Syracuse

Togo

Digital Identity, Internet Governance, and Public Policy

My research interest is not location-specific other than being related to global governance issues. However, by origin and experience, I have an interest in challenges and responses of African countries in an evolving and ICT-enabled global environment.

I attended higher education in France where I graduated in Philosophy at the University Charles-de-Gaulle in Lille, in 1995, and in Political Science (African Studies) at the University Panthéon-Sorbonne in Paris, 1996. I first engaged with ICT for development through an internship at UNESCO, Paris, in 1997. From 1998, I conducted the organization’s project for public domain digital libraries on development. I coordinated and implemented the publication of the first digital library CD-ROM (“SAHEL point DOC,” released in 1999) in that series, which included information on development materials, along with full contents, about Sahel countries (francophone readers). A second CD-ROM in the same series, targeting the East African region (contents both in English and Swahili) followed in 2001. I then started work with the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), at their Dakar Office in Senegal, where I coordinated ‘Scan-ICT’, a research project on ICT indicators for measuring and monitoring ICT deployment and use in Africa. My main responsibility included addressing methodological issues arising during the field survey in six countries, as well as compiling and editing a consolidated report. Following that assignment, I moved to Maputo, Mozambique, where I lived from January 2003 to August 2005, and worked for and with various institutions from inside as well as outside the country:

• Distance Education course involving telecenter managers and experts distributed in eight countries and three continents, using the WorldSpace digital radio and CLASS (Combine Live Audio and Slide Show) software package (contract with UNESCO, Paris);
• Production of a CD-ROM on Malaria for the Manhiça community telecenter in collaboration of the University Eduardo Mondlane (UNESCO local office in Maputo);
• Final evaluation of the Multipurpose Community Telecenter Programme sponsored by UNESCO, ITU and the IDRC, as member of the research team set up by the international scientific coordination agency for the evaluation (Evalnet, Johannesburg);
• ICT baseline research on sixteen West African countries, including survey and analysis of key data and statistics in the telecom and Internet market, policy and institutional framework (Open Society Initiative for West Africa, OSIWA, Dakar).

And lastly before returning to the academia, I attended the DiploFoundation online Capacity Building Program on Internet Governance (March-June 2005), and was awarded a UN Fellowship to assist the Secretariat of the Working Group on Internet Governance in drafting its final report for the second phase of the World Summit on the Information Society, WSIS. I was also involved in the WSIS process through various electronic forums, and was elected for a two-year term as ICANN-GNSO Council member in November 2005. Since August 2005, I have undertaken a Ph.D. in Information Science and Technology at Syracuse University in Syracuse, New York, where I have been awarded the Katzer Fellowship for the academic year 2006-07.

There are risks attached to digital technologies, such as the security and integrity of the information that is processed and stored. From the citizen’s (or, if you will, consumer’s) viewpoint dealing with such pervasive technologies, those risks also include privacy concerns. Any digital government scheme will only be as much successful as the level of trust that it allows or generates from the users. Security and privacy are key for building such trust, and may be embedded in the system to the extent possible. However, given the government’s broader missions, there is always the temptation, and related suspicion, of surveillance and its possible abuses. This issue seems harder to tackle by technological means, and would much require social and political arrangements. Exemplary in that regard is the problem of identification systems, either through national identity tokens or through private transactions (e.g., online.) Besides the government, more and more private actors are interested in ascertaining the digital users’ identity. Considering governments’ historical function in creating and maintaining identity records, is it relevant at all for governments to play a role in the efforts being developed by private actors to build digital identity frameworks? What might that role be if it were not to hinder online transactions (including, but not limited to, e-commerce) while ensuring to minimize e-delinquency? And what level of international cooperation, if any, is both needed and acceptable in dealing with these issues?

In sum, I’m not just interested in learning about how governments use information technology to enhance their capacity to fulfill their usual missions, but also in how public authorities make technology-related policies, and how they respond to technological innovations, as well as the ensuing societal challenges and changes. I’m much interested in how digital technology transforms “governmentality” and citizenship, that is, basically, the relationship between governing and governed. The theme of DG this year “the City” appeals to me as in phase with the decentralized way digital technologies have been developing around the Internet, and the obvious need and relevance to tackle related challenges at the edges where often most innovations take place as far as Internet is concerned. From a practical standpoint, I am keen to gain some insight from cases (and, with the field visits, from arguably the biggest of the metropolises), while on the theoretical side, I look forward to benefiting and leveraging the expertise of the high quality supporting researchers in the program, in order to expand my research interest as well as make a headway in my current approach to my dissertation topic.