Staying up to date with broadband policy

I have been looking into open source applications which can provide a single page to preview the media releases from the major broadband policy actors. What I wanted was a start page where I could determine which links appear, and then share the page in a way that others could see the start page just as I did.

Applications such as Feedly tend to predetermine your preferences and are difficult to share. On the other hand,  Google Reader allows you to share feeds and updates in real time, but only as individual articles which are not 'sticky'. Fortunately, I have found a solution using an application called iFound.

iFound is useful as it enables me to add only the links I wish to monitor, and I can then share the link so others may do the same. It also provides a preview screen when you hover over each webpages' snapshot. The preview is large enough to identify any recent changes to the site.

I am hoping that my iFound page will enable me to keep up to date with the major policy actors in the broadband 'industry'. I am still updating it, and I intend to do the same for each country I compare. In the meantime, any comments or suggestions are most welcome.

Participation & Communications Policy

Things are certainly looking up when you receive an email linking to the Minister for Broadband's press release, and then when you visit the site, you are able to use the ShareThis functionality on the page to automatically blog about the press release.

See: Draft Legislation Released for NBN Co Operations | Senator Stephen Conroy | Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy

While there is still a long way to go, those interested in communications policy now have greater access to the policy process than in pre-Web 2.0 days. Nonetheless, it takes a great deal of discipline for the casual observer to keep abreast of issues as they arise.

For example, submissions on the Digital Dividend Green Paper close tomorrow. The submission guidelines are quite useful, especially the questions at the end of each section which provide some structure for potential submitters. But you would have to know that the Green Paper was being developed last year and that it opened for submissions in mid-January.

At least in theory, it would be quite possible for the non-expert to have their say in certain elements of the policy process. But industry knowledge is essential if you are to stay informed.

In addition, the available technologies make it possible for interested citizens to be involved, but the trick is to know how. A simple model for the casual observer is to subscribe to the Media Centre of the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, monitor items of interest which appear from time to time, and then note the deadlines for submissions where relevant.

It is hard to imagine how the average citizen could ever have been involved in such a process in a paper-based system. However, there is still some way to go.

Being able to comment on the Green Paper is fine, but what about being involved in the drafting of the Green Paper? One of the biggest problems with public consultation is that it often occurs after the important decisions have already been made.

There were opportunities to participate in the Green Paper process through industry groups such as AMTA (and I am sure there were others). But how can we monitor all that is going on. And, how can the casual observer do this for free?

I am finding Feedly quite useful to monitor numerous websites in an easy-to-follow format. But I am not aware of a convenient 'map' of the industry to help others do this. Ideally, I would like to see something like LobbyLens freely available to citizens for relevant industries.

Nevertheless, participation in communications policy means much more than writing submissions. But should  it be the government's responsibility to enable participation in detail? Creating accessible resources for interested participants may be the most important contribution citizens can make to the policy process. I am currently working on such an industry 'map' and will make it available in the coming weeks.

University of Canberra goes 2.0

This year, the University of Canberra is introducing an intensive Winter Term to give students 'greater flexibility and opportunity' to either fast-track their degrees or spread their study load across three teaching periods.

A local initiative, born out of a combination of a growing local tech-savvy community (sharing ideas via local Web 2.0 tools such as yammer) and an institution-wide support program that is bringing the higher education sector kicking and screaming out of the dark (unlit) ages, means the University of Canberra is going 2.0.

I have been dreaming about introducing blogging and other social media tools into the curriculum to fill a growing gap in students' online communication skills for some time. Now, with the support of the institution, this dream will become a reality in the new Winter Term.

While I have been using Facebook and blogs in my teaching for many years, the intensive Winter Term presents some challenges to teaching delivery which are difficult to overcome using traditional teaching methods. Halving a traditional semester should not mean simply cramming traditional teaching and assessment methods into a shorter period - it calls for a change in how we deliver the educational experience. Enter Web 2.0.

This winter, I am replacing my standard face-to-face teaching with a fully-online subject. Typically, my subjects focus on generic skills such as written communication in addition to subject-area content. This does not necessarily mean that my subjects will be designed specifically for distance education (although being fully-online provides this option), but it means that I can expand the generic skills component to include written comunication online.

