Assessing Internet Development in Brazil: UNESCO launches the first edition of a new publication series of Internet Universality National Assessments

By iednewsdesk Last updated Apr 28, 2020

The first edition of the UNESCO Series of Internet Universality National Assessments has just been published, with Brazil as the country of study.

Following the resolution of the 31st Council of the International Programme for the Development of Communication (IPDC) in November 2018, Brazil has been the first country which has voluntarily completed the assessment of Internet Universality Indicators.

The publication is the result of research conducted by the Brazilian Network Information Center (NIC.br) through the Center for Studies on the Development of the Information Society (Cetic.br), and overseen by the Multi-stakeholder Advisory Board represented by the Brazilian Internet Steering Committee, CGI.br.

The report is a study in which all 109 core indicators are documented and assessed in order to establish a comprehensive mapping of the state of the Internet Universality in the country. It is composed of six distinct categories.

These include findings resulting from the research on contextual indicators, which outline information on the country’s economic and demographic situation, as well as on development, equality, governance, and ICT development.

This is followed by an assessment of the indicators composing the four “ROAM” categories of Rights, Openness, Accessibility, and Multi-stakeholder participation. A final subset of indicators then looks at Cross-cutting issues (“X”), such as gender, children, trust and security.

For each of the five ROAM-X chapters, research findings are complemented with a set of recommendations formulated for different stakeholder groups: the private sector, technical community, academia, civil society, the judiciary, and government. The follow-up action will be to take these recommendations forward to inform the policy debates and improve the Internet policies in Brazil.

As the first report in the series of national assessments, this edition serve as a good practice for future assessment reports of a number of countries in the pipeline.