a key element within the access and the accessibility within Africa.
We also work -- we also recently had a DNS forum just to remind you as I said. We work on technology, we work on policy. We work on development. We had the DNS forum again in which we worked with the technical community. We brought up some policy issues, some technology issues, all within the development field as well. In the Middle East, we will also work on that access of the infrastructure, the unserved and underserved areas.
The reaching out to the communities, the bringing together the communities, the working with the communities to build their trust. I'm not going to take up any more of your time because I want to leave the floor to the various bureau Directors or bureau staff that are here. I do also before I do hand over to them, I do want to say that our partners, our communities, our chapters, our members are essential to being able to work and to be able to listen and work with the voices that are on the ground throughout the world.
So without our chapters, without our members, without our team members, we could not do the development work that we are proud to do. We're passionate about it. And so we look forward to working with all of you through our regions through the -- through the -- on the important work we're doing. With this, I would like to give the floor to Sebastian Bellagamba who's our Director for the Latin American and Caribbean region.
>> SEBASTIAN BELLAGAMBA: Thank you. Thank you very much. Our Latin America and Caribbean bureau is based out of Uruguay. Basically, we work with -- exactly with what's been described that ISOC does. We work in development policy and -- and -- so our main task in the region is to try to implement or personalize what the ISOC globally is thinking strategically. In this case, the strategic development and also to feed the processes back in a way that we think it's strategically, all of the considerations from the regions have been taken into account.
So it's a two-way work that we do. We implement locally. We have locally and regionally, sub regionally, our region has I would say two main sub regions that we have to touch and we try to -- their own particularlies and their own similarities. I would say Latin America -- speaking Latin American but one big sub region of the Caribbean area is another sub region. It's not just like that. It's much more complicated than that.
Latin America is not just one, it's Spanish speaking countries have -- yeah, there is no such thing as one Caribbean. Yeah, there is English speaking Caribbean on one side and non-English speaking Caribbean on the other side. Basically more Latin American than Caribbean. We have Puerto Rico which is U.S. instead of being Latin America. But they consider themselves Latin American.
So in our region, not as simple as I present it. But basically we have two sub regions. What we do in a day-to-day basis is implement these programs. And we're working a lot. We're working a lot today, mainly in IXPs, for instance, that's a good example. In two ways -- one is helping to set up new IXPs and many countries have that still lacking their own IXP. And the second way to helping -- levelling up the current existent IXPs.
It's not comprehensive. But we are, today, working with Argentina, Ecuador, Suriname, Honduras, and many other countries that are helping them on setting up. The importance of IXPs has been already stated. So it is important for us to realize that the better we do, the better we keep the traffic -- the low calorie John on traffic local, the most efficient and fast and inclusive.
So today just to give you an example, I mean most of the traffic in our countries are exchanged through Miami. Even inside our own countries, many of our countries, even those that have an IXP, they change their traffic through Miami. And Miami and -- if you have a mental Latin American-Caribbean region, it's not a small region. Going from Miami to say Argentina or Uruguay, it's 8,000 kilometers. Boy, it's a big chunk. Even between countries we exchange through Miami.
Inside the countries. Those countries that have an IXP, sometimes they exchange traffic through Miami. So that's something that is -- that we're working with. And we work in partnerships. We like to think we're in a community building business too. We help our local and regional communities to develop -- to strengthen those communities to make the whole system more efficient. The whole ecosystem more efficient.
So we partner and we work with different stakeholders. We work with the private sector. We work with the technical community. But we also work with governments. I mean with it here. We had a very good spam workshop two weeks ago, three weeks ago, in Mendosa, Argentina with the telecommunications branch of the organization in the United States.
So that's governments being trained on anti-spam measures that was basically what the workshop was about. So those are two basic examples and I don't want to take too much time, but I -- IXPs, interconnection and traffic exchange which is even more than purely IXPs, I would say, and the spam workshop or many other projects that I can talk about but I would save that for the questions and comments period are some of the -- of the things that we're working about in Latin America.
So I will stop here. And now when I will open the front to questions -- I will give myself and make myself available for questions later on. I would invite Noel to talk about the Asia Pacific region? As you wish.
