Vision

Digital Equality: A world where everyone has the same rights and opportunities online.

Mission

To advance the open web as a public good and a basic right.

How we do this

Original research: to inform debates and policy recommendations

Advocacy: to persuade governments and firms to advance a progressive policy agenda

Experimentation & innovation: to drive practical, transformative change in local contexts

Image: Credo Action, CC BY-2.0

Affordable Access for All

The Web Foundation leads the Alliance for Affordable Internet ( A4AI) — a global coalition of more than 80 organisations from government, business and civil society fighting to ensure that no one is denied access to the internet on the basis of cost.

‘1 for 2’ – Ensuring that income is not a barrier to access

This year, A4AI announced a new ambitious target for internet affordability: ‘ 1 for 2’ – 1GB of mobile broadband priced at 2% or less of average monthly income.

The UN Broadband Commission currently defines broadband as affordable if an entry-level (500MB) data plan is available at less than 5% of average monthly income. However, this definition of affordability does not account for poverty and income inequality — two major challenges facing the world today — and would leave access out of reach for large sections of the poorest people in society.

We found that when a basic broadband package is priced at 2% or less of average monthly income, access becomes affordable for all levels of income earners. Achieving this more ambitious target would help millions of people currently priced out of access to get online for the first time.

By the end of 2016, the ‘1 for 2’ target had been endorsed by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS); we hope to see other countries and international bodies follow soon.

Measuring the world’s progress on affordability

In September 2015, world leaders gathered at the UN and agreed that the internet is critical for global development and everyone, everywhere, should have access by 2020.

Measuring whether we are on course to achieve this goal, A4AI’s  2015-16 Affordability Report took an in-depth look at the barriers to affordable internet and found that without urgent action, we will miss this target by over 20 years, achieving universal access across the world’s least developed countries by 2042 at the earliest.

On current trends, we’ll see just  16% of people in the world’s poorest countries, and 53% of the world as a whole, connected by 2020. This is why our ‘1 for 2’ target is so crucial.

The report called for governments, companies, and civil society to work together to build open, competitive markets that drive prices down. At the same time it pointed out that lower prices alone won’t connect everyone. To ensure marginalised groups get online rapidly, we need to look to free or subsidised public access in tandem with digital education.

Campaigning for a FAST internet in Africa

While access is the first step, ensuring a quality internet connection is also critical. In May, we kicked off FASTAfrica — a campaign for Fast, Affordable, Safe and Transparent internet in Africa. The campaign delivered 30 grants for a week of action across 20 countries, which reached millions of people both online and off; demands from the campaign were delivered to the World Economic Forum in Kigali.

Investigating the impacts of zero-rating

In 2016, zero-rating — providing free or subsidised data for restricted web services — was widely touted as a way to connect people who could not afford full internet access. As the debate around the merits — and risks — of zero-rated services intensified, A4AI decided to investigate the availability, use, and impact of these service models across developing countries in order to develop informed recommendations on their use as a low-cost connectivity option.

To fill the dearth of empirical data available around the effectiveness of zero-rated and other mobile data plans, A4AI conducted a large-scale study to analyse the use and impact of zero-rated and other mobile data services across eight countries. The study found that:

• Only 1 in 10 zero-rating customers (12%) are first time internet users; the vast majority of those using zero-rated services had previously been online.

• Users prefer access to all of the web and would opt for limitations on time or data over limitations on the sites and apps they can access.

• Public WiFi was the second most popular method of connecting to the internet (behind full-cost plans), strengthening the argument for investing in more and better public WiFi hotspots.

In short, the findings indicate that zero-rated mobile data services which limit users to a narrow slice of the web are not terribly effective at bringing more people online, and are primarily used as a means of ‘topping up’ other forms of (unrestricted) internet access, such as public WiFi and paid data.

Armed with this evidence, A4AI outlined a set of clear policy and regulatory guidelines for the provision  of zero-rated and other mobile data services. Together with A4AI, the Web Foundation will continue to work towards enabling open, affordable internet access for all.

Images:

World Bank, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Asian Development Bank, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Harnessed gender data to fight for equality

Most countries suffer from a lack of reliable, gender-specific data on vital areas such as health, education and economics. To tackle this problem in Côte d’Ivoire, we held an open data challenge specifically focused on gender data, in partnership with the UN. The TechMousso project brought technologists together with policymakers and civil society to build technology solutions to address problems that affect women — with a $10,000 prize up for grabs.

80 teams entered the competition, with 20 progressing to the final round. The winning idea, from team Mafubo, was a web app to allow nurses to better monitor and support pregnant women in maternity wards.

