Since the inception of the IGF, the Council of Europe, the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) and APC have been working on a joint initiative on public participation in internet governance. Now a draft code of good practice on transparency, information and participation in internet governance is ready for comment!

In 2003, APC launched our first ICT policy handbook “for beginners” to critical acclaim. ICT policy was a relatively new area and very few really understood what was actually involved. The APC handbook was the first comprehensive guide for non-technicians. Now APC has published an entirely rewritten second edition free and online for anyone to download.

The Internet Governance Forum is the only space of its kind in the world – it acts as a “pressure relief valve” for some of the most important and controversial issues related to the global internet. The IGF is in its fourth year of existence and next year could be its last. APC brings you quickly up to date with some of the most pressing issues to be debated from November 15-18.

APC has recently co-produced training materialson Web 2.0 and social media for development for the FAO Information Management Resource Kit (IMARK). This unit, along with others, is available for free online and in CD format on the project’s website.

Amy Mahan, a long-time collaborator of APC, died unexpectedly on March 5. Amy was a fervent supporter of Global Information Society Watch, a watchdog report that has become recognised as an essential reference by activists and critics in ICT policy all over the world, since its conception. APC will be dedicating the 2009 edition of GISWatch to be published in November in her honour. Amy touched all who worked with her, leaving a legacy of activist work that aspires to combine intellectual rigour and concrete outcomes that make a difference in the lives of people who lack resources, power and access.

In late 2003 APC gathered in Colombia to define our strategic priorities for the following five years. Like most good APC meetings, the event mixed politics with capacity building, debate and dialogue with dancing, and it was the largest meeting in our history at the time. Looking back over this period in earnest is quite intimidating. We hope that the APC Progress Report for 2004 to 2008 will give you some idea of those challenges and gives us an opportunity to recognise why APC is what it is and why we do what we do – making the world a better place by helping people gain the access, the skills, and the rights they need to work together online.

“With GEM I began to appreciate why sometimes the women that are part of our community resist the empowerment process. I used to be annoyed but now I understand that this is the product of years of conditioning and it will take some effort to reverse the trend. GEM helps you see the situation for what it is, so you can optimise your resources where you can make the maximum impact in creating change,” John Dada has been a GEM user since 2007 in rural Nigeria. GEM is an evaluation tool for determining whether ICTs are really improving or worsening women’s lives and for promoting positive change. GEM has been developed from the ground up, and has involved the collaboration of hundreds of community-based organisations and individuals since its first design in 2002.

The Internet Governance Forum (IGF) was set up in 2006 as a kind of “pressure relief valve” for some of the most controversial international discussions on the future of the internet. The IGF provides a space where this type of dialogue, between adversarial opponents, can really move towards deepening understanding and ultimately influencing decision makers to make better internet policy for a more just world. Learning to listen to traditional adversaries, understand different perspectives and look for common solutions to complex problems, without losing sight of closely held values and principles, has not come easily to an international rights-based NGO with a broad activist membership like APC. We explore our role in the creation and development of the IGF and its agenda.

As a consequence of our capacity-building work with hundreds of organisations and people from the women’s movement, we believe that we have helped to transform how the women’s movement thinks about technology and the internet, and that their confidence has been built to use technology more and more creatively to further women’s rights. “In the last five years, we have worked with many people and organisations,” says women’s programme coordinator Chat Garcia Ramilo. “What we have discovered is that this overall process of capacity building takes a long time, but if we persist long enough, we find out what changes it brings about.”

In a new publication “Change at hand: Web 2.0 for development”, APC’s Anriette Esterhuysen explores the circular relationship between information and communication technologies for development and Web 2.0 for development, and the assumptions about the “quick fix” that ICTs were expected to provide.

Since our inception, APC has been combining grass roots initiatives with local and national impact, with global experiences that amplify these impacts. An example of this is Take Back the Tech! – an international campaign that uses technology to fight against violence against women. We present this and other initiatives that the network hopes to be carrying on the next four years.

