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October 7, 2003
Commonwealth ICT Summit: Uptown Panelist Slam
During the first afternoon session of the conference, I chaired a panel that was ostensibly on the use of online networks to share best practices with each other. What ended up happening was a whole other matter.
Carl Wright, director of the Commonwealth Local Government Forum, spoke about strategies that local governments were using to create e-government initiatives and capitalize on local civil society groups working on improve community ICT literacy. Carl was followed by Dr. Tim Hubbard, head of Human Genome Analysis at the Wellcome Trust/Sanger Institute. Hubbard talked about the strategy used during the work on the Human Genome Project. With scientists contributing to the project from all over the world, they created what was basically an open source network -- all research would be shared publicly, remain in the public domain, and open to rigorous testing by fellow scientists. This openness created a system of checks and balances that ultimately speeded up the project by years.
Wrapping up the panel, Sarah Cripps of the Association of Commonwealth Universities, spoke about CUDOS, a massive online database and directory of university-related information, such as professors, courses offered, etc, at Commonwealth-affiliated universities around the world. (For example, you could do a search for physics professors at African universities with a student population of more than 10,000.) But Sarah also noted that the system is subscription driven - universities must pay 1000 pounds to access the database.
When I opened the session for audience questions, at first no one said a word for about 10 seconds. I had scribbled down a list of at least a dozen questions I'd ask if a circumstance such as this arose, but soon enough someone raised their hand. Their tone set the stage for the next hour of debate: So you've created this massive system for universities in the developing world, but you're expecting them to pay a small fortune to access it?
Ms. Cripps was put on the defensive, noting that her group tried to explore several economic models but this was the only one that made any sense if they were going to get the project off the ground. But the audience was incredulous. Dr. Hubbard soon chimed in, saying that it's vital for a network to be open if it's going to achieve buy-in from the community. I asked him about the economic model for Public Library of Science, the new open-access science journal: rather than paying huge subscription fees, everyone gets free access to the research contained in the journal, while scientists who want to get published must pay a fee to be peer-reviewed, thus putting the economic burden on the producer's side. This allows scientists from the developing world, as well as average citizens, to have full access to research that otherwise would cost thousands of dollars.
Hoping to take some of the pressure off Ms. Cripps, I asked if anyone had a question for Mr. Wright. Someone raised their hand, then promptly made another critical comment about the CUDOS system. I jumped back in and asked Mr. Wright to talk about the role of civil society in ICT literacy training at the local level, which fortunately spawned a couple followup questions from the audience. But the balance of the discussion remained wholly focused on open versus closed content. Several audience members passionately said that open content supporters shouldn't be viewed as trying to overthrow the capitalist system or anything like that; rather, it should be possible to put forward a sound economic argument for making more content available freely. It was clear that this was an issue that struck a chord with this group of ICT leaders, even though this issue wasn't a particular item on the agenda. Undoubtedly it would require further discussion and debate.
Posted by acarvin at October 7, 2003 4:20 PM
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