The competition was the first ever national multi-stakeholder data forum in Côte d'Ivoire, and paved the way for a national dialogue on data, open data and data needs, especially for women. The National Statistics Institute sent us an official congratulatory message, thanking us for our efforts.

Laid groundwork for OpenOwnership, a tool to tackle corruption

The Panama Papers release in 2016 revealed the huge costs that global corruption inflicts on society and was an urgent reminder of the need to hold those who abuse the global financial system to account.

Yet, across the 92 countries we surveyed, only one — Australia — makes company data fully open, leaving anonymous companies as convenient vehicles to hide financial assets.

To fight for a more accountable financial system, we partnered with other leading transparency organisations to launch OpenOwnership — an initiative to build an open global register of beneficial ownership data. Making beneficial ownership information public is a powerful tool to end anonymous companies, helping to tackle corruption, money laundering and fraud.

The register is now in beta and governments, including those in Ghana and Ukraine, have committed to working with OpenOwnership to integrate their national data with the global register — first crucial steps towards a truly global register of beneficial ownership.

Continued to hold governments accountable on open data

In April we launched the 3rd Edition of our Open Data Barometer to track the progress of open data initiatives around the world.

The good news is that for the first time over half of the 92 countries studied have open data initiatives. However, fewer than 10% of the datasets vital for global development were open. Worse still, most open data is found in rich countries, with nearly half of the open datasets in our study found in just 10 OECD countries, and almost none in Africa. This data inequality acts as barrier for the many countries that need this information to help achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

The Barometer offered six actions that countries can take to move their open data efforts forward:

1. Get behind the Open Data Charter.

2. Expand and deepen open data practice.

3. Finish the job — make sure the government data published is truly open.

4. Harmonise open data, privacy and freedom of information efforts.

5. Consult data users and prioritise the data citizens and data users want.

6. Provide funding, training and support for developing countries to close the data gap.

The Barometer results were reported by global and national media around the world, and allowed the Web Foundation to push forward conversations on how we make sure governments remain committed to transparency and to opening up government data in a meaningful way. The Barometer has become a key benchmark for policymakers and civil society and is being used to measure progress and change policies in 15+ countries, including Canada, South Korea, Mexico, Ukraine, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom.

Championed the Open Data Charter

We continued to push governments and multilateral organisations to adopt the principles of the International Open Data Charter, so that government data can be used by, and for the benefit of everyone.

Since the Charter launched in 2015, the Web Foundation has been an integral force in promoting its adoption as a member of the charter's advisory body and as a Lead Steward, supporting implementation and measurement of progress.

In 2016, we ran a number of events around the world to encourage key decision makers to sign up to the Charter. We co-organised the International Open Data Conference in Madrid, welcoming 1,200 experts from 42 countries. At the conference, the governments of Costa Rica, Paraguay, Sierra Leone and Ukraine all announced their adoption of the Charter.

At the Open Government Partnership (OGP) summit in December 2016, we used the Charter principles to deliver recommendations on improvements to the draft National Action Plans (NAPs) of various governments, including Australia, Israel, Italy and Papua New Guinea, encouraging them to fully embrace open data principles.

As of the end of 2016, dozens of national and subnational governments have adopted the Charter and form part of a growing community of governments dedicated to making open data a reality for citizens.

Used data to solve local challenges in Indonesia

Now in its second year, our  Open Data Lab in Jakarta supported a host of initiatives harnessing the power of open data to address social challenges. We partnered with governments to launch open data portals, helped organisations ue open data to improve their communities, and held workshops to arm people with the skills they need to turn data into action.

One success story came from Lab partner  GeRAK Aceh. Partnering with the Lab and working with open data for the first time, the Indonesian anti-corruption watchdog was able to use open data to score a major policy victory, pressuring the provincial government of Aceh to extend a moratorium on mining to 2017. While this advocacy involved a range of tactics,  GeRak credited the open data skills they learned as crucial to achieving the reforms.

The Lab also announced  “Innovating for Open Cities” in partnership with  Making All Voices Count — a project designed to harness open data’s potential to make fast-growing cities better, more efficient homes for their citizens. We worked with the following partners in Jakarta to improve the city’s use of open data:

• Radya Labs: to help the Fire Department improve public service delivery.

• Perkumpulan SKALA:  to provide information in the face of natural disasters.

• Produk Tanyoe: to  help local producers advertise and sell their products.

A big focus of the Lab’s work is fostering collaboration and learning. In November, we brought 21 innovators together for  Southeast Asia Open Data Innovation Week to build best practices for designing and implementing open data initiatives. The event produced a number of tools that are available to others embarking on open data projects.

Images: Haley, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0