🔭 Documentation

Nov 15 | SESSION 13 — Keys for sustainability (2): USF in the different areas of the world + social sustainability

In this session, Dr Emma Otieno and Adriana Labardini presented on the Universal Service Funds (USF), why they are necessary, what different models are out there, challenges and lessons learned, as well as discussing innovative uses of USF to promote bottom-up and women-led community networks for social, economic, and environmental sustainability. As homework, participants were invited to deliberate on the current models of USF in their respective countries, whether they do implement gender lens, as well as what actions can be done better to elevate CNs.

Key highlights:

1. Universal access (UA) and universal services (US) refer to objectives and policies that governments implement to ensure that all their citizens, regardless of region or location, socio-economic status, ethnicity, gender, disability, or any other factor, have access to the benefits of critical services. Critical services refer to the basic needs that citizens need — ICT has joined the ranks of basic needs as we have seen post-COVID where there is a need for broadband access to communicate, conduct daily businesses, education, and many others. 
2. But private sectors have come to dominate the ICT field, excluding isolated communities and that can include CN. This is why UA has to be a matter that governments must intervene and make sure that every single person has access to the Internet.
3. Universal Service Fund (USF) targets to promote social and economic development, focusing on unserved and underserved areas and disadvantaged communities that cannot be served by commercial service providers.
4. The three pillars of USF — it must be available, affordable, and accessible.
   • Availability — ensure the services are available to the last person in the jurisdiction that is not reached by private sectors.
   • Affordable – Everyone in the jurisdiction must be able to afford.
   • Accessible – must not be discriminatory. Includes the needs of PWD — do they need certain devices or content or needs?
5. There are many ways in managing USF globally which includes through the country’s national regulatory fund (NRA), the ministry for ICT and the private agencies. In her experience, Emma found that going through the NRA is the most optimal, as they already have experts at the level, and they already have the data available for future monitoring. This can reduce the cost and increase the integration. When dealing with agencies, normally the OPEX would be too high and the money allocated to them would often be used to pay salaries or operate the institution. The rule — No single shilling should go out to the fund to fund OPEX, they should fund projects.
6. Inadequate stakeholder engagement and involvement can be one of the reasons affecting the effectiveness of UA. This is why we must understand the needs of the communities so we can make them understand that they need these services to enhance their lives.
7. We need to also ensure the government is also on the same page in collaboration to make sure the services are available, accessible, and affordable to everyone. 
8. Most of the time the funds are there, but there is no clarity on how to utilise it. Not to mention, bureaucratic hurdles prevent us from utilising the funds effectively.
9. CNs are encouraged to apply for licenses to be able to apply for USF. With licenses as well, CNs have more opportunities in the regulatory space.
10. USF is important to social sustainability because it promotes inclusion, diversity, gender equality, the local economy and needs, and engages with the target communities and is mindful of their culture, environment, and preferences.
11. USF should be the result of having specific access goals that we can allocate resources to the right actor to the right uses, and that we need independent agency transparency in monitoring the USF.
12. In the Global south, we still have a deficit on infra. Important that there’s credibility, transparency, and accountability in how the resources are managed, and this can be done through USF.
13. In the end, there are many potentials for USF in CN, as CN are known to be more efficient in our own governance, more sustainable – with the right enabling environment we can be better at managing our infra and capacity building.

Memorable quotes:

“How can the very last person access the ICT services?” — Dr Otieno

“I would think that the three pillars of USF — availability, affordability, and accessibility — are like the three-legged African stool that are really strong and often used by African men when they are chatting.” — Dr Otieno.

“We need to think out of the box and knock on the door of USF managers or regulators or ministers, make them know that the communities are also the players in this country, as agents of communities.” — Adriana.

“We need to question everything, and should no longer stick to old paradigm.” — Adriana.

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Nov 19 | SESSION 14 — Knowledge keeping, knowledge transfer, digital skills and continuity in the community

In this session, Tigist and Mariana spoke about their experiences in various feminist spaces of knowledge production and preservation, particularly FIRN and Gender IT. The participants were then invited to reflect on the existing ethical research principles by Gender IT in relation to the current work they are doing in knowledge building and transfer in their own community networks, or to suggest new ideas beyond the list.

