gatewatching

Alcopops, petrol tax holidays, who leaked emails from whom… Sometimes its difficult to get serious policy discussion in the MSM (unless, like me, you’re a Fin junkie).

The best way to find out about major policy developments that impact on your areas of concern is through your RSS reader. I thought I’d try to start sharing some of what I get on a semi-regular basis on the blog. We’ve posted about policy matters before, but at the moment there is important stuff coming out pretty well every week that has a direct bearing on citizen journalism and politics online. I thought I might as well stick it all together for readers now and again.

With all the reviews and inquiries going on just now, there will be a mass of reporting coming along shortly which will be informing big policy initiatives. Also, notwithstanding some MSM narratives of the first six months, I’m with Mark Bahnisch and Possum in holding that there is actually a fair bit going on already - you just have to look around in a clear-eyed fashion. There are some fundamental policy shifts slowly being put in place, particularly in the communications area, but for whatever reason it’s not being picked up on by the big outlets. I guess that’s one area where bloggers come into their own.

Anyway, the first piece of news this week comes from that most fecund of research organisations, the Australian Communications and Media Authority. ACMA has released a report that’s been given the classic title, “Top Six Trends in Communications and Media Technologies, Applications and Services - Possible Implications”.

The report does what it says on the can. It identifies six trends for a “concise overview of technologies, applications and services trends over the next five to 10 years.” We can summarise* them here as (i) an accelerating pace of change in technology and “connections between people”, (ii) diversity in the development of physical infrastructure (broadband, digital broadcasting, smart radio, mesh networks etc. etc.) (iii) the continuing spread of distributed creativity beyond computers and into everyday objects (iv) enhanced content and network management capabilities, (v) the emerging social web (to which we will return) and (vi) continuing scientific and technological innovations (including AI, nanotech etc.) The regulatory implications of all of these technologies are considered (regulation is ACMA’s brief) and it’s all worth a read

But it might surprise many to learn that ACMA’s discussion of the “social web”, which will enable “innovation and creativity by users and service providers”, doesn’t offer a single mention of blogs or citizen journalism. The entire report doesn’t include the words “blog” or “weblog”. The growth and improvement of blogging practices is not something that ACMA see in Australia’s communications future, or not at least on this evidence.  Instead, they discuss social networking sites at length, and then the mobile web, internet TV, cloud computing, virtual identities (including a little talk about second life and augmented reality) and the semantic web. But citizens offering reportage, political opinions and other forms of content on blogs is not something that ACMA is considering for its regulatory implications in this report.

There might not be major policy implications in blogs not being discussed, and ACMA might simply think they’re established as a permanent feature of the landscape.  And given the complaints about ACMA’s approach to Internet regulation in the past, maybe its for the best

Elsewhere, the State and Federal communications ministers got together last week to discuss a big-ticket policy item, the broadband rollout. After the meeting, they issued a joint communique. The ministers offered the following framework:

Online and Communications Council delegates agreed to pursue a framework including:

• developing the capability of the National Broadband Network;
• providing digital content in priority areas, such as health and education;
• transforming the nature and delivery of key government applications and services;
• using the National Broadband Network to deliver certain Australian, State, Territory and local government services to Indigenous Australians; and
• streamlining planning process for broadband deployment into greenfield and other developments.

All great stuff. Let’s hope that they have the resources and political will to deliver on this in a meaningful way, because as we’ve mentioned on this blog before, the current situation is a discgrace.

Anyway, there were elements of the rest of the press release accompanying the communique that could have been read as “fighting words”:

Ministers resolved to work together to examine options to leverage their future telecommunications procurements to ensure an appropriate competitive structure and to deliver enhanced value for money and expanded and better quality of services.

The state and territory Ministers expressed their strong preference for a solution to be operated by a genuine wholesale provider that is separate from any retail service provider.

The MSM might not have given it extensive coverage, but I bet Telstra read it.

Another thing came out last week that might feed into the mix of policy discussions around national communications, and might also bear on discussions of the blogosphere and citizen journalism.  A report on “media literacy”, also commissioned by ACMA, and delivered by academics Robyn Penman and Sue Turnbull. It’s a good summary of current academic literature that’s nicely shaped for policy deliberation. To venture a personal opinion,  this is at least as important as infrastructure development - democratising Internet initiatives mean bubkuss in the absence of a more general capacity to make use of them.

*I can’t quote directly from it, because ACMA engages in the annoying practice of password-protecting its documents so no one can cut and paste from them.

ACMA, Steven Conroy, Telstra, blogging, broadband, media literacy, regulation ACMA, blogging, broadband, futures, infrastructure, media literacy, policy, regulation, Steven Conroy, Telstra