>> NOEL: Hi, I'm Noel. I'm the programs coordinator for the Asia Pacific region. And I'm stepping in today for Raj Singh, the regional Director who's not here right now. And today I'll be focusing on one of the key projects that we're working on -- one of the key initiatives that we're doing in the Asia Pacific. This is specifically being implemented in south Asia at the moment.
This is the wireless for communities project. We started this in 2010 with a local organization. It's the digital empowerment foundation, which is Delhi based. And the idea behind the project is to overcome the barriers or overcome the costs that are -- that are entailed in deploying wired infrastructure to a remote communities. So the solution that the alternative, rather, to that is to use instead wireless mesh networks as a more cost effective and, well, we're hoping more sustainable way of bringing internet access to underserved areas.
So the strategy that ISOC has employed for this is to roll out infrastructure and to scale it out. So all of these projects and all of the locations that are chosen are scalable, which is important in any development measure. And ISOC is involved in technical guidance. This is assisting in the deploying of the infrastructure itself. And also in building the capacity of the literacy of computer scales of people who will be using the internet.
So each initiative begins with -- I can't read the -- it begins with what we call the training of trainers. We -- we train local people to deploy and maintain the wireless infrastructure. And currently, this is going to -- this is workshops to build media literacy and computer literacy among communities also carried out. And this is -- this is the main activity for the initial phase which was in 2010 to 2011. Since then, we've had two phases.
And for these phases, we focused on scaling up. So this is broadening access to both the existing locations, which means building additional infrastructure within the existing locations, and also expanding to other areas. which means building additional infrastructure within the existing locations, and also expanding to other areas.
We've expanded past India. We expanded to Bangladesh and Bhutan. We're conducting workshops for locals to not only access the internet you create their own content and their own services. More importantly, we think this is in line with the more development that Karen was speaking about earlier in that it -- it uses ICTs to empower locals in, you know, in providing internet access that is hopefully sustainable.
And this is done by basically transferring -- well, how do I say this? Enabling the locals to own the wireless networks. We mean they co-found it. They deploy the infrastructure, they maintain it. And most importantly, they use it. And we think that this is a key strategy for ensuring that beyond ISOC's involvement, the internet in those communities continue to evolve and develop according to the needs and references of the locals.
Oh, sorry. I actually -- exceeded. So in terms of impact. We're thinking that these -- we have increasing evidence that we've been successful and to a large extent. The overall goal basically is to ensure or to -- there's a growing belief that ICTs enable people to pursue other development goals. So I think yeah, if you want to know more, there are booklets available. They look like that. And they're available by the door on the chair and you can also approach me after the session.
>> KAREN ROSE: Thank you so much, Noel. We have three short presentations and then we'll open the floor to your questions. So I'd like to invite Karen Mullbury from our public policy department up.
>> KAREN MULLBURY: I'm a Policy Director in the ISOC policy department. We work with our bureaus on policy issues that appear through both the global stage as well as initiatives that have come up from the regional perspective to give you some sense of what we look at and where we interface, or why we work a lot with the ITU.
And the initiative that Sebastian mentioned came out of the wicket discussions of developing regions that they had a concern and an issue and needed a better understanding of what is spam and how they are to address the spam mitigation techniques within their countries. So that's a slab ration that we do as an example.
We also are preparing right now for WTDC, which is the world development conference. We're looking at what's evolving within the regions as the original positions. What we could contribute in terms of their capacity building and understanding about the internet in the issues that are on the internet. And in particular, the openness that's critical to maintaining the internet and its infrastructure.
You know, as an area. We're also looking at some of the issues that will be coming up further down the road next year in that initiative ready fining the outlook and the structure for the ITU for the next four years. We also work within OECD as part of the technology group. And the development on some of the other issues that are related to the internet. And in particular, the documents that come out of the OECD that address internet and internet-related issues.
We participate in UNESCO. We have a focus on very particular subjects as well. Digital content, human rights. There's a litany of things that we pay attention to at the international and global level in that apply down through the regional process so that we can marry the two visions to move forward with something very common and useful for the internet. Thank you.
