apc.au blog

March 26th, 2008 is the inaugural Document Freedom Day, a global event to raise awareness of the importance of the Open Document Format. Open standards are crucial to allow diverse computer applications to exchange information and for that information to outlive the application that originally created it.

Many of us have experienced the pain of trying to access information created in now obsolete products (anyone remember Wordstar?). We’ve also tried to share documents between other organisations and seen the formatting disasters and corruptions that can occur (MS Word to Lotus, for example?). How about those who have received a document written in the latest version of MS Office but cannot read it because they’re running an older version?

Open document standards have been compared to the Rosetta stone as they allow us to unlock information. They also help promote competition as any application can work with them and, perhaps most importantly, help prevent vendor lock-in. No one organisation should have control over how your store your information.

For our part, apc.au are going to make available 10 years of essays, lectures, reports and articles dealing with information communication technologies for cultural development (ICT4CD). We’ll be loading them onto our wiki in both open and portable document formats, these papers are available for sharing and re-publication under a Creative Commons Australia license. It’s going to take a while to get them all loaded, so we’ll drop progress reports here as time passes.

For now, spare a moment to think about how your information is stored. Can you share it easily with others? Will you be able to access it in the future? Maybe you should consider changing to an application that supports open standards? Food for thought

Update: Here are our links:

• Our media release
• The list of documents we’re making available
• Our DFD 08 wiki page

In the previous article I discussed the processes required to get me to Kakuma via the UNHCR and other required routes. In the next few articles I’ll provide a blow by blow description of getting there and anything of interest along the way.

Schedules

The schedule published in that first article is one of many that have been prepared along the way, and as of today, clearly not the last. Thanks to our travel agent, Cloud 9 Travel, I’ve been able to make these issue revised schedules and have flights re-booked with relative ease.

It’s been tricky to coordinate schedules for both Kenya and Thailand given the constraints of net access, work space issues and the excessive telephony tariffs throughout Africa, with South Africa perhaps the highest.

In addition, I’m now to ensure that I can coordinate UN charted flights from Nairobi to coincide with security escorts to and from Kakuma. But before I get this far, I’m still trying to get Kenyan Government approval to enter the camp and I can’t get this if I can’t coordinate communications with our proposed guide there, Peter Mabouch.

If Peter and I are unable to communicate frequently with each other would I still go to Kakuma? It would be a shame to have come this far and not go. In short, I’ll go, but with far more caution.

I’m also arranging to leave some of my luggage, including my guitar, at the APC office in Johannesburg. This means getting there and back from Nairobi, organising transports to and from the airport and accommodation in between.

Note: Have since made contact with Peter via colleagues in Melbourne, but unable to reach the Kenyan Government official we need to communicate with prior to fixing our schedule with the UN (charted flights, security escort, etc.).

I’m making plans for Kenya now that I have a line of contact through to the UNHCR in Geneva and their officers in Nairobi. It will be interesting to see how much of the trip from here on in can be organised remotely, particularly flights. Given my replacement credit card will only work at point of sale, not via the net nor phone, I’m having to rely entirely on our travel agent to make all my bookings.

Here’s the proposed travel schedule that should see me leaving Cape Town on the morning of Monday, 10 March.

• 10 Mar: Cape Town to J’burg, late morning.
• 11 Mar: J’burg to Nairobi
• 13 Mar: Nairobi to Lokichoggio, Kenya (leaves from Wilson Airport, Nairobi)
• 16 Mar: Lokichoggio to Nairobi
• 16 Mar: Nairobi to J’burg

I’m working on the basis that I wouldn’t need to spend more than 2 -3 days in Kakuma covering traveling time and other unforeseen logistics.

I hope to travel with Peter Mabouch, a young Sudanese refugee who had been in the Kakuma Refugee Camp since 1992. He’s been briefed by Archangelo N. Madut, or Nyuol as we’ve got to know him, a counselor/advocate based at Foundation House. Peter is keen play the role of identifying participants to the project in the camp, or alternatively, recruit others in Nairobi should we find too many limitations hindering involvement of participants in Kakuma.

At the outset of this research project for Home Lands we’d planned to look at the Thailand end of the project. With the problems in Kenya and subsequent uncertainties, it seemed unfeasible. However, being as I was in South Africa, if there were to be any possibility that I could get there, and if my colleagues back in Melbourne approved, I’d head in.

It was during the Home Lands presentation I’d made at the APC Eboard, staff and management meeting in Ithala, South Africa, that the first step to Kakuma had been taken. Not only were APC people enthusiastic about the possibility of having me there, Karen Banks and Anriette Esterhuysen were confident that our contacts through to UNHCR in Geneva would help to pin point the right people to get the necessary protocols for my visit seen to.

They were right! Karen asked me to prepare a briefing paper and after it had been sent, it was only a matter of days before we had a contact in Geneva who subsequently put me directly in touch with his colleagues in Nairobi, asking them to assist in making the necessary arrangements for my visit to Kakuma. The first thing I had to do was just get to Nairobi to ensure their support for the Home Lands project, my research trip and the logistics required to get me in and out of there.

I’ve also been in touch with James Nguo, Regional Director of the Arid Lands Information Network-Eastern Africa (ALIN) and Tony Roberts from Computer Aid, a frequent visitor to Nairobi. Given that ALIN are APC members, working with James has been entirely necessary as he’s provided views to the political situation in Kenya that are not widely known, at least not in my circles. Tony has joined the Home Lands team as part of the growing reference committee and will be an invaluable resource as I take my first steps on Kenyan soil.

I’ve been wanting to get more involved with the direction the Internet’s going – I feel that we finally have a tool that could be used to bring out the “peoples’ voice” but governments and media corporations are trying to shackle it into the controlled, guided and restricted world of “traditional” media (eg: newspapers, television and radio). We stand at the beginning of a massive Information Serengeti, a vast plain where anyone can travel to any information sources they want, produce their own information and engage in two way communication with other entities (be they people, businesses, NGOs or governments).

Instead, thanks to the general apathy of many, lack of honest information about the risks we face and, of course, greed & fear, the digital serengeti is being converted into a spigot, where controlled, filtered and sanitised information is fed down the tube to the passive masses. Any information we consume is tracked and any movements we are able to make are monitored and limited to spaces within walled gardens. Our privacy, our access to knowledge and our freedom are in danger of being limited.

To me, this would be a great tragedy that cannot be allowed to occur.

So, to this end, I’m considering getting more involved with the Australian Internet Society, the Internet Governance Forum and ICANN. I see this as being a great lever for our ICT Rights work and to help us get more involved with the big issues facing the Internet. It’s very early days at the moment but you can track what’s happening over on our Wiki with the Net Activism page I’ve set up.