Given the increasing presence of Web 2.0 capabilities in traditional career streams, the opportunity to incorporate Web 2.0 assessment items in my curricula has been a long time coming. Nonetheless, Web 2.0's social element enables a deeper level of sharing and learning which will help to overcome the shorter timeframe.

The traditional essay will be replaced with students writing blog posts on subject-area topics, and being required to comment on their colleagues' blog posts. Media sharing applications such as Digg, ScribeFire and  ShareThis will be used to facilitate the sharing process. While many of these applications will be 'old hat' to inhabitants of the blogosphere, I am constantly surprised at the number of 'digital natives' who have not had a 'digital education'.

While I believe the traditional essay is the cornerstone of best-practice in developing formal written comunication skills, it would be a mistake to think that blogging is an 'easier' form of writing. Indeed, the added technical skills and the exposure to a wider audience require as much care and attention as an academic essay. Moreover, blogs and social media sites are gradually being recognised in academic referencing systems, even though in Australia blogs are ineligible for an ISSN. There is some way to go.

In addition to students blogging and sharing media articles, we will be developing a series of multimedia materials ourselves. This means we can overcome the problems of  incorporating multimedia  materials in teaching online due to restrictive copyright laws (or at least the constant threat of breaches of copyright). The Creative Commons  licencing regime provides an appropriate mechanism to share such resources without losing the all-important academic acknowledgement.

But how will we know if we are successful? Student feedback is the easiest measure:

Michael De Percy Feedback Summary 2004-2009

View more presentations from Michael de Percy.

But student feedback alone is insufficient. What will prove the usefulness of 'Teaching 2.0' is the longer term effect in the latter years of the student experience. For example, our focus on written communication skills in first-year units has paid dividends in second- and third-year subjects with many colleagues reporting that they can now focus on the subject content and concepts, rather than re-hashing skills which should have been learnt in the formative stages of higher education. 

One element of feedback which is difficult to obtain until after students graduate is feedback from employers. Next year, I am hoping to add a work-integrated learning aspect to my 'Subjects 2.0' by enabling employers to participate in the feedback process. This is much more difficult to implement than it appears.

Although I am generally opposed to centrally-controlled policies, what would be useful is a government-led initiative to encourage greater community participation in University 2.0 initiatives - something that Web 2.0 technologies enable in an efficient manner. 

In the meantime, the University of Canberra has gone 2.0, proving that while the institutional wheels turn slowly, they do turn.

Not-so-happy reaction to NBN in Mt Isa

Conroy digs himself a hole in outback | The Australian

While the rollout of the NBN on the Australian mainland is great national news, it seems that not everybody is happy about it. Never mind that Australia is already well behind most of the OECD in broadband connectivity. Surely the magnitude of this investment is begging for an educational program to promote the use of higher bandwidth?

The problem stems from the centrally-controlled and disengaged manner in which the NBN is being rolled out - another major program dominated by political and business elites. Nonetheless, to catch up on the opportunities lost by successive governments since the Net became widely available in 1992, there is little option but to get the infrastructure out as soon as possible.

Missing from the multi-billion dollar investment strategy is any attempt to educate potential users about the benefits of the NBN's capability. Users must be involved in the process if there is to be any national improvement in the lack of online skills which are surely the product of more than a decade of neglect.

The trouble with centrally-controlled approaches to network technologies is that the human element of the network is not viewed as an integral part of connectivity - which is ultimately the reason for the investment in the first place.

Mainland NBN Begins

Today's announcement by the Minister for Broadband is great news: the NBN has finally commenced on the mainland. It is a nice change to see rural and regional areas targeted for the commencement of backbone infrastructure. While the returns may not be as immediate, the longer term is looking much better.

It is becoming increasingly apparent that the social aspects of the digital divide, particularly in education, are a result of the last decade's inaction from the federal government.

That is not to say that the current government's focus on Net censorship hasn't distracted the debate from more important issues like providing all Australians with adequate connectivity. But at least now there are some tangible signs that the wheels of the NBN are actually turning.

More info: Regional Blackspots Program

Re-defining the Last Mile

I found a recent post by the Dodgy Goatee quite insightful, particularly this quote:

We tend to think the problem is solved when we solve the technology problem but the human innovation, the human problem, still remains...

I mistakenly read the 'Last Mile' as a social science comment on the techo-term which usually refers to the medium that connects the end-user's big screen to the provider's big pipe.