>> KAREN ROSE: Thanks a lot, Karen. And next we have Terrell Callenson, the Senior Director of internet leadership.
>> Thank you, Karen. Hello, everyone. Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you this morning. So, we're at an interesting time in the evolution of the internet right now. There's a confluence of developments that undermines the sustainability of the open internet model as no other time in its history.
And since the inception of the Internet Society, we've been very effective at reaching small groups of end users, influencers, technologists, policy makers. But as we recognize that the issues become more nuanced, as the next millions come on-line, we're creating many more that we need to reach. Am I creating shadow puppets here? It was formed in January of 2011 with two mandates. One was how we strengthen the leadership pool to strengthen the issues and the second is how we more broadly reach the others do.
Our work is divided to three areas, one is leadership, really developing the pool of leaders that can navigate the languages between policy and technology because we can't just operate in silos. The second is around training and working with higher education institutions, educators, and students to train about Internet Governance and other areas. And the third is around knowledge. So working to develop also sets that we can work with end users that we can educate them with the rights, rules, and responsibilities around the internet.
The three core areas in which our work is focused. And we have with the -- the emphasis of the internet team is providing the strategy to scale our efforts more effectively. And so as I said, we've had lots of success in reaching smaller groups, but how do we scale the work of the experts and try the outcomes we want to see in the regions and with the end users. The investment areas are with the four areas, one is with the programs and this includes our ambassadors to IGF. We have a few here. We're happy to see them.
It includes fellowships to the IETF. The second investment area is around the learning system. So the official announcement I'm making right now is around the forum. It's the new management system. We had a soft launch earlier this year. This is a learning platform that allows us to deliver courses on topics on Internet Governance, for example, or, you know, who are the actors in the internet ecosystem.
We're looking at working with the public policy team as an example on a tool kit for regulators. We're working with Karen Mullbury to take out the workshops she's doing in the region on the spam initiative. Those are a couple of examples. The third investment area is in the portfolio to reach end users. So, for example, we have a trust and identity research arc for the past four years. And so things like how do you manage the on-line identity, what is the digital footprint as part of the assets we launched in January this year, the on-line identity modules and that's outside of the emergency management system but it's things people can share via social medium. It's available in English, French, and Spanish.
But we've gotten requests to translate it to Hindi and Mandarin, so it will be available for the next millions. And the last investment area is investment and convening groups. So as an example on Monday of this week, we had a collaborative leadership exchange in partnership with some of the other organizations that are also focused on capacity building.
So the partnership with Diplo, the summer school on Internet Governance, dot-Asia and so it's about strengthening a community to go to meetings like this and have a different kind of dialogue. That's the type of investment around convening. So, in closing, I guess I have an ask of all of you. As you hear all of this from myself and from my colleagues, partnerships are essential. The Internet Society is an organization with fewer than 100 staff members.
But there's a lot that we all need to accomplish and we can only accomplish it together. And so freely reach out to any of us at any point. And I would also like to say I'm very fortunate to do the work that I get to do both because of my colleagues and also because of working with the individuals like our ambassadors and our fellows. So let's all make a difference together. Thank you.
[ Applause ]
>> KAREN ROSE: Thank you so much. And then one last presentation and that's from Joyce Jonye and Navid Haucke who will talk about some of our chapter work and activities and we'll open the floor to your questions and discussion.
>> Joyce: I'm pleased to see so many of our chapter officers and members in the room. Thank you for joining us and for taking the time to be here. I started with the Internet Society back in February. And so my role is to really work with the chapters to support the amazing efforts in their regions in developing their internet related activities.
Working closely with the internet bureaus to look at the region and see how we can actually support our chapters best. But also to identify together with them opportunities for new chapter development. So very pleased to see that we have an almost new chapter in the room as well, by the way. In the last little steps to become a chapter and be a member of the chapter family.
Obviously we have our chapters globally spread. So to please the number-driven people like Michael, I'll just throw some numbers at you as well. So as Karen said, we have 99 chapters, almost 100? To -- across the globe. Looking at the geographical spread, 18 in the Asia Pacific region. 28 in Europe. 11 in the -- 12 to be -- I'm not putting any pressure on you at all? Six in the Middle East region, eight in North America. And so the chapters in each of those regions are really the bridges that's for ISOC to the communities.
