At the first Internet Governance Forum launched in Athens in the winter of 2006, the prevailing perception of open standards was that of an arcane, technical subject confined to obscure standard setting organizations staffed by computer scientists, engineers and technologists. It is perhaps testament to the efforts of the Dynamic Coalition of Open Standards (DCOS), created in Athens in 2006 that open standards has come to the fore of the 2nd Internet Governance Forum in Rio de Janeiro.
DCOS’ mission is to “provide government policy makers and other stakeholders with useful tools to make informed decisions to preserve the current open architecture of the Internet and the World Wide Web. DCOS includes actors from standards setting organizations, industry, academia, government and civil society. A forthcoming blog will detail the workshops we have held on “The Intersection of Open ICT Standards, Development, and Public Policy” and on “Best Practice Workshop: “Open ICT Standards for Greater Citizen Access: Best Practices in Government Policy and Procurement Practices” each attended by around 80 people.
During the opening session of the Rio IGF, Anriette Esterhuysen (Head of the Association of Progressive Communication) noted that:
Increasingly, there are standards being made outside of public spaces that have social implications that limit what people can do with the Internet. And the IGF needs to address this. This touches on issues of intellectual property, interoperability between different applications and devices. And these are things that impact on the cost. Why should blind people pay more for interfaces to read text because they’re blind and because someone owns a royalty on making two applications talk to one another? This is wrong. On the issue of access, I think as has been said, it’s really vital.
During today’s session on “Openness” attended by 250 people, Ronaldo Lemos (Fundação Getulio Vargas and Chairman of the Openness session) highlighted the political dimension of openness. In his view this political dimension was encapsulated by open standards and inter-operability. I asked Professor Lemos “Could you please further elaborate on the development dimension of open standards and inter-operability and how they relate to the discussions at the IGF?” For his answer, and the rich debate that transpired including an outstanding summary of this panel by Markus Kummer of the IGF Secretariat, please read my forthcoming blog entry.