Key highlights:

1. For many years, the Global South had been perceived as the receiver of technology and knowledge. FIRN counters this by building works of internet research by Global South activists and researchers rooted in feminist intersectional approach to inform activism and policymaking.
2. FIRN does not only offer donors and grants to the partners, but also facilitates spaces for their partners where they have the freedom to choose the direction of their own research, and make impacts in their own fields in Global South internet research and knowledge making perspectives within local and international communities.
3. FIRN have accomplished a number of achievements along the years, which included research projects on datafication, access, OGBV, economy and labour. They also do meta-research study where they observe how project members or partners conducted their own research from the feminist perspective – what are the challenges? How does the final product give them about feminist knowledge making? What do they understand about intersectionality? Why is it critical for them to apply intersectionality theory? All of these research and questions can help prepare so the team is more informed to assist the next cycle of FIRN members and partners.
4. FIRN produced a mapping of the internet research field, which is a repository of 300 works from 2016-2021. It is a testimony to the knowledge creation, documentation and political analysis being done by feminist researchers around the world. More than that, it also will help visibilise the existence of GS internet researchers who are often sidelined as they were often research assistants, or co-authors to white researchers.
5. FIRN also does work with other journals in an attempt to destabilise, intercept and intervene the power dynamics between CSOs and academics, and making the research by CSO get as much visibility and influence as academic work.
6. Feminist conceptualisations, theories, and practices are ways to reconstruct the internet with the needs and realities of the most marginalised groups with people at the centre. Centering it also means also to work with and hire people from the Global South. 
7. Feminist practices also values embodied and humanised approach to the internet, and prefers contextual qualitative methods over quantitative as it values human experiences even more.
8. Each of the research visibilises social actos with their own meaning and perspectives, as the Internet from the feminist perspectives shows that those who use the Internet is never monolithic and comes from unique and multiple backgrounds and identities. The internet hegemonic perspective is often cetnered on white, cis male, Global North perspectives — no more!
9. The idea is to open the eyes and the minds of researchers and activists and policymakers to create a different kind of evidence based on experiences, with people in the centre, as embodied knowledge.
10. On the question of the possibility to do feminist work/research without branding/naming it "feminist" — yes, read the room, put the people first, and understand the contexts to whom you are speaking to. In many countries, it can be very political and using the term ‘feminist’ can cause backlash (maybe change to women’s participation as the term). Reflect on the research experience: even though you're not acknowledging it as feminist word, do you really pay attention to the politics of feminism, and in so do you help prioritise the most marginalised person or people or collective in that specific moment? Have you intervened in the imbalance of power dynamics? Did you make it people-centered?
11. Ethics is not a one-off thing and not limited to signing consent forms. Reflect on the time we have done our research in which we have unintentionally silenced the voices of our research participants, or misrepresent them. Understand the power dynamics of participants and researchers.
12. Affection and relationship can also develop between participants and researchers, especially after they have been working together for a long time. The relationship can also help enrich and build the knowledge in the research and can impact us as we are not neutral beings.
13. We need to also reflect on the ethics of taking pictures that are often in no way indicative of the research we are doing, especially to show in presentations to donors — do we have the consent to take pictures of the particular individuals or communities? What will these pictures be used for? Are they absolutely necessary?
14. Researchers can sometimes be indulged within their own expertise, especially if they have more access to resources and they are working amongst vulnerable communities. This can lead to the lack of accountability. They need to understand they are not the experts, only have access to more resources than most people, and the impacted communities are the experts in their own lived experiences. As such, they are also still learning.

Memorable quotes:

“Quoting is political. We need to know who is doing the work researching the technological issues in our continental perspectives.” — Tigist

“Making the repository open access is also political intervention, so anyone, especially people in the Global South can access the work.” — Tigist.

“We receive affect and we give effect, and that affection affects our research in a way that it would be positive and allows us to go deep,  instead of creating problems.” — Mariana, talking about affections and friendships developing between researchers and participants.