And so we have on our team -- and Davide is one of our region chapter managers, but each of the regions have their own chapter managers. Feel free to reach out to them to get more support if you need some in each of the regions. We actually had on Saturday a -- sorry, on Sunday, rather, a APEC chapter regional workshop where we had 12 representatives of our chapter, chapter officers, plus we had the opportunity to have the idea for ambassadors to join us to discuss some of the opportunities for the chapters in to developing their activities in each of their chapters. I believe it was a very successful gathering and a lot of bonding has been happening throughout the workshop and also throughout the rest of the IGF.
This is one part -- the chapter workshops, the regional chapter workshops is one piece of the activities we do with our chapters to support them and understanding how to build their communities in their respective regions. And so we are also looking at IO, for instance, and using the platform to develop some specific training for our chapter officers and chapter members in each of their chapters.
We very often -- we use the word "chapter" freely. But I very often have to explain it to my mom once in a while, what are chapters? She thinks it's something in a book, you know, that you turn to the next chapter. I'm trying -- I'm trying to explain it to her. But our chapters for the ones amongst you who are not familiar with it, our chapters are really independent multistakeholder groups that are really formed by our communities for our communities and that actually work within the -- within their communities to strengthen and further the ISOC mission in their specific regions. And they do that through a number of ax -- activities, obviously.
One of the things -- I mention a couple. Educational events that could be training for nontechnical people, explaining to them what the internet issues are. Policy-related activities where they actually really talk to their policy makers so there are decision makers about the importance around any kind of internet issues, depending on the region, depending on the area.
And that last but not least also being involved in community programs to really drive some of the development work that is being done with the Internet Society and with the internet communities. I think we can actually look into more specific activities that we do in the region here in Asia Pacific. So I'll hand over to -- to Davide with one last request -- whoever of you who is not active in a chapter, please join the chapters and join the amazing work they're doing on day-to-day basis. So thank you for the ones that are here. And Dawit, if you want to --
>> DAWIT BEKELE: Thank you, so she's given an introduction for me. I'm the chapter manager for Asia Pacific. My role is to develop, support, and assist what amazing work is done in chapters in the local communities across Asia. Before I dive into more details here, I just want to announce a great player that the recent application that we have received from Indonesia. So we are going to have a chapter in Indonesia in due course of time. It's coming from the local community, in Indonesia, it's great.
I look forward that we'll have a chatter in the near future and Indonesia as well. Coming back to the whole Asia Pacific picture of the chapters, we totally have a team and they are well covered throughout the sub regions that we have in Asia Pacific, that includes south Asia, that includes southeast Asia, east Asia, Australia, and, of course, Pacific islands. So the Pacific islands chapter that we have is actually a sub-regional chapter that covers the whole community inside the Pacific island. These 18 chapters are actually fantastic group of volunteers and I'll just show the numbers.
We have 9,700 chapter members in Asia Pacific. So just imagine how -- how big the community is. And it will go on growing. And, of course, there's these volunteers come across and present our truly multistakeholder community voice. So we have them from the technical community academy, Civil Society, internet companies, and, of course, we do have volunteers from the government as well.
So it's a true multistakeholder flavor that's being presented to our chapters across the globe and of course Asia Pacific as well. Few of the main activities that the chapters are doing in Asia. So, again, it's a multi-flavor. They're do technical capacity building and upcoming internet technological issues. They do campaign and raise awareness regarding issues like access security, privacy, freedom of expression, and then they also partner not only with the international organization, but also with the regions -- sorry, and somehow they just transform that twice to their community as an Internet Society chapter. And they also partner good -- good number of the chapters are partnering with the governance.
For example, Australia chapter of the Internet Society basically was a -- was one of the key stakeholders that's a national IGF in Australia. So that's, you know, how diverse the chapters are and they're doing a wonderful job throughout this community of Asia Pacific. I think I'll just stop over here. Again, like they said, if you want me, there are amazing things being done and I'm quite passionate to work with all of you in Asia Pacific from the chapter community.