APC is pleased to announce that Global Information Society Watch (GISWatch) which is available in English for download at www.giswatch.org and is available in print upon request, is now also available in French on the GISWatch website. GISWatch is an annual watchdog report which this year asks: How do we ensure access to the internet is a human right enjoyed by everyone? The report highlights the importance of people’s access to information and communications technology infrastructure, and where and how countries are getting it right (or wrong), and what can be done about it. This edition, which focuses on access to internet and internet penetration, explores the challenges related to internet access in almost 40 countries, and includes six regional reports, and several thematic reports.

APC and the Latin American Association for Educational Radio (ALER) have launched an audio version of the APC Charter on internet rights in Spanish, available on the web in the form of podcasts.

In late 2007, APC members from almost forty countries and five continents met to define the strategic priorities for APC until 2012. They assessed the context faced by APC and civil society organisations using internet and other ICTs for social change. They considered trends in accessing the internet (including the role of mobile phones), in internet and information policy and regulation and in social networking and media. They also looked at other factors like climate change, which will have a huge impact on people’s lives and livelihoods. After several days of deliberation, six issues were identified as key strategic areas that APC must tackle to ensure that the internet remains free and open and that more and more people can connect to it and use it to improve their lives and create a more just world.

After several days of intense debate, APC members identified six issues as the key strategic areas that APC must tackle in the next five years: advocating for affordable internet access for all, ICTs and the environment, building the “information commons” , defending internet rights, critical and creative engagement of emerging technologies from a social change perspective and improving governance, especially governance of the internet. Why did APC members prioritise those six issues? What are the key challenges and opportunities that they perceive regarding the freedom of the internet and its use for social justice in the coming years?

Can Facebook and YouTube help the poor tackle their pressing problems? Or is this promise just hype? One is faced with tough questions: Can “Web 2.0 tools” directly influence the poor themselves? Can those interested in poverty work do better to start with the “situation” rather than the “technology”? Or should one think big and dream of a network of networks encompassing a billion children and their teachers, families and friends — nearly all of the poor people in the world, and most of the rich? BytesForAll co-founder and journalist Frederick Noronha takes a look at the issue.

Facebook is not just a way to get back in touch with old classmates from school or see what your “friends” are up to. Activists around the world are taking advantage of this new virtual space to expand their reach and establish more immediate and interactive contact with individuals and organisations from an ever wider range of backgrounds. ITeM, an APC member in Uruguay, talked with APCNoticias about how it is using this web-based tool, and shared some practical advice for others who are experimenting with social networks and other Web 2.0 tools.

In recent years, Kerala India has come forward in the international free and open source software (FOSS) community for its use and promotion of free software. As an emerging FOSS user, Kerala will host the second international conference on freedom in computing, development and culture: Free Software, Free Society. From December 09 – 11, APC staff member Cheekay Cinco will be one of five women speaking at the conference, among a list of 50 prominent speakers. APC is also working with experts on free software Aslam Raffee and Sunil Abraham, who will be speaking at the conference about implementation of pro-FOSS policies in South Africa and on the topic of open information sharing/licensing. Find out more about the programming and how to watch a live video stream of the events as they unfold.

Seven women and thirteen men from Anglophone and Francophone Africa and the Caribbean met during the last days of September in Gorée Island, Senegal. They have many things in common, but one in particular is their ability to make innovative connections in gender, agriculture and information and communication technologies (ICTs). This ability has led them to be finalists of the Gender, Agricultural and Rural Development in the Information Society (GenARDIS) small grants fund.

How can feminists use technology to their advantage? On November 10, the first ever Feminist Tech eXchange (FTX) in Cape Town will bring together more than 100 activists from around the globe to address this type of question. Organized by the APC Women’s programme in the run up to the massive women’s movement forum AWID, the capacity-building and information-exchange event will explore various technologies such as video, audio, social networking platforms and other emerging ICT tools. The event will act as an open space to network, share knowledge, and learn new skills and strategies for how to make technology work best for the women’s movement.