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Universal internet access a must for information rights

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By Mathatha Tsedu…

Thursday was the 20th anniversary of the emergence of Google, which means that 21 years ago, there was no Google, no Gmail, no Youtube, and the many other things that we now not only take for granted, but feel we can no longer do without.

Our country of two countries embodies different challenges, however. Challenges of inequality and poverty-induced disempowerment through lack of information. Whilst the world is grappling with the effects of Google, many of our fellow citizens ask “What is Google?”.

Whilst most parts of the world deal with the information overload that is the Internet, many in our country ask what the internet is. Whilst Vumatel works in overdrive to lay the fibre in suburbia where I live, to ensure I have enough download speed, deep in rural Venda where I call home, even the landlines we used to have have gone the way of all cable flesh.

Which raises the question, what do we mean by Universal Access to information, and through the internet when the children learn under trees, when their struggle is not about open source but open space, where goats wander into their airy classroom as they learn.

Government says there will be Universal Access by 2020. Even the perennial optimists agree it won’t happen, at least not by that date. The Department of Post and Telecommunications said yesterday 2020 “is unlikely to be met because there are around 20 million South Africans who do not have access to the internet. A similar number doesn’t have digital skills to access and use this information”.

The migration from analogue to digital is now scheduled to be completed by this December. For that to happen, there will need to be an outlay of over 50 000 set top boxes per day. We all know it won’t happen until those responsible are assured that the tender for the set top boxes and installation is awarded to people who will return the favour, and not necessarily the most competent.

We all know that the slowdown in the digital migration has been partly also due to the flip flopping around encryption to ensure some monopoly remains that.

In the access to information clause in the Bill of Rights, the pre-amble to the Promotion of Access to Information Act (PAIA) states that the purpose of the Act is to:

  • foster a culture of transparency and accountability in public and private bodies by giving effect to the right of access to information;
  • actively promote a society in which the people of South Africa have effective access to information to enable them to more fully exercise and protect all of their rights

How do we make these lofty ideals real for all?

The media has been central to the momentous political developments that have led to the Zondo Commission into State Capture. It was not through publication of information gleaned through PAIA but through a whistle-blower who downloaded the entire or huge chunk of the Gupta server.

The teams from a number of media houses and institutions that worked to mine the information and distil for easy national consumption was largely donor funded and not through the resources provided by the media houses themselves.

This is because as the technological developments happen legacy media houses dependent on advertising are seeing a steady erosion of revenues leading to staff reductions and loss of skills to do the complex work that went into decoding the GuptaLeaks or the international collaboration that looked into illicit money flows around the world.

Why is this important on a day when we are marking the 18th anniversary of the enabling legislation of PAIA and its promises of Nirvana?

It is important because in the face of an inability to provide the physical infrastructure for Universal Access, at the very least create the legislative framework that would allow media to access information easily and distribute to the public. This would help foster “a culture of transparency and accountability in public and private bodies by giving effect to the right of access to information” as we have seen demands for action and accountability following the GuptaLeaks and other scoops around corruption.

What then are the key things that can and should be done to ensure progress in opening up information to the public?

First, we need to make it easier for the public (and the media) to use PAIA to access information. A major improvement in the law will be to make provision for pro-active disclosure of information.

It is encouraging that this matter is already on the agenda of the Information Regulator, to make recommendations to Parliament to introduce the principle of pro-active disclosure in an updated version of PAIA and to further align it with the African Model Law on Access to Information.

The second issue after pro-active disclosure is for information holders and access to information activists to vigorously pursue the Open Data and Open Government agenda.

As a country we are a founder member of the UN initiated Open Government Partnership, and there already exists ambitious commitments to establish open data portals, with projects ranging from Open Justice, Open Budget (such as the new national budget portal Vulekamali and Municipal Money), Open Elections, etc, all of which are in different stages of implementation.

When the open data movement started to gain momentum five years ago, the inventor of the world wide web Tim Berners-Lee said that “fighting poverty, accelerating industry and innovation, and reducing corruption can all be assisted through the release of publicly held data to the public and software developers.”

For South Africa to start seeing these benefits, we need to establish a culture of open data; support initiatives by civic tech and “data liberation” activists and information industry workers to use open data for the public good; and encourage the SA Human Rights Commission, with its mandate to protect and promote our access to information rights, to monitor and hold the government to account on the implementation of its Open Government commitments.

With all this information available online, the third requirement to ensure “effective access to information” as PAIA requires from us, is to provide universal access to the internet.  In 2016 the African Commission on Human and People’s Rights called on African governments to take legislative and other measures “to guarantee, respect and protect citizen’s right to freedom of information and expression through access to internet services”.

Here at home numerous policy papers and legislation refer to the need for citizens to have the means, capacity and skills to fully participate in a digitally driven democracy and economy, in line with the vision expressed in the National Development Plan of universal access to the internet and an e-literate public.

On a practical level, initiatives such as the Internet for All project launched last year jointly by the South African government and the World Economic Forum to try and fast track universal access policy implementation should be commended.

But for these initiatives to be successful, a basic level of free internet access, especially aimed at the poor and vulnerable to exercise their constitutionally guaranteed access to information rights, should be a key part of any plan to provide effective access to information.  This concept is already written in South African law, but citizens, and especially the rural poor who need it most, have yet to see these rights realised.

On this International Day for Universal Access to Information, government and oversight bodies such as the Human Rights Commission and the Information Regulator should recommit to prioritise the progressive realisation of the right to universal free access to online information – in the form of a basic level of guaranteed free access to the internet for citizens to exercise their basic information rights

We commend efforts by the online and media industry to advance practical ways in which this can be achieved, and efforts by the Human Rights Commission to monitor and report on the implementation of government’s universal internet access plans.

A combined effort to address these three issues, pro-active disclosure of information, open data and universal access to the internet, also sometimes called the golden triangle of access to information, will greatly improve our efforts to fulfil the promise made in PAIA to “actively promote a society in which the people of South Africa have effective access to information to enable them to more fully exercise and protect all of their rights”.

But it is not just the policy level discussion or talk around how far transparency should go, for us it is still also or in the main about the basic foundations of access in the form of bandwidth size and its penetration. It is about helping the open school kid, Tsakane, to literally leapfrog into the digital age by using wifi in her classroom under the Mufula tree.

 

This is an edited version of the keynote address by Mathatha Tsedu at the celebration of the International Day of Universal Access to Information hosted by the SA Human Rights Commission and the Information Regulator under the theme “PAIA almost two decades on: Reflections and Opportunities”

Mr Tsedu is also a member of the SABC Board.

 

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