So I'll just hand over to Karen. Karen, in case we do have time at the end of the question/answer session, I would like a few of the chapter leaders who are here, I can see the faces, a bit tired, but I can see they're still up to share something with all of you on that amazing stuff that they're doing for the Internet Society and bringing our mission in the local communities. Thank you.
[ Applause ]
>> Thanks a lot. Well, we covered a lot of ground from economic activities to specific development activities, infrastructure, policy. Other aspects of development. We've covered Latin America, Asia, so as you can see, the Internet Society, we're truly global, we're truly around the world. And we're here to work and make a difference for the communities that we're reaching, including you. So with that, I'd like to open it up for any questions or comments or discussions that you have on what you have heard or other things. Anyone in the room? We've got two people here?
(Speaking a language other than English).
>> Moderator: So the lady is from Gabon. She helped if I could help to translate.
(Speaking a language other than English)
>> Moderator: So she works to the ministry and specializing advisor to the minister in digital economy in Gabon.
(Speaking a language other than English)
>> Moderator: The lady is thanking us for the interventions for the presentations and if there are contradictions in the comments she will be making, there's a language difficulty. So please excuse her. If I may, I will call you Ms. Florence. Congratulations to all that ISOC does. And thanks us for the latest intervention in governing. I saw putting in place a workshop for the establishment of an IXP in Gabon, which in brackets, I intervene here which is under the access pro that I mentioned before.
There's still a lot of projects that are still in the pipeline for Gabon. And is in many countries, there's the collaboration and cooperation with ISOC and the request to continue to collaborate and cooperate with ISOC. One of the prime projects or one project coming up is the organization of the forum on the internet. And like with many countries, the request is how can ISOC help? Or how can there be partnerships collaborations with ISOC like with many countries around the world, for example, with the financing or the assistance with national IGFs.
There's also the request for assistance in establishing a chapter to learn how one establishes a chapter because right now there's no chapter in Gabon. So there's the request for information on how to go about to establish a chapter. And finally the ask is whether there will be a report on this particular presentation or on this particular workshop? And from an Africa -- from an African bureau perspective, as you know our Africa bureau works closely with the countries and identifies the priorities with the countries.
The workshop that you mentioned on access. I know that the team worked very hard to be able to present the best practice workshop, the first workshop that took place in Gabon. Interestingly, there was a collaboration with the world bank since the world bank is doing a lot of connectivity projects in Africa and in Gabon in particular, there was a collaboration to ensure that there's coherence between the different projects from the agencies and in Gabon, we will have an assessment workshop to flow up on the best practices of the workshop to work with the community that is being established so with the community we can move towards the establishment of an IXP in Gabon.
I have the chapter team that you saw. You can see Joyce. She will be able to sit with you later on as well in terms of chapter development. We have a chapter development support person, Christine Segesure who's dedicated to Africa in particular and who is integrate in the African team. But Joyce can give you the context. Those are the responses. Thank you.
>> KAREN ROSE: Thank you very much for your question. And I think one of the things this question highlights is the fact that, you know, the internet is a multistakeholder community. It's by working between the technical communities, government, Civil Society, and others that we get our work done. So we're really happy to have you here at this forum and your interest in the work and we look forward to working with you and Gabon going forward. So thank you very, very much for being here in your question. Oh came, we had one -- let me go up here. And here. And then there was one back there. Okay.
>> Thank you, my name is Marina River. I'm from the OECD. I would like to thank you for an interesting information. ISOC is a member of the technical community but it was great to get the overall big picture. I would like to have a question to Michael. Michael, you mentioned one of your future programs is about local content.
We had a very successful project together with ISOC and UNESCO local content. And you basically mentioned that it's about showing how often more expensive is it to have like international traffic and keeping content local. So I was wondering whether that project was focused on the economic metric analysis or if you're coming out with numbers, okay, how much more does it cost? Not exchanging traffic locally. Or if you're also coming up with policies, what do you have to do in order to incentivize people to create more content?
