The GIPO observatory tool and what’s next for policy observatories

Event report

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The Global Internet Policy Observatory (GIPO) was initiated in 2012 by the European Commission in an effort to overcome the fragmentation of information and to enable more informed policy making, especially for those who face difficulties with accessing the information. As for practical implementation, the GIPO Observatory Tool has been available for use since this year at https://www.giponet.org/en.

The ambition of the GIPO tool was to develop the space for supporting better engagement in Internet governance (IG) processes, especially of those under-informed and newcomers to IG. In a broader sense, GIPO provides a strategy to enable further interaction with stakeholders in both technical and more socially/policy-oriented topics dealing with IG and next generation Internet.

The session was introduced by Ms Kasia Jakimowicz who is part of the consortium implementing the GIPO. As she explained, the workshop aimed to build on and further develop discussions initiated during previous GIPO’s and two previous IGF observatories’ workshops on the landscape of the mapping initiatives and observatories, as well as their sustainability in the future. Main questions for discussion covered the aspects of how the tool can be used for a better grasp of IG topics, how can this information be shared with others in the community and how could the participants contribute to further usability of GIPO.

GIPO is an open-source tool that can be used by anybody. The dashboard can be integrated in any website, Jakimowicz showed and explained the example of the EuroDig website, with information specifically for Europe. GIPO has been intended to be used mainly:

• as a source of information for the public
• as a tool for curators of content of other observatories
• as a dashboard at IG community organisations’ websites, eg. ACSIS, EuroDig
• as a facilitator of a community around a more open approach to IG

It has further served as an enabler for new content creation via application programming interface (API).

This year, the project is coming to an end and the financing from the European Commission is finishing. As a next step, the Commission has launched the Next Generation Internet Initiative to support the development of a human-centric Internet around core European values. The website launched at www.speakNGI.eu should serve as an open dynamic consultation process.

The session then continued by splitting the participants into working groups which worked on suggested scenarios for the further development of the tool, as well as possibilities for collaboration with other similar initiatives. The recommendations from the session will serve as a basis for further recommendations to the European Commission.

By Tereza Horejsova