DC on Internet Universality Indicators (DC-IUI)

Introduction

In November 2015, UNESCO’s 38th General Conference marked a milestone and endorsed its updated position of Internet Universality, embracing four ROAM principles: an acronym for Rights, Openness, Accessibility to all, and Multistakeholder participation. UNESCO recognizes these four “pillars” underpin the growth and evolution of the Internet, fundamental to the development of the Internet, in ways that are conducive to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.

UNESCO’s Internet Universality ROAM-X Indicators framework is a set of 303 indicators that aim to assess how well national stakeholders, including governments, companies, and civil society perform in adhering to the ROAM principles of Rights, Openness, Accessibility, and Multi-stakeholder participation. It also includes 79 cross-cutting Indicators (category X) concerning gender and the needs of children and young people, sustainable development, trust and security, and legal and ethical aspects of the Internet.

Based on its deep engagement with IGF community in the past 15 years, UNESCO is launching this Dynamic Coalition on Internet Universality ROAM-X indicators at the IGF 2020, as a new shared space for advocating ROAM principles worldwide, sharing experiences and raising awareness of the value of these ROAM-X indicators and good practice in applying them in more countries. This Dynamic Coalition will also be used to strengthen UNESCO’s synergies and partnership with IGF MAG and all stakeholders, National and Regional IGFs (NRIs), Best Practice Platforms (BPP) and other DCs to jointly advance the evidence-based Internet and policies at national, regional and global levels.

The dynamic coalition seeks to engage with all countries and all stakeholders worldwide to promote free, open and accessible Internet for all and provide a space for multi-stakeholder dialogue and collaboration. The coalition will serve an umbrella platform for facilitating collaboration on countries’ alignment to UNESCO’s ROAM principles via national assessments and implementation of recommendations to harness Internet and advanced technologies’ potential to achieve the 2030 sustainable development agenda.

Internet Universal Indicators website: https://www.unesco.org/en/internet-universality-indicators?hub=66940

Action Plan

An inclusive multistakeholder approach has been mainstreamed and implemented at all stages of UNESCO’s Internet Universality indicators project at international, regional and national levels. Though the IUIs assessment is at the initial stage of implementation, the process has attracted high level attention and support from countries’ key ministers, policy makers, and multi-stakeholder actors, and its strong impact on policy improvement has been evident, with the Multi-stakeholder approach and mechanism being strengthened to promote human rights in the policy making process at the national level.

As the IUI framework is a sophisticated, multifaceted research tool designed to achieve substantive and wide-ranging findings, the Implementation of the framework will require careful planning, sufficient time and resources for effective data-gathering and analysis, and inclusive discussion of findings and recommendations including follow concrete actions:

  • Task 1: Establishing a Multistakeholder Advisory Group
  • Task 2: Building a collaborative research team
  • Task 3: Developing a research plan
  • Task 4: Data gathering
  • Task 5: Data analysis
  • Task 6: Report-writing and presentation
  • Task 7: Organization of national validation workshop and related advocacy activities
  • Task 8: Impact assessment and monitoring

The Dynamic Coalition will support national assessment processes via consolidating collaborations of national multi-stakeholder and expanding the participation of the various sectors related to Internet governance and telecommunications policy and regulation in the interested countries.

The Dynamic Coalition also offers regular exchanges of good practices, lessons learned via webinars, virtual and physical trainings through all above tasks to interested actors and research teams on the implementation process as well as research methodology to aid them with conducting national assessment of indicators within their respective countries.

Mailing List

Mailing list address: [email protected]

Subscribe to the mailing list: https://intgovforum.org/mailman/listinfo/dc-iui_intgovforum.org

Stakeholders

Government

  • Polish National Commission for UNESCO
  • German National Commission for UNESCO

IGO

  • Council of Europe
  • Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)

Civil society

  • Association of Progressive Communications
  • Missions Publiques

Academia

  • CETIC.br

Technical community

  • Internet Society (ISOC)
  • Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN)
  • E-Governance and Internet Governance Foundation for Africa (EGIGFA)

Media

  • Global Forum for Media Development (GFMD)
  • Leibniz Institute for Media Research | Hans-Bredow-Institut

Multistakeholder organizations

  • Global Network Initiative (GNI)

Documents/Reports

Useful resources:

Contact

Tatevik Grigoryan – t.grigoryan[at]unesco.org