>> Michael: It's neither, really. We're not going do any econometrics. This can be done with just some numbers about the costs. It's really in between. I've been talking to Constantinos about the second version. It's really just in between. It's thisth just having local caching and having the content developed locally. So there's a lot of content that's relevant in many countries. It's the local content that's hosted abroad or global content that people enjoy. Games, TV clips, soccer clip, whatever.
So it's really just focusing on -- as a -- as a first step, taking advantage of local caching and hosting opportunities as a way of hopefully kick starting the generation and that will feed into your next report as I understand it. So it's not focused on the content generation per se, but just what's there moving it -- moving it locally.
>> KAREN ROSE: Okay. Great. One on the floor here?
>> Thank you, hello. I'm Nicholas from Paraguay, soon to be chapter. We've been struggling for the last three years to get it approved. And well basically I have a suggestion -- you know, Latin America is big continent. So when you say Latin America, the Caribbean, the reality is -- the needs, and, you know, the things that -- are not necessarily the same, right? The Caribbean is like a whole different world. You know the Indian -- the Indian countries?
The river region, all of that stuff. So my humble suggestion would be to have subchapters, sub headquarters or something like that. No need related to an administration. No need to have more offices and more people and everything. But I think we should have like decentralized kind of administration in possible, right? We can certainly volunteer to help. Thank you.
>> MICHAEL: Thank you, Nicholas. I totally agree with you. That's why we have chapters. So we have chapters to have a local presence. Particularly in Latin America, I think we're fine with having the -- all of the Latin Americans and Caribbeans -- I mean, if you go to the granularity, today Mexico is not the same as Argentina either you. Have to split that in two.
Eastern Europe and Western Europe would have been separated and the British islands would be something different and Scandinavia would split also too. So I think for the sake of having a managing -- a manageable organization, we should still have this region of bureaus as we have them and have national chapters that will drive our business locally. And that would represent us there and that would feed us back. I mean where we can include those perspectives in our regional, sub regional, and global -- global strategies. So I think that's the way that -- the way go. Thank you.
>> KAREN ROSE: Okay. Thank you. I have one question back here and then I thought maybe we could get a comment from one of our chatters on some of the things that -- one of our chapters are doing and then we can go back to questions.
>> Hello. Hi. I'm from INEX. I had a question about local content to try to drive -- it's kind of a follow-on question to the previous question that was asked. There are a lot of reasons to try to get local content down to the areas where it's serving.
Does ISOC have any way to try to work with internet provider there is to do net flow analysis on their traffic to see where it's coming from to try to work with the -- you know, the big CDMs, to try to get them into the regions? And in particular if they can't get those to the regions, how do they solve the really big problem of who pays for the traffic on the way in? Because if you have a whole lot of people in IXP, you have a cache or something like that, that CDNcache is going to pull down a lot of data and someone has to pay for it. The content providers are not going to want to do that. They feel it's the responsibility of the local community to -- to pay for it. This is a difficult problem which I don't completely know how to solve. So I wonder if you have any ideas about it?
>> SOFIE MADDENS: Yes and no. We're going to work with the community. We hear how we're going to leverage the rest of the community. We've gone from zero to one economist.
>> KAREN ROSE: That's 100% increase.
>> SEBASTIAN BELLAGAMBA: Or 1,000. So I think the idea is we've been talking to Martin, certainly talk to you, try to gather some data. Right now if you go -- if you go to some projects that I was doing before I came here, I would ask the ISPs and one of these countries what percentage of your -- before there was an ISP, what percentage of your traffic is local and you can't even conceive the question, it's basically all of it.
What percent is international, it's all of it, right? There's no local track and you put in the IXP. So more data is needed. But I think the low-hanging fruit is the country like Kenya where you have data centers that are basically empty and you have content and you have a good example through Google and others. Then we move to countries where there's no data centers and try to figure out what the content infrastructure that needs to go along with the IXP and the access infrastructure. I don't have answers to all of the questions yet.