Late last year, I worked voluntarily with a Jordanian business to help them enhance their use of Facebook. While the workshop was a success, I had this lingering feeling that there were many deeper issues to comprehend. Indeed, access to high speed Internet in Jordan was less of a hassle than here in Gungahlin - so why was it so hard to find information online?

With all the hype about innovation, I wonder if the situation in Australia is really that different. Sure, having a website now might be no different than having a fax machine in the 80s - it is a necessity for businesses and governments. But is that enough in a Web 2.0 world?

I am tired of thinking about the lost opportunities from the finance and resource gatekeepers who assess the risks of implementing new technologies, waiting and waiting until the last possible moment before giving the go-ahead for technologies that are really yesterday's next best thing. By the time the previous innovation becomes commonplace, there is always somewhere new to be.

It would seem to me that the real last mile is not the wire or airwave that connects the big screen to the big pipe, but the mindset that prevents the opportunities from becoming realities during their heyday. While the momentum needed to bring an innovation to fruition might be fraught with transaction costs which are too much to bear, it would seem that those who are able to adopt new technologies faster than others would experience a window of competitive advantage.

The most important last mile, then, is that big obstacle between the big screen and the big open mind - the end-user. Yet many end-users wish they had the skills to implement the big idea, only the transaction costs appear to be too high.

Is there a solution? To me, the start point is to understand why humans do what they do, but more importantly, why they don't do it. The social sciences provide us with the tools to answer such questions, something which the last few decades and their focus on behavioural economics have had little to say other than how to encourage users to purchase the elusive physical last mile.

To make matters worse, the research culture in Australia was set back decades by previous gatekeepers of research funding, who deemed the humanities and the social sciences to be a waste of time and money. Little wonder that social scientists have been reluctant to step outside the so-called non-economic areas to challenge the status quo.

But if history has taught us one thing, it is that history tends to repeat if we refuse to learn the lessons of the past. If we take any other network technology developed over the last two centuries, we see technological innovations hindered by human obstacles which eventually gaive way a generation or so later to large-scale take-up and sighs of 'I wonder how we ever got along without technology X'.

The minefield of obstacles between innovation and implementation are the real last mile, and this is the area most worthy of further research.

Australia & Jordan: A Quick Broadband Comparison

After a four-month break from the Australian broadband scene, it was interesting to return home to find that online censorship is still making the news. Returning from Jordan, a country which has just slipped to 'not free' in the recent Freedom House rankings, I was surprised to find that iiNet had survived a breach of copyright challenge from Hollywood while the South Australian Government had attempted to restrict online political debate. It seems that freedom remains a relative concept in global terms.

Although Jordan differs from Australia on all aspects social, political, cultural and economic (GDP per capita in Jordan is about 13% of that in Australia), an interesting feature is the proliferation of mobile telephones and the use of Wimax technologies to deploy broadband services throughout the Kingdom. Recently, a second submarine cable has been deployed which will improve the Kingdom's connectivity with the rest of the world. Although connectivity is almost a non-issue for wealthier Jordanians, unlike Australia, Jordan's challenges come from a lack of access to computers and a high level of computer illiteracy.

However, Jordanians can access the Net from a growing number of knowledge stations deployed throughout the Kingdom, Net connectivity is at 12% of the population and mobile connectivity stands at 86% of Jordanian families. I purchased a basic mobile phone for JOD 25 (about AUD $40) and found the service inexpensive (by Australian standards) and impeccable. Indeed, using Zain's network, I was able to make and receive calls throughout Jordan, and even while in Bahrain and Jerusalem at barely more than the cost of a within-country call.

I was able to access the Net faultlessly and at least 2.5mbps in both Amman and Aqaba, using ADSL and Wimax from a variety of providers including Orange (the now-privatised Jordan Telecommunications Group), Zain and Batelco. Interestingly, the speed of the Net in Jordan was better than it is here in Gungahlin tonight!

Although I have plenty of ideas to thresh out, a recurring theme in my ongoing cross-national study of broadband deployment indicates the importance of establishing anchor tenants such as schools, hospitals, libraries and other large-user sites when establishing broadband networks.

It would appear that Jordan has been getting on with the job while Australia is caught up in the politics of it all.

While political freedom in Jordan may not compare well with Australia, it would seem that Australia is not racing away in the broadband stakes. But then, it is all relative.