That's the project we're going to kick off is going to try to answer. If you look at a country like Kenya again, the amount of money that's being spent to bring the traffic in has to far outweigh the savings of leaving it in Germany or in -- in London, right? There has to be enough money on the table that everyone can be better off. The users, it will be faster, cheaper to get. The content providers will be giving -- will be sending more traffic. And ISPs will be saving a lot of money. But the specifics about the CDNs and everything, those are questions that we have to figure out answers to.
>> KAREN ROSE: Thanks for the questions. Of course, if you want to get any deeper to further conversation, please feel to ask anyone from the Internet Society off line to further discuss these issues. So for an overview of what some of our chapters are doing, Shadip from Nepal. Are you here? Will the real Shadip please stand up? I want you to know it's not me picking on you. It was Joyce who suggested that you might be able to give us a view of what a chapter does, some of the things that are of interest to you and your region and in Nepal?
At regional level of Asia Pacific, what we have been trying to do is we've been trying to get energy especially with the young people, trying to come up with issues related to Internet Society. Apart from that, we have been posting events like we went the EIS. We tried to locate the local content for prospects and challenges. On a personal level, we've been doing events like let's talk about internet where we talk about internet of the -- at the user level. You know? Normal people, normal students. It doesn't take much.
Facebook events and students who are talking about the internet and we have a meeting room and we talk about internet. It's easy. I believe it's -- the Internet Society is all about the individual that is standing here. It's about bringing change to our society. It's about doing that effort locally. Not internationally or looking at resources. Right? You can do it at an individual level and with few steps you can bring it in. And I believe being part of the ISOC community, I feel proud that I'm here.
Talking about my regional perspective, you know, to make change. There might be issues but I'm happy to get a chance to be a part of ISOC community and I'm proud to say that I am with ISOC. So thank you. [ Applause ]
>> KAREN ROSE: Thank you so much for that great overview. It's stories like this that make us all proud to be part of the ISOC community. Whether we're working directly for ISOC, whether we're a chapter or an individual member or partner. So are there other questions or responses from anything today? So -- sorry. The -- she had your hand up here. Then we'll go to those two.
>> Thank you, I'm Shiva Mohammed. Ambassador from Trinidad and Tobago. Thank you for having us. I didn't want to lose Karen's points at the beginning. I've been doing the policy for years and the failings of technocentral policy is shockingly clear. There's a big gap there that needs to be addressed and the triad of infrastructure, the human -- besides the technical, the human and government elements are really essential still.
And it's shocking that, you know, we kind of leave this gap unfilled. What I'm interested in is finding an intersection for the points. I'm doing a study in Trinidad on policy and practice. We're seeing it again and again coming up where we have policy makers at the top level thinking that ICT is an IT thing and they DEG gait it to the technical people. Technical people are brilliant, of course. But how do we streamline it to reach some of the issues to use ICT as an enabler in Trinidad and Tobago and addressing some of the human rights issues. It's important not to lose that. And I think ISOC provides a very space to do that with a crowded room with many voices that have microphones than individual users can. So if we coalesce, it's something very important and we need to have continuity and find concrete ways to do this beyond just the theoretical rubrick.
>> KAREN ROSE: I'll just answer. You can get more information about that smart development approach. That's a good example. It's something you want to push. It's too many times still issues are put in boxes. Sometimes it's all internet, it's just a technical thing, this is just a technical thing, this is just a policy thing, or this is just human capacity. At any project again at any scale, you have to look at the intersection of those three.
That's what's going to make it work. And that's one of the reasons why pushing a multistakeholder dialogue is so key for so many of these issues, getting the different perspectives in the room. And it will be great to follow up on you on Trinidad and Tobago and those issues as well. A small island states is something we're going be taking a look at more in depth from an access perspective and an economic perspective as well. So thanks for that question. There was two questions in the back. Sylvia?
>> I just wanted to say that I am -- I'm an ISOC member since 1996. And it has been like a -- like a growing curve around my life. It's been a constant and professional life. Started when they were running the net workshops and I met with half of the colleagues that I'm conspiring to make the internet a better place. I was part of the ISOC chapter in Colombia. Then to Uruguay. I'm living in Australia. I'm trying to work with the guys in Australia as well. It's like you carry this spirit with you.
And you -- you keep the spirit of bringing that interface between the technical community and the Civil Society and putting some common sense into all of the requirements and all of the discussions and all of the conversations that are happening and are part of the track. So I really think that the role that the Internet Society has been doing for all these years is great. I kind of feel old when I think of all of the years that you have been around. But I'm very much proud part of the Internet Society and voices in the room that is not, please join me.
>> KAREN ROSE: Thanks a lot, Sylvia. One of the great things about being in our community is that not only do you have professional colleagues, but you really grow friends all over the world that you can count on and you know for many years. And Jay was talking about something about developing circles of trust. When you're doing projects.
And really that's what the Internet Society does on a really broad scale. You know, there's individuals around the world that we know that we can always reach out to and we can reach across some other people in our community to get things done. And I think that's a really great benefit of the internet society. So we had a question here.
>> Hi, I'm from Indonesia. To be honest, ISOC is, what, a new name in my head. I know ISOC from the idea in Indonesia. Okay. My quick question is because this makes me curious, is there any programs or -- that ISOC does for changing or impacting to government in the country or countries -- okay, that's it. Thank you.
>> KAREN ROSE: Yeah, we can -- Terrell wants to answer that. One question -- is anybody from the -- do we have an Indonesian chapter? Not yet. One of the things that can be driven through chapter activities. When there's a specific request, I think again as Jane was saying, you come to request assistance, we can -- we can work with you to figure out sort of what the best approach is in analysis. But let me turn it over to Terrell.
>> TERRELL: Thanks for that question. One of the programs we started in January of last year led by a public policy team, is a policy special guest to the IGF. So to bring in regulators and demystifying some of the technology pieces. So those are some of the elements that we're addressing.
>> I'll just add -- so we do have received an application from Indonesian local community to have Indonesians Jakarta chapter. That's not a chapter really to present that mission in the local side of the community. They do strive and try to work with the governance.
So somehow you know I'll share my business card with you and you know I'll try to connect you with that because it's a process where we want more people from the community to join in and have a strengthened Internet Society chapter inside Indonesia. Thank you.
>> My name is Walid Asakof, I'm proud to be the founder of the Yemen chapter, ISOC Yemen, recently founded. I happen to know plenty of the faces here including Davide as an icon. One thing that caught my attention is just a few weeks after I joined ISOC and becoming a chapter member and leader, I found the interesting debates on the mailing list.
I'm not sure if you're familiar with this debate about the sustainability, the financial sustainability of chapters. It was about the ISOC Cambodian chapter. There was eagerness with ISOC to help connect with this chatern and see what problems it may have. Obviously for someone to start to have to form the chapter, it's something to worry about but also to be inspired about and understand that even if you face difficulties, you can't always try to seek help and try to coordinate. So, I mean, these are the impressions that I have. If you want a comment about financial sustainability and areas of progression and that respect.
>> Karen Rose: Thank you, Walid. Maybe just I will not go into the details of the Cambodian chapter. I think they've been addressed. I'm happy to have a conversation about it separately. On the financial sustainability of the chapters, we're working as you know with the administrative support group, actually a working group to identify what kind of support is actually needed for the chapters. What we found so far is that there is a number of things that we can put in place that are not necessarily financial contributions directly.
So we're really trying to identify what exactly the issues are that are resources that are needed for the chapters and working through that list one-by-one to see how we can support it, whether it's financial or general resources to support the chapters in the day-to-day life. We're looking at setting up a program and looking at a training as well in terms of fundraising specifically in the chapters, local fundraising. So as we understood, it's a challenge for some of the chapters as it's not something they do in their day-to-day life.
And so we have been requested as well from some of the chapters to get some training on how should we address this, how do we approach people to do some fundraising. It's work in process. Any suggestions or questions are always welcome, of course. I hope that addresses your comment. Thank you.
>> KAREN ROSE: Well, thank you, everybody. We're at the end of the time for our session. So if there are any further questions, please feel free to come and approach and ask any one of my colleagues or myself. And I'd like to thank you very much for attending the open session and making it a great conversation. Thank you.
[ Applause ]
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This text is being provided in a